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.