What is your first response to pain (physical)?

[Bruno@MT]

Not trying to attack or be disrespectful..but should we not train for contact conditioning at all hours? I mean we train in the dojo as it might happen on the street. We will not be able to tell our attacker "Wait, do'nt attack me, come back at 4PM and we can try this again." Please help me to understand the logic. With humble respect. Sifu CC

Personally, I don't think so. Training for contact is only part of it. You can't do that at every moment of your training or you won't focus on the other things. Learning flow, correct body positioning, position of the feet, etc... we train these with no or light contact, repeatedly, and initially even very slow.

Only when the movements have become natural do we drive up the speed.
If you train for hard contact always, the risk is that people will start cutting corners, just to avoid getting hit. And every time you teach somethign new, there is a higher risk of injury because people will make mistakes and take a full force punch or kick.

 

[billc]

My former Iaido instructor was in the Millitary police in the airforce and was stabbed in the back during a fight. He would hit us with the bottom of his fist in the back and tell us that was what if felt like at the time. He didn't know he had been stabbed right away.

 

[Supra Vijai]

Thanks for that, again I understand that under adrenaline you feel less pain etc but What is the reaction? Do people tend to freeze with the shock? Do you hit back and lash out? Do you ignore it and keep moving?

 

[billc]

When I talk to someone who has been injured in some way I always ask them about how bad it hurt, and what they did immediately after the injury. I have a guy where I work who tore the tendons in his knee. He said the pain was immediate and he fell down and needed help to deal with the injury. My brother is a cop and during the arrest of a drunk suspect riding a bicycle, he got his foot trapped between the bike and the curb. When he pulled the suspect off the bike it twisted and broke his ankle. They both fell to the ground and my brother said for a second or two he was frozen in reaction. Luckily the guy was not an immediate threat. If he had been I wonder how that may have changed my brothers reaction.

 

[Supra Vijai]

Thanks, that sort of thing is what I was after. It's interesting that even someone with exposure to the street has the freeze response when experiencing sudden pain

 

[Cirdan]

Ignore it and focus on the situation. If the situation is threatening I will allow it to fuel my destructive side a bit.

If you get punched hard in the face you will likely freeze for a second, not because of the pain but because the world goes BAM and black.

 

[Supra Vijai]

Ignore it and focus on the situation. If the situation is threatening I will allow it to fuel my destructive side a bit.

If you get punched hard in the face you will likely freeze for a second, not because of the pain but because the world goes BAM and black.

Dare I ask?

In class we talk a lot about the flinch response and also how sometimes you just don't have the time to flinch, we learn that it's inevitable and try work with it. However the freeze response from my understanding is something that you can drill out?

 

[Rayban]

Hi Supra,

I'm a little "iffy" on drilling out a frozen flinch response to being punched in the face. Yes adrenalin and "flinch conditioning" help heaps but your face contains 4 of your 5 senses.

You hear a loud and stunning thud that lingers
You see a fist then blackness (eyes take time to adjust to the vision-blind-vision again moment)
I'm not too sure on taste and smell but everytime i've been hit sufficiently hard in the face all I can taste is metal (blood) and not smell much.

This all takes a toll on the mind because almost every sense is blanketed. An analogy would be:

"If you remove all the inputs to a computer, the system must restart"

Bear in mind I'm talking about a hard hit; not a disrupter (quick jab). I've found I can wear most disrupters usually because they are so light on power compared to a hard hit.

 

[Supra Vijai]

Hi Supra,

I'm a little "iffy" on drilling out a frozen flinch response to being punched in the face. Yes adrenalin and "flinch conditioning" help heaps but your face contains 4 of your 5 senses.

You hear a loud and stunning thud that lingers
You see a fist then blackness (eyes take time to adjust to the vision-blind-vision again moment)
I'm not too sure on taste and smell but everytime i've been hit sufficiently hard in the face all I can taste is metal (blood) and not smell much.

This all takes a toll on the mind because almost every sense is blanketed. An analogy would be:

"If you remove all the inputs to a computer, the system must restart"

Bear in mind I'm talking about a hard hit; not a disrupter (quick jab). I've found I can wear most disrupters usually because they are so light on power compared to a hard hit.

