The fight response.

[Kframe]

Fight or fight, it all boils down to those two things. Last night I came head to head with them. Woke up last night in the early am to my sister and her boyfriend having argument. Now I live with my sister till the house im renovating is finished. I hear a loud thud and my sister freaking out, so I leave my room and there now in the living room near the front door. My sis trying to get him to stay, he trying to leave, and me madder then a pissed off hornet. You see several years ago, my sister extracated herself from a abusive relationship, so you can imagine how I was feeling when I heard the commotion. He had attempted to leave there room, so she got in his way. He grabbed her arm, so she slapped him(she says pushed, but it dosent matter) so he not so gently moved her out of his way. Cant get my post to move to the next line.. sorry for wall of text, something about this browser, my enter key wont work on this site..

Needless to say both were drunk. So, im in the living room in my whitey tighties, standing between but off to the side at a angle to both of them. It was then, as he was getting angry, but not threatening, that my fight response started. I assumed the "subtle fight stance" that my new coach taught me. It places my hands up in a good defensive position while looking non threatening, and moved my feet to there proper fight stance place. My heart is racing, fast my breathing is controlled but deep. The odd thing was, the intensity of the feeling was way higher then even the hardest sparring. I felt what seemed like a weird vibration in my chest, turned out to be my muscles in my upper chest spasming.(found that odd, never happened in hard sparring) My ability to think was altered as well. I found my thoughts narrow in scope.

Normaly in sparring I can think ahead and visualize what im going to do or what is coming next, but I was unable to do so. When my thoughts did come, they came in quick flashes. Mostly if he does this, ill do that. Kicking didn't even enter my mind as a response. My mind was only able to boil my responses down to a few ways. One a slip to a duck, to a body shot with my right and weave and up to a left hook. The other was step inside, left neutral bow, double knife block, backfist and possible palm strike to face, and the final flash was a move inside of punch, parry trap, then reversal of his arm, displace him down and wrist lock.

The attack I was expecting never came. The closest he came was "bro" pat on my shoulder. It was during the "bro" pat that I had tunnel vision. All I saw for that moment was his hand and forearm. I think the tunnel vision was me focusing hard on his movements. It took a lot of my will power to prevent a automatic response from me. That was hard. Remember my emotional state was at a high, I was angry. I am proud of my self control honestly, tho I need to work more on pressure training, I should beable to maintain my fight planning during a real fight, that im disappointed in. At its peak, my hole body was reacting to the stress. Muscles in my legs were spasming, everything, I was on a hair trigger. I am glad for all the sparring I have done, I don't think I could have functioned at this high lvl of stress had it not been for the pressure of sparring as frequently as I had. Im sorry for my computers problem, for some reason, on forums, it wont let me hit enter and move to another line..

 

[Kframe]

Sorry for the wall of text, I fixed it. My browser is acting weird with this forum.

 

[Cyriacus]

Welcome to the difference between training, and your mind telling you what it wants you to do in its now active state. The two dont always line up very much.

My advice to you: Consider how your body itself felt, and what you wanted to use it for (two totally seperate things). Learn from that information. It can be valuable. Some great stuff can be gleaned from what you think of doing without exactly thinking about it.

 

[seasoned]

From someones signature.

He who angers you conquers you.
For in combat, to think is to die.
HARD TRUTH #9: "Knowing what to do is not the same as doing it." - Force Decisions, Rory Miller

First ponder, then take what it's worth. Don't train for knowledge, train to own.

I'm in a slight hurry but will comment more later..................

 

[Kframe]

Thanks Cyracious and Seasoned for the good advice, especially about listening to my body and learning from it. I did not intend to make it sound like I was deep in thought. The whole flash thought process was only a few seconds worth from start to finish. Most of the time I was only focused on him and his movements, not wanting to get ambushed.

My bodies reaction to this whole thing was interesting. Cyracious you mention how my body felt, and its ability to act on my planned moves had it come to it. I definitely felt like I was physically affected by the whole thing. The muscles in my chest, and the outer sides of my thighs were spasming non stop, my hands were shaking but only a little bit and it only happened intermittently. I felt cold(well I was in my white tighties...) and my movements when I did move my arms felt a little jerkish. Tho it was not overly so. I feel that I would have been able to grapple had I needed to, not to mention all the punch defenses I know are all gross motor based. Tho my arms did feel a little "heavy" as well as jerkish.

