Adrenaline Dump During kata

Nick,

I remember you mentioning on the old GT forum that the student should experience an adrenaline dump if kata is done properly.I suppose the same holds true for any martial form,including tai chi.I can see how the presence of an enemy can be visiualised and have experienced this but how do you build up such a degree of presence and intensity to bring on the effects of adrenaline? Do you try and recall the feelings you have experienced in real fights when doing kata?

Mate,

I really don't have time right now to give this question the attention it deserves...got something critical going on personally. Let me get that sorted and I'll come back and take a stab at it if that's ok.

Nick

No probem,Nick.Look foward to your reply.

PDB,

The answer to your question is yes and no...how's that for evasiveness?

Yes, because you actually do get the effect (more on that in a minute) but no, if you're assuming the effects are going to be what the average person experiences when they get an adrenalin dump.

When I went through jump school in the Legion (and remember...all real soldiers are jump trained ) they told us of a study that was done in Pau whereby they hooked up a first time jumper and a veteran to a heart rate monitor.

The neophyte was ashen faced, visibly trembling, and had a heart rate of around 200 bpm. The calm and collected veteran jumper, looking cool in the shade and joking with his mates jumped and had a bpm reading of around 200. The difference was that one had learned to control the effects of the adrenalin and the other hadn't yet.

What I aim for when I do the kata is invoke all the senses and don't just do the physical movements...so I'm getting the effects of the adrenalin but not the outward manifestation. In other words you should experience the same results as a real fight, but not let it overwhelm you like it would someone inexperienced.

Some people have a problem understanding how you can conjure up the feelings enough when it's all imaginary. The easiest explanation I can give them is either that of a nightmare or things that go bump in the night.

Most people can remember a nightmare that caused them to awaken with heart racing, cold sweats, rapid shallow breathing, and/or screaming...and yet, where's the bad guy? In your imagination only.

Others can recall coming home late at night from a horror movie and, as they go down the side of the house, the cat jumps out of the trash can and they leap fifteen feet in the air and land in shock nearly having shit themselves. Feel their pulse...it's racing. Where's the bad guy(s)? In their imagination again.

This is all because the sub-concious can't differentiate between what is real and what is imagined.

That being said there are techniques that make it easier to access the state so to speak. In hypnosis we learn about the different brain wave patterns beta, alpha, theta and delta and it's easier to tap into the sub-concious in the alpha and theta phases than it is when fully alert.

What I work on is a form of self-hypnosis therefore where you begin to access the alpha state and then start imagining the guys around you. You need to not only see them in every detail but smell them and hear them as well.

I've done this with students and you can visibly see their faces turn pale, and the pulse in their neck racing while their eyes are closed and I'm having them visualize the situation they're in. (incidentally, I've also done this with fellow students on a hypnosis course doing regression therapy where you take someone back to a situation, and, even though it's a classroom, they can have all sorts of reactions from sweats to throwing up)

That's the state I want to access before I begin practicing forms otherwise it's just a physical exercise.

Hope that helps mate.

Nick

Hi Nick,
That made me feel better,my post some time back, said how I 'beat myself up' for feeling scared one night on the doors.
I suppose it's ok to be scared,just control it.
Cheers,
Jethro

Thanks for that,Nick,it certainly clarifies things.

I can relate to it more from the perspective of climbing rather than fighting.Having been in situations where I have almost got the chop its not hard to feel the effects of adrenaline coming on by simply recalling those situations.With fighting its different as I simply haven't been in enough fights to be able to recall how I felt.Scared?Sure, but everything was a blur and once things had started I didn't really feel anything.With climbing you have time to think and have to work out your next move which might well be your last if you get things wrong so its far easier to recall how you felt in these situations.

I should imagine a form of guided hypnosis is the best way for people who have limited fighting experience?

Sorry PDB,
did not mean to jump in ahead of you, must him been on my mind.


Jethro

Thats really interesting Nick.

When I was at Univeristy a few years ago, I was browsing through the library (geek), & I came across a scientific journal called 'The Journal of Mental Imagery'. There is a whole field of science and supporting evidence in this area.

I remember reading a study where they took three random groups. The first group practised shooting baskets for an hour a day, the second group practiced shooting baskets in their minds for an hour a day, and the third group did no practice. At the end of a week, the difference between the first two groups was negligiable (as good as each other), and the third group was significantly poorer.

Thought it may be relevant.
cheers,
Rich

It is mate...very. Sports science has proven the efficacy of the method...my own empirical evidence has backed it as far as I'm concerned, and my students have all claimed it works.

There's another study I cited here once where a group did physical, a group did all imagery and a group practiced fifty percent of each...that group was ahead of the others.

I always thought it was amusing that the Russians were credited with using imagery rehearsal with their athletes when in fact whoever came up with the concept of kata was doing it years before them.

Nick

hiya,
cool thread. making me do a bit of re-thinking i reckon. i had all but dumped formal martial art training--to include katas almost firstly. i threw out the metaphorical baby with the bath water. i remember getting quite a good feeling (adrenaline/endorphine/etc...) from doing my katas like they were real--though i wasn't great with neatness if i was being judged. i once tried to invent a simple kata for those i would train that reflected actual techniques we would use, but sort of dumped it for drills and pad work--distancing myself from sports-like anything. this is sort of cool because i wonder now if it couldn't be used like a sort of moving meditation of sorts
maybe meditation isn't the word i was looking for. a regulating of adrenaline--i guess i was trying to avoid a phrase. anyway, i like the thing about what you do with fear. it fits nicely with the whole switching off piece that i think i understood (issues with reading at times) Mick (Coup) reference.

anyway, i hope this wasn't like barging in--new here. it peaked my interest because i've been looking for a way to harness/or cultivate, or whatever, the whole supra state/anchor insider terminology that i think i get (starting to get). i absolutely get the idea of meating an offensive attack with the script re-write of fashioning one's own violent offensive attack. no explanation needed there. and, sorry for being all over, but this adrenaline cultivation piece through the proper visualization during kata is intriguing. Richard Grannon wrote to me once that katas shouldn't be tossed out, but they shouldn't make one rigid (to paraphrase).

food for thought--for me.

Glad to hear it mate...and feel free to barge in any time...that's what we're here.

Nick

Hi Nick

I am digging up an old thread here but the mind/body connection is an interesting area. In the past I've seen various crank conspiracy theory literature about programming assassins using different brain wave states - I think it was in relation to Sirhan Sirhan who shot Robert Kennedy. More recently though they've been referred to in material about sports psychology and peak performance.

I can see the combative applications mentioned above but I am actually more interested in this for rock climbing and dealing with the tunnel vision 'panic' on crux moves. Can you recommend any specific methodology for generating/using these different wave states? Can this kind of thing be self-taught and is it a safe thing to do?

Thanks in advance.