Death to the Heart Rate Chart

Death to the Heart Rate Chart

by W. Hock Hochheim 
 

It's happened again. A firefighter training organization has resurrected the old Bruce Siddle, PPCT Heart Rate and Performance Chart as if was a new, magic discovery, or recognized world-wide as a Nobel Prize winning, commandment and industry standard. You've all seen the 20-plus year old chart by now? 

CONDITION BLACK (heart rate above 175) 
 
Irrational fight or flee
Freezing
Submissive behavior
Voiding of bladder and bowels
Gross motor skills (running, charging, etc. at highest performance level)

CONDITION GRAY (heart rate 145 – 175) 
 
Cognitive processing deteriorates
Vasoconstriction (=reduced bleeding from wounds)
Loss of peripheral vision (tunnel vision)
Loss of depth perception
Loss of near vision
Auditory exclusion
Complex motor skill deteriorates

CONDITION RED – "THE ZONE" (heart rate between 115 and 145) 
 

Optimal survival and combat performance level for:
Complex motor skills
Visual Reaction Time
Cognitive Reaction Time

CONDITIONAL YELLOW (heart rate 115)
Fine motor skill deteriorates

CONDITION WHITE (normal heart rate) 
 

 The professional look of the chart and its matter-of-fact presentation suggests some very serious, study work has been done. But by whom? The actual source is somewhat elusive these days. The source is usually just regurgitated in police circles as “Bruce Siddle's work on,” or the “work of Bruce Siddle,” over and over again, as through Siddle himself was a renown heart surgeon or maybe a Distinguished Fellow, doctor at Houston's Debakey Heart Center. Does anyone ask just who this Siddle really is? Actually, Siddle has not graduated a college and has no psychology or medical degree or experience. He is essentially a self-proclaimed, martial arts grandmaster of his own style "Fist of Dharma," from a small, Illinois town. He had an idea at a very ripe time decades ago, to teach very non-violent, police courses, starting first with friends at a local academy. Many police administrations eventually loved the programs because of the "pressure-point approach." Many, many officers, including myself, did not like the program. Not at all. But back then Siddle seems to have won a "police training lottery," despite all his shortcomings.

Thanks to the ripeness of his unusual and perfect timing, Siddle's name is now entrenched in the police training world. Inside this world, and also in the “reality-based, self-defense” training world, there are these – you might call them – “usual suspects,” for lack of better term. The usual suspects, being those known police trainers that are name-dropped by others to sound ever-so-educated and informed. These are the names of people and their courses that are constantly regurgitated in a spinning tornado of speeches, books and videos. But few know that with new research and discoveries, many of their ideas have lost their spin and have ground down to a small, smelly breeze. And so too goes the Siddle Heart Rate Performance Chart, and here's why.

Generalities. We all know a general bit about the human heart. It beats. It does a lot of blood and oxygen work. It's amazing. We need it. We all know that if the human heart beats at a super rapid pace, surely we will pass out and die. And, we all know that if the heart beats at a super low pace, surely we will pass out and die. It therefore becomes intuitive for us to understand that there must be a continuum of sorts, a progression within those two points? It just makes sense. Fast rate or slow rates, if you are near death, you are not feeling well or performing well.

Then you are shown the above Siddle Heart Chart. You look it over. Okay, given your general, intuitive grasp of the human heart, this must make some kind of sense. And in a time a few decades ago, when research and skeptics and counter-ideas weren't sweeping across the internet, this chart swept quietly across enforcement training courses in manuals and seminars. The "low-information student" nodded in agreement. Then, martial artists trying to be all mod, technical, informed and insider-ish” began touting the chart in martial arts training. So, the "low-information martial artist " nodded in agreement. Even parts of the military nodded too, even though plenty of independent thinkers and experts had immediate doubts and questions. I certainly did.

Here, I will remind everyone that I have taken PPCT courses many years ago. With the chart's inception there has never been an official explanation or obvious attachment between the heart rates shown and perhaps some other elements in the equation, like fear or stress or conditioning. This lack caused a ton of misleading information and misunderstanding. Based on the simple chart of numbers, many were lead to believe that a track runner would poop in his pants when reaching 175 beats a minute? And don't think for a moment this concept wasn't discussed a lot. Sports performance aside, people that do a variety of fine motor tasks under great pressure, like snipers or jet pilots, or the tons of people that perform under stress simply had to be classified as freaks or super-special athletes, else this “work of Siddle” just couldn't fit in with reality.

In the late 1990s and early to mid-2000s, independent thinkers began really challenging the chart as the internet grew. The challenges spread and gained momentum. There were numerous testimonies about people doing refined tasks with increased heart rates in combat, as well as other unusual circumstances. Even a friend of mine, an accountant, was running on a treadmill once back then, and using the small buttons on his Blackberry. He noticed his heart rate was very high and thought to himself, “ I shouldn't be able to do this, should I?” thinking that according to the chart the he should have lost control of his bowels at that point. Actually, at one point he stopped running, straddling the moving ramp to find that any trouble typing he'd had, came from the physical bouncing on the ramp while running. His heart rate was still very high while straddling the ramp, and he could pound the numbers with some ease when standing still.

“Your heart can easily beat 300 times a minute if your brain tells it to do so, but you will hopefully never see this out on a run or bike session. When we talk about maximum heart rate, (MHR) we always mean activity specific. You may find out your MHR for running is 190 bpm but on the bike it may be only be 175. Your Maximum Heart Rate is different for every activity you perform. In addition, it's also difficult to predict a number within each sport with formulas such as the popular MHR = 220 –age or the newer MHR = 205 -.1/2 age. The fact is that even if the formulas would be based on a single activity, there are wide genetic differences between individuals that make these formulas too vague to be predictably useful,” says Dr. Scott, MD.