Going based on the way my body felt, I feel I have learned a few things. Being that im only a 1 year novice at boxing/mma/grappling I feel that my best bet for self defense would have been simple short movements. Things like my above mentioned slip duck body punch weave left hook are simple and I have done them 10000 times before. I feel that if I had to do any grappling it should have been simple and not overly complex manuvers. I know I would not have been able to pull off any complicated grappling. Same thing applies to my striking defenses. I do not think I would have been able to apply the new deflections(blocks) my new coach is teaching me. I would relied on boxing almost exclusively for striking defense, because of how "simple"(gross motor) they all are.

Now maybe with a few more years of training, that will change, but for now, im glad I maintain my boxing skills, despite having moved on from it as my only Martial art.

Id have felt better with a baton or taser as well...

 

[Dirty Dog]

Many people here will tell you that this sort of response is inevitable. I'm going to disagree.
With experience, it goes away, and you deal with conflicts as calmly as you deal with anything else.
My job lands me in confrontations on a regular basis, and I've not had to deal with the fight or flight reflex in years.
This is a good thing because it allows me to deal with a crisis using my mind, not my emotions.
Doesn't matter if it's an armed agressive patient or blood spraying to the ceiling. I'll deal with the emotional response later. In the moment, I do whatever is needed with a cool head.
Unfortunately, I don't think there is any way to train the fight or flight reflex out; supressing it comes with experience, and it's not the sort of experience that can be simulated.
I suspect some of the LEOs here will agree that they also have learned to put off the "reflex" responses till later, so that can deal with problems intelectually.

 

[geezer]

In your OP you didn't tell us how things turned out except that you barely managed to control yourself and keep from fighting. You seem to be more focused on the affects of the adrenaline dump on your fighting abilities than on the bigger picture of how you could have defused the whole situation while insuring your sister's safety. From your description, it sounds like your sister's boyfriend was just trying to leave. If you had attacked him, it would have definitely made the situation worse for all of you, regardless of who won.

 

[Kframe]

They seam to be ok for now, no one fought. You must remember, I was coming off the memory of my sis getting beaten by her last ex. I was not about to let that happen again while I was there. Sorry im a brother, I didn't expect for that to be held against me. I feel I did great keeping my cool. Diffusing the situation was not going to happen, seeing as they both were drunk and screaming. All I was doing was making sure no one hurt each other, I left the fight up to them.

I was not about to attack him, he would have to had made the first move. I thought I made that clear, if not im sorry. I was not some out of control animal, how you got that from my op is odd. I was in control, I just was not prepared for the effects that kind thing had on my physically.

I agree he was trying to leave, but my sister was making a mistake in not letting him. Tho I feel that letting him leave at that point would have been foolish. He was very drunk, and would have gotten himself or someone else hurt by driving off.

Honestly this post is not about the fight. I made it to address what happened when my body had a adrenalin dump or the fight response. That and all martial arts lessons that can be gleaned from my experience was what I posted about.

 

[Cyriacus]

Many people here will tell you that this sort of response is inevitable. I'm going to disagree.
With experience, it goes away, and you deal with conflicts as calmly as you deal with anything else.

If im not mistaken, thats more becoming conditioned to whats happening to the point that you rarely if ever get to that state?

Thanks Cyracious and Seasoned for the good advice, especially about listening to my body and learning from it. I did not intend to make it sound like I was deep in thought. The whole flash thought process was only a few seconds worth from start to finish. Most of the time I was only focused on him and his movements, not wanting to get ambushed.

My bodies reaction to this whole thing was interesting. Cyracious you mention how my body felt, and its ability to act on my planned moves had it come to it. I definitely felt like I was physically affected by the whole thing. The muscles in my chest, and the outer sides of my thighs were spasming non stop, my hands were shaking but only a little bit and it only happened intermittently. I felt cold(well I was in my white tighties...) and my movements when I did move my arms felt a little jerkish. Tho it was not overly so. I feel that I would have been able to grapple had I needed to, not to mention all the punch defenses I know are all gross motor based. Tho my arms did feel a little "heavy" as well as jerkish.

Going based on the way my body felt, I feel I have learned a few things. Being that im only a 1 year novice at boxing/mma/grappling I feel that my best bet for self defense would have been simple short movements. Things like my above mentioned slip duck body punch weave left hook are simple and I have done them 10000 times before. I feel that if I had to do any grappling it should have been simple and not overly complex manuvers. I know I would not have been able to pull off any complicated grappling. Same thing applies to my striking defenses. I do not think I would have been able to apply the new deflections(blocks) my new coach is teaching me. I would relied on boxing almost exclusively for striking defense, because of how "simple"(gross motor) they all are.

