One of the biggest lies in self-defense training is "You will fight the way you train." No, you won't. Not the first time. You will try and there might be some resemblance but likely (assuming you don't just stand there, frozen) you will have a pretty severe dump of hormones. Adrenaline and stuff like that.
That means you will lose most of your peripheral vision, seeing a small patch in front of you with useless clarity and completely unaware of people (or fists or boots or blades) approaching you from the sides or below.
You will likely lose part of your hearing. The idea of not being deafened and shocked by gunfire in an enclosed room sounds pretty cool. Not being able to hear your partner say, "Behind you!" or the first responding officer yelling, "Drop the weapon!" is much less cool.
The blood pools to your internal organs, one reason among many that you will lose sensitivity as well as coordination.
Thoughts may be crystal-clear and completely irrelevant. Illogical, obsessed with irrelevant details and almost always stubbornly stupid.
So you fight the way you trained except with a body that is suddenly partially blind, partially deaf, insensitive, clumsy and stupid. Other than that... yeah. You fight the way you train.
Provided, of course, that you trained for fights as they happen, but that's another post for another day.
The most powerful ego strokes after the Oakland event came from private e-mails, talking about some changes in the writer's regular training. Finding and exploiting weaknesses without thinking about it. Getting to better positions subconsciously because it felt right. Flowing not just between different levels of technique but different levels of intensity and connection.
We know that the hypercritical inner voice is suicide in a fight. How much of your personal training caters to that voice?
We know that our programmed social responses are only appropriate for certain levels of conflict...and in almost every instance those levels can be avoided. How often do we practice jettisoning that conditioning? Do we specifically train in when it is appropriate to do so?
We know that submission, like fighting, is a habit. How can we choose to believe that surrendering our own insights and autonomy to someone whose only real qualification is a darker strip of cloth will not condition us to submit to a threat with a gun?
We know all this...
How does a cat play with a mouse? How does a leopard kill for food? How do we slaughter and hunt and why is that so different from fighting? Why do so many have to work themselves up to lay hands on another person (and when you run in to someone who doesn't need to work himself up, you become a toy, because you get caught in social conditioning that he has jettisoned.)
What are the mindsets that work? How can we access them, get comfortable there?
Just a taste made some profound changes in some people. Qualitatively leaps in people who already had serious skills.
15 comments:
Rory, you discuss often the difference in adrenaline response bewteen men and women. With men, it's a sudden and simultaneous experience of these things you illustrate here (tunnel vision, loss of coordination, even the freeze itself). Because women tend to experience a more latent rush of adrenaline than men, I wonder if any of these things is first (and second, and third) to go -- and which one. Is there a pattern among women in this case, or is this an individual experience?
I also wonder if, because this is mostly brain chemistry, one can gain an advantage over the helplessness of the adrenaline dump by regulating the use of things other than caffeine or alcohol. For example, does regular consumption of vitamins or green tea (or the lack thereof) have a noticeable effect?
Any psychopharmacologists in the house? Anyone in need of a thesis? :}
That's a real nice post Rory, resonates well with a lot of what I'm doing my level best to put across...
No such thing as a genius in a fight, so why do so many try to be geniuses in training?
Can be a little like beating your head against a wall at times it seems, though I find using someone else's head gets the point across much quicker...
Mick Coup
Training under stress helps. Probably the only thing that really does
And as a woman it affects me physiologically the same. The thought process may be a bit different but the physiological responses from the freeze to the brain drain to the loss of vision, hearing and fine motor skills are pretty much the same.
Being in good physical condition does help. If you are used to work your heart under aerobic and anaerobic condition, the increased heart rate produced by stress will not affect you as quickly.
Having the proper nutrition in your system is definitely a plus. I pride myself in being in good physical condition and as a doctor, nutritionist and biofeedback therapist, I like to use the best supplements to keep me at my peak. While this all helps, the freeze can hit you just as hard.
The one thing that has helped me get over the freeze is the stress inoculation and using the simple training methods of Kasey's favorite Hick's law: have a system composed of a few techniques that will flow well under just about any circumstances.
Repetition is necessary,until it becomes second nature and if your brain and body stops working the way it's supposed to, you still can rely on something that will save your hide and in the least keep you going until you regain your faculty.
My 2 cents worth
You have some idealistic points there. Training is not practicing what you will do in a certain situation. It is more like on preparing your body and mind in handling a certain situation. It only makes your body strong and your mind in focused manner.
Rory,
The firstest with the mostest is the bestest. Everything else is window dressing, up to and including how you get there.
Tiff, control of heart rate has, in my experience, the biggest impact on the ability to mitigate adrenaline outside of adrenal stress training (inoculation). So working out definitely can positively impact adrenal spikes.
LD
Are there particular resources you recommend for changing mindset (beyond your books of course!)?
And maybe it would be better to say that 'one can fight no better then they train' but that's not neccessarily true if somebody hits that point where they unleash. Maybe, 'one is likly to fight no better then they train'? Clearly there is an correlation between training and fighting, perhaps it is non-linear?
Tiff- That's a piece of it, but it is not a super-power. It could be, but most women have been so socially conditioned to either not fight at all or to lose, that there is a whole extra layer of gunk to scrape off to get to the machine. But, definitely, we could use more research.
Mick-Honor to see you here. Yeah, walls are tools.
Lise- Maybe. General thrust of thoughts are good, but we really don't know, sometimes, what helps. More towards the bottom.