In 2004, Simunitions pioneer Kenneth Murray published his popular Training at the Speed of Life book. And yes, still, inside the book are all the usual suspects and the same tornado of ideas spinning about. They are all co-endorsing, co-forwarding and co-quoting each other in the usual, round-robin of incestuous back-slapping. And yes, Kenneth covers the old, “must-mention” list and the Siddle Heart Rate and Performance Chart comes up in the book.

BUT this time, enter Kathleen Vonk! Officer, athlete, certified physical performance trainer in numerous programs, BS in Exercise Physiology, etc. Vonk has done years of performance studies. She dismisses the Siddle heart chart because of the simple fact that everyone performs differently at different rates and levels. She also says in the book, and in numerous follow-up interviews, that many other factors interfere with performance. You just cannot tag a heart rate number with specific event, physical performance, or lack thereof. (Some interfering factors are hydration, altitude, fear, heat, cool, last meal, genetics, well…too many and too obvious to list right here.)

Ken Murray, both a gentleman, a scholar and a better man than I am as you'll soon see, very diplomatically uses the phrase “building on Siddle's work on heart rate” in his book when revealing Vonk's hands-on, experienced, qualified results. “Building?” Is building the best word, Ken? No diplomacy here from me – rather, it tears down and eliminates it. This was not news in many sports performance circles even by 2004. Quite a number of experts already agreed with Vonk. But it was newsy to the police training tornado. Not newsy enough though to crash and burn the chart completely as it should have. It seemed to take Dr. Bill Lewinski and his Force Science college wing to make a decent dent in the legend of the Heart Chart.

Fear. Dr. Bill Lewinski, Ph.D., executive director and multi-decade, psychologist specializing in body reaction, and violence, of Minnesota State University, Mankato. He says “the idea that a high heart rate (alone) causes a loss of fine motor skills is a myth. The culprit is fear or anger, not heart rate. ” In 1997 Killogy's popular Dave Grossman virtually teamed up with Siddle and co-opted the Siddle Heart Rate Chart. You will still find late 1990s charts here and there with the "Siddle-Grossman" name and copyright in the bottom corner. But, then in 2004 came a popular, public disclaimer from Grossman that the fear factor was also important in all this and that actual heart rate numbers "may vary." The numbers may vary? Sounds like the end of the Siddle Heart Chart to me.

History has rewritten itself in an effort to justify still using the chart? Yet, even with this looser number rewrite, veteran EMT David Collins reports, "I saw Grossmen in early 2013. He give his usual lecture & I enjoyed most of it, except the heart rate info because it is wrong. The bio-chemicals that flood the body and brain are what causes us to shut down, stop thinking and panic. Yes, there is some kind of heart rate increase, but It is not about the heart rate. This does not prove cause and effect." 2013! Colonel Dave? Let the chart go.

Does this mean we need a new heart chart? A fear chart too? What level of fear mixes with what level of heart rate, to create what level of response? Fear is different for people. I personally have felt more fear batting in the ninth inning of our softball team, playoff games, than I did when searching a room for an armed felon. How can one quantify this dichotomy?

And one other point that confuses this research, I might add – the sudden heart spike. People experience this spike frequently. Do spikes count? Or must one maintain a high rate? If so? For how long for it to count in research? Do I empty my bladder when a sudden spike reaches 175 beats per minute? Or, will I loose my stool only with a sustained 175 bpm for 10 seconds? How long is sustained? We all know the answers to these questions. It depends on the person and the situation. 

"Does this mean we need a new chart? A fear chart too? 
 

What level of fear mixes with what level of heart rate, to create what level of response? Fear is different for people."
 

  Workable solutions? If your heart beats way too much, you die. If your heart beats way too little, you die. There is indeed a performance progression inside these deaths. The progression is based on an individual's genetics, conditioning, outside environments and the task at hand. I have already perused for you a large number of very complicated, technical, new and not-so-new studies that involve heart rate and performance. In all of them, being in shape produced the best results. Off the chart if you will. The real solutions are also intuitive. Stay in shape, eat right, breathe right (yes, that age-old tactical breathing) and exercise. Scenario training – simulate the combat stress you'll experience through repetition training. I add here, use my “who, what, where, when, how and why ” list to best prepare for the simulations.

Despite all this research and common sense, the Siddle Heart Performance Rate Chart and other ignorant manifestations of it, still get rotation within the tornado, quoted and presented in books, lectures and films as biblical truth, just as with the firefighter training program I heard of just the other day, and in the Grossman lectures.

So, if you are about to write the next “pioneer,” reality-based, fight book and insist on quoting all the usual suspects? Why not stop for a moment, meditate on violence, and ask a few questions first about all of them. Be the skeptic.

Few seem to know that Bruce Siddle no longer owns PPCT and hasn't for years. Siddle has also lost millions in a lawsuit involving many things, PPCT being one. Many police agencies, even PPCT instructors themselves are ignorant of this fact, as PPCT seems to partially operate in some sort of Twilight-Zone-flux without a proper, defined, hydra head.

As the Siddle Heart Performance Chart is "history-rewritten," it's only modern rescue is a vague excuse – "Well…ahhh…it teaches people that white, gray, black etc. conditions…ahh…exist." Okay, but I think there are about 12 better ways to briefly explain that existence, than list a thermometer of precise responses with precise heart rate numbers. Drop all the disagreement and confusion and drop the chart. After all, the old Col. Jeff Cooper, Color Code is used by survivalists and shooters alike and it didn't need accompanying heart rates with it. We all fully accept, approve and understand that instantly.

The Siddle Chart should never have been made. And, you can't make a fear/heart/performance chart either. You just can't assign the acts of mandatory defecation, tunnel vision, loss of fine motor skills, etc. to one heart rate number for all of humanity, or even a general one. Not even Siddle uses the Siddle Heart Chart anymore! So, what do you say we all quit passing this deceased, heart chart around and around?

Let it rest in peace. No need to resuscitate.