Now maybe with a few more years of training, that will change, but for now, im glad I maintain my boxing skills, despite having moved on from it as my only Martial art.

Id have felt better with a baton or taser as well...

A few seconds is long enough on adrenalin Often, what snaps into your head in a splitsecond can be better than things you actually plan out.

Your deductions so far are on the right track. What youve basically got is a list of the stuff you have confidence in. Now you can feed that confidence.
For example, body punch > left hook is a simple process in and of itself. Its just right low, left high. The other movements are just what youve been trained to relate to those movements (think of it as offhand learning).

Cold and shaking, i *think* has to do with blood being distributed to your arms and legs, but that may be something else.

Best of luck

They seam to be ok for now, no one fought. You must remember, I was coming off the memory of my sis getting beaten by her last ex. I was not about to let that happen again while I was there. Sorry im a brother, I didn't expect for that to be held against me. I feel I did great keeping my cool. Diffusing the situation was not going to happen, seeing as they both were drunk and screaming. All I was doing was making sure no one hurt each other, I left the fight up to them.

I was not about to attack him, he would have to had made the first move. I thought I made that clear, if not im sorry. I was not some out of control animal, how you got that from my op is odd. I was in control, I just was not prepared for the effects that kind thing had on my physically.

I agree he was trying to leave, but my sister was making a mistake in not letting him. Tho I feel that letting him leave at that point would have been foolish. He was very drunk, and would have gotten himself or someone else hurt by driving off.

Honestly this post is not about the fight. I made it to address what happened when my body had a adrenalin dump or the fight response. That and all martial arts lessons that can be gleaned from my experience was what I posted about.

In a perfect world, you would have been calm. There were ways to defuse the situation, but that wont always be everyones go-to.
Anger is a state of mind you dont always get to choose, and it has effects on the body, and thought. Go figure.

 

[Dirty Dog]

If im not mistaken, thats more becoming conditioned to whats happening to the point that you rarely if ever get to that state?

To some extent, yes. But to some degree it may also be inborn.
I've never been one that gets rattled easily and as far back as I can remember, I've always pretty much shut down emotions in a crisis.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I was a Boy Scout Tenderfoot at a summer camp. During this camp, we were told that we were going to practice our orienteering. We took maps, compass, etc, and started on a hike. We were given directions of "go this direction so far, then go this direction so far, then..." and the contest was to see which group of boys would arrive closest to the target destination.

So we walk around a bluff, and there are three guys laying on the ground, apparently a climbing accident. One had brain matter exposed. One had a broken arm with arterial bleeding. One had a broken leg and his intestines coming out through a hole in his belly.
Bear in mind I am the smallest, youngest (I think I might have been 10 or 11...) and newest person in the group. People freaked out. In my head I looked at the guy with the brains out and said "he's dead...", grabbed the biggest kid in the group and made him put pressure on the arterial bleed, told the others to give me water and cloth to cover the guys guts, and told one to run, not walk, back to camp to get help.

The leaders had never told us that we were going to be tested on First Aid during the hike. This troop was on a military base in Spain, and they'd gotten a moulage kit from the base to set this up and see how we would respond.

I didn't really have any emotional response until the leaders stepped out from where they were hiding/watching. AFTER it was all over, my hands shook and I had to sit down. During the event? Nothing.

 

[Cyriacus]

To some extent, yes. But to some degree it may also be inborn.
I've never been one that gets rattled easily and as far back as I can remember, I've always pretty much shut down emotions in a crisis.

A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, I was a Boy Scout Tenderfoot at a summer camp. During this camp, we were told that we were going to practice our orienteering. We took maps, compass, etc, and started on a hike. We were given directions of "go this direction so far, then go this direction so far, then..." and the contest was to see which group of boys would arrive closest to the target destination.

So we walk around a bluff, and there are three guys laying on the ground, apparently a climbing accident. One had brain matter exposed. One had a broken arm with arterial bleeding. One had a broken leg and his intestines coming out through a hole in his belly.
Bear in mind I am the smallest, youngest (I think I might have been 10 or 11...) and newest person in the group. People freaked out. In my head I looked at the guy with the brains out and said "he's dead...", grabbed the biggest kid in the group and made him put pressure on the arterial bleed, told the others to give me water and cloth to cover the guys guts, and told one to run, not walk, back to camp to get help.

