Okay. I get everything you're saying, but just don't understand how competition HURTS ones ability to do these things. I mean, the awareness can be learned concurrently. Couldn't it?
Yes and no, you can learn awareness while competing but knowing what to be aware of takes time away from training for competition. For example, I create scenario drills where students sparring in street cloths but under conditions reflexive of a self-defense situation. Such as when carrying a bag of groceries to the car & being assaulted by outside in the parking lot, between cars & often set up multiple BBEG (Big Bad Evil Guys) so that the student which is the real threat and which isn't.
The Goal of the exercise is a) looking for "tells" the send up red flags, b) allow students to face actual combat conditions; wind, rain, snow, uneven ground & small spaces & c) to give them a memory in reference to real world conditions. Now granded my students sometimes compete in Sport Jujitsu tournamnets, the goal of training is less in competition but in addressing the SD on multiple levels.
Competitive training doesn't preclude situational awareness training, etc. Does it?
It can, yes... It doesn't have to but most competition schools simply focus on the rules of the sport and individual skill of the competitors. While sparring and inter school comeptition is required for building profciency in techniques it leaves allot of ground uncovered SD wise.
Regarding the adrenal dump, it would seem to me that a competitor would have more experience with it than a non-competitor, and would be more likely to stay composed and aware. What are your thoughts on that?
Thats something I can agree with, within context. Being able to handle an adrenal dump is based on several factors. A competing fighter used to the adrenal dump
under the conditions of competition will have "more experience" then a non-competitor
under the conditions of competition. But. Newbie jitters aside, competition and a real fight or being on the recieving end of a criminal assault (self-defense) is completely different.
First off, I need to address what adrenoline is and for that
I'll refer to Wiki which gives the basic discription of "Epinephrine (also referred to as adrenaline;
see Terminology) is a hormone and neurotransmitter.[1] When produced in the body it increases heart rate, contracts blood vessels and dilates air passages and participates in the "fight or flight" response of the sympathetic nervous system."
Note that adrenoline has the effects of increased heart rate, contracts blood vessels, dilates air ways and participates in the "flight or flight response" (I'll address this next). So Physically, you have increased nuero response; which also means faster thought processes (take note of that BTW) & faster actions. Your blood pressure rises with heart rate & your body takes in more oxygen from the dilated airways & as your blood vessel contract, also a factor in increased blood pressure, it spreads hormones and oxygen to the muscles in actions.
Secondly, as I promised more on the flight or fight response. Thats a theory which is very limited in scope because sociologists & psychologists have broken the flight or fight response to four actions; Posture, Fight, Flight or Submit. Thats the "default primate setting" of our brain and training can/is proven to effect that default setting. When faced with a threat of violence we have four automatic instinctive responses, those responses are based on past experience and yes even aquired knowledge.
If you associate loud bangs as gun shots; while others are looking around when a car back fires you're dropping prone. Simply because your mind has developed a pattern of thought that "bang = gun shots." So when the adrenoline hits your primate instincts plus your conditioned pattern of thought will effect your responses. If you have been conditioned to think of a threat of violence as a challenge to compete, common to many competition minded individuals, it will effect you automatic responses.
Course so will anything you mentally connect psychologically with any similar outside stemuli. Most commonly regardless of training, due to the fact that most people don't trained under conditions which allow you access and reprogram the primate response insticts in their brains, people still act out based on those primate response. When threaten with violence, we threaten back once the adrenoline hits (posturing) and many times it comes about from "racing thoughts" that lead to asumptions we make. Following the Threat Posturing, we have three basic responses; Fight, Flight or Submission.
Following that a mugger who approachs us with a gun and demands money, will automatically a subcontious & contious cause a response Threat Posture leading to a further show of intent by the mugger. Most commonly the response to this stimuli is going to be either Fight (disarming), Flight (running away) & Submission (giving the mugger money). Freezing, is generally an involuntary "over thinking" of the situation under the Adrenoline Dump.
Finally with all that explained, it comes down to the fact that if we quite simply have no reference to associate with a thought pattern we may make assumptions based on the untrained primate instincts. Sooo, while competition may make for a better fighter technically it may also be subject to the primate thinking.
The Adrenal Dump to someone trained both recognize and apply an educated awareness of various tactics, sets ups and factors of human behavior will be able access those reference, especially if added to competition style sparring. So its not so much that competition is incapable of addressing these things but that the rules of competitons simply do not allow & when in the alien environment of fighting outside the ring much of the technical proficency may be wasted on decisions based on an uneducated or confused state which leads back to the primate thought processes.
another thing not often mentioned is that competition keeps things fun. If you enjoy competition and competing keeps you training, that's a good thing. Right?
I agree 110%
