Linage, is it important?

Linage has always been important. It tells something about who your teacher /school is. Look at business (Harvard , MIT and so on) or the UFC. Getting connected to the right school, gives you a basis for doing well. It can’t guaranty you success, but they have proven that they know some “tricks”, and as a minimum you get these “served”.

Even when you’re out in life, referencing your “linage” can be a sign of quality. But really what counts is how you utilize the stuff you’ve learned. You can have the best credentials and the best teachers, but this doesn’t mean you automatically do “magic stuff” or the right things.

Being able to build on your experience, and be able to make it work for you is something you are. Teachers and Schools can set up the learning environment and optimize the learning experience, but it’s up to the student to learn and to “get it”.

So when Sense’s/teachers/coaches boast or reference there “linage”, it’s just part of it. And if you look at Blooms taxonomy, you’ll see it’s just the lower part of understanding/learning. What really counts is the understanding and being able to share, analysis, elaborate and use what you have learned, which is the higher part of Blooms. So look at the students, and see how well they perform.

When looking at performance many parameters should be considered, from a technical point of view to a social relationship standard, were the 2 mentioned are the most dominant.  The technical view is for many “easy” to see compared to the relationship overview. Physical techniques can easily be shown and tested, while relationships are built on known and unknown rules, and the corresponding dynamics can be hard to see. But it is here you’ll see whether a teacher helps build his students, and sees them as individuals or he sees them as possible clones of himself.

A student will never reach their potential if the teacher/coach doesn’t give them the possibility to grow and evolve. The questions is how to see this, since every school or dojo, has some requirements that are fundamental. Some of them are pure technical and sometimes quite many, were a couple of thousands don’ the most I’ve heard, while others concentrate on more the mental part. These two extrems are easly spottet for what they are, it’s when they mix and only fill small parts of the “school” or are downplayed. That’s what you’ll look for.

Another “trait” is to look for the “super sensei”. He’ll have answers for everything, and nothing but his own fit’s to what he’s doing, even the most obvious. Doing self defense is doing what works, and if you can have success by running around in big clogs, smoking a joint… prove it and do it… if it works.

So we are back to … what works… linage might be important, if it works, and see if the students can get it to work for themselves in any area and you have a school/dojo that will give you great basis for doing your best at selfdefense.

Self-defense - listing

Just finished 2 self-defense books.

Both of them stated that they were the "ultimate" and most necessary for anybody that needed to learn self defense. They stated that the reader would learn the nitty gritty that was necsessary for self defense.

This article isn't a review of those books, but what triggered me was the both books only listed a lot of things the writer meant to be important, like:

• Remember to not be were violence can start
• Dont let people in close to you
• Read people

Even though the statements are sound, there was nothing on "how to..." do it. And there wasn't any integration between the statements.

Looking at any conflict, remembering a list of things to help you through the conflict isn't going to help. And the faster the conflict escalates with corresponding risks, you need to have your "tools" in place, because you can't live with the consequence not doing so. 

You could take the list and go out and shop around and fine places/teachers that would teach you, but the books didn't state anything about the success criteria for those areas, and how you should connect them, or your just going to get X number of teachers teaching you a lot of things that have to work together, that each teacher can't or won't be able to get to work together.

So when these books talk about "ultimate" or "The only thing you have to learn", I believe there doing more harm than good. If they stated that they were a list of references  fine, but that does sound boring, so I understand that they call it for something it isn't.

It's a choice - warrior

Morten Laursen asked the other day on our facebook page:

“Hi everyone

I’m writing and lecturing a bit about mental fitness, and coming from martial arts myself, I believe that nobody is stronger mentally than a real fighter/warrior (in a non-militant fashion).

My question is ”what goes on in a warriors mind, when he is faced with great opposition, both in and outside the ring?”. I.o.w, I want to know what separates the warrior from the victim mentally, what words and thought processes are used to keep up the warrior spirit, and not be broken by opposition?

In advance, thank you for your time!

