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During a crisis will you be a winner, or will you let the stress of the event destroy you?
Why during some instances do practitioners of the warrior arts fail under pressure, while someone with minimum skill sets come out a winner under the same stressful environment?
During a crisis we rise or fall to the level of our training.
When our fight or flight response kicks in, chemical changes occur in the body. I will call this the chemical dump. When your heart rate increases due to this chemical dump your physical and cognitive abilities decrease.
The normal resting heart rate is 60 to 80 beats per minutes. At this heart rate level all tasks and skills seem very easy and work very well. To put this in to perspective, practicing self-defense techniques in the gym all work perfectly, and all shots at the range hit the intended target and are easy to perform.
Unfortunately this is the heart rate at which most practice their techniques in the gym or dojo, which are very sterile environments. At the range we practice marksmanship skills in a controlled environment to ensure safety for ourselves and for those around us. However practicing these skills at the resting heart rate level once the skills are learned is useless for real life self-defense and real altercations.
Once the heart rate increased due to the chemical dump, our performance drops dramatically and we may not even be able to perform the simples of techniques. These are chemically induced heart rates increases: exercise induced heart rate increases do not have the same effects on motor skill deterioration.
Once the heart rate is elevated to approximately 115 bpm fine motor skills deteriorate. Fine motor skills involve intricate precise movements using small muscle groups and generally involve high levels of hand eye coordination. Included in fine motor skills are skills such as handling keys, dialing a phone, writing, grabbing, and picking up small objects. Fine motor skills also include drawing a weapon and then using that weapon accurately. The same effect applies to empty handed combatives: when the fine motor skills are lost, many of the techniques that worked so well at the lower heart rate are no longer available to us.
Around 145 bpm complex motor skills deteriorate. Complex motor skills are movements that are linked together to reach the desired outcome, and require balance and coordination.
The more complex the skill, the less likely it is you will be able to accomplish that skill at this heart rate. The numbers of movements, as well as the environment play a big role in making a motor skill more complex. Skills at this level include deploying and using your weapon from the carry position, and empty hand combatives that require more than two moves for completion such a throws, joint locks, and chokes. Because balance is a complex motor skill, kicking at this heart rate level would be more difficult and risky to perform.
At 175 beats per minute cognitive processing and decision-making abilities deteriorate.
This would include use of force decisions such as whether to defend or run, how to defend yourself and what technique to use, as well as how much force to use.
At this level there is a loss of depth perception a loss of near vision and auditory exclusion. With no training this can cause you to become confused as to what to do and how to do it.
With the loss of depth perception many of us will experience tunnel vision, not being able to see multiple threats or escape routes.
With the loss of near vision, you may not be able to see the front site when deploying your firearm, so shooting a man size target may prove to be difficult even though you are an expert at the range.
Once our heart rate reaches over 175bpm there will be an irrational fight or flight response to include freezing and submission behavior at their highest level. At this heart rate level most learned skills will not be available for use.
While a heart rate of 175 beats per minute or higher inhibits many abilities, gross motor skills will be at their highest performance level. Gross motor skills involve large muscle movements which are not very precise, and include many of the fundamental movement patterns: walking, running, jumping, pushing, slapping, and punching.
There are generally two schools of thought on how to improve performance while under this chemical induced elevated heart rate.
With the first school of thought, we will try to minimize the increase of the heart rate by training under stress.
We will also train in a variety of stressful situations trying to limit surprise so the chemical dump will not be immediately activated. Training this way will also enable us to feel more confident and comfortable in each stressful situation. Once we are able to handle a stressful scenario we will then be able to move on to new scenarios.
In these scenarios we can practice our tactical breathing to lower the heart rate and remain calm. Also by practicing our situational awareness All of the above training will minimize the chemical dump and the rapid increase of heart rate which is so detrimental.
The second school of thought is to use stress to increase the heart rate up to the 175 range and then perform our techniques at that elevated heart rate level. Many experts consider this to be the number one technique to use. Professional athletes, NASCAR drivers, Olympic and professional shooters use this technique to increase their heart rates to the 150-175 beats per minute range before they train on their skill. Using this modern approach to stress response training, we can teach ourselves to effectively perform at these higher heart rates, and our skills can actually peak at these increased heart rate levels.
Training at these heart rate levels we also need to keep our choices of techniques down to the most minimal, utilizing Hicks law, which basically states the more choices you have the slower and the less accurate the response is.
As stated earlier, at these high heart rate levels the only skills that actually improve are the gross motor skills. These are the simple large muscle group movements: running, slapping, punching, and pushing. We need to practice gross motor skill techniques, because in a stressful situation these are the only movements that are going to work 80-90 percent of the time.
While I am a believer in sighted shooting, most of us under stress will not be able to see the front site, nor have time to attain a good site picture. With that being said, I believe all of us owe it to ourselves to practice instinctive shooting and point shooting with our firearms.
I will ask the question again.
During a crisis will you be a winner, or will you let the stress of the event destroy you?
We need to train at high heart rate levels that are stress induced, such as "No Second Chance" Chaos Drills. We need to keep our techniques to a minimum using one simple technique for many attacks; we need to use gross motor skills when we do attack. I recommend that all of us use both methods of heart rate training. The first reason is to limit the effects of the chemical dump so our heart rate levels do not spike over the 175 beats per minute mark. The second is we need the ability to use our skills and to operate at heart rates between 150 and 175 beats per minute for optimal performance, but this can only be done after stress response training.
The Spartan have a saying "Fear makes Warriors forget, and skill that cannot fight is useless".
Do not let stress destroy you! Do not let fear make you forget your skills!
You owe it to yourself and your loved ones to use stress induced training. This will give you the best possible chance for winning during a real event.
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