The leaders had never told us that we were going to be tested on First Aid during the hike. This troop was on a military base in Spain, and they'd gotten a moulage kit from the base to set this up and see how we would respond.

I didn't really have any emotional response until the leaders stepped out from where they were hiding/watching. AFTER it was all over, my hands shook and I had to sit down. During the event? Nothing.

I dont doubt that, and i appreciate the information.
I cant really speak for how i react to things, since i havent really been in a situation to do so for a long, long time.

 

[jks9199]

Many people here will tell you that this sort of response is inevitable. I'm going to disagree.
With experience, it goes away, and you deal with conflicts as calmly as you deal with anything else.
My job lands me in confrontations on a regular basis, and I've not had to deal with the fight or flight reflex in years.
This is a good thing because it allows me to deal with a crisis using my mind, not my emotions.
Doesn't matter if it's an armed agressive patient or blood spraying to the ceiling. I'll deal with the emotional response later. In the moment, I do whatever is needed with a cool head.
Unfortunately, I don't think there is any way to train the fight or flight reflex out; supressing it comes with experience, and it's not the sort of experience that can be simulated.
I suspect some of the LEOs here will agree that they also have learned to put off the "reflex" responses till later, so that can deal with problems intelectually.

The OP was adrenalized. He's done a nice job describing it.

It is inevitable, under the proper situation. What happens is that, with experience and training, the intensity of the stimulus needed to trigger the response moves higher up the scale. You can see the same sort of thing happening in a martial arts class. Remember the butterflies and virtual terror the first time you sparred? or maybe your first tournament? But, after a while, doing it again and again, it became just a thing you do... Well, the same sort of thing happens with the adrenal response to a violent situation.

I freely admit that I froze the first time I dealt with a real violent situation at work. That night, I wouldn't have told you I froze. But, especially in hindsight, I did. I was in a warm, fuzzy place, moving slowly and it was perfectly rational to me, at that moment, why I wasn't doing anything else. Then, when I was told what to do, the freeze broke, and I stepped up. Today? The other night, we responded to a guy with a knife. I was calm, in control, and can tell you exactly what I did each step of the way, leading to him being arrested without injury. Or I can tell you exactly what happened with the knucklehead who bucked and got to ride the lightening a few months ago. Where the OP's needle pegged at 10 quickly... mine goes to 11 now. And moves up there much more slowly.

Emotional responses are something completely different; they come from a different place. The adrenalization is the lizard brain. It's instinctive, and the way we control it is to learn how to keep it from being fully engaged. Emotional responses come from the monkey brain. We learn to control that by not letting the monkey take the reins. Like you said -- it's displaced. (And sometimes, just not even triggered. We cops get to be cold bastards about some stuff... we see it too much.)

 

[mook jong man]

Thanks Cyracious and Seasoned for the good advice, especially about listening to my body and learning from it. I did not intend to make it sound like I was deep in thought. The whole flash thought process was only a few seconds worth from start to finish. Most of the time I was only focused on him and his movements, not wanting to get ambushed.

My bodies reaction to this whole thing was interesting. Cyracious you mention how my body felt, and its ability to act on my planned moves had it come to it. I definitely felt like I was physically affected by the whole thing. The muscles in my chest, and the outer sides of my thighs were spasming non stop, my hands were shaking but only a little bit and it only happened intermittently. I felt cold(well I was in my white tighties...) and my movements when I did move my arms felt a little jerkish. Tho it was not overly so. I feel that I would have been able to grapple had I needed to, not to mention all the punch defenses I know are all gross motor based. Tho my arms did feel a little "heavy" as well as jerkish.

Going based on the way my body felt, I feel I have learned a few things. Being that im only a 1 year novice at boxing/mma/grappling I feel that my best bet for self defense would have been simple short movements. Things like my above mentioned slip duck body punch weave left hook are simple and I have done them 10000 times before. I feel that if I had to do any grappling it should have been simple and not overly complex manuvers. I know I would not have been able to pull off any complicated grappling. Same thing applies to my striking defenses. I do not think I would have been able to apply the new deflections(blocks) my new coach is teaching me. I would relied on boxing almost exclusively for striking defense, because of how "simple"(gross motor) they all are.

Now maybe with a few more years of training, that will change, but for now, im glad I maintain my boxing skills, despite having moved on from it as my only Martial art.

Id have felt better with a baton or taser as well...

