Caveat: This post is mine and mine alone. I the author of this blog assure you, the reader, that any of the opinions expressed here are my own and are a result of the way in which my meandering mind interprets a particular situation and or concept. The views expressed here are solely those of the author in his private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of other martial arts and/or conflict/violence professionals or authors of source materials. It should be quite obvious that the sources I used herein have not approved, endorsed, embraced, friended, liked, tweeted or authorized this post. (Everything I think and write is true, within the limits of my knowledge and understanding.)
It occurred to me that an example provided in the book, Facing Violence by Rory Miller and Lawrence A. Kane, seemed kind of familiar to me. It was a survival-stress reaction test the author experienced during a shooting training exercise. It involved strenuous exercises done in a way and under a time constraint that induced the effects one might experience in a survival situation. (Caveat: I am not a professional and I don’t have the experiences in the adrenal flood to validate my post but I would consider this type of test to be physical, mostly, and not indicative of what occurs when the mind is flooded, etc.)
There is no real way to induce the type of mind or psychological mind-state that one will encounter when life and limb are on the line under circumstances that involve no rules and a very real danger of loss of life or great bodily harm but this would get the practitioner a modicum of experience.
What I suddenly realized is that the Marines use the same type of training over a long period of time, basic training that lasts about three months, that expose recruits to such stresses that would provide the same survival-stress type exposure, experience and testing. The moment a recruit steps off the bus and assumes the position on the famous, for Marines anyway, yellow footprints. Take a look at the current video’s on Marine recruit training or any of the military training. Consider that for some that extends into other training regimens and those combat circumstances. Thinks also training requirements for Grunts, Marine Recon and others like the Navy’s Seal/Buds training, the Army’s special forces and so on.
Now, considering this and the example provided by Miller and Kane, can you come up with scenario’s that would also induce such stress reaction training for the dojo?
Consider those ancient training beliefs many Asian martial arts programs use such as the winter training done in the cold and snow. Add in some of the training stresses that are described by both Miller and Kane or Military stuff and you might actually have some stress inducing training that will provide some semblance of reality for self-defense martial arts.
Add in those training opportunities like the many commercially run challenge races, i.e., the Spartan Races type challenges. Those quasi-military training challenges that will definitely induce stresses that you can use to train your mind-set/mind-state. An example, take the Spartan race challenge (I just picked this one out because some family and friends like the Spartan races) for example. You can get a group of practitioners together to run a race and then have half attack and the other half defend throughout the race to induce survival-stress like situations (careful here, you may have to let the race promoters know what you are doing so they don’t think racers are fighting.). Or, you can do kata and two person drills immediately after completing certain challenges or obstacles through out the race (better yet, so they won’t assume racers are fighting).
Once you get some of this going on in your training, use your imagination to create more opportunities to create stress-survival like training.
Primary Bibliography of Self-Defense:
MacYoung, Marc. "In the Name of Self-Defense: What It Costs. When It’s Worth It." Marc MacYoung. 2014.
Miller, Rory Sgt. "Meditations of Violence: A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence" YMAA Publishing. 2008.
Secondary Bibliography of Self-Defense:
Ayoob, Massad. “Deadly Force: Understanding Your Right to Self-Defense”Gun Digest Books. Krouse Publications. Wisconsin. 2014.
Goleman, Daniel. "Emotional Intelligence: 10th Anniversary Edition [Kindle Edition]." Bantam. January 11, 2012.
Miller, Rory. "ConCom: Conflict Communications A New Paradigm in Conscious Communication." Amazon Digital Services, Inc. 2014.
Miller, Rory and Kane, Lawrence A. "Scaling Force: Dynamic Decision-making under Threat of Violence." YMAA Publisher. New Hampshire. 2012
Miller, Rory. "Force Decisions: A Citizen's Guide." YMAA Publications. NH. 2012.
Miller, Rory Sgt. "Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected." YMAA Publishing. 2011.
Elgin, Suzette Haden, Ph.D. "More on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense." Prentice Hall. New Jersey. 1983.
Elgin, Suzette. "The Last Word on the Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense" Barnes & Noble. 1995
Morris, Desmond. “Manwatching: A Field Guide to Human Behavior.” Harry N. Abrams. April 1979.
Elgin, Suzette. "The Gentle Art of Verbal Self-Defense" Barnes & Noble. 1993.
Elgin, Suzette. "The Gentle Art of Written Self-Defense" MJF Books. 1997.
Maffetone, Philip Dr. “The Maffetone Method: The Holistic, Low-stress, No-Pain Way to Exceptional Fitness.” McGraw Hill, New York. 2000
Strong, Sanford. “Strong on Defense_ Survival Rules to Protect you and your Family from Crime.” Pocket Books. New York. 1996.
and more … see blog bibliography.
My Blog Bibliography
Cornered Cat (Scratching Post): http://www.corneredcat.com/scratching-post/
Kodokan Boston: http://kodokanboston.org
Mario McKenna (Kowakan): http://www.kowakan.com
Mokuren Dojo: http://www.mokurendojo.com
McYoung’s Musings: http://macyoungsmusings.blogspot.com
Martial Views: http://www.martialviews.com
Shinseidokan Dojo: http://shinseidokandojo.blogspot.com
The Classi Budoka: https://classicbudoka.wordpress.com
Wim Demeere’s Blog: http://www.wimsblog.com
The concept of 'stress' is problematic. It's an ambigous concept that the father of stress research, Hans Selye, famously said: everybody knows what stress is, but nobody really knows.
ReplyDeleteA good description of the typical three stage stress training program is Stress Exposure Training: An Event Based Approach by Driskel et al in Performance Under Stress by Hancock and Szalma.