Morten
Chief Instructor
Aarhus Crossfit

”

As I understand it, a question to find the spirit , the drive, motivation that drives people that have great odds against them. History is filled with stories of warriors, fighters and brave people doing things everybody else would awe upon, raise a brow or just plain be impressed. So knowing that this quest is more for everybody, and everybody it isn’t to be just a “warrior” trait, but maybe by looking at the extremes we can find the kime to what works and why. In this article the extreme will be paired to a physical confrontation, with your life at stake.

I believe in the holistic approach, seeing a man as a whole, were mind and body are interactive with each other. So doing something will influence your whole being; ie. Getting stronger will benefit, also on the mental plain, were you’ll learn to push yourself, discipline yourself and learn to focus. On how well you do this will bring you closer to your goal. But how does this help you when placed in a physical confrontation? What happens when you face a knife wielding bad guy, who feels that your wallet isn’t enough. Well to be honest we don’t know, there are many factors in play, so maybe the question should be put a different way; how to increase the odds to your favor?

In asking this question you have to defines the odds, which areas that are to be improved, so in the search even though a holistic view is sought, it helps to split the mental/physiological and physical apart. Knowing that Morten Laursen is the Chef Coach instructor at Aarhus Crossfit, and very good at what he does, I won’t write about physical conditioning and training that optimizes the physical aspect of handling of violent confrontation.

Looking into a confrontation, there are three phases with a loop back (feedback) from the first phase: Preconflict, conflict and post conflict(with a loop back-feedback).  Each phase consists of different mental aspects that are to be handled in separate ways, but have great influence on each other. The phases will be different in time and length depending upon on how the confrontation is built up. The core in the three phased model is the conflict itself. This is were it’s ongoing, and to compare this with a competition this is the fight or executing of technique. Everything before that is pre-conflict, and everything after that is post conflict.

To see what is “in game “ in the pre/post conflict, you need to see what is going on in the conflict phase. As earlier stated I’ll be using a violent physical confrontation as my reference, so in this case physical harm is being done. There is differences in types of attackers and the weapons they use, but that can be another blog. IF the physical confrontation is manageable, the in principle there is no push to the extreme. To get it manageable is the  what we will be answering but let’s see what’s in a non-manageable situation.

The conflict phase is experienced very differently between people(there are other veriations, but to keep it to the highlights), but some of the common physiology areas are:

·         Adrenalin gets hot into the body

·         Hearing/seeing/feeling can change; either heightened or lowered

·         Hallucinations can be experience

·         Gross motor skills kick in

·         Breathing can be impared

·         Flight, fight, freeze or submit kicks in

·         Amygdala high jacking

I’m not going into each of these areas, since the questioned asked isn’t about this, but they are listed to give an understanding what happens in the body /mind when in a confrontation. Most people can agree that even though we started off looking at this as a physical confrontation, these same areas are experienced a lot of people have tried in one or more situations through out their lives. Be it you first grading, taking your drivers license, getting married or loosing a loved one. Not that the list is explicite. Anything that pushes you out of your comfort zone and into a higher stress area can trigger this. Stress being the key word here.

Antonovsky and Lazarus both talk about sense of coherence/coping process, as a way of handling stressful situations. In short they state that people that can "see" the coherence of a situation have a better chance of handling it, and not just the situation itself but also the persons role in it. And it’s not just an accept of it, but a sense, a total understanding and accept of the situation. Not having this sense will eat up your free mental capacity with clutter.

Free mental capacity is the mental free space to think cognitive about a situation. More stress will make this free space less and less. So in a sense it’s a question of minimizing the “stress” factors. Some of the factors can only be minimized while others can be recognized (coherent) and then through that minimize the effect of the stress. Recognizing is the key factor, that goes through all the phases of a confrontation.