For more details and references, read this articles and studies. Also, look at the very latest sports studies. 
 

http://www.hammernutrition.com/downloads/heartrate_performance.pdf

http://www.pponline.co.uk/encyc/heart-rate-variability-analysis-how-to-improve-your-training-performance-40837

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/10/health/nutrition/10BEST.html?_r=0\

http://www.joefrielsblog.com/2011/03/high-heart-rate-questions.html

W. Hock Hochheim is a military, police and martial arts vet, who teaches hand, stick, knife and gun seminars in 11 allied countries around the world. He can be reached at Hock@HocksCQC.com
 

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The "Myth of the Duel"...Knives and Otherwise.

Are all those stabbings and slashings around the world, all Zorro-like, face-off duels? No.

 The "myth of the knife duel" is about limiting yourself and/or over-training dueling methods while striving for situational, reality knife fighting. The myth of the duel is using fencing or sparring as the main model for self defense training. This is the definition of "the myth of the duel." The stand-off where each opponent has the same size stick, a knife or are empty-handed. Sparring like this is not the full answer, can confuse and mislead.

 We live in a mixed-weapon world. Such a misleading knife course that over-duels, is unlikely to understand the full, modern, "Weapon-Matrix" options, like gun versus knife for one example. Many criminal and military knife attacks are like football or rugby with a knife with sudden and vicious collisions, not prolonged fencing matches.

 But, if you specialize in a specific era dueling or historical training dueling, and/or understand where the duel truly fits in the big picture, then you are among the enlightened, educating and pursuing your interests and the interests of your friends and students. Dan Inosanto once told us in the 1980s that the real reason for knife sparring was for footwork. And it really is fantastic for footwork.

 Of course, just as a good knife course covers knife ground fighting, it must also cover a proper proportion of so-called "knife dueling," because knife dueling may, has and does occur inside an overall knife fights in war and crime. We duel/spar a bit at every knife level I teach. We do the Killshot Knife Fighting Module to cover the subject, all the time remembering that if there is space between knife fighters, there are often other wise options than the continuance of the knife versus knife duel. Such as the photo above and to the left suggests, pick up something else and fight with it.

 So, are all those stabbings and slashings around the world, all Zorro-like, face-off duels? Or, are they sudden, passionate charges (like football players with knives) that involve a sucker punch, with a thrown ashtray at the face. A knife in the back? A chair vs. a knife? A struggle on the ground? Two bad guys cornering one guy. A very small knife vs. a machete? Or worse, unarmed vs. the knife?

 The very term "knife duel," in many training systems today does fancify and mislead what is really homicide-like or an ugly, vicious bloodletting. The training for knife fighting, as done by so many martial systems today, is a prissy, unrealistic game of tag with rubber toys, mentally detached to the virtually unspeakable horrors of knife wounds, knife maiming and edged weapon killing.

 This dueling concept is often a mitigating concept in all forms of fight-training, not just with knives. Hand. Stick and gun too. Will you always fight an opponent with your 28-inch stick versus his 28-inch stick? For another example, you may be mentally brainwashed into the "empty hand-versus-empty hand duel." If you only train in common, storefront, martial arts and unarmed combatives you will most likely forget to pick up a handy weapon in your environment. Use something as a battering ram or a shield. Sometimes to throw. Always get the edge. Get something to fight with. Always cheat, be tricky and use what's around you. This is easy to pontificate by some instructors, but their actual working outlines and doctrines miss this whole, vital point. Remember, night after night, you are building muscle memory. 

 The myth of the duel is really a two-prong problem. The second part is when you duel, you are sparring. If you are training fighters for a sports event, then follow those rules. But, a reality trainer really needs to take a hard look at sparring and what it really produces in class. I often hear instructors proclaim "We spar everything out," as if everything is ever-so, "battle-tested" as a point of pride or a tough-guy, sales pitch. But I think many are confusing sparring in a matted dojo with the slime of a back alley.

 First, let's quickly establish the characters in our sparring study. The instructor runs the show. The trainer is the attacker. The trainee is one we are all hoping to improve. There is free-style sparring and combat scenario..."sparring." Sparring done with protective gear is useful but only to a point. The gear saves the attacker/trainer from the real fight-ending injury. If the fight-ending injury is ignored by the padded trainer, then the session is counter-productive. The trainee soon forgets the real fight-enders because they are ignored by his partner. The finishing moves then de-evolve from his list. Ignorant, padded attackers ignoring fight-ending moves is the single reason why so many sparring matches become wrestling matches on the ground, often ending in choke-outs/tap-outs. Where else can they go? How else can they end it, when all other simulated fight-stopper, attacks are ignored. Just "sparring things out," sounds cool, but does not maximize the goal. I am talking about the next, higher level, whether you are freestyle sparring or combat scenario sparring, you cannot afford to ignore, solid, fight-ending moves. Ignoring them is a like a cancer to your training doctrine.

 Through the decades I've frequently taken this fact as such simple, common-sense. I foolishly forgot how many instructors fail to grasp this child-like truth. How can they not? I am mortified with this vast, blind ignorance. Be it hand, stick or knife, standing or on the ground, each sparring session needs a coach/instructor to step in and remind the fighters when every serious simulated strike is ignored and what that strike may have actually done to an unpadded person. Sometimes the coach needs to step in and just declare a winner. Reward the proper moves. Reprimand the lame and weak ones.

 "Reality training requires good acting."

 Reality training requires good acting. It sounds like a dichotomy but it is absolutely not. If you shot a trainer in the head with a sims ammo round, the helmeted trainer should act like he was...shot in the face, not completely ignore the bullet! This would be an injustice to the trainee and a glitch in the training mission. The same is true with a knife stab, a stick hit or a solid elbow to the face. Actors/attackers should react conservatively, not ham up the injury, though at times opponents do get hurt this badly.

 We have kicked around a lot of subjects here from knife dueling on down to acting. The myth of the duel and sparring is very deep and appears in many aspects of training. It is a mythology that lots of martial trainers and students worship and...mishandle.