Might be beneficial to do some type of scenario training , to go some ways towards immunising against the inevitable adrenal dump.
To get the best effect you need training partners that can act really well , complete with posturing movements , faces filled with rage , personal insults and lots of swearing.
Not everyone is comfortable with this type of training , but that is mainly the point of it.

One of my old instructors gets students to do an exercise where the training partners start off forehead to forehead , the nominated aggressor will start swearing and yelling abuse at the other guy.
The goal of the other guy is to stay as calm as he can and just ignore the torrent of abuse , while they still stay contacting forehead to forehead.
After about a minute the defender will start to slowly extend his arms into a fence position to move the other guy back , not shove him back , but just slowly extend the arms.

From there you could continue the exercise with de-escalation talk , pre-emptive striking , or the aggressor initiating an attack.

 

[Kframe]

SO the question for me now is, I know for me, that my training program is working. Im kinda shocked that when the poo hits the fan, I default to boxing, but I should not be surprised, its what I have the most time in.

So my question is, do I need more sparring of harder intensity to push my needle up more as JKS says? Will regular practice at the gym help the problem?

My training typically runs like this. After conditioning, we will run through one of my favorite drills, striking defense. We spend a few rounds doing all of our defenses. Coach straps on gloves and starts swinging, my job is to not get hit. He will randomly call out things he wants me to do, say pick, or duck or slip and I have to do it. We usually start with a few rounds of my boxing defense skills, then we move on to the new deflections he teaches me. Now I like this drill because I rep each defense ALOT, close to 50+ reps for each defense depending on which one. I love the fact that if I mess up I get hit. Instant feed back. Tho he dosnt hit me that hard, hard enough to not be comfortable about light sparring with gloves power level.

We rep our standing and ground grappling the same way. First with no resistance then with increasing resistance.
So do I need more time in sparring, or am I on the right coarse?

 

[Kframe]

Geezer, I tried to de escalate it as much as possible. Being that they were drunk made it very difficult, on top of my adrenaline. I was unsucsessfull in defusing my sister, she would not back down and was only making things worse. I did the one thing I knew to work. I called my Father, and he came over. He and my sister have a special bond and he can talk to her far better then I can. The moment I did that, things calmed down(sorta, lol not much, but the fever pitch was waning. and they were sobering up) My dad arrived and he drove boyfriend to his house and they talked and slept it off. Sure I had to call my dad, but honestly it was the only way to get my sister to back off.

I was not sure how to proceed with de escalating the situation, considering that neither side was listening to me or each other. I was unsure what to do after that.

 

[Dirty Dog]

Personally, I don't think so. If you're not born with a high needle, then simulations won't adjust it, not to any significant extent. You're not going to have the physiologic response unless it's real. Or (as in the story I posted) you at least think it's real.
This might help...

For a price, I'll come randomly attack you...

 

[Chris Parker]

From an older post of mine, in a similar thread:

I think the first thing that needs to be understood is exactly what the Fight, Flight or Freeze response actually is, and why "knowing what to do" doesn't necessarily help matters at all.

In essence, it's a survival mechanism. When you get suddenly and seriously adrenalised, the higher functions of your brain shut down, and your survival programming kicks in. It basically assesses where the cause of the adrenaline dump is, how far away it is, and gives you the response that is deemed (from a survival point of view, honed over hundreds of thousands of generations), which is basically that if there is distance between you and the cause of the adrenaline, try to escape (flight), if not, then engage it (fight). You know when you hear a siren, or car tyres screetching, and you stop for a second? That's your survival brain assessing the next step. And once it has assessed, then it looks for a powerful response in whichever skill is required.

Freeze comes into it when you assess an action (typically fight), but you have no resources to apply. In other words, if you have been taught (psychologically, on a deep level I'm talking here) that "fighting is wrong", or "you're too weak to do anything", or simply never really put anything that the unconscious (who is really in control of that survival part of yourself) that is assessed, or believed to be powerful, then there just won't be anything there to work with. As a result, when you look for an action, and find none, you have an absence of action, or, you freeze.

So how do you deal with it? Well, "knowing what to do" really doesn't come into it. Mainly as "knowing what to do" is a conscious assessment/decision making process, and that's not present for you under such circumstances. What you need to do is teach your unconscious responses that are recognised as "powerful". And that comes down to the way you train it. Basically, it needs to be done seriously, with a sense of reality (life-and-death, in a real way).

