Stages of conflict

Any physical confrontation goes through 3 main stages; pre-conflict, the conflict itself, post-conflict. The stages can themselves be cut down to different stages and areas.

Breathing, pre-contact clues, awareness, stress, flinching, PTSD and so on, each having influence in the different stages, and some of them are more primarily fixed in certain stages.

Therefor conflicts are not just something that happens. Events up to the conflict, decisions made, past references are all a part of the conflict, building up to the result of the conflict. Some of these things you can take responsibility over, while others are out of your reach. Know and change a bad guys decision or past references isn’t something you can take responsibility over, but your own actions and how they influence your choices and possibilities today is something you can start doing now.

You can look at what you can do in the pre-conflict stage; which could be starting learning about conflicts, the conflict itself ; which could be learning to defend yourself and the post-conflict; which could be learning how to handle the impact of a confrontation.

TO defend your self, implies you know what is happening

To defend oneself it implies that you know what is happening, or else you’re not defending yourself. The key word here is “knowing”, and on this note learning how to handle that knowledge.
The mind and body work on association, so it recognizes situations and uses past experiences to handle coming situations, be it learning how to use the new tv-remote or something more serious like a person threatening your life. Even though both situations can be stressful, the strongest impact of stress is probably the threat on your life. Antonovsky (ref) states that all things in life stress an individual, it’s a question of how well the individual coopts with the situation and one key factor of handling a stressful situation is the sense of coherence; the understanding/knowing of how/why the situation is as it is.
To get to this knowledge and implement it scenarios have been used by professionals for many years. Police, ambulance, firefighters have all done scenario training were the situation was simulating real life situations. Being it as first responders or taking over for a colleague, seeing and working the scenario helped getting to know many facets of a scenario. Thus bringing knowledge to the real life scenario.
For many years Tony Blauer has been stating that the “scenario dictates”. Stating that any motivation or decision will take it’s offspring in the scenario.
Scenarios will also show the evolution from start to end, thus connecting “the dots”. Getting this knowledge is essential, since it’s brings us to the ques and pre-ques . The ques / pre-ques are the signals that indicate something could be on its way, be it a punch or a head but.
This brings us back to the start of the blog; knowing what is happening.

The fundemental part in a puzzle

Learning martial arts has been a teaching in structure and systems. No matter which style there was always an assumption for what you did and why.

With the blocks you assumed certain attacks, the attacks you assumed certain situations and the stances you took, enforced these assumptions.

Never did I question these assumptions, since they were "golden rules", and each system/style had it's own. Sometimes they would fit each other and at other times these would fill out voids.

By time I started to teach these techniques, I was using the same assumptions that were taught to me. But my teaching was moving from martial artist to more non-marital artist. People having their daily work in areas were physical confrontation was more a norm. They questioned my assumptions, moving my understanding of what is self-defense, and how can I teach people who need it for daily self-defense.


A lot of people working in areas of physical confrontation don't want to spend hours and hours doing techniques that have to be worked on for years, to be able to do self-defense. And waiting for a "black belt" isn't the goal. I started to look into how to minimize repetitions so my students could learn effective techniques that could easily be utilized; looking at how to do techniques that depending on natural movements. I also started looking into who else had been thinking about this, and what have they done. But it was a puzzle, each time I thought I had a piece in place, 2 or 3 more areas had a space to be filled. There was always areas with something missing or just some kind of information just "hanging out there".


This search brought me to Tony Blauer (Coach Blauer), reading it on the internet, buying his Highgear, the CD's and DVD's. It sounded good and had some possibilities. What I didn't realize was that reading and doing are 2 different things, something I usually told my students, but really experienced/woke me up the first time I participated in the PDR cert. with Tom Acuri.


It blew my mind. I thought I was working on a puzzle piece by piece, but found that I was working around one major piece: PDR/SPEAR - startle/flinch. Suddenly I found myself having old pieces of the puzzle falling into place while others just materialized by themselves.

The concepts of P.D.R/S.P.E.A.R just filled in a void, not pushing my knowledge away, but filling out many gaps. The Cycle of Behavior helping on fear management on too the physical drills(and the usaged of startle/flinch) giving a fundamental understanding and reference for future training.

The drills in themselves being small puzzles that can be taken apart and put together to fit the scenario you need to practice. Emphasizing Coach Blauers statement "The Scenario dictates all".


In every real life scenario the BG has to come to you, making what I think the encroachment drill the key drill to all drills. Where it's possible to think or act(or practice) tactical, protective and primal on all parts of the drill, and at the same time change angles of the encroachment or just letting the BG change his intent(on the drill or meanwhile doing the drill), gives many variations just based on 1 drill. Even two(or more) BG can encroach and still use the encroachment drill. Even on the technical side many variations can be practice, be it tactical, protective or primal, distance and CQF also are refined using a BG as the sharpening tool. Of course encroachment isn't enough, but the attack when the BG encroaches can differ depending on the scenario, given us other drills, like the bear hug drill or under lateral. And by putting the encroachment drill in front of the other drills, they come to life. And in that sense they become close to reality, and given us students the possibility to practice real self-defense based on real approaches or encroachments if you want :-)

With this Coach Blauer has helped me get back to where self-defense counts; for people who need techniques and principles that work for them. And I now can see my puzzle given sense, and looking forward to many good hours with Coach Blauers PDR/SPEAR.

