When I was a kid I would scare my Mom, on a regular basis… I would hide in the hamper, under the dirty clothes, in a closet, in the dark, whatever it took. I would go all out, I mean I would plan it out in advance! I would find out what she is doing, and predict where she would go. So, if she was drying and folding linens, I would go hide in the linen closet and wait. Sometimes I would wait for 10 minutes, sometimes more, sometimes I was wrong and she would never come. It was always worth it… Looking back I feel bad, as I may have very well taken a few years off of her life.
Regardless of how I scared my dear Mother, I would always garner the same response: A scream, a jolt, and a chastisement, often followed by a punishment (and yet I kept doing it but, that’s another story). She would always provide the same response, a natural response.
This; this is what we are after! A natural human response! If we are defending ourselves when our fear, adrenaline, and every other human function is going crazy, we will default to our natural response. We cannot fight these reactions, certainly in the moment. Now, let me lay out a disclaimer here: We can also default to our training; once we have trained and prepared ourselves to encounter certain events we may default to our training. Our article on hyper vigilance talks about our mind being a Roledex, check it out to learn how it works.
What if we understood and could plan on our natural human reactions? Imagine knowing what will happen to your body if “X” happens, training for it, and mastering it! This would place you in the top few percentile of people. This is where our training philosophy comes in to its own. We train, and teach you what happens to your body under extreme stress, then we teach you how to harness it, then it is up to you to master it. I would argue that mastering our natural instincts, our reaction to them, and our response would make you super-human, not the TV superhuman by the way, just a normal person performing acts that most everyone else cannot.
Why do we do this? Well, you are going to do it anyway, right? Why not perfect and control our response!? For example; bi-pedal animals are designed to get as big as possible and square up to a threat (bears, humans, primates, etc. all do it) So, our fighting stance, to include shooting, should utilize this platform. If you become the best at what we do naturally, you will be incredibly hard to beat.
Bruce Siddle in his fantastic book: Sharpening the Warriors Edge, tell us how the Isosceles stance came to be. In 1927, Lt. Fairborn with the Bangcock Police department observed the officers in gun battles. They all adopted that stance naturally, it was not taught to them. Fast forward to 1989, a research group took 39 police officers, the majority whom shot only the “Weaver” stance”, a very accurate stance used by competitors for over 50 years. They put them in real world scenarios with a gun. All of them hated the isosceles, and worshiped the weaver. In that moment, 96.7% went straight to isosceles. What is the take away? Not even training can overcome natural reaction every time. (I highly recommend this book, it is excellent!
However, there are times in which we train to overcome natural reaction. Running away, freezing in place, panicking, etc. are all bad natural reactions. We train those out, and replace them with productive activities.
What can we learn?
- Scaring our mom is not cool…
- Understanding natural human response is critical for two reasons: Measuring our response, and knowing theirs
- Training is critical
- At Strategic Defense Group, we train to master and perfect natural human reactions. We do not fight them, we work with them so all systems are working together, in synchronization.
- Train to and master your natural human reactions, and you will become better than most…
- We train to what is natural for that very reason, it is natural. It is easier to understand and master, because we are already programmed to do it, we just tweak it and master it.
Stay Sharp,
Adam