Depending upon the degree of recognizing a mental “knee-jerk” reaction will be set inplace. A kind of primal reaction to defend you from the stress situation at hand.  This “knee-jerk” reaction is closly connected to the amygdala high jacking:  a neurological reaction to a stimulus that does not have a recognition pattern in the amygdala. Typically when something fast happens, but doesn’t nescarry have to be fast, just has to be something unknown to you amygdala; take the deer caught in your cars light as an example. If the amygdala doesn’t know/recognize what is happening or has a bad memory it will choose a primal reaction depending upon if it defines it as a fear or fright reaction. I will not go into this now, but more state the fact that not having the correct reaction connected to the amygdala will give a reaction that might be not the wanted reaction; in a physical confrontation standing still (freezing) just might be the wrong reaction if you are continuously being stabbed.

Getting the recognition factor in place is a key factor to be able to be in the conflict(the corresponding stress) zone.

Building up the scene with the same factors as the conflict will help for recognizing the situation; thus telling your brain that this is something you’ve done before. Doing this in self-defense is building up scenarios, while in competition sports it’s making small competitions, pre- grading’s and such. Setting up the situation so it looks and feels like the real thing. This is much easier to control and define in a sports related event, were as in a self defense situation there are many unknown and subtle factors.

But being in the “fight” and doing it as “in real life”, isn’t enough. There are mental  aspects that come into play:

·         Motivation

o   Before

o   While conflict is ongoing

·         Past history/experience

·         Coping

·         Acceptance

o   Of the situation

o   Giving yourself permission

o   Social acceptance

·         Evaluation while in the conflict

o   Re-evaluation

Aspects that necessary don’t have a specific flow or have to all come into play. You might even experience different aspects from scenario to scenario. But it is through the use of scenario you’ll get closer to your “normal” reaction in a conflict situation, and having a honest coach, and being honest with yourself you can work on these. But the choice to change can only be done through accepting the situation as is, and wanting to do something about it, and in fact choosing to accept the fact that you will be in a conflict/stressful environment.

Accepting the fact that you are or going to be in the stressful environment is probably the single most important factor for being able to cop with the situation. The acceptance gives go to the action phase of the conflict, enabling you to react. Opposite is an non acceptance which is close to a denial of what in realty can or is happening. But the acceptance is more than that, since a conflict has many unknown factors and risks , the acceptance is also an acceptance of that situation; going into something with many unknown factors and typically scary factors. This typically builds into the motivation of people; the feel of wanting to do it. Now that they are in roaring conflict, these people fine the key areas to hold on to and don’t get suck up into trying to evaluate everything that is going on. This is one of the things that a scenario practice helps with, picking up on cues and helping defining which key areas are to be focused on. Which again helps with the evaluation in the situation, keeping the need to evaluate on the lowest/easiest possible level(with out free mental evaluation, this part falls out and your left to primal reactions, which you can’t be sure what will happen).  

Since we are social beings, the social interaction we have with others will have influence on what we do, be it before the conflict starts on to how you handle the conflict itself. Kicking somebody in the groin, poking the eyes our or just knowing that grunting while hitting a tennis ball at your match is a no-go, will influence your behavior. The social rules will influence your behavior, already there given you a baseline to your thought process.

A partial conclusion now would be a person who focuses on the goal, optimizing each area of his/her’s life, while listening to the inner voice. All areas are covered and tested by putting themselves in a realitybasis training/testing environment. But the fundamental part of it is the ‘sense of coherense’, learning that the situation can be handled under extreme pressure.

This only shows that you can, what you now need is the will to do it, prevail and keep going. Probably this is what most people think about when talking about warrior-spirit. And this is also what people want, because they see the results – typically results that are normally out of what normal people think would be possible. The ‘will’ is part of your motivation that influences you in the three different phases. Motivation has many levels and is very complex and varies from individual to individual. There’s everything from sudden gratification to knowing your doing good for others, and of course a mix of it all. Finding out what drives the ‘warrior’ is finding your motivation. This is a process way much harder than just “throwing” yourself into a scenario or going to a therapist. Even though both will help you get closer to understanding yourself, the motivation has to be found in the core of the ‘warrior’.  Something that will withstand the pounding and chaos in a conflict. A kind of light or beacon  that can lift you up, but also will be your guiding in your everyday struggle. And if you can make it a cognitive choice and part of your “scenario” training, chances are greater that it will help you get through a conflict. There are many ways to find this motivation. One is to see your life as different sized balls . The most important ones are the largest(decide what is most important), put them in a glass/container called “my life”. When that is done take the next largest balls and put them in the container, and continue with smaller and smaller balls. At some point there isn’t room for any more, and what is left should be things and stuff that can be “cut loose”. Then go back and start focusing on the largest balls, by time they should be your focus/motivation when “the shit hits the fans”.

