Answering Tommy

From another forum section...

I'm not sure about this point Nick, although I can see the reasoning. While I can agree that you fight as you train I think that holds true for forming fighting style. train easy and you'll fight easy. Train to pull punches and you will pull punches. Train to jump into a big stance at the first sign of trouble and you will. The Gracie's train a lot of shooting and ground fighting and they do it almost exclusively so that is how they fight. If you train in point sparring then no doubt your reaction may be to pull your punch short in a real situation. My lack of head protection, IMO, wasn't a habit formed by training it was a "lack" of training in that area. It was something missing rather than a bad habit developed through endless reps.

For example, we also kicked to the head repeatedly in practice and in sparring. But out of that environment I "don't" kick to the head often....it's not really my preference. There are a lot of things I did in my training that I don't do outside of that environment. I did them endlessly because they were required but I didn't fit them into my fighting outside of Kyokushin. So I think that by practicing a wide variety of things and doing them well, you gain the ability to make a choice in how you will approach a situation or opponent. "If" your training is in order. I don't think you just go on automatic as far as techniques go, just mindlessly doing what you practiced. What does become automatic are your reactions. Yes, my head protection was poor but that wasn't a bad "habit" from training, that was more of a "missing" element.

Protecting my head became something I had to learn, not something I had to "unlearn." It is a fairly simple fix.

Tommy, I take your point about it being something missing but still, you trained a certain way and you fought a certain way as a result of that training n'est-ce pas?

As for training and going automatic...I thought the whole point was to train to a level where your responses become automatic. Conscious thought is too slow in combat.

What about the cops in the States who were found dead after a shoot out with empty cartridges in their pockets? They figured out later that these guys were bending down picking up their spent rounds during a gun fight because they trained that way on the range. Surely they should have been capable of realizing the difference but the fact was they weren't.

We could get into this one for hours but I'm sure the reason you didn't automatically head kick was you didn't feel any real pressure. There's a difference between toying around with someone (and I bet like me you hardly get any adrenalin rush in a fist fight with a zob) and fighting for your life.

Nick

PS: There you are having two bites again Train to pull punches you'll pull them...train to jump in a deep stance and you will BUT train to throw head kicks and you won't because you don't go into automatic mode. Which one is it goddammit?

Nick Hughes wrote:
We could get into this one for hours but I'm sure the reason you didn't automatically head kick was you didn't feel any real pressure. There's a difference between toying around with someone (and I bet like me you hardly get any adrenalin rush in a fist fight with a zob) and fighting for your life.

yes...it's another one of those debates that have too many small detail and will never end

PS: There you are having two bites again Train to pull punches you'll pull them...train to jump in a deep stance and you will BUT train to throw head kicks and you won't because you don't go into automatic mode. Which one is it goddammit?

hmmm....maybe I did take two bites. (?)
I agree that you should train to go on automatic under pressure. But that "automatic" should be done with thought rather than uncontrolled panic. I don't mean thought that will slow you down I mean thought as far as meaningful technique rather than automatic "flailing." This is where, hopefully, with proper training in a variety of things you have the control of mind in a high pressure situation to choose the proper techniques. Actually not "choose" but have the right techniques fire off automatically.

But if your automatic response is the wrong one (through improper conditioned responses) then you're screwed. That is where I think "fighting as you train" comes in. If your fight training is poor then your fight will be the same. As an example, if you train in single technique and then someone yells "yame!" Then you may stop after you hit your opponent through a conditioned response (waiting for yame). What I meant with my head kicks was that I don't prefer them since I'm not so young anymore and not so fast. Not that they aren't effective for me, just a little more uncertain at times. So I choose not to use them. Could I get someone by surprise with one in the street? Probably if the circumstances were good, and even if I didn't hit him square I think I have enough power to prevent him from recovering fast, and enough skill to capitalize on his pause. So if, under presure I end up doing as I trained and throwing a high kick...so what? It has been trained well and will probably work. That is the difference between that and a conditioned response such as waiting for yame or pulling a punch. But that is only my opinion at the moment. With deeper thought I might have a different one! However I'm not sure how important it is and as you said we could go on for hours. In text that would be a heavy task and too many points get lost. I already have a headache!!!

What I mean by details is that what you and I are saying is debatable on both sides I think, as far as certain techniques. But what isn't, as far as fighting as you train, (the bigger picture) is that if you train for no contact or light touch or one attack and stop then that is how you will fight. If you train full contact then that is how you will fight.
Option two is the right choice. Wouldn't you agree?

Tommy

This is an interesting question. Automaticity, when a motor skill becomes 'automatic' enables actions to be performed outside of conscious thought due to skill mastery. That is, we practice a skill and learn it; this process requires conscious thought initially, a requirement which becomes less important over time and practice as automaticity approaches and is eventually achieved.

