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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…..
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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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…..
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.
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……..
And yes you are parallel with what I mean.. you are far better at articulating it than me.. 