 Adios Amigos

W. Hock Hochheim
http://www.hockscqc.com/blogs/09-11/index.htm

The Mosin Nagant 91/30 An Honest Review

By Joel Persinger

Overview:

A few weeks ago I picked up a 1942 Mosin Nagant 91/30. I had just finished teaching a basic pistol class and stopped into the pro shop at the range to talk with the range manager. I never got to talk with the manager, but I did buy a rifle.

While I was waiting for the manager to appear, I noticed the old Russian girl standing in the gun rack next to so many sleek new rifles. When my eyes drifted over the price tag I just had to see it. Once I held it and fiddled with it a bit, I thought... "What the heck!" So, I bought it for $143.00 out the door (including taxes and the California government fees).

After I bought the Mosin I made the mistake of looking on the web to find out about it. What I found was endless opinions about the Mosin Nagant as an "end of days/SHTF" rifle, a hunting rifle or a home defense rifle. The discussions go on adnauseam. After having purchased one, cleaned it up and shot it, I think I've figured out what it can and cannot do. So here comes yet another opinion... mine.

How did it shoot?

After a couple of hours spent cleaning the cosmoline out of the 69-year old rifle, it actually looked like I might have gotten my hands on something interesting. From what I could tell, the rifle appeared to have been refurbished or perhaps simply never issued to a soldier. So, I took it completely apart, checked the function of the gun and the firing pin adjustment to make sure it was safe to fire and went to the range. I had purchased some surplus 7.62x54R ammunition, so I thought I'd start with that.

It was a good day to try the rifle, since my partner and I had just finished teaching a pistol skill builder and the range was not being used. I set up a paper target and launched some rounds at it from 50 yards to see if I was on the paper. Right away I noticed two things. 1) The gun was LOUD! 2) It did not have the punishing recoil I had read about. Sure, it pushed back at me when I pressed the trigger. But the recoil was manageable and actually quite soft for a rifle firing a powerful cartridge. My business partner, Mike Ritz, felt the same way after he fired it.

Accuracy:

The sites were a little off, causing my rounds to strike about six inches to the right. I didn't have a mallet or brass punch with which to adjust them, so I had to deal with it the old-fashioned way. After applying a little Kentucky windage, I was able to put three rounds in the center of the target in a group that measured slightly less than 1 1/2 inches. Once I had the sites figured out, the rifle consistently grouped under two inches. In fact, I had two groups which measured under one inch. That's pretty good for a $140 rifle that's almost 70 years old, particularly when firing surplus military ammunition. Suffice it to say that accuracy was good.

Functioning:

Although the gun functioned almost flawlessly, the bolt was quite rough and the trigger was pretty bad. The bolt tended to stick after firing a round. This was probably due to some cosmoline I missed when I first cleaned the rifle. As a result, cycling the bolt was challenging, although the problem seemed to go away after I fired three or four rounds. The trigger was of the standard military variety. I didn't measure the trigger pull, but it was pretty heavy and the trigger had quite a bit of creep. All that having been said, for what it is, the Mosin Nagant is a great rifle. I'm very glad I bought it.

Dependability and usefulness:

The Mosin Nagant is an ugly, simple, rugged and utterly reliable rifle that was designed to be issued to illiterate peasants and conscripts who had little if any rifle training. The rifle is dirt simple and can be used and cared for by anyone given a modicum of instruction (like ten minutes). By design, the rifle is meant to take abuse and still keep shooting. Basically, the Mosin Nagant is an old bolt action battle rifle that was perfect for what it was designed to be. But how does it fit for a home defense, end of days (SHTF, WOROL) or hunting rifle?

As a home defense gun it leaves a lot to be desired. It is too long, too heavy and too powerful to be an ideal home defense gun. You're better off with a short shotgun or a good handgun. The same problems present themselves when you contemplate using the Mosin to hold off a determined group of thugs in an "end of days, SHTF" scenario. With the Mosin's slow rate of fire and limited magazine capacity, you would be much better off with an AK-47 variant, a Mini-14 or a good AR15. Again, similar issues pop up when you think of the Mosin being an ideal hunting rifle. As a hunting rifle, it's HEAVY, long and cannot be easily fitted with a scope. A much better choice would be a light and quick handling modern rifle with a good scope.

All that having been said, not everyone can afford a home defense shotgun, handgun, AR15 or a nice hunting rifle with a scope. When we consider the reality of the pocket book, the problem with the Mosin Nagant is not with the rifle, the problem is people's expectation that the Mosin Nagant should somehow manage to be ideal for any task other than the one for which it was designed. As a result, it is not "ideal" for most things. For example: It's not ideal for home defense. However, I would not want to be on the business end of one! Being hit squarely with a 7.62x54R round will put just about anybody's face in the dirt. It's not ideal for an "end of days, SHTF" gun. Still, it isn't all that bad a choice either. It's rugged, utterly reliable, cheap and supremely capable of killing anything that walks in North America. It's not fast. But when combined with a good quality fighting handgun it doesn't need to be. If the bad guys are up close, transition to your short gun. If they're far away, bust out that Mosin. Lord knows that if you hit 'em, they're not going to fight with you anymore. Besides, if the dude you shoot has a nice AR15, you can take his. After all, he won't be needing it. It's not ideal for hunting. Still, the 7.62x54R round is perfectly suitable for taking both medium and large game anywhere in North America. Actually, I plan on taking my Mosin Nagant 91/30 deer and pig hunting this year. But, keep in mind that if you buy a Mosin for hunting, you probably won't have a scope. I wouldn't let that bother you. Folks were hunting successfully without scopes long before any of us were born. Many people still do. So, there's no reason why you can't.

The bottom line is that the Mosin Nagant isn't the ideal rifle for anything. But, if you're on a budget, it's a darn good rifle for just about everything. You can buy one for around $150 or less and you can buy a "spam can" containing 440 rounds of surplus ammunition for less than $90. What a deal! So, let's recap: the Mosin Nagant is cheap, accurate, strong, reliable, powerful and always goes bang. Works for me!