Another approach is to look for the 1 single thing/person that means the most for you; what really makes your day, no matter what. And by connecting a mantra to it you can enforce this on a daily basis. The mantra should be in sync with the rest of your mental focus. A lot of people end up choosing somebody they love(spouse or child) , but for some it might be their work. Since the motivation is to be a single most important motivator, keep it as simple as possible. Were work is much more “fluffy” than “your wife” or first borne.

Having this mental focus is essential when the “pounding” has started and the world as you know it is in chaos. Finding into the core and start by acknowledging the fact what is happening, use your motivation to choose to do something and do it. This is using your motivation to get going and do something.  And in most cases it’s better to do something than just wait for the right opportunity. Doing anything will change the variables that are in play, were one of them is the bad guy suddenly haven to use time to handle the fact that you are doing something, most likely surprising him by not succumbing. But here is also a self-motivating factor, that you are doing something to change the current situation.

One thing is finding the motivational factor another is training it. Using it to help you through a situation, building up the mental strength that is needed to withstand and get through a highly stressful situation. As mentioned before there has to be the choice to do it, to train it, to do something about it. It is this choice that needs to be harnessed, and built up.  This is were the term comfort zone comes into use. Being pushed out of you comfort zone will help grow into the area were you are to be. Since a physical confrontation isn’t something you can train in 100%, without getting seriously hurt(or hurting somebody seriously), security measures will always be taken, and alternative training methods to be used.  Working in a scenario with padding or doing a drill designed to work on special attributes. Scenarios can have special slants with focus areas, while drills are more specific on the talent you want to work. A scenario could be being approached by somebody who will try and hold you, and start slapping you area. While a drill would be working on the point of being hold and have the feeling that you can’t get out of the hold. No matter which approach you take, it has to be built up in different degrees of difficultness. Pushing somebody out to fail isn’t going to help them grow and work on their motivation. Building up slowly will expand  a persons ability to handle the situation; in a sense the brain will recognize the situation as something it has learned to handle and will not stress as much as if it was something totally new.

Knowing an individual’s motivation can then be used and enforce the person to perform in extreme situations.

This brings us to the last phase of a conflict, when it’s over and there is a loop back (feedback) on what has happened.  Everybody learns from a conflict, the question is what did they learn? This is where the really good teachers, coaches; sensei show what they are worth. Being able to spot and help somebody to find the right areas to work on and to motivate them to get through.  Connecting the training, mindset and scenario together with the internal motivation from the student will help the student to “sense of coherence” and make the situation as low as possible on the stress level. Using this red thread as a guide line through training, life and the feedback will give a more robust student and in the end give the possibility for self-evolvement. It also helps the student to build up a mental patch way used to get through a highly stressful situation, and also evaluate it and learn from it.

Concluding/elaborating on this text consist of two main areas: choosing and having a motivation to be and get through a stressful situation.  To support this working on the different arenas and enhancing these, be it food, training, techniques, flexibility, mental and motivational, will enhance the individuals chances in a confrontation. And by connecting them in by “ a red thread” will make them stronger. But as a chain is only as strong as it’s weakest part, you have to work on your weakest part.

Life isn’t perfect , and the same for people too. For a person to be 100% in all areas and know thyself, is (if impossible) very rare. But what you will see in “warriors” are people who are dedicated and see themselves in that role and understand what is going on and how to handle it, and they will seek to “do it” with the means that they have.