Freezing is really fairly common, when it all comes down to it. Martial artists can also be afflicted by it quite a lot, especially if they've treated their training (when training) as "fun". What that does is tells the unconscious to categorise the martial skills in the "fun" box, not the "powerful, survival" box. So when you look in the "powerful, survival" box, it's empty.

Train like it's real every time, and train every time like it's the only chance you get. And get as acclimatized to adrenaline as you can.

How do you train for it? I'm going to go against Dirty Dog here, and say that yes, simulations can absolutely help. Provided they give a realistic sense of the adrenaline (often to a lesser degree, but can, and should, be scaled up), then they do help a lot.

The thing is, the form of adrenaline found in sparring is very different to the adrenaline experienced in a sudden, violent assault... so sparring, believe it or not, is not a very good analogue for handling a violent assault. Oh, and when you mentioned that you defaulted to boxing, it wasn't that you had more time in it, it was that you (unconsciously) believe that it is more powerful. That's really it. Under the adrenaline, you went to what you (unconsciously) believe is the most powerful... and media (movies, television etc) have reinforced that belief. Honestly, I'm far from surprised that you'd default to it...

 

[jks9199]

So my question is, do I need more sparring of harder intensity to push my needle up more as JKS says? Will regular practice at the gym help the problem?

No. You need the right sort of training, which means several different things. Part of it is scenario training, done right, with people who know what they are doing to do it. Lots of stuff gets done and called scenario training -- and is most definitely not doing what they think it is. See the drill described above, which included practicing standing literally nose to nose with someone, and letting them yell and insult you... Think about what that's really teaching and practicing; are you ingraining a response that will be beneficial?

Sparring, unless you and your partners are really going to try to kill each other, won't help. It'll ingrain bad ideas and thoughts. Here's just one: You're sparring someone, you get in, tag 'em, and get out, right? Even if you KO 'em... what do you do? In a real violent encounter -- what should you be doing? Are they the same?

As a starting point, review material from Rory Miller, Marc MacYoung, Bruce Siddle, Kenneth Murray, and Dave Grossman. Peyton Quinn has good stuff, too...

 

[mook jong man]

No. You need the right sort of training, which means several different things. Part of it is scenario training, done right, with people who know what they are doing to do it. Lots of stuff gets done and called scenario training -- and is most definitely not doing what they think it is. See the drill described above, which included practicing standing literally nose to nose with someone, and letting them yell and insult you... Think about what that's really teaching and practicing; are you ingraining a response that will be beneficial?

Sparring, unless you and your partners are really going to try to kill each other, won't help. It'll ingrain bad ideas and thoughts. Here's just one: You're sparring someone, you get in, tag 'em, and get out, right? Even if you KO 'em... what do you do? In a real violent encounter -- what should you be doing? Are they the same?

As a starting point, review material from Rory Miller, Marc MacYoung, Bruce Siddle, Kenneth Murray, and Dave Grossman. Peyton Quinn has good stuff, too...

That exercise is used by one of my old instructors who at one stage was head of Australian Krav Maga under Eyal Yanilov.
The exercise is a desensitisation experience , only one of many drills , most of them are done from the fence position , but for a brief time this is done in close.
It is beneficial , in that the person will get somewhat used to being yelled and sworn at and will be able to remain calm under pressure and try and think tactically instead of freaking out when targeted by in your face aggression.

All the self defence gurus seem to be American on your list.
You might not believe it mate , but there are actually other people in the world that are doing good work in this area , not just Americans.

 

[Mauthos]

I believe in scenario training, as I do think it can provide an insight into how you would probably react in a real situation. The usual 'bullring' idea works for my students, basically surround you in a circle with everyone jeering and shouting from the outside. 1 attacks and only stops attacking once you have got them to the ground, then another attacks. Obviously this in then stepped up that the time between the attackers gets shorter and shorter, so at some point the guy in the middle will have to deal with multiple attackers, normally this continues until they are overwhelmed. Really works wonders as when the pressure builds up all technique goes out of the window and the person in the middle just reacts with what comes naturally to them.

On another note, I find it fascinating how people react in these situations, the OP was literally high on adrenaline, pumped with muscles itching to go whilst finding it difficult to think and eventually explaining he had tunnel vision. I have unfortunately been in similar situations or 'real' fight situations and I have shared the elevated heart rate and deep breathing, but I found that my brain calmed and I was able to think clearly and this enabled me to logically deal with the situation and I was intensely focused with my awareness peaked. Interesting differences, in my opinion