Sparring

Go and check out pragmaticmartialarts.com thoughts on sparring & realistic testing of your training.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTGZvwZ9Gr4&feature=youtu.be

Force Science exhaustion study

Just in: Final findings from Force Science exhaustion study

The Force Science research team that explored officer exhaustion through a unique set of experiments in Canada last September has now issued its official findings--first presented in detail in the Force Science Certification Course conducted in Wisconsin this past week (4/18-4/22) and scheduled for integration into future courses--with these significant conclusions:

• Less than 60 seconds of all-out exertion, such as an officer might expend in trying to control a combative offender, can deplete the average LEO's physical reserves and put his life in peril;

• Environmental awareness and memory are also affected adversely, hampering an involved officer's ability to deliver accurate, detailed statements and testimony once a desperate fight is over;

• Even officers in top condition are not immune to the rapid drain of physical prowess and cognitive faculties resulting from sustained hand-to-hand combat.

"The bottom line," says Dr. Bill Lewinski, executive director of the Force Science Institute who headed up the research team, "is this: If an officer can't resolve a struggle very quickly, a tactical withdrawal or swift escalation to a higher level of force may be necessary and justified for personal survival. And investigators and courts need to understand that an officer who doesn't provide details surrounding a major physical conflict is not necessarily being deceptive, malicious, or uncooperative."

TEST DESIGN. Force Science News explained the testing sequence of this research in Transmission #159 [9/24/10] soon after the project launched (click here to read it.) To recap:

Researchers recruited 52 officer volunteers (42 males, 10 females), ranging in age from 23 to 51, with an average of 8 years on the job. All were "familiar with officer safety training involving high aerobic physical engagement," according to Dave Blocksidge, a Force Science Analyst from the London (England) Metropolitan Police, and one of the research team.

"During an initial briefing, all the subjects were told to remain alert and try to absorb and remember as much as they could about what took place," Lewinski says.

First they were given a crime report to read, which included details about the m.o. and descriptions of an armed robbery crew that had attacked 3 locations. Then in a gym used for training by the Winnipeg (Manitoba) Police Service, the officers were paired, with one-half instructed one at a time to launch a full-force physical attack on a 300-lb. hanging water bag and the others (a control group) assigned as "partners" to observe as the action took place. All were fitted with heart-rate monitors and the "physical exerters" also donned VO2 masks to measure oxygen consumption and gas exchange.

The exerters were told to attack the bag with as much ferocity as they could muster, selecting their own "assault movements"--punches, kicks, and/or palm, elbow, and knee strikes. During the attack, a researcher shouted "encouragement" ("Harder! Faster!") on 3 occasions. Once the name of a familiar intersection in Winnipeg was yelled out and another time a random 3-digit number was hollered. Unknown to the participants, all this would prove relevant later in a memory test.

The exerters were to sustain assailing the bag until they no longer had strength to keep going or until they were visibly maxed out ("breathless and struggling to continue") and were told to stop by exercise physiologist Justin Dixon of the London Police, who supervised this part of the experiment.

"In terms of upper-body involvement and energy expended, the bag drill realistically replicated a full-force fight by a moderately trained officer to control a strong, dynamically resisting suspect," Lewinski explains. "Two officers actually collapsed, and the rest were severely taxed as they moved on to the next phase of the test."

That required the exerter to run upstairs and outside to a trailer that a "known felon" was suspected of occupying, a distance of 145 feet. En route, the officer passed a gaudily dressed role-player holding an electric drill, who stared at the exerter intently but said nothing and made no aggressive moves.

Inside the trailer, the officer found a "living room" mocked up with furniture and a variety of visible weapons, including an M16 carbine, a revolver, a sawed-off shotgun, and a large kitchen knife. After a 5-second delay, a "critical target" emerged from another room--"a large, black, middle-aged male," wearing a black t-shirt, blue jeans, and a black bandana. He screamed profanities at the officer, commanding him/her to get out. He was not armed, although several of the weapons were within his easy reach.

The trailer scenario lasted about 15 seconds. After that, the exerter was permitted some "recovery time" while his observer partner ran through the same trailer exercise.

After 3 minutes' rest, Dixon drew a blood sample from each participant to measure lactic acid levels. The officers were also given informational "updates" about the robbery crew.

Then all completed a battery of memory tests administered by Dr. Lorraine Hope, a cognitive psychologist from England's University of Portsmouth. This testing included a review of what exerters and observers could remember about what had happened and a photo lineup in which the officers were asked to pick out the suspect they'd confronted in the trailer.

PHYSICAL DECLINE. The heart monitors, face masks, and blood tests all confirmed that exerters reached an intense level of energy output during the bag blitz. Heart rates, for example, leaped from an average resting rate of 73 bpm to an average maximum of 179 for the bag beaters, significantly higher than the modest average rise to 104 bpm for the observers. The exerters' blood lactate levels, reflecting the amount of exertion and affecting muscle function, skyrocketed up to 13 times the normal resting concentration. "It was impressive how committed these officers were to going flat out," Lewinski remarks.

Most dramatic--and alarming--was the speed at which exerters depleted their physical resources. On average, the officers spent 56 seconds hitting the bag, although some either quit or were called out as thoroughly exhausted after as little as 25 seconds. The blows they were able to deliver ranged from a low of 73 to a high of 274. The average was 183. The overwhelming majority of hits were fist punches.

Reviewing time-coded video of the action, researchers were able to count second by second the number of times each participant struck the bag. The average officer peaked at 15 seconds. After that, the frequency of strikes fell in a sharp and steady decline.

"The officers started out strong, driving hard with penetrating hits that visibly moved the heavy bag," Lewinski reports. "But by 30 to 40 seconds, most were significantly weakened. They were not able to breathe properly, their cadence dropped, their strikes scarcely moved the bag if at all, and they were resorting largely to very weak, slowly paced blows that would have had little impact on a combative assailant."