Resistance

Working with Coach Blauers PDR /SPEAR it is essential that natural resistance is part of it. Resistance as in doing what a BG would probably do, so you can learn how to react towards it.

To work without resistance, is building up a technique and understanding of it without acknowledging the fact that any BG is a thinking being and will do things on his own, and in reaction to what you might be doing.

There is a sound empowerment to isolate techniques /drills to practice single areas or just for understanding how things work. But one has to remember that these are not self defence techniques and are not meant to be used 'as is' in a physical confrontation.

Practising without resistance will not give you the edge within a real confrontation, since the resistance brings a new dimension into the equation. Typically the resistance isn't something that stands alone, but is usually backed up by a frustration or aggression, heightening the confrontations complexity and intensity. Not know (or have learned) to handled this kind of resistance you will be using important energy (mental and physical) in an area were you have no or little experience. Energy which could have been used to get out of the situation, and not just try and cope with the resistance.

So work with resistance, when your technique or drill is in place, and you'll be working towards learning how to handle the real thing!

Close Quarter Combat

Close quarter combat = fighting in close with another person(s). Usually meaning that elbows and knees are able to reach the opponent. Thus given multiple possibilities for targets and tools (terms used as in Coach Blauers terminology).

This range is an intense range, were large movements will be moving around and into the opponent, are in contrast to movements that are inside and direct/fast contact. Even if a hook is fast and hard, a direct elbow (which is on the inside) will connect before the hook, and be very hard.

For CQC tools to be efficient tools/targets fit have to have the lowest highest efficient level.
Let’s say that the opponents head is in front of you, and you right elbow is up, but behind your own shoulder. The elbow is effective and ready. But compared to your left hand that is up and open, the palm heel strike will be more ready. Thus given it the most effective tactic (term used as in Coach Blauers terminology)

Viewing the CQC as a tactic, were your tools come into play, give a more principle way of handling a defence situation. Thus not locking yourself to a style, but opening up to the possiblities of how a physical confrontation might evolve.

Todays blog is written based on my participation at Coach Blauers PDR seminars.

The why, what and how?

Questions are a natural part of life and as we grow up we learn the different social rules of asking and listening. Through asking and listening it's possible to get information and understanding. But the usability of this information really depends on how good the asking and the listening is, which again is based on your personal experience.

When learning something new like a new move or a new style, we are building up a new experience/foundation/set-of-truths. In these cases we build experience by ourselves or have a mentor/teacher/coach to help us. In this sense we are building our understanding on our own experience or on somebody else’s experience.

To speed up learning, understanding and getting by we use assumptions. It's a way of life: we assume that if the car started yesterday it will start today, if it rains we assume that the roads get wet, hitting somebody hurts or learning from an expert(assumption; they know what they're "talking about" and understand the how's and why's.)

Another way of learning is to simplify the amount of variables of what are your learning. In martial arts this would be classical basic techniques that only take into consideration 1 movement from the badguy/uke/opponent. This could be a straight punch, and from there building up to more complex punche(s). But to practice the straight punch you have some assumptions; stance, pre-movements, fixation of impact, follow through. If you did the straight punch without these assumptions the punch would be too complex for most people to learn to defend against.

When moving along from basic towards more advanced techniques or scenarios, you need to move your assumptions and basic ideas with you so they follow suit. And if your interested in self defense the complexity has to move into this realm hand in hand with assumptions.

To ensure what your doing is in the realm of self defense it is important to ask why am I doing this? To what means? Is this really what is going to happen?

Use the questions to make your assumptions based on reality, and keep asking not for the sake of asking but for the sake of your life.

Startle/Flinch reaction - the second it starts

Nothing happens by it self. There is always a story/a prelude before the physical part of the confrontation, not that the victim always can see it, but it's there.

The second an attack starts, if it is introduced faster than expected the body reacts with a startle/flinch reaction. A reaction coined by Tony Blauer, that states that "An individual who is confronted by a physical threat will have an autonomic response, startle-flinch that is part of the unconscious self-defense mechanism. This occurs long before the cognitive identification process which allows a victim to process the available information and make a conscious decision that results in the fight or flight response."(citet from tonyblauer.com)

Richard Schmidt states that it takes 300-500 repetitions before a new movement is learned, but the 10 fold (3000-5000) to learn a new movement that has to replace the old. 3000- 5000 repetitions take time, which could be used to learn 10 new movements for the same number of repetions. In theory you'll learn more by not using your time to change movements. In some cases it would be nessecary, but in those cases were a movement has the poetenial to work for you, why not use it, as with the startle/flinch which puts the body into natural protective state.

Using the startle/flinch as your base will give you a double edge; Using your time more effective and starting your defence as soon as possible!