I once heard a story on a seminar with Gavin Mullholland and Iain Abernethy (can't remember who mentioned it) about a bloke who drilled knife disarms continuously in line-ups. When attacked by a knife wielding maniac he disarmed him but then handed him back the knife, as this is what he did in training. Not an ideal scenario and similar to your police story Nick.

Tommy mentioned training to pull punches would become a conditioned response which is probably true and from my experience of people who do this it would seem so, I think we can agree on that. The automatic or dominant response over time is to pull a punch acquired through repeaedly drilling pulled attacks.

The jumping into stances we’ll leave for now but high kicks would not necessarily become automatic or the dominant response as there is a choice of the target for the kick, lower/upper leg, body or head and different methods of training the kick. If you trained to pull the kick for point scoring competition this could/would become automatic if drilled.

Motor skill acquisition is specific to the skill learnt, obviously, and to the entire movement/action in the drill, hence the knife-return becoming automatic in the example above. But if the drill is set up within an environment replicating the ‘chaos’ of the fight other aspects of motor skill are included in the drill and will be acquired as a result.

So if head kicks were religiously practiced and drilled ‘dead’ (exclusively hitting pads held at head height) in the absence of kicks to other targets this response may become dominant and would probably appear under the stress of a fight. Someone training exclusively in sport TKD may become conditioned in this respect

However, if high kicks were to be trained in a ‘live’ drill where targets become available and have to be selected to be successful, perceptual elements of the motor skill become important and would be learned. The perceptual element would direct the motor element to the required target. Over time the perceptual cues would be acquired to allow successful targeting of kicks.

Therefore high kicks may or may not become automatic (dominant response), dependant on training method.

Excellent post John.

Like I said...we could go on for hours about that one...my personal thoughts are the more pressure that's applied the more automatic the responses become.

I talked at length to an instructor on the BMW high performance school I went to (excellent course btw) and at slow speeds most people are capable of pulling off whatever manouvre is ncessary when driving. Now, have a dog run out in front of the car, or a kid, and they automatically jam on the break, even though there might be an eighteen wheeler a few feet behind them. The pressure is what throws them unless, they're superbly trained, under pressure, on a constant basis.

Nick

A couple of years ago we did a number of classes in a row on escapes from choke holds. The exercise required you to be the victim one minute and the attacker (the choker) the next.

A few days after one of these classes, in a local park, a good mate (not a training partner) and I engaged in a spontaneous wrestle that he instigated. I gained control quickly. But to my horror I went straight for a choke, without even thinking. It wasn’t really appropriate to the situation and taught me a lesson regarding spontaneous reaction under pressure (even minor pressure).

Pressure IS when the dominant response becomes dominant. If the stimulus from a cue is strong enough the dominant response will be initiated. IN the case of the dog/kid leaping into the road the repsonse almost always will be initiated as its a very strong cue.

The question is how to 'inoculate' against pressure. I don't like this phrase, stress inoculation seems silly to me, it should be somehting more to do with coping, but i'm meandering already. The physiological stress response is identical regardless of situation or interpretation of a situation, the body is prepared to fight or for flight, this response is hardwired through evolution.

Generally, the interpretation of asituation varies between individuals based on experience of the situation. A driver with greater experience will not break in response to the dog/kid cue due to training. The driver has retrained his repsonse to that cue.

The question is how to overcome anundesirable 'dominant response' to a cue resulting from given situations under pressure, in this case dog/kid jumping out at you, but could apply to a self-defence situation.

Part of the answer involves perceptions of pressure/stress. A pressure situation is only stressful if we perceive it to be so. Nick, you mentioned on the Steve Morris section that sometimes you can hit a bloke when on the door and barely get an adrenaline reaction, another person with minimal experience would get such a large adrenaline response as they can't handle the pressure in the same way you can, ie. it's more stressful for them.

So the next question is how to get that ability to handle the pressure appropriately (and now we're interested in fighting rather than driving). Years of door work to acquire it over time? Train for it? Use traffic light codes to engage relevant levels of arousal? There clearly are many options, but obvioiusly the trainee needs to avoid becoming fearful, as this can lead to negative concious interference, freezing could result.

I'm sorry if this is descending into a bit of semantic roundabout but in basic terms i think that getting a handle on responding efficiently under pressure is better achieved by training in an environment that allows perceptual cue acquisition. This results in the learner relying on sub-conscious rather than conscious processing, or as Bruce Lee once said

Don't think feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel

I'm not sure it's no adrenalin...and I mean that, I'm really not sure. Years ago I used to think there wasn't any but it might just be so well controlled that it seems like there's none.

The reason I say that is in the REP one of the jump masters told us of a study at Pau (the French Airborne free fall and HALO/HAHO school) where they hooked a first time jumper and a veteran of 3000 jumps up to heart rate monitors and had them jump.

The result surprised me. Right before the beginner went out the door his heart rate was about 196 +/- bpm. The veteran's was exactly the same.

Ayoob also did the study where they injected pro shooters with adrenalin and five of the six shot BETTER!!!! than when they weren't shot up with it.

