The post-Holiday shopping season is a great time of the year to take advantage of after holiday sales. If we disregard the fact that this is the busiest time of the year for gift giving, people tend to spend a lot of time looking for clothing, electronics, and other items of interest they wanted but could afford before the post-Holiday sales. This actually adds to the mayhem of people returning gifts and increases the volume of people out at the malls.

With the hurricane of consumerism hitting us every year, the shopping centers are flooded with armies of people between Thanksgiving and well after December 25th. Much like a herd of wild animals, this invites the danger of predators looking for an opportunity to pick off an unknowing shopper for their own gain.

Even with summertime being the peak time for robberies, the Holiday shopping season is when we see a peak in crimes of this nature. This doesn’t mean you have to lock yourself indoors and wait until the Holidays are over, you just have to take the proper precautions when venturing out.

Travel in a group – By increasing your numbers, you increase the number of eyes that could look out for danger. Walking in a group also may deter a potential robber from considering you as a target.

Travel light – When you make a shopping trip, bring only what you need. Don’t travel with a ton of credit and ATM cards. If possible, just carry cash and be sure to keep everything in separate locations on your person. If you carry everything, car keys, ID, credit and ATM cards, etc, in one place like a wallet or bag, you could lose everything in one fell swoop. With all this personal information falling into the wrong hands, you leave yourself at risk for potential car theft, burglary, and identity theft.

Travel with protection – In a case were an attacker may engage in violence to rob you, it’s always better to hand over your shopping bags than engage your attacker. However, if you find yourself in a situation where you are at risk for harm, it’s always a smart idea to have a self-defense weapon just in case. Keeping something as small enough to hang on your key chine at the ready when walking alone, such as a Kubotan, Heart Attack, or small canister of Pepper Spray, could even the odds in the event of being surprised by someone.

When walking in the evening, it’s hard to notice if someone is following or watching you from afar. Couple the darkness when being tired from a long day, you are more focused on getting home rather than your surroundings. You could find yourself in a situation where there isn’t time to reach for a self-defense weapon and the only defense against some punk is yourself.

That is why martial arts instructor Tim Larkin developed Focus Training, a method of self-defense that uses quick reactions to deliver devastating attacks to subdue an attacker. Focus training provides you with the skills needed to turn yourself into a formidable weapon to ward-off any attack.

This training will teach you how to overcome any situation, even if the person attacking you has a weapon. The trick is to know the person attacking you has a weapon, avoid it, and subdue the person quickly and efficiently. Tim Larkin’s training won’t make you fearless, instead it will teach you how to ignore that fear and to do what needs to be done to survive.

This training comes in the 5 Seconds to Live or Die, which teaches you the full program of hand-to-hand/hand-to-weapon fighting techniques such as striking, targeting, and using leverage to ward of an attacker or even multiple attackers. Or you could just purchase the Defending Against a Gun or Knife which teaches hand to weapon fighting.

In any event, when you invest in a self defense item you should take into account how you access it. Unless you plan on walking around with a taser or pepper spray canister out and at the ready at all times, training yourself to be a weapon is the logical option.