In effect, Blocksidge states in a paper he has written about the research, the exerters "delivering a concerted and sustained physical assault...'punched themselves out' " in a matter of seconds.

Perhaps surprisingly, this seemed true even of officers with a high level of personal fitness and fighting skill. Blocksidge offers this explanation: "Fitter officers delivered faster and more powerful strikes," expending greater effort and thus exhausting their presumably greater reserves in "roughly the same time" as those less fit and skilled.

MEMORY DEFICIT. The officers' exertion proved, for the most part, closely associated with incomplete and faulty memories of what they experienced. The exerters remembered "less visual and auditory information" and made "greater errors in recall" compared to the observing control group, Blocksidge reports.

Exerters and observers were asked to estimate within 90% the number of each type of blow delivered against the heavy bag. Exerters scored significantly better than observers in recalling the number of elbow, knee, and palm strikes they'd made. 89% of exerters, for example, estimated within the accepted accuracy range the number of elbow hits, compared to only 45% of observers.

"However, there were very few elbow, knee, and palm strikes made overall, so they tended to stand out in the exerters' memory," Lewinski explains. "But with the most common hits--punches--it was a far different story." 25% fewer exerters than observers were able to estimate accurately the number of fist blows. "The more exhausted officers were, the less accurate their estimates tended to be," notes researcher Hope.

Observers also were able to recall more by wide margins than exerters about the information that was shouted out during the bag blitz. Likewise, they were more accurate and more detailed in remembering information about the robbery crew.

As to the man with the drill who was encountered en route to the trailer, more than 90% of observers were able to recall at least one descriptive item about him, whereas nearly one-third of exerters did not remember seeing him at all.

Everyone remembered seeing the angry male in the trailer, but observers were able to correctly describe significantly more things about him, while making an average of half as many errors. And during the photo lineup, 54% of the observers correctly identified the suspect, compared to only 27% of the exerters. Typically, the tired officers expressed little certainty about the identifications they did make.

"As exhaustion takes over, cognitive resources tend to diminish," Lewinski explains. "The ability to fully shift attention is inhibited, so even some potentially relevant information tends to get screened out. Ultimately, memory is determined by where the focus of attention was during an event. The exerters were zeroed in on delivering blows during the bag blitz. Afterward, they typically had little cognitive resources left."

During the trailer encounter, however, the exerters were able to register threat cues. Here, in fact, their responses were virtually identical to those of observers. Six observers and 5 exerters remembered seeing no weapons at all. The most weapons noticed were 2, recalled by 4 observers and 5 exerters. However, 16 officers in each category remembered seeing one weapon, usually the largest (the carbine). (After noticing one, the researchers speculate, most officers may simply have quit scanning for more, having confirmed a potential life threat.)

"Fear conditioning through training," Blocksidge writes, apparently "enables simple processing" of threat and danger cues to continue on some level "despite the impact of exhaustion and anxiety." The ability to respond effectively to such cues, however, would be gravely degraded in an exhausted state, Lewinski points out.

IMPLICATIONS. As Lorraine Hope notes, "The legal system puts a great deal of emphasis on witness accounts, particularly those of professional witnesses like police officers." After a violent confrontation, Blocksidge states, "it is commonly believed" that officers are capable of recalling relevant particulars, "such as subject position, number of blows, time sequences, verbal comments, and the position of colleagues.... Policing is quite unique within the cognitive field, since officers are [expected] to operate in a dual-task mode of...taking action whilst remembering...information."

The gap documented by the study between what exerters and observers were able to remember means that in real-world conflicts "substantial aspects of visual details may remain [unnoticed] by active or involved witnesses while being noticed and attended by passive witnesses," Blocksidge writes.

"If investigators and force reviewers don't understand the implications of this study," Lewinski cautions, "an officer's memory errors or omissions after an intense physical struggle may unjustly affect his or her credibility. We think we have a lot of attentional resources working for us at all times, but in reality we don't."

In addition to illuminating memory issues, Lewinski is hopeful that the research findings will underscore the importance of tactical pre-assessment in deciding whether to engage or temporarily back off from potential physical conflict. "Officers need to read situations better before getting physically involved, knowing they have a limited capacity for all-out exertion," he says.

When a struggle does occur, he hopes the findings will help officers, trainers, investigators, and reviewers better appreciate the justification in desperate circumstances for escalating force in order to end a dangerous fight quickly. "The longer physical combat lasts," he explains, "the more at risk an officer is to the dire consequences of exhaustion. Very quickly an officer can reach the point of not having the energy or the ability to physically overcome resistance. Even a few seconds may make a difference between getting a suspect under control or the officer ending up badly hurt or killed."

Sgt. Jason Anderson of Winnipeg Police Service's Safety Unit, who assisted with the experiments, expresses gratitude for the study. He says it provides "data we can bring to court from a scientific organization using scientific methods and give the court the ability to properly assess these situations fairly."

Statistical details from the study, which was funded fully by the Force Science Institute, will be included in a report the research team is preparing for publication in a peer-reviewed professional journal.


http://hockscombatforum.com/index.php/topic,7644.msg64151.html#new

KILLSHOT

Are You Ready For the Next Level in Combat Stick & Knife Sparring?

By Joe Hubbard

"It's sparring night again and this week we are going to do some knife sparring", the teacher declares. The students, filled with adrenaline and knives at hand begin with their weekly showdown. They both move in and out like two kick boxers exchanging blows. Protected with helmets and pads they begin to ignore all the diminishing and deadly killshots they have exchanged. To somehow end the round, one charges in, takes the other person down and proceeds to wrestle. The so-called deadly knife fight suddenly ends with a submission choke. Slashes to vital targets are totally ignored even though real slashes to exposed vital targets would have ended the fight way before the choke. Often the guy who was choked out is the one who would have survived the real encounter because he had landed the first shot to the neck seconds after the fight started. But unfortunately, after a while most sparring that takes place becomes more of a study in endurance submission fighting than knife fighting.

