The 2nd Nature Trap
Many of you may have heard the saying that you must train continuously until your techniques become 2nd nature. Let's think about that for a second and figure out exactly what that means. While I understand the intention, the implication is that your training is meant to be in place of your first/original nature. From our perspective, and experience, there is one fatal flaw with that approach.
This works well under a competitive setting where there are rules and officials overlooking the contest in order to ensure the safety of the competitor. However in a self defense/combative situation there are far more variables and far less in terms of safety precautions to protect you. Often a self defense situation is an ambush attack, often involve weapons and rarely happens in ideal settings. You will often be caught in confined spaces, with obstacles in the environment. It may be between two cars, in a bathroom stall, a hallway, or somewhere with chairs or tables around you. You may find yourself on uneven ground, a wet floor, or rocky surface. All of these things are real variables that you may encounter in a self defense scenario.
This works well under a competitive setting where there are rules and officials overlooking the contest in order to ensure the safety of the competitor. However in a self defense/combative situation there are far more variables and far less in terms of safety precautions to protect you. Often a self defense situation is an ambush attack, often involve weapons and rarely happens in ideal settings. You will often be caught in confined spaces, with obstacles in the environment. It may be between two cars, in a bathroom stall, a hallway, or somewhere with chairs or tables around you. You may find yourself on uneven ground, a wet floor, or rocky surface. All of these things are real variables that you may encounter in a self defense scenario.
So the problem is that unless you are training in these variables, you are not really training in a way to prepare you for the setting of the encounter. It's no secret that a person's performance suffers under unfamiliar circumstances, and that most people have an instinctual fear of the unknown. Add these factors to the inherent fear response that comes with an ambush attack (with a likely addition of a weapon) and you will quickly realize that 2nd nature falls away quickly and you revert to whatever your instinctual nature is.
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Under highly stressful situations, we enter the "fight or flight" response, which enhances certain regions of the brain. If the stress is high enough, it will temporarily "turn off" other regions of the brain. The parts of the brain that are activated during this period is the limbic system which includes the thalamus, hypothalamus, amygdala and other parts of the brain that are typically part of the automatic (so involuntary) responses. Along with this, the sensory cortex is enhanced so that our awareness becomes heightened.
Our Natural Instincts
This also assumes that our natural instincts are poorly equipped to handle life threatening situations. Apparently we managed to become the predominant species by accident if you believe that to be true. However this couldn't be further from the truth. It is because of our natural instincts that we have manage to flourish the way we have.
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Here's a fun experiment. Every day for the next 7 days, take a rolled up pair of socks and throw it at a friend or family member's face (playfully of course). Some may take a few times, others will respond immediately, but they will all throw their hands up to avoid getting hit. Miraculously, nobody has to teach you to have this response.
Now... that's not to say that if you were attacked that this would be enough to manage the situation. My point here is that we do not need to replace our natural instinct.
Instead, what would happen if you were to learn how to use your natural instincts effectively?
Now... that's not to say that if you were attacked that this would be enough to manage the situation. My point here is that we do not need to replace our natural instinct.
Instead, what would happen if you were to learn how to use your natural instincts effectively?
Bridging the Gap Between Instinct and Training
Because our limbic system and natural instincts are focused on our ability to survive, we should base our training in a way that uses this natural response as its starting point.
That way instead of working hard to replace an instinct that is present in virtually all living things since the beginning of intelligent life, we learn to harness this powerful impulse. |
There are those who have made a lucrative business by specializing in this one fact. Tony Blauer for example (seen in the image) formulated his S.P.E.A.R. system (Spontaneous Protection Enabling Accelerated Response) in the 1980's, which is at its very foundation built on this natural instinctive response.
However this is not an endorsement for Blauer of his system. Rather it's pointing out that our natural response may not be a conscious part of our training, but it doesn't have to keep being this way. Just do a quick Google search of fighting stances from various styles and you will see one glaring similarity... they are all variations of our natural and instinctive defensive response. If we train in a way that allows our instinctive response to engage our trained responses, how much more reliable will our trained responses be?
However this is not an endorsement for Blauer of his system. Rather it's pointing out that our natural response may not be a conscious part of our training, but it doesn't have to keep being this way. Just do a quick Google search of fighting stances from various styles and you will see one glaring similarity... they are all variations of our natural and instinctive defensive response. If we train in a way that allows our instinctive response to engage our trained responses, how much more reliable will our trained responses be?
Our Universal Guard
In our system, we begin with what we call the "Universal Guard". We call it that because it is based on our natural and instinctive responses. We have two expressions of it; open and closed. From there, all other responses and techniques can be indexed. Here is a video on our Universal Guard...
For more information on our system, visit our website here.
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