Close enough! Some anecdotes:
After I left Japan, I went to Europe (eventually) and was accosted in Greece-it turned out to be a sad misunderstanding-they thought I was someone else, and attacked me, with what they thought of as justification, having mistaken me for the scumbag who disrespected them……I defended myself successfully, but I hadn’t practiced good situational awareness at all: I was being a tourist, and was, just as many people are, attacked from nowhere, with no prelude, interview or “monkey dance…”
Then I got mugged in Spain. This time, they tried to snatch my duffel and camera….I resisted, successfully, but I just about never saw them coming-and, these days, I’d have let them have it: there was nothing in that duffel worth dying for, nor was the camera…..
I have heard this described as "being in Disney Land" (either Rory Millar or perhaps Kris Wilder perhaps?) and I like that description. If we are honest with ourselves there are many times when we can find ourselves in this mental condition. Out of the now or too much in the now LOL. I think that perhaps the trick is knowing when we are in this Disney Land condition, acknowledge it, and make it on purpose.
Months later-months that were occupied with college, and being a bouncer, and hanging around with a motorcycle club, and engaging in other youthful foolishness, I had my little incident on the subway……I actually was pretty aware, considering the lateness of the hour, and how I’d spent the hours preceding it, but I really shouldn’t have been on that particular platform, at that particular hour, dressed as I was and wearing a Rolex, of all things-I may as well have had “vic” tattooed on my forehead…….even if I wasn’t one……(it’s worth pointing out here, that I can tell all of this story to a roomful of people, and say that I shouldn’t have been waiting to board the Brooklyn IRT at that hour, dressed as I was, and they’ll all nod their heads, but tell a woman that if she goes out in a short skirt, high-heels and a “tear here for boobs” top-that she’s inviting trouble, and it’s just not politically correct….oh well.)
So, situational awareness is something I’ve obviously had to work on: mom called me an ‘absent minded professor” for most of my childhood, and there’s some truth to it. While it can be considered the first foundational pillar of self defense: knowing where you are, who the people involved are,
fitting in and being unobtrusive-not standing out as a target., avoiding places where trouble could happen…these should mostly be common sense.
Experience is what we get 30 seconds after we need it LOL if we are lucky.
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Common sense is so rare that we now have to teach it and take classes for it...sigh
Of course, I say that now, as a 55 year old man-not as a teen or twenty-something who always wanted to be in the middle of “the action.” That all ended when I got married and had children of my own-priorities and the way you view the world will change….I say this because on another thread, people laughed off the exploits of Renzo Gracie-a man who is old enough (44?) and trained enough to behave better than he has….these are just some things to think on…I’ll talk about how I trained my situational awareness and observational skills, and how I train others, but maybe in a separate post…
I look forward to reading that future post, sir.
What I want to talk about first, though, are the effects of adrenalin on the human body and perception, and methods for training for, controlling and channeling adrenalization and fear.
GREAT topics, always.
What happens when we’re startled, frightened or under stress? A part of the brain-the hypothalamus-initiates the secretion of stress hormones: cortisol, noradrenaline, and adrenaline. This is hard wired into us, and prepares us to face perceived danger: to either fight it, or flee from it-fight or flight.
It’s hard-wired into us. The rest of our brain, the
thinking part, can sometimes make the hypothalamus think we need to do these things, when we don’t: got a big, important exam coming up? Your body could release those stress hormones, thinking you have to face down a sabre-toothed tiger or something….this can work to our advantage, as I’ll explain. Briefly though, if “the
thinking part” can make the hypothalamus release these hormones, then we can think our way into releasing these hormones. What do
they do?
Well, when these hormones are released, our respiratory and heart rates increase. Blood is shunted away from our digestive tract and directed into our muscles and limbs-extra energy to fight or run. Our pupils dilate, and our sight sharpens (though this effect also can lead to tunnel vision) Our impulses-our reflexes-can quicken. Our perception of pain diminishes.
Those can be the plusses, if we need them to run or fight, but they can also be liabilities-especially if we’re not used to them, or don’t know how to deal with them.
Funny how liabilities can often become positives and positives can become liabilities depending on experience and perceptions.