I think a large part of it, based on evidence, is making the student aware of the effects of it so, when they happen, it doesn't freak him out and increase the panic (self defeating cycle). One of my students who is smallish (sorry Dan ) hadn't had a fight since grade school - literally and works as both a cook and an insurance agent since leaving school.

He trained with me for about eleven months and asked about filling a slot on the door at the club I worked at. His very first fight was some ex con who tried one of the sneakiest fastest sucker punches I've ever seen (I was too far away to intervene dealing with the shithead in questions' two colleagues)

Dan saw it (perceived it) slipped it, and drilled this clown into the ground where he, and then the manager, piled on to hold him down for the cops. After it was all over he got up and carried on as if nothing had happened (and I was watching because I was curious from an instructor viewpoint)

John, you did leave one response out on the hardwired response mechanisms and that is to "freeze" as well. A lot of people mention only the fight or flight as they were the only two but Hock has done some real in depth research into freezing as a response and not just done out of panic or shock. Some of the research supports that it was a viable response if big game is hunting you as movement is what animals pick up on. In other words freezing would have been more viable against something bigger and meaner in that environment than either fighting or flighting as both of those were losing propositions. Sometimes the freezing is simply because the brain ran through its options and couldn't find anything relevant.

More good stuff

Nick

PS: It's one of the reasons I like Hock's so much. He avidly hunts down and attends very expensive presentations by the cutting edge research groups in the fields of sports medicine and human combat, military and law enforcement training etc. You still run into instructors out there reciting the same old crap they heard years ago such as Hick's law (Hick no relation to Hock ) that has been surpassed by ten other studies since debunking the former. He keeps up on them all and there's some incredible stuff that comes down the pipe.

Nick, who is Hock? I'd be interested to read some of his stuff, any links?

I intentially left out the freeze response, as I have always considered it a panic/shock response and as such more closely aligned to a conscious reaction to the stress response inducing situation. I like the concept that in certain situations freezing would be a more appropriate response than fight/flight, interesting but I'd like to read the full rationale.

The multi-disciplinary approach of this Hock bloke is good as often scientists can become far to involved with the detail of a studt than the overall message, he would appear to be able to see beyond this.

But with a scientist head on I'd've liked to see additional indices of 'stress' measured in the parachuting study, such as coritsol measures, and even pen and paper tests, to give a more rounded insight into the jump stress. Sometimes the knowledge that a test is taking place is sufficeint to increase HR which could confound findings. Also the shooters and adrenaline studyis interesting, how did the authors explain their findings?

Hock can be found at http://www.hockscqc.com/ and just follow the links to the forum.

...and here is a piece of some of the freeze findings...

The Evaluation-Freeze: Stop, Watch, Listen, Assess

When surprised or spotting a new threat, it is a typical human response to stop and assess it. This looks like panic freezing, but such shocking fear may have nothing to do with it. Such stopping and accessing may be good or bad depending upon the speed of the attack.

The medical and psychological experts listed in Part One below explain...

"Consider a military combat situation. When a soldier encounters an initial sign of threat...the response (often) demanded by his military training and reinforced by other members of his unit, is usually the "stop, watch, and listen" the heightened-alertness response. This behavior is partially consistent with the other biological predispositions toward the freeze response."

It is also human nature to try to back up in this evaluation phase. The brain wants to see even more and have time to evaluate the whole situation, especially against a charging threat. So, this does not look like a full, statue-like, freeze because the person is witnessed back-peddling away from the direction of the threat.

This form of Evaulation Freezing, is an overall evaluation process that has nothing to do with bravery or fear, or trying to select this or that tactic from too many tactics, or even sheer shock. Some of the experts I read called this stage more about the state of fright than the state of freezing from fear alone-fright being lesser than fear. Technical categorization. Nonetheless, the subject is simply surprised and evaluating whether or not there is a fight! Least of all what tactic to select for a fight. This documented phase is often confused with a Hick's Law issue by laymen and therefore is misleading to self defense and tactical response instructors.

Ayoob was the guy who conducted the adrenalin test with the combat shooters. The premise was that adrenalin is not the boogey man a lot of trainers try and paint it to be. If you've had sufficient experience and training you can control it and use it to your advantage without it overwhelming you.

I've always likened it to kids on motorbikes. Back in Australia you could get your learner's permit and buy a Kawasaki 900 (biggest motorbike in the world at the time) and kids would die all over the place.

The govt stepped in and said 1st year anything up to a 250cc, 2nd year up to a 500cc, 3rd year anything up to a 750cc and 4th year open class. Deaths went way down because newbies weren't being given too much power to deal with until they'd learned to cope with it.

Methinks adrenalin is a little the same way. People with limited exposure to it are overwhelmed and then go away telling all who'll listen "you can't do fine motor skills...hell, you can't do anything when you get an adrenalin surge."

As Ayoob pointed out, "bollocks." In fact, some people thrive on it and, in the case of his shooters, even performed better with it.

Nick