I believe that if we could look into the minds of these “warriors” they will be just as scared, worried, thought full, honored, happy … you name it, the same as everybody else. But you’ll also see the looking for windows of opportunity and taking them, reevaluating and keep going. 

And if you look at how “warriors” act in life, you’ll see people going for what they want, doing stuff that triggers them(even if it is dangerous) ,  taking the path least travelled, challenge themselves and so on. It’s easy to romanticize the warrior, but at the end of the day they are just normal people like everybody else, full of complex and ever changing personalities. Different motivations drive people even though the goal is the same, but for them all; they choose to do it.

Teaching and learning

The other day I have a person approach me and wanted me to teach him the tricks of self-defense. As he put it himself. Like it just was a question of learning a killer movement he could use anytime.

It's not the first time people have asked me to learn them or their children or better half to learn self defense. It could be soooo nice - they might need it one day. What happens is a typical "dance" of words back and forth about what they should learn and how much time they are to spend and so on.

But really gets to me, is that people want to" teached". They don't want to learn, but be taught. They say "teach me", and wait to taught. The expectations that showing them the ropes will automatically give them the skills to defend themselves, besides the fact that movement can't by the majority of people be master by just watching. The other part of teaching is the passiveness or argumentativeness approach that many times are shown by these "teach me students". Non of which give learning a possibility, because learning is the responsibility of the person that wants to learn. You can't learn if you are not motivated to it.

Motivation can be made by the teacher, opening up the student to learning. But the students that really learn into the core, are those that are motivated by themselves. They will suck it all up and give it a try, no matter if its fun or boring. They will endure hard training and push themselves. They will in the end own their own experiences from their own motivations, and in such be part of that person for the rest of their life. And since were talking self-defense; this kind will go much further than "teach me" students.

In a sense, and not always knowing it, the self motivated student takes responsibility of learning, or you could say that the person is self driven from their own needs, and will get the teaching to fit.

So teaching is something the teacher does, while the student learns.The teach can only open up to options and possibilities that enhance the possibility for the student to learn. But the learning process itself is souly the students "job".

Testing wisdom

I've been doing Martial Arts(MA) since 1978. Through time I've meet a lot of people  students, friends, teachers, coaches and MA people who are not any of these. But all of them have influenced me, and in a sense made me what I'm today.

Some of them were self centered others willing to share and give with out thought. Some the toughest I've ever fighted, and others so soft you barely could look at them with out them creeping over to a corner.

But it's easy to pick out the extremes, much more harder is picking out were the small stuff that doesn't your training. To see the teacher that uses terror to keep his pupils in line is easy, but the teacher that keeps students by "You just have to do this 1000 times, and you'll understand" is harder.

Experience through repetition is important, but being able to tell a person upfront what is expected as a result. Otherwise the student doesn't really know if he's working in the right direction. Worst case were the teacher keeps teaching without talking , the student might learn to do the technique the correct way, but understanding it completely differently. So when the student one day becomes a master and starts to apply his "wisdom", the application of it may be catastrophically, in worse case sending his students to get maimed or killed in a violent confrontation. A way of always ensuring your understanding and application of what you've learn is to test it. The test could be competition fighting or trying the technique/concept in real life.

Understanding how to test techniques or concepts become important when training with teachers or coaches.
Test can vary from just understanding body movement over to trying the technique in a scenario, over to hearing the teachers/coaches reason of why things are done as they are.

Your experience and who and what you are really will define your own tests.  This also shows how important it is to know yourself; on a mental and physical level. Your technique will look differently throwing a person that is lower than you, then the other way around. If a teacher can't get you to handle the difference, there is a great chance that they really can't help you at all.

There is a catch to being critical to what your learning, and that is your entering an era which you haven't got any experience, and it can be difficult to evaluate the value of it upfront. So sometimes you just have to throw yourself into it, and take a chance and see what the results are. Depending on how much time your using mini test /evaluations can be made along the line.