Does this sound like a ridiculous way to prepare for a real knife fight? It's only one step away from the esoteric jokers who'll tell you that you must hit that pinhead nerve two inches above the wrist under a puffer jacket in a dark alley or nightclub to render your opponent unconscious.

In fact, so much of sparring training is disproportionate to actual events that you may experience in a real confrontation. This causes great concern because the strategies and tactics designed to protect your life are programmed right out of your muscle memory in favour of a college-wrestling match!

Knife fights are supposed to end by hitting vital areas of the body. Any knife expert will tell you that it is not whether you slash, stab or hack, it is where those strikes land that are important. The same is also true with impact weapons. I love those guys who tell you that you won't hurt anybody with a rattan stick, let alone a metal pipe! I have witnessed grown men who were champion fighters get rapped on the knuckles and were doubled over in pain. You cannot afford take one of these shots. Not to the arm, the legs or more importantly to the head. Yet how many hardcore, helmeted stick fighters virtually ignore headshots and keep on fighting eventually hitting the dirt, throwing their stick away and turn themselves into Brazilian pretzel fighters?

Real impact weapon fighting is about the attack and defense of the headshot, along with a keen focus on the weapon-bearing limb. OK, it is possible while in the heat of battle that some adrenalised humans may withstand a shot to the torso, the arm and the leg, while the hand/wrist, elbow, knee and of course the head may diminish, devastate and even cripple. It has to be said that a power shot to the head may also kill!

Does stick and knife sparring prepare you for actual combat in these areas? Most are led to believe this from their instructors, many who know very little at all about this subject. Sparring (weapons or empty hand) does not prepare you for real combat! It is part of a whole training matrix that prepares you for the actual event. Tactical application of attacking and defending the headshot while employing the use of force continuum will start to provide you with an understanding of a real-world fight whatever the context.

Stick fighting competitions are often set in an unrealistic and maddening format of point fighting where the headshot only gives you a single point. Many of these matches also do not allow empty hand strikes, kicks or moving footwork. One such match I attended displayed two world-class stick fighters standing in front of each other trading fan strikes and pummel shots. The deciding factor at the end of the round was the victor had landed 52 strikes while the loser had only 49. COME ON! Who hit who first?

Throughout his police career, W. Hock Hochheim has witnessed and been involved many impact weapon and knife attacks and has viewed countless prison¹s riot footage. From this real world experience he observed that while some people could take blows to the body, very few would ever endure a headshot. In 1997 Hock created the Killshot Training Program and has hosted tournaments that has brought real strategy and tactics back into this ever fading picture.

In Killshot training and fights, hitting the enemy's head diminishes his power, consciousness and sensibility either by a shocking jolt or by knocking him out cold. Even if your helmet gets nicked, it represents a stun that without that protective layer may cause you to see stars. This is a fact! I have seen people hit by accident in training to the head and it momentarily short circuits their brain giving ample openings to takedowns, disarms and finishes by their opponent. Don't let the unqualified tell you that disarms won't work. You must hit the head first with a baseball bat, and then they will work.

In the Killshot blueprint, referees must oversee each fight. Participants still wear protective padding and of course helmets! But if either fighter receives a solid shot to the head, the coach immediately breaks up the fight. After, there is an instantaneous debriefing between the coach and the two fighters. "You are dead or possibly just unconscious" or "Your head is split wide open." This verbal acknowledgement of taking a serious blow trains the participant¹s muscle memory and creates a realistic impression of what exactly happened to him. A headshot is no longer a transition in the quest for that fang choke on the ground. With each and every headshot, the fight must be stopped in order for that body/mind connection to be driven home time and time again. Only then will the practitioner strive to protect his vitals, re-educating that free-for-all mentality with a reality-based replication scenario.

In our Killshot stick tournaments, a power shot to the head results in an immediate and swift loss. This could happen in seconds. As a bouncer, I soon realised that all my years of training resulted in a four second fight! This concept comes to light in these tournaments. Champion point fighters have "lost their lives" in the first few seconds of a Killshot tournament. We also use ankle and wrist weights to simulate wounding. The Killshot concept emphasizes shots to the opponent¹s weapon bearing limb in order to clear a path to the head. If a fighter receives a blow to his weapon-bearing limb, the coach stops the fight and instructs the victim to switch hands. We then strap on a five-pound weight on the wounded arm simulating a swollen, heavy injury. It is important to note that a bigger, stronger person may not be affected by the five-pound weight as a smaller, skinnier person, but then a power blast to a bigger arm may cause less injury to the stronger person. Remember, size does matter, but size along with the proper training matters more! If the leg or knee takes a significant attack, we strap on ankle weights. The fight rages on. These simulated injuries will slow the practitioner down and teach him the consequences of his tactical mistakes.

If the second newly armed hand is smashed, the fight is stopped again. We take away his stick, weigh him down and he is forced to fight empty hand against the stick. These all constitute realistic possibilities in combat. Sometimes the result of this scenario ends with the unarmed man defeating the armed man. As in real life predicaments ¬ the chaos of combat rules - learn to thrive in it!

Stick ground fighting still happens, but empirically with much less frequency when headshots get counted for real. Killshot fighters do clinch, but a smaller percentage end up on the ground. When they do we do not throw away our weapons. This is where the use of the Dos Manos (double handed system) comes into play. Simulated pummel strikes, chokes and a variety of other life-saving ground combat tactics, previously weaned out of your stick ground fighting, suddenly have true merit.

There are pros and cons to everything. There is no perfect way to run any form of competition or classroom sparring match. But at the end of it all you must ask yourself, "What have I learned?" If your goal is to get together with friends, duke it out with each other and eventually end up on the ground wrestling, then understand it for what it is. Just remember there is much more to the true science of hand-to-hand, impact weapons, knife and real world survival ground fighting.

