Welcome to our blog

Street Shield Self-Defense instructors
Eric Holsinger and
Amy Stewart-Cooper

Welcome to the Street Shield Self-Defense blog. 

Street Shield Self-Defense is Amy Stewart-Cooper and Eric Holsinger. We formed Street Shield exactly a year ago, July 2019, when our friend Jay Beecham of Streetwise Women's Self-Defense had to move to California and asked us to fill the void he was leaving behind here in the Boise, Idaho area.

Before the Coronavirus pandemic we were teaching at the Downtown Family YMCA in Boise, we also taught a co-ed high school class, and we were scheduled to begin teaching at Idaho Martial Arts in Eagle when the lockdown occurred right before our first class. Due the surge of Covid cases here in the Boise area we are not currently teaching in-person classes, therefore we are starting this blog and increasing our social media presence because there's plenty of good information that we can share to 

help keep people safer and enjoy life more.

Amy teaches "Soft Skills", which are also known as "Alpha Skills" because they are the first set of skills that we use to keep ourselves safe. These skills include things like Situational Awareness, Boundary Setting, and De-Escalation. Eric teaches the "Hard Skills", which are the Physical Skills of how to physically defend yourself and fight.

We strongly believe that the Physical Skills are best learned in person with a qualified teacher, not only to help you learn the skills properly but also to make any necessary adjustments to your individual physicality, and most importantly to keep you safe as you're learning. Therefore we will never post any videos on how to do techniques. On the other hand, the Soft/Alpha Skills can actually be learned remotely through reading and also through video, and can be practiced without training partners, so those skills will be the focus of this blog.

You might be thinking, "But the physical skills are fun. That's what I really want to learn."

You're right, they are fun and you should want to learn them. We, and other self-defense schools, will resume teaching them as we feel it's Covid safe to do so. In the meantime, you deserve to be safe and to learn those first line of defense skills.

And Soft/Alpha Skills are also fun. Amy teaches them through "Gamefication." She and her group of self-defense instructors think of skills they want to develop, create games to teach those skills, and play those games as we go about our daily lives.  Situational Awareness does not mean looking for bad guys hiding in the bushes, that would be a terrible way to live your life plus the Treasure Valley is very safe so there's no reason to live like that. However, being aware of your surroundings and all the cool and beautiful things that exist around us provides a richer, fuller, and more enjoyable life experience.

Amy has a saying, "Self-Defense is Life Enhancement. The things that we do keep ourselves safe also make our lives better on a daily basis."

I don't want to speak for Eric, this is Amy writing this, but after our first class he said that, "Every act of self defense is a celebration of your inherent self worth. Do not hesitate to celebrate that. It is both beautiful and powerful. You are worth it. Always."

Together those two quotes are good summary of our philosophy.

More to come. Until then,

Happy Training!

Posted by Amy.