Starting MA back in 1978 had me doing alot of kata's, countless repetitions, religious influence, mediation, far eastern mystic, totally submission to teacher - never questioning, eating the "right food"," thinking" the correct thoughts and so on. Some of the things I wouldn't let my students do today, either because it's totally wrong or just the "learning" takes to long compared to the time it takes to "learn" it. While others I will push them through, but I will tell them why I do it. giving them the fundamentals to understand, and be able to "test" if what they are doing works.

This is really letting students learn how to learn through "testing", and not just doing techniques.

Agression

Just had the great pleasure to participate in one of Europa’s best Martial arts seminar, with really inspirering Martial art masters. One of these, Sensei Steve Barnett, work our group with aggression growth. Not working on becoming aggressive, but to use your built in aggression. Letting it become a tool and motivation for handling violent situations. But also a tool for learning that side of yourself and learning how to use it, and not let I be something that just pops up and you have no knowledge and control over.

Aggression is an emotion, just like many other emotions like joy, sadness and so on. Learning how to handle emotions are a natural part of life. Like it is unnatural to suppress any feel, and might lead to emotional problems in the future.

There are people that believe that aggression is wrong, and must be suppressed. A thought that aggression destroys, and is not something that builds and helps create relationships. But violence already has defined that building and creating something good, isn’t a part of what’s going on. Some people think that meeting violence by non aggression, will negate violence or at least minimize it. And in some cases it just might, but really depending on the scenario. Working with aggression isn’t about the situations that can be handled by non-agresssion, but being able to use aggression in situations were that is the solution. The person who decides which reaction will stop the violence is the attacker; his mind set, his goal and expectations. This is a blog entry worthy by itself.

Knowing your aggression is balancing your self between your different emotions. It also make you more aware of what you are feeling, and can take action on it. A good read about listening to you emotions is “Gift of fear “ by Gavin DeBecker. The faster you can catch up on your emotions the faster you can react on them, and that is the key. You can react on them. You don’t have to be a slave of emotions, but learn to listen and then do as you want.

So as you can let joy overwhelm you at a birthday party or a weeding party, you can let aggression help you out of a situation with a knife wielding mugger.

While thinking about it, take a look at a friends blog about aggression and “no-mind”. It’s worth a read: http://kojutsukan.blogspot.dk/2012/10/mushin-no-shin.html

Weapon defense

The other day one of my students asked me why there was an emphasis on weapons? Shouldn't a reality based (or flinched or human reaction based) system be indifferent to if there is a weapon or not?

The idea being that you can't or don't have time to evaluate if the person is wielding a knife or brass knuckle  you only have time to react.

If you look at the movements of a weapon wielding attacker, many of them will remind of unarmed movements. A punch can be a swing of a short club or a knife. An upper cut a gutting from a knife. A straight punch a stabbing of a knife.

So just practicing "one" movement for them all should simplify training and giving time to concentrate on other aspects of self defense. A thought commonly seen, that self defense is just a matter of technique, and that the simplification of technique is the most efficient. But it is more than that.

Self defense can be seen as three time spaces: pre-conflict, the conflict it self and post conflict. Even this can be broken down to different time frames, but for now I'll keep it to these three. In the pre-conflict cues are very important to pick up on. This could be the way somebody walks, holds his hands or keeps dodging with his eyes. And the closer you get to the confrontation(the conflict) these cues might change in form or intensity. But they are also different depending on what is going to happen; if the attacker wants to hit you, he has to pull his hands out of his pockets. If it's a knife, he has to move into consideration on how he's holding the knife.

To put it simple "The scenario dictates", as Coach Tony Blauer says. So even if the technique you're doing is the "same", the situation/scenario will give you so much more information making the whole weapon defense with all phases more nuanced when a weapon is brought in.

Another factor in practicing is the mental fright for weapons. By working with specially with it, you're working on optimizing more mental space for cognitive processing in a situation with a weapon wielding attacker.

