Training Coffee Talk 12/07/05

[Michael Brown]

"Warriors are all much like one another. It is the one who has been to the most severe school who wins."
-Heraclitus

I will propose that the greatest benefit of full contact training is the development of the ability to live in the fore-brain during conflict as that is where all your skills and knowledge are. If pain and risk to the ego is familiar to you, you are far more likely to be able to access your skill set.

If you fall back to the mammalian brain upon first contact with a threat (as the un-trained almost always do) you can only rely on a minimal set of skills if you had any in the first place.

It would be nice if there were any easy, useful training for combat.

Unfortunately there isn't any.

Michael Brown

[RDS]

Yep, how true. Kind of like a guy who fancies himself a boxer when all he's ever done is punch a heavy bag.

I think your advice and observations are right on. I'd add the following to just about every training scenario/function, "Now try it after you've experienced an adrenaline dump, your heart rate is @ 175, and you're mouth breathing."

[Michael Brown]

I'd add the following to just about every training scenario/function, "Now try it after you've experienced an adrenaline dump, your heart rate is @ 175, and you're mouth breathing."

Exactamundo!

I think the difficulty has always been the adrenaline dump and has caused a lot of people to mistake the problem. You obviously understand that there's more going on than just heart-beat increase since you've been there.

What you see at some training is the students expending some energy in some form of exercise prior to shooting or some other task.

Unfortunately this misrepresents the problem because exercise causes the spike in heart rate over time in a gradual fashion (although for some this occurs faster than others). Fear causes the spike instantly and that's what causes people to fall back on the mammal brain and is hard to mitigate without prior experience.

Thus far the only means by which we can come close to replicating that adrenalized state is through full-contact simulation training. Some other tasks can make you nervous but I think the concern about pain is what really does it.

Michael Brown

[GMThunder]

Interesting, I've got about 3hrs before I give a senior seminar over this very thing. It's not tied directly with violent situations in humans but it does have to do with fear responses and associative and dynamics of non-declarative memory in regards to fear stimuli. Basically how your memory changes to enable "learning" of behavioral responses from stress. The mechanism for adrenaline in learning a fear response is essential due to the blood brain barrier not letting anything through but glucose. Kinda cool to see a real world translation.

[RDS]

The first Simunition scenario usually does it for most.

Re. exercise induced simulation - put on a gas-mask with filter and do some activity to get your respiration/heart rate up to the point of "panic/fear of suffocation " (caused by the mask's restricted air flow).

You're getting pretty close to primal survival mode now, you'll have to fight the urge to rip the mask off...but focus on breath control and the task at hand.

Sgt. Brown, you mentioned the fear of pain...the only thing worse than doing this drill the first time, is doing it the second time.Your consolation comes from the fact that you know NOW you will live through it.....

[RDS]

The whole idea is to learn that you can exert some control over the "go stupid" effects of a primal brain downshift.

[Michael Brown]

I am a firm believer that most people spend most of their lives trying to avoid pain, fear, and death. Such a practice is potentially deadly for the warrior.

The practice of making yourself intimately familiar with these three things makes you a formidable opponent for anyone.

Michael Brown