In a recent article I explored ‘Hick’s law’, the psychology around making choices in survival or high trauma combat situations - and that these must be simplified into ideally a single option to prevent the dead time in the automatic - and delayed - processing inevitable in our brains when multiple choices are built in.
I’m following up this theme here with the fact that once self defence response choices are simplified, these must be designed for gross motor skills to be effective.
This article covers why this is. It’s everything to do with our evolutionary brain.
In high-quality Krav Maga and other self defence training, defences should be taught by being broken down into components and learned in initial phases sequentially, only moving from A to A+B to A+B+C after each is practiced and mastered individually.
This not only embeds confidence in the practitioner that they can do the solution they're practicing but also because we learn practically through seeing pictures and by modelling these into actions. Too many pictures cannot be adopted by the brain into relevant motor skills all at once.
Only once process A is completed can the next phase B be applied. This is the stimuli (the attack or threat) into a self defence response phase - and it should be made as real as possible when practiced.
If you’re a Krav Maga student, you’ll hopefully recognise this model of teaching. Practice by breaking down a technique first, then more stress is applied, often under some physical exertion, mental stress or disorientation.
There is a major consideration serious students and instructors should note at this point. Physical exertion, or making the heart rate elevate, is NOT a complete replica of the stress and trauma associated with a sudden, unexpected violent encounter or threat.
I will explain why and how this should shape self defence training to make it as appropriate and suitable as possible.
Research over the last 20-30 years has moved on from looking at sports performance and the impact of elevated heart rate to the psychological and physiological impact of combat stress on practitioners.
It’s worth noting what an elevated heart rate is. It’s the measure of the perceived stress level, not the cause. When we’re looking at loss of fine, mixed or even gross motor skills with an elevated heart rate in self defence scenarios, the cause (what’s happening) is more important than the measure (the rise in heart rate).
This research shows something fundamental in our brains taking place. Our mind is hardwired to override even trained responses by certain evolutionary processes. These neural processes, essentially a fear-response to optimise survival in dangerous situations, are so powerful that they can take over most trained responses.
Located deep in our so-called reptilian brain is small area called the ‘amygdala’. This area is responsible to instantaneously - without conscious thought - determine the threat and its significance and trigger the most suitable survival or protection response (according to evolutionary biology).
This could be freezing, running, a body movement to block or stop something, extracting yourself away (hand on a hot stove, anyone?) or changing the physiology, e.g. instantly rising the heart rate to over 200 BPM to pump blood into the major muscles ready for fight or flight.
To facilitate the survival responses, how the brain perceive these are all important - and this is where it becomes important to self defence training.
The body will receive input from every sensory system in the body - sight, sound, touch, smell and taste. This information is routed to a place in the brain called the thalamus.
The thalamus, located close to the amygdala, is like your brain’s receptionist or mail room. It will sort out what goes where. If the threat is not imminent, maybe something you see further away, the brain will start to engage the neocortex.
The neocortex, or the thinking part of the mind, can now start to analyse and make more conscious decisions about the threat. This decision is then sent to the amygdala to to create a response as to the most suitable survival action.
This brain process is the one you use in most self defence training. You will already know the type of attack. You have visualised it. It’s not spontaneous in the sense you know it’s coming. You have prepared a response and you can execute it as long as it’s based on gross motor skills without too high a BPM and Hick’s law permits you to make a decision in time.
Success. You now safer than before.
Or are you?
Modern brain research have found that in surprising, unexpected and immediate danger scenarios, the brain will follow a different neural pathway.
The stimulation will bypass the thinking neocortex and move directly from the thalamus to the amygdala.
Our brains will now not do what we’ve consciously trained to do, but what it has pre-programmed itself to do over a lengthy evolution.
Think sneezing if something goes up your nose, gag reflexes, airway closures if swallowing water, changing your footing if about to trip over, etc. These are natural responses to protect yourself, managed by the amygdala.
The amygdala also acts to try to keep you safe in high trauma incidents. It will respond first, and only then send information to the neocortex to think about what caused the survival action.
In face of violence, it can be a heart rate explosion, freezing the body or sending a limb to stop something threatening it. Imagine something in trajectory towards your head where your arm goes up and head away or how you drop the head and elevate shoulders after a loud sound. The amygdala is in charge. Your instincts take over. Fast.
Essentially, the higher the stress and more imminent the threat, the more the amygdala will take control over your thinking and actions. Interestingly, there are far more neural pathways from the amygdala to the neocortex than vice versa. The evolutionary brain is designed for your instinctive brain to dominate your thinking brain for survival.
What does this mean for Krav Mags or self defence training? Recognising that in real danger situations where fear is naturally a very pervasive emotion, our trained responses must match as closely as possible the natural expectation of the amygdala.
There must be congruence between what is taught and how the neural processes of the brain work.
If these processes dictate more and more basic or gross motor skill physical responses the higher the fear-stimuli of the amygdala, the less and less the fine or mixed motor skill reliant techniques will apply.
This is particularly relevant to visible weapons attacks, which in principle can induce the greater level of fear.
Ask yourself: Is my teaching curriculum filled with nice-looking, long-sequenced, fine-or-mixed motor skills techniques? What happens if the sequence is broken? Can I simplify techniques, combine them and make them more motor-skill based? What happens if I test my techniques during the highest possible (but safe) pressure? And if you find a different answer to what you’ve done so far: What’s most important - my ego, politics, my affiliation - or my students?
Questions can be challenging and answers may be hard to accept. Hopefully you’ll know what the right thing to do will be.
Combined with Hick’s law, that the brain delays action exponentially with the number of response options it has available to assess, the continuous simplification of self defence responses into a bigger gross-motor skill repertoire is congruent with modern research on brain functioning.
Many modern, flexible and adaptable self defence schools follow these principles and actively look at creating techniques which combine against various attacks and are based on simple and instinctive responses rather than longer and more ‘perfect’ solutions, having to be done sequentially and aesthetically.
Simple, instinctive and ugly does it. That’s the message from pre-historic times.
After all, self defence is simply about survival. If you don’t believe that, ask your brain. It already knows.