Ronald- You do realize that training your mind and body to handle a "certain situation" will almost certainly backfire when you get handed an uncertain situation, right?
LD- But since the bad guy, almost by definition, is usually the firstest, training has to center around overcoming that. We've both done it enough to know it is possible... but how do we teach that part?
Travis- Most children no more about how to shift mindsets than most adults. Angry, mad, happy, sad and all with a whole heart. But they get there just the same playing "let's pretend". To answer the second part, and play off both Lise and LawDog it's not linear or non-linear. The training helps, hugely... but very few people access their training the first time, and if you don't survive the first time, you're screwed.
What seems to happen is that you get through enough encounters by luck or stubborness that you start to relax enough (how much relaxation does it take? Don't know.) that you can use your training.
LD isn't a good test case. He has some of the best training in the world, but he had been in multiple shootings before he was selected for that assignment. I haven't seen anyone, including people who were "stress innoculated" use much of their training in their first real fight. Second, yes. And they got good faster.
But surviving your first big one is a huge crap shoot.
When we taught self defense part of the training was to experience fear and confusion. We might not have been the best at it. Maybe there was too much. Maybe not enough. But we found that most students did pretty well with the large motor basics and "This end towards rapist". Honestly, if you have that and can deliver it under pressure you're already ahead of the game.
Even though we changed the stimuli, by the second or third time they had started to associate the anxiety and confusion with fighting rather than freezing. It wasn't pretty or artful fighting, but it was recognizably what they'd been taught. And they came up with some of the most amazing innovations on the spot.
I'll never forget the ones who started tearing the armor off to get at the soft bits inside. I try to forget, but it keeps haunting me at about three in the morning. Thank the gods Tiel was there to pull them off.
Note on that last comment
They had already gotten me face down and done a knee drop or something similar to the back of my head. In one case I had a concussion. The second time I figured it was realistic to stay down.
I don't think that stress inoculation is the all mighty answer but it is a huge step in that direction. You have to understand the core concept of violence and the mind of disturbed people or how things can go from bad to worse. You also have to understand yourself, what makes you tick, what you are willing or capable to do and what are you honestly incapable of doing. From a female point of view we also have to get over the ingrained notions that have been hammered in our head. Personally I have been told all my life that girls don't hit, I even remember losing a few BF that thought I was not "girly" enough. I still thank my dad for not supporting that line of thought and raising me that I can do anything I want to. But it is hard to get over everybody else telling you otherwise your entire growing up years. Boys are taught that you have to be rough and tough, wrestling around is not only OK , it’s expected.
I still have that compassion that clings to me and prevents me from hurting the friends I train with. I am very grateful for the training I received. Those guys do not have a problem "hurting" me and letting me know that if I don't show that though-it's-you or me spirit I will feel pain
You'd be amazed at how many women have never been cussed and screamed at in a very threatening manner. Let me tell you that it makes us freeze and shrink the first time it happens. We need to learn to get over this QUICKLY. Stress inoculation helps this.
I think keeping your mind open is the most important thing. You can't get your mind set into "If this happen, I will do this"... coz frankly that rarely works. Nothing ever happens the way we think it will. You need to have a general concept of how bio mechanic works and what it takes to manipulate the human body. Knowledge will breed self confidence. Self confidence will breed this calm you are talking about.
Having already decided what your GO buttons are is a MUST. If you start the defense process too late you will be in deep doodoo.
Mostly we need to have that fighting spirit and a never give up attitude
I don't think that stress inoculation is the all mighty answer but it is a huge step in that direction. You have to understand the core concept of violence and the mind of disturbed people or how things can go from bad to worse. You also have to understand yourself, what makes you tick, what you are willing or capable to do and what are you honestly incapable of doing. From a female point of view we also have to get over the ingrained notions that have been hammered in our head. Personally I have been told all my life that girls don't hit, I even remember losing a few BF that thought I was not "girly" enough. I still thank my dad for not supporting that line of thought and raising me that I can do anything I want to. But it is hard to get over everybody else telling you otherwise your entire growing up years. Boys are taught that you have to be rough and tough, wrestling around is not only OK , it’s expected.
I still have that compassion that clings to me and prevents me from hurting the friends I train with. I am very grateful for the training I received. Those guys do not have a problem "hurting" me and letting me know that if I don't show that though-it's-you or me spirit I will feel pain
You'd be amazed at how many women have never been cussed and screamed at in a very threatening manner. Let me tell you that it makes us freeze and shrink the first time it happens. We need to learn to get over this QUICKLY. Stress inoculation helps this..........
........I think keeping your mind open is the most important thing. You can't get your mind set into "If this happen, I will do this"... coz frankly that rarely works. Nothing ever happens the way we think it will. You need to have a general concept of how bio mechanic works and what it takes to manipulate the human body. Knowledge will breed self confidence. Self confidence will breed this calm you are talking about.
Having already decided what your GO buttons are is a MUST. If you start the defense process too late you will be in deep doodoo.
Mostly we need to have that fighting spirit and a never give up attitude
Rory-
First is usually with criminal violence. There are other types of violence too, as you are very aware. You can hit first and still be defending yourself, assuming you meet the legal definition under reasonable person standard. If we aren't talking about preemptive striking, then we have to get the operator to the point of accepting what is happening and to be alert and prepared for what my happen, with no preconceived notion of what might that attack may look like ("you attacked me wrong")
Or maybe I'm full of shit. Usually am, for that matter.
You are completely right in the rest of your post.
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