So in a sense "you're right, but wrong", we need to train weapons separately because there are other things than just the technique.

Heart Rate

A blog written by my good friend Christian Hvidberg:

The body and mind react to stress. Were as stress can be anything from a person yelling at you up to a life threatening situation were a gun is placed into your face. An indication on how the stressful situation is influencing you can be seen by monitoring your heart rate.

 

A high heart rate by itself as in running isn't enough to simulate the stress the body and mind undergoes. The surge of adrenalin can literally sweep your mind away.

 

Studies have shown that heart rates can be classified into three groups:

 

Fine motor skills: up to around 120 bpm (beats pr. min) were it starts to fall at 110bpm

Complex motor skills: up to around 175 bpm, were it starts to fall at 135 bpm

Gross motor skills: can be held to max bpm

 

The body increases the production of adrenalin, which increases the blood flow to the extremities and in the end increasing strength, but will in the end interfere with the fine motor skills.

 

All is not lost, in the sense that only gross motor skills can work at high levels of stress. By utilizing scenario training, to understand, cope and learn how self-defense situations will influence you, you'll become more familiar and be able to push the limit of when fine and complex motor skills will cease to function.

 

Breath control

 

Some would say that life begins with the first breath, indicating the signification of breathing. No matter if this is true, our breathing will influence on our performance, and stressful situations will influence your breath. This interaction with your stressful situation, gives you the possibility to influence your situation.

Hyperventilation is a response to stress; a function that has the goal to kick start you to your fight/flight mentality.

By controlling your breath, slowly and in rhythm, you can take control and regain control of yourself.

Kata

The other day I was looking at some kata's being performed. Nicely done, and everybody was doing the same; sharp, weighted, time movements.  Again and again, some of the movements working with an imaginary opponent others just a set of movements that are to be remembered and other a nice mix of the two.

 

There was no doubt they were dedicated individuals, working at a high level of achievement. With beautiful results.

 

I started thinking about who the imaginary opponent was, and his role in it all. How was he reacting, and in which environment this was happening. Was he taller, heavier, faster, in his pajamas, out running or just plain out drunk? Which queues did the kata-doer use to activate hos movements? OR was he using a timing system to activate his sequences.

 

You probable already get the idea that running through the kata isn’t taking into consideration the other factors in a scenario. Things like environment, why are we having this situation and what kind of luggage is in play here.

 

Could they be played into a kata? Yes, I think so. This might make it not so nice, and not the same from time to time. But it will make the kata more vertical to reality. Tony Blauer uses this thought set in is Close Quarter Combat Form, were variations dictate your movements(and follow ups)  . There is a fundamental structure your based on, but from that it’s the scenario that dictates the rest (a quote from Mr. Blauer: scenario dictates all).

 

Katas are good for getting your movements better and sharper, but when it is to be used in another environment, use the specifications from that environment, or you might be missing the point.

Knowing it's going to happen

In our latest class we worked with close quarter. Something that might feel easy because you know what is happening. But do you have this heighten understanding while waiting in queue for a bus, a train or just at the counter of a gas station? Next time notice what you have in your arms, were they are. Who else is there and how have you placed yourself in relation to other people. Not that you should get paranoid, but use it to learn by reading yourself and reading others.

 

Some people don’t mind standing close, while others don’t mind standing in the rain just so they don’t stand close to somebody. But they are standing natural and being just a part of the crowed.

 

Getting this “natural” feeling in class is hard, very hard, since you know that you are there to work on a concept, and that concept is to be u of the signals in confined spaces.

 

Getting students to turn off the danger signals in their brain, is hard, and you shouldn’t get them to work against some good reactions. But what you need them to do is connect those good reactions to the situation. And by using the scenario training to “code “ and connect to the signals in the brain, they will enhance their chances for “seeing it coming” in future situations.

New form

I've decided to change what to write about in this blog. Before it was 100% percent street-sence related.

But now I'll be trying to give thoughts and feedback on self-defense related issues.