Hi Rayban,

Obviously safe training is implied. Throw on a head guard, a mouth guard and some hand mitts and train with people you know. I'm not talking about getting smacked in the head with a baseball bat till you learn to "deal" with it. I've been in a couple of fights in my time (unfortunately) and with adrenaline I've never blacked out or lost any of my senses. I will agree with the tasting blood thing but aside from that, there's been a time - my 19th birthday when I went to pick up some pizza for the party actually - where I got jumped by a group of guys who thought I looked at one of them wrong and ended up on the ground with my head being stomped on. I'd had no training at that time so my only reaction was to try move away and get up, but I was fully conscious/aware the entire time.

With regards to the analogy, have to say that if you remove the inputs to a computer it just means that you can't type or move your pointer, doesn't cut the power

 

[Cirdan]

Dare I ask?

If you are refering to the destructive bit, this is about flicking "the combat switch" in your mind. In order to defend yourself from violent attack you must be willing to cause damage so that person will no longer function. You must want to get home in one piece no matter what the cost. I imagine how you deal with this may be different from person to person.

In class we talk a lot about the flinch response and also how sometimes you just don't have the time to flinch, we learn that it's inevitable and try work with it. However the freeze response from my understanding is something that you can drill out?

The flinch response to getting attacked/swung at, sure.

Dealing with pain I think is just done by focusing your mind. However there are bodily reflexes you can`t drill out because they don`t involve the brain. Like when you burn your finger on a hotplate and pull it away without thinking.

The momentary blackout from a solid punch to the face, nope. What Rayan says describes what it is like very well. Again, it is not about the pain. I have for instance been slapped in the face with belts, something that was quite easy to block out in comparison. Some parts of the head like the back and top are obviously more solid than face front/sides, hits there are more likely to just leave you dizzy.

 

[Supra Vijai]

Cirdan, that makes sense, it's like in sport where winning or losing is a case of who wants it more.

As you said everyone's reactions will be different hence this thread in the first place My reply to Rayban was quite candid as we know each other outside the forum/training quite well for a few years now and was based solely on my own experiences in real fight situations.

 

[K-man]

Although I'm a little beyond tournament fighting now, and don't believe it to be of benefit in the real world self defence situation, it does give some insight as to how you might react in a live situation. In my first tournament, about thirty years ago, when a fair bit of contact was not only allowed but expected, I fought through to the final without a problem. Only after when I got in the car to drive home did I find the broken toe and quite a number of other painful areas. I have no idea when those injuries occurred as I didn't feel a thing. On another occassion, sparring in the dojo, which was a regular occurrance, an over exhuberant blackbelt slipped one past my guard into my ribs, 'snap'. Boy, did that hurt. No adrenaline present and instant pain.
As to how you can condition. We have certain drills where we stand in a circle and take turns to strike each other (torso obviously) to build a tolerance to firm contact. We also incorporate the hitting conditioning practised by the systema guys where one person is in the middle of a circle and those around hit whatever torso part they can as you keep moving. As you never know where you will be hit next, you just keep moving, defending against any strike you see coming and ignoring the punches that come from behind. This drill helps keep you relaxed, as the last thing you want to be, when hit hard, is tense. Another systema drill is with a partner, walking past each other. As you come in range, in goes a quick jab to the midriff. Trick is again, don't tense up. Just absorb the blow.
It all depends on the schools now as to how much contact is allowed. Those with 'no contact' rules are pretty useless in a self defence sense. :asian:

 

[Gaius Julius Caesar]

Fighting hurts.

Suck it up and move on.

If you are training and you get some pain, unless something stops working, keep going.

If you stop or flinch for every boo boo, you will be easy to beat.

 

[Supra Vijai]

Thanks for the detailed reply K-Man, it remains consistent with the concept/belief that adrenaline makes you stronger, faster and feel less pain (at the time anyway )

It also answers the question in a non violent sense in that you covered that while sparring within the dojo, the pain was instant so your reactions would obviously be different.