147 - Mailbox: "They shoot new trainees, don't they?
SensiGirl asks about the control of space, horses, force and the “Furry Genius”...
Pic: Two happy new trainees after attending their first workshop…
Mailbox question from Sensigirl:
Hi Jeth,
I've been finding it hard to articulate this question, but it came up for my training partner this week, so I thought I would have a go. A little anecdote to start.
Many (many) years ago, I did a bit of karate. The instructor was a very funny guy, always quipping. We were doing a standard "step forward and punch, step back and block" drill, and he clearly felt it lacked a little oomph. My opponent was a brown belt, and I was most definitely not, and I was probably feeling a little intimidated.
"Oh, Nicole" the instructor said to me. "You wouldn't believe what he said about your horse, earlier"
I don't even know how the instructor knew I had a horse. Possibly because he used to find it funny to get everybody into kiba dachi (horse-riding position) and leave us there while he went off into some lengthy anecdote. Being a serious rider at the time, I could basically hang out there forever, and the rest of the class hated me for the thigh-burning that ensued.
My opponent definitely didn't know I had a horse, and he was looking quite bewildered at what he might have said about her. I knew he hadn't insulted her, but perhaps just because it broke the tension a bit, the next "step forward and punch" I did drove straight through his block and connected. There was blood, he was Quite Cross, and I found myself rapidly improving my "step back and block".
With the horses, we find people often struggle to find the oomph needed to move the horse, either out of their space, or around the round pen. Or, they have so much dominant energy that the horse wants to avoid them like the plague (case in point, New York lawyer saying that she didn't understand it - she could reduce people to tears with a single sentence at work and yet the horse didn't want to follow her.....). The stalker drill is very reminiscent of moving a horse around, and it feels familiar to me, in a way that hitting people obviously doesn't.
So I suppose my question is around how should people engage some of that fire, in a training situation, without going too far? Obviously, in a real-life situation it's a case of doing what is needed, but I'm mindful of what you have said about newbies being quite dangerous in a training situation because they potentially lack the control and understanding to moderate their attacks. This is definitely something voiced in the class, last night, an uncertainty around how much to "go for it", and a fear that if the fury genie got let out of the bottle, it might be hard to get it back in again.
I hope that makes some sort of sense. Brain slightly frazzled. "Fury genie" got autocorrected to "furry genius"
From
Jeth:
Sensigirl, thank you for this. Apologies for the wait in replying.
Firstly, your experience of training the Stalker drill.
“The stalker drill is very reminiscent of moving a horse around, and it feels familiar to me, in a way that hitting people obviously doesn't.”
The Stalker series is a fantastic tool for making a lot of supposedly complex ideas about controlling space immediately doable for the average trainee.
That's why we use it a lot, set ups and expanding to other drills.
I can throw new skills into the drill while people are learning in real time and it really gets them up to speed very quickly.
Add a mad rush or two and some verbal abuse for seasoning and “Voila!”.
How to control the Furry Genius?
This is a great question and is indeed a rabbit hole of training in it's own right.
(I'll answer a part of it here very basically as this is a public post, the rest will be in a workshop/s).
Each new trainee is a mystery in many ways to the trainer – only vague knowledge about them is imparted on first meeting.
Ever trained before? Injuries? Experiences? Etc...
Just enough to get them started at the correct place.
Much of the self knowledge may be completely unknown to them as they've never done this before – they think they know what self defence training is and then slowly realise it isn't a martial arts class...
Preconceptions, revelations and then...self development.
A lot of people are socially conditioned – everyday, decent people that have a very hard time reaching a place where they are able to connect with the ability to impose their will – even in a situation where their life is at risk.
There are many other different types of trainees that will be both trained and untrained before attending but there's a very small minority that can come looking for a “fight club” (a fantasy that gets corrected quickly) where they get to pretend they have the agency they feel that they lack in the real world, usually guys.
This involves them using force on others without having to receive it – a form of running away.
The first common type can be a risk ironically to larger, stronger or more experienced trainees as they will assume that they lack those very same qualities and therefore feel that they need to apply techniques far harder than they need to and potentially cause injury.
The “fight club” type will get excited at the idea of fight simulation and be wild, reckless and improvise in unexpected ways during learning phases and again cause injury or instil fear in other trainees and shut their learning down.
An absolute “no” on that one.
The main tool I use for group learning workshops is slowness – there are many reasons for this but the main one is that it offers a clear way of learning that feels safe for newer people (because...it is) and gives a gives an opportunity for the over zealous to really stick out like a sore thumb where they can be reminded nicely (at least, at first...) to slow down and care for their partners and this usually smooths things out to where they should be.
At it's most basic level, slow training gives you the time to actually match your response to the stimulus. New people can try and place the bits in the correct order - “one hand here, step there, do that” type stuff and the experienced get to really zero in on some small detail or moment in order to work on quality of movement and so on.
It's a win for everyone.
What about your main question, how much to go for it?
If you're training slow, how can you do that?
The answer is in intention.
Retain a visualisation that this is real but is happening more slowly.
Practice aggression and ruthless determination but with the speed variable taken out.
The module where we talk about emotional responses to assault and empathy can be repeatedly and efficiently practiced here.
The difference is palpable for both trainees and quickly raises both of your learning to a new level.
Also, I should point out that this is why training is divided into different workshops with more chaotic force on force simulations with PPE kit being done privately.
Thanks so much for this considered reply - there’s loads of interesting stuff, here, and it all makes sense.
I think the socially conditioned aspect is really key. I am sure it is one of the reasons that bullying is so prevalent in schools but also in the workplace. I reckon that at some point in my adult life I have sworn that I would never hit someone, probably not even in self-defence. There is a kind of moral high-ground attitude of not “stooping to their level”. But also there’s this idea of taking it to someone else to deal with - like the school, if the child is being bullied, or HR if at work. Or even the police, I guess. It is frowned upon (and punished, potentially) to fight back at school, or stab a fork into an unwelcome hand on the knee at a dinner party. And it leaves people very vulnerable to attack and harassment. I think you mentioned that in Journal Entry 145 people were saying that the security guard shouldn’t have tackled the potential knife threat directly, which I think illustrates the general view that there’s always a more benign way out of the situation, which I now realise isn’t always the case.
I guess when people are overcoming this conditioning they might swing a bit far the other way initially. We definitely see this with the horses: the human who before was being trampled and crushed regularly by a 500+kg horse can start to enjoy the power of being able to move the horse around, and take assertion over into something a bit more like bullying. And the horse world is also full of terrifyingly dominant women who terrorise horses and humans alike.
I’m guessing that the “fight club” types are the ones that might take someone on in the streets, too, like the chap that gets stabbed in Journal Entry 15, or the guy that starts to take on the chap kicking off outside the supermarket in Journal Entry 16? I suppose wanting to know how you might fare in such a situation or as you say feeling you have something to prove is a factor.
The slow training and breaking things down into bite-sized chunks is invaluable, although I think it’s a specific skill that for most of us needs developing, to be slow *and* intentional.
It feels much easier to block a strike that is coming in with a bit of (not too much!) speed than a really slow one. But I guess the perception of speed and the ability to process information comes with experience and skill, and that’s what the slow training is providing. When you first take a line of fences on a horse it’s possible to sort of black out on the approach and come to at the end - the idea of doing anything in the middle seems impossible. But after some practise, you can make micro-adjustments and respond to the dynamic changes as if the horse were actually jumping quite slowly. I’m guessing/hoping it’s the same here!
Thanks again for another thought-provoking journal entry.