When I was asked to write this blog my immediate answer was sure, in fact that’s all my reply was, not ok but what shall I write about or can I use your notes? Now, this isn’t about my ability to retain information as I was doing more listening than writing, this really speaks volumes for the quality and relevance of the whole weekend. I felt nearly 8-weeks post event I had retained enough information to write a short blog but more importantly I had been stimulated enough to learn more about the subject in order to enhance my Krav Maga teaching and ultimately make my students Safer, Fitter, Smarter and ‘Always Ready’.
If you are not familiar with Mr Rory Miller’s work and want to skip my ramblings on please, if you do nothing else today go and buy one of his books ‘Meditations On Violence’ – A Comparison of Martial Arts Training & Real World Violence or ‘Facing Violence’ – Preparing for the Unexpected (see bottom of page). They are an inspiring read and absolutely relevant to what we do as Krav Maga Instructors.
What I liked about Rory Miller was his humble credibility; you could
sense that he’s been there and done that and probably learnt most of
what he knows the hard way. Being in the military myself and been away
on numerous operations you can soon see through those full of BS and
those that know their stuff. You’ve heard the phrase if you’ve walked
the walk you have the right to talk the talk well he has. Rory Miller
has been studying martial arts since 1981, he has served for seventeen
years as a corrections officer and sergeant working maximum security,
booking and mental health; leading a tactical team; teaching and
designing courses in the Use of Force Policy and Decision Making; and
Crisis Communications with the Mentally Ill. So along with numerous
jailhouse brawls and tactical operations I guess he’s picked up a few
lessons to share with us, which is what I shall try and do now.
We have a term in the military called ‘Bottom Line Up Front’ BLUF. It
means, get to the point and tells us what you want us to do or need to
know at the beginning rather than making us read through loads of stuff.
So this is my BLUF in no particular order of what I found most
interesting! To cover everything you’re going to have to buy a few of
his books.
If you can truly flip the switch from a surprised, overwhelmed, and terrified to the assault mind-set, I can’t teach you much. What he meant by this is it’s the opposite of the “frozen” response often triggered by a sudden assault. Knowing we are in that frozen state and are able to break out of it allows us to apply one of the basic principles of Krav Maga and that is be brutal in our counter-attacks so that we can escape and hopefully trigger that very same ‘freeze’ response in those that we may have to fight.
What does a real attack look like, and do I have a chance? To answer this question we split into small groups and acted out an attack from an attacker or rather a Predators point of view. How would they plan the perfect attack? The idea being…. to be good at avoiding conflict, be it bad place or bad people you need to get into the mind set of an attacker or predatory.
This is my favourite and has positively affected my life more than any other. The wife and I don’t argue half as much and I’m much calmer in what would all too often end in a verbal stand-off, and I’ll explain why later. We talked about adrenaline and the affects it is has on the predator in terms of how they can control the time, the place of an attack and therefore their adrenaline levels.
We talked about the different response times in males and females referred to as the curve. In general, when men get aroused by conflict they have a big surge of adrenaline early which only takes one heartbeat for the effects to kick in but it dissipates fairly quickly. Compared to women who have a much slower build up and a longer cool down. So if a man has an effective response he would be ready to fight in a heartbeat under the influence of adrenaline or indeed he could freeze. Whereas women have time to think clearly for several moments before they hit their adrenalin high, useful when confronted with a situation where physical conflict may not be the answer.
So back to the wife, understanding this surge of adrenalin and knowing how quickly it can affect me and any decisions I might make means I am aware of it and therefore can better control it. So were as before I may have responded with verbal abuse the moment I was agitated I know take a knee and let it pass. So the lesson here for women is delay the encounter for as long as you can the more likely the attacker will calm down, the more adrenalin you will have. However if the threat is from a women the quicker you can end it the better you will be. And for men, switch on and then explode all over the attacker and get away to safety as quickly as you can. Lots of training lessons here to be learnt and passed on to our students.
The Monkey Dance is the most common
and the most avoidable of the social violence types. It can usually be
avoided with a simple apology. It can be defused with submissive body
language—an apology, down cast eyes. The Monkey Dance looks like this.
- A hard, aggressive stare.
- A verbal challenge, e.g., “What you lookin’ at?”
- An approach, often with the signs of increased adrenaline, pushed out chest, arms by their side.
- As the two guys square off there may be more verbal exchanges and then one will make contact. It will usually be a two-handed push on the chest or an index finger to the chest. Shortly followed but a punch up.
