Let's start with a quote from the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius:
"How ridiculous and strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life!"
The quote is culled from Aurelius' Meditations a series of loose but connected notes to himself as he struggled to stay the stoic course while conducting a long military campaign to resist German invaders who had penetrated into Italy over the Alps.
In context, Aurelius' notes to himself cover both the mundane (court matters and human interaction) and the crushing expediencies of the battlefield; we must keep in mind that the battlefield of 2nd Century A.D. more than likely involved a bit more hardships than we encounter today.
Today let's use these 13 words of wisdom to inform how we approach our real-world self-protection training and allow it's pragmatism to adjust and direct our course where we may come up lacking.
More often than not, when one conducts, engages in, observes real-world drilling we see it in sterile pristine conditions. That is, inside a gym/dojo/training facility at pre-arranged designated times. This is a given and it's hard to get around this portion of drilling sterility, but...
We often see sterility intrude into other aspects of our drilling which are most definitely under our control. If any portion of the below short-list is a part of your real-world drilling method then your drills just may be a bit sterile.
- You know the tactic you are defending against 80% or more of the time.
- You have a pre-selected/ chosen/assigned defensive tactic more than 80% of the time.
- Your training remains in the gym 80% or more of the time.
- You train in designated clothing (that is, workout clothes as your system/art defines them) 80% or more of the time.
- You train/respond with your dominant lead 80% or more of the time.
- You train minus handicaps (physical, sensory, equilibrium, et cetera) 80% or more of the time.
You get the idea, spending the majority of your time dealing with the known while purportedly training for the unknown seems a bit contradictory. Real life is far messier and chaotic than a drill. Yes, we must use drills to train and groove neural nets but drilling with smoothness or sterility does not accurately reflect the nature of the battlefield.
As any student of real world conflict knows (or at least should know) that even a cursory study of security/battlefield/surveillance camera footage or even self-posted video of assaults by malignant scum reveals that seldom, if ever, do any of these encounters follow sterile protocols.
Yes, you can see common attacks or scenarios (punches, tackles, knives, guns, street-grappling, et cetera) but how often does the real world right-in-front-of-your-very-own-eyeballs evidence of actual assault or violent encounters accurately reflect the drills or environmental conditions of your gym?
We as law-abiding citizens will always be surprised and immersed in chaotic conditions when violence strikes as we never get to choose our time and place of encounter with evil, so in that aspect we are always (ALWAYS) disadvantaged.
But...
We can allow our training to become "infected", informed by what we do see occurring in the real-world. By including more of the chaos, more of the random variables, more of the never-planned-for aspects of violent assault that we can readily see as evidenced by video or 1st-hand accounts we go a longer way towards safety by inoculating ourselves with the truth and kill a bit of the sterility that just may be doing a disservice to our end results.
No, we will never be able to (nor would we want to) completely mock or mimic evil, but training for reality as if it were the smooth world of a combat sport is denying reality.
One more time, the Emperor:
"How ridiculous and strange to be surprised at anything which happens in life!"
In a clumsy re-phrasing, if it has happened to others in your demographic, it can happen to you. It does not mean that it will happen to you only that it can.
With that in mind do you allow any of your training to reflect any of the following "infections":
- Mall or workplace shooting?
- Responses with full-on dress clothes (shoes included) whatever dress clothes means to you?
- Physical incapacitation-predators prey on the weak. We are all weak at times (injured, dead asleep, sick, et cetera)?
- You have young, elderly, or infirm dependents to protect.
- Seated?
- Cramped quarters?
- Cold-I'm talking numb non-responsive grip, folks.
- Blurred vision?
- Blinded?
- Dizzy/nauseated?
This list can go on and on, but you will readily see that many people not too different from ourselves have had to face just such situations and we choosing not to place ourselves into drilling simulacra are being a bit blind to reality; and a decision to ignore what has and can happen in life and to stick with sterile drilling might be a bit less than intellectually honest, and perhaps morally questionable if you are training others who are depending on you for honest guidance.
If we are training to survive the realities of the street, then we must allow reality to inform what and how we train.
And reality, unlike sports or games, is always more than a little messy.
This article originally appeared in The Vale Alliance private forum.