The first way that I train dealing with being adrenalized is to deliberately simulate it as much as I can-once people have some semblance of technical ability with a self-defense movement or response, I’ll have them execute it right at the aerobic threshold, repeatedly, and over their anaerobic threshold eventually. While I’m a big fan of aerobic training and fitness, and , basically, training like a boxer, self-defense is actually an
aneaerobic activity-it’s a short burst, not a long-haul. By actually performing with a high heart rate and high-and generally insufficient-respiratory rate, we are simulating effects of adrenalization while executing movement.
I have had the privilege of working and training with some 'cool customers'. Folks that do not seem to get excited or upset no matter the action around them. These are not cold people or psychotics, but they have become super aware of their own nervous systems and can feel when it is becoming aroused and once aware, they can nearly instantly (to me it seems, to them it takes too long...it is all relative, the difference between a finch and a hawk) return to a calm normal state. Their nervous systems work the same, but where I and most people have huge spikes and valleys like an emotional roller coaster as our nervous system becomes aroused and depressed (sympathetic and parasympathetic) since they can feel that very first moment due to their sensitivity and their ability to return to a normal state, where many have spikes and valleys they have more of straight line with just little bumps.
Additionally, movements-already gross rather than fine responses-become even grosser, and focusing on efficacy-on
making the movement work-becomes part of the focus: I’m not looking for the perfect execution of a throw or strike in terms of form-
I’m looking for the opponent to wind up on the floor: self defense generally requires gross rather than fine motor control, in part because fine motor control goes out the window with adrenaline, and because simpler is….well,
simpler. So, at this stage and with this type of training, we’re simulating working with the negative effects of adrenalization simply by operating with increased respiration and heart rate……
….and what you’ll often hear me saying to the panting, gasping
tori, after the tenth or eleventh repetition is
”Control your breathing!-which I’ve heard lots of instructors say over the years, and is sometimes received as a meaningless instruction (
If I could control my breathing, do you think I’d be gasping like this??!!, they must be thinking….) Suffice to say, breath control is another element of dealing with adrenalization, as well as staying relaxed enough to do movements under stress-with me, it’s not an order, but a
reminder, as my students and I spend a fair amount of time on breath control exercises-some of which are familiar to Asian martial arts practitioners, and some of which might be familiar to Systema practitioners like you, Brian-since I got them from one of my teachers, Mr. Joseph Greenstein, a famous vaudeville strongman known as the Mighty Atom, who trained under a Russian strongman…at least, I’ve often wondered if they’d be similar…..
Looking forward to that conversation, sir. I am always amazed at how the principles I have learned while training in Systema get repeated and reenforced from totally unexpected and unrelated sources.
In any case, I think some sort of breath control is essential to dealing with and channeling adrenalization. There are lots of theories, exercises and disciplines around this, including meditation, and it’s been my observation that if followed diligently, they’re all kind of get you there, so I’m not going to get too detailed about how I do it: breath control, though, I think is key.
Agree totally. I often describe breathing as a bridge between all of our bodies systems. A bridge with on-ramps and exits that allow us to access and 'control' the ride.
There are other factors to that I use in developing mindset that I'll post about separately, but breath control and stress training are the physical starting point.
My granddad, who trained hunting dogs, had to train them to accept gunshots without starting,
and for a fired shot to mean it was time to get to work. The flinch response in humans serves a protective purpose-to protect the eyes and ward off a threat. It’s a reflex-meaning we rreally
can’t control it, and probably shouldn’t try to, but we
can “reprogram,” or re-purpose it.. There are some differing opinions as to which direction this should take: Rory Miller and Tony Blauer basically both favor retraining it towards aggression, sometimes with a forward movement: I look to
kata, and what’s natural, and ask, what’s wrong with moving back and making a warding motion,
especially if it’s the body’s natural response already?
Otherwise, we don’t differ much: the way to retrain a reflex is, essentially, Pavlovian, with a negative feedback for undesired responses, and positive feedback for desired responses, until desired responses are all that’s occurred. That’s really all I’m going to say about that, except to remind people of the many times I’ve said that I couldn’t train children the way I was trained as a child without some parent wanting to sue me or put me in jail……and how I don’t train children,
yet, and won’t
really use the methods that I use for retraining the flinch reflex with children when I start to……..
