ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — Through September, Weapon Brand, a small business in St. Pete, is offering free self-defense classes to a select group.

The company’s classes mix fitness with practical skills for personal empowerment.

Weapon Brand offers other courses in personal safety as well.

A group of students from Eckerd College recently took the high-speed combatives self-defense workshop and is feeling good by feeling safe.

Madison Prois is jumping into something new.

“I at least jump off the Pier once a week and I can’t wait to keep getting in the water,” Prois said.

She is new to the area and is getting into self-defense as she starts her in her first year at Eckerd College.

“I do carry around pepper spray so that’s also helpful but that could always go wrong,” she said. “It’s not always going to work.”

Prois plays for Eckerd’s beach volleyball team.

Her teammate, Ella Kloepper, who is also a new at Eckerd, took the class as well.

The class instructor, Brian Anderson Needham, explained what the students get out of high-speed combatives.

He said it is “basic instruction on how to avoid danger if they can avoid it.”

It is also about how to fight out of an attack while also getting in a good workout.

Needham is the co-owner of Weapon Brand.

The retired Marine gave the free class to 22 Eckerd students new to campus life.

The program is part of their orientation in more ways than one.

“This maybe a new time for them to be in a community and an environment that it’s a little bit different,” Needham said.

What is not different, said Needham, are the skills needed to feel safe. 

Prois and Kloepper are feeling empowered.

“I feel like I’m leaving with confidence,” said Kloepper. “If I was put in a situation, I have many ways that I can get out of it and a way to feel safe around campus and out.”

Prois said it is “definitely worth it and I could definitely use it in the future.”