This description is simplified and shows only one side. It must be emphasised that there have been thousands of generations conditioned to play this game in this way. It is easy to get sucked in and a very difficult thing to walk away. Backing down from a Monkey Dance, is extremely difficult and embarrassing, especially for young men. The short of it is that as pack or tribal animals it’s not productive to keep killing our rivals as this effects the productivity of the tribe so it’s better to posture and monkey dance in the hope that one will back down rather than fight.
This is a great little nugget “Always run to safety! Never just away from Danger”.
At what stage do your students hesitate – Glitch Hunting? What Rory discussed here was the importance of finding out what our student’s glitches are and then helping them overcome them. A glitch being a hesitation in delivering some kind of counter or a delay or doing some kind of appropriate response. I.e. would they hesitate firing a weapon at a male attacker…probably not, but a pregnant women, maybe, stabbing someone, hitting someone with a weapon, gouging an eye?
Rory suggested that we ask our students to find a trigger in their minds, how far would they go to protect themselves or a loved one, the thought of what could happen if they didn’t do something, and then use that thought, that trigger to enable them to push through any hesitation. A bit of mental preparation or eye of the tiger moment before battle. Rory suggests that we give our students permission to do what it takes!
This is another great little nugget, “Training has to be real not just Intense”.
Boundaries and the Thinking Stance. Quite often in training we are taught to say to someone who approaches or comes to close to “stand back or stay back” which is fine and works, but Rory suggested saying something completely different in order to brake their thought processes and hopefully reduce the possibility of conflict such as.
Mate, this is the third unmarked police car which has passed here in the last 3-minutes……what’s going on? Or ask them their Star sign.
Following on from boundaries and assuming an attacker has grabbed you with intentions to take you to a secondary location he may say “come with me and don’t make a scene”. Rory suggests at this stage you should consider what is the worst that could happen if you do go with them? Compared with what could happen if you do the opposite by shouting get off me you pervert and making a scene. Don’t be obedient or you will get kidnapped. The decision is yours.
This one had everyone stunned. What are the Principles of Self-defence? Write them down now and check with the list at the end….don’t cheat and don’t confuse these with the Law of Self-defence.
On the last day we looked at Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and the three-party brain structure (human, monkey, lizard). He divides the concerns of the pyramid among the brains, with the lizard being concerned with the lower levels (safety, security), the monkey with the middle levels (belonging, esteem), and the human brain with the top level (self-actualisation).
He theorises that asocial violence comes from the top and bottom of the pyramid while social stems from the middle. Examples of asocial violence would be an addict trying to get their next hit, who does not see their targets as anything other than a resource, and at the other end of the spectrum, a psychotic who takes pleasure in murder/rape/torture is not seeing the humanity in their target either.
The middle sections of the pyramid, those influenced by
the monkey brain in this model, contain social violence. These are
pretty much the primate behaviours that Rory refers to as “The Monkey
Dance” in his books. Although not exactly accurate, a useful rule of
thumb goes:
- Neo-cortex = human brain. The Neo-cortex controls rational thought, speaking and other higher brain functions.
- Limbic system = monkey brain. The limbic system controls emotions and a whole lot more.
- Cerebellum = lizard brain. The Cerebellum controls movement and action.
The Lizard is the oldest part of your thinking brain, the hindbrain. Your survival instincts (particularly fight/flight/freeze responses) are triggered here. This is the part of your thinking brain most closely tied to your physical coordination, to your physical body and your senses. This is you, the animal. The Lizard also has an affinity for ritual and rhythm. Habits are laid down in this part of the brain.
The Monkey brain corresponds to the limbic system, the emotional brain. The Monkey is completely concerned with social behaviour, with status and what other people might think. The Monkey cannot distinguish between humiliation and death. For much of our evolution, being cast out of the tribe was to be sentenced to a slow and lonely death. The Monkey knows this and fears being ostracised above all things.
The neo-cortex, what we call the Human brain, is the new kid on the
block. It is thoughtful, usually rational (but only as good as its
information). It is also slow. Gathering evidence, weighing options and
possibilities takes time. It tends to find a good solution, but usually
one of the older sections of the brain has a decision all set to go
before the neo-cortex has fully explored the problem.
Rory concluded that we have three different brains with three different
priorities. They evolved to deal with different kinds of conflict.
Now refer back to your list of Principles of Self-defence? What do you have? Rory gave these as his list of principles:
Leverage, Gravity, 2-way Action, Structure, Momentum, and Environment. I did a quick search on Google of his work and found a further three principles.
- Avoid dangerous people and dangerous places.
- Respond immediately and escape.
- Do not defend your property.
Feel free to start a debate and add your own principles of self-defence below.
Tony Robinson
AR Krav Maga Self Defence Training - Norwich UK
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