In paintball games, when the referee sees the paint hit you, you are out of the game. Oh, it would be great macho fun to ignore the paint splattering all over you and charge in guns a' blazing. The only problem is you are training for suicide by doing that! Why is this so easy to see in the context of paintball, but so hard for stick and knife fighters to understand? Training with plastic knives is fine as long as you don't forget that when one hits you in a vital target such as your neck, although we do simulate "bleed out" time, you are dead. Don't end up dead wrong just because you are repetitively programming your "muscle memory with erroneous training methods. Train hard, but more importantly train smart!


KILLSHOT RULES OF ENGAGEMENT
Impact Weapon, Knife, Stick and Knife

1) Winner of 2 out of 3 rounds is declared a winner.

2) Winning is achieved by a participant deliering, what is assumed to be a knockout or killing blow. And in the act of moving in and out while delivering that blow, the deliverer does not receive a killing blow. If both receive "death blows" then neither win. The event must be played over, unless it is the deciding round, in which case no one wins.

3) In a stick battle, a killing blow is to the head or neck.
Note: Witik and Abinikko strikes to the head will not be considered Killshots. However,
any Power follow through single strike or combination to the head will end the fight!

4) In a knife battle, a killing blow is to the head or neck, or an obvious inner thigh or obvious inner wrist cuts.

5) Rules of wounding and simulating injury.
a) If the weapon-bearing limb is significantly hit, the fight is stopped. The victim
places a wrist weight on the injured hand; switches weapon hands and the fight
resumes. If both weapon hands are struck in the event, then the victim puts on
another wrist weight and faces the enemy unarmed.

b) If a kneecap or other leg strike is considered significant, the fight is stopped.
Some device will be placed on the ankle or knee to weigh down or limit leg
movement. The fight resumes.

6) We ask the participants to be honest about their successes or failures.

7) Judges start each round with participants facing each other and an announcement that the match begins. We ask that one to three judges work on each match. We ask the judges to feel free to have confusing clashes "played over" if they cannot decide who-hit-whom first and have trouble determining the events.

8: We ask viewers and participants to understand that no simulated tournament is perfect and to be patient with the process.

9) All participants must wear protective equipment including helmets, elbow & kneepads, shin guards, groin guards and gloves. Further proactive equipment may be worn such as chest guard.

10) As a default rule, padded sticks & knives will be used. However, if any two fighters agree, they may use rattan sticks of their choice.
EVENTS

• Stick vs Stick
• Knife vs. Knife
• Stick vs. Knife
• Double Weapons vs. Double Weapons
• Double Weapons vs. Single Weapons


http://hockscombatforum.com/index.php/topic,7035.msg59778.html#new

who, what, where, when, how and why

In the who, what, where, when, how and why of life, positioning falls into the "where" category. Where are you? Where is he?

To me that is big topic. From the macro to the micro. In BJJ or any submission wrestling tunnel vision, positioning means only the micro, the very small little positions of your body versus his body. Inches. Half-inches. less. How many times have you heard a BJJ practitioner declare-

"the most important thing I have learned is positioning."

MAN! I have heard it a lot of times.

Think about that. Think about what that actually means inside their world. Think about what that means to them within their confinements. Does it really mean positioning to get a submission hold or a choke? When I hear that remark from a BJJ practitioner (and by that, I mean ANY submission fighter...wrestlers too) I always feel a little uncomfortable for them. I mean, I know what they mean. Yes it is important. But it is very micro in body and mind. It is actually as important as everything is important. I mean, if I said the most important thing to me in a ground fight is breaking the guy's nose, someone would agree me. Positioning my body and my arm so that my hammer fist can be position onto his nose. About six times. Why not seven?

To me, positioning means MANY things, like getting behind cover in a gun fight. Getting outside someones arms for a take down. Working my way to a door way to escape fast. Cutting off an escape route for a fugitive. All that is real world positioning.

If you know me for years now, you know I have these commandments of fighting system doctrine preparation. Macro to micro. Mission. Strategies. Tactics. Situations and on down to micro - the smallest positions. Your training doctrine depends on your mission. Look at this from a WW II perspective:

Mission - invade Europe on D-Day
Strategy - how do we do it? By boat. Beach landings. Air support.
Tactics - what generic tactics do the troops need to execute this strategy
Situational - what specific tactics will a soldier need to fight in these identified
situations. Identify the situations and train those tactics
Positional - the last little section. Probably the most intricate, if there is time to
train it. Learning these tiny specifics of those tactics in those situations.

A wrestlers world is very small. If your world is small, you can worry more and fuss about small things. You can meet at 8 pm twice a week and roll around, working on a mat doing small things, for years and years and years - work for many years, which will do almost NOTHING for preparing you for a wolf pack attack by three thugs at an ATM machine, or killing a Nazi hiding with a subgun in a ruined building. Or dodging a crack head. I mean there is SO MUCH. AND so MUCH positioning involved in everything, that for a fighter to declare that minuscule positioning in a matted ground fight is the most important fighting attribute....is small. That is not a system geared for real word survival or self defense. You are not just re-arranging deck chairs on the Titanic. You are on the wrong boat.

That kind of micro positioning is not everything when it comes to a mixed weapon, mixed person (size, shapes, strengths) mixed terrain world of combatives.

We fight in a mixed weapon, mixed persons, mixed terrain world.

More on this later.

Hock
http://hockscombatforum.com/index.php

The Trap of Trapping

The Trap of Trapping

I get these questions a lot, and especially lately since Training Mission 9 is being constructed and the official subject of trapping doesn't seem to be in it...

"Has Invading Hands been removed from the UC course, or will it still appear as a separate module?"

"When will you do a trapping hands DVD?"


Yes and no to the both of these questions! But...

There is nothing wrong with isolating and developing skills in parts of any training movement, and trapping is a part. It is only when we erect a shrine in that one part, we start to lose our way. I was once in an empty hand system that did over 100 different kinds of trap sets. Trapping consisted of about 80% of the entire system? Where was the space for the ground fighting? Anything else?

Trapping takes place in less than a camera snapshot of time and on a few, mere inches on the floor - yet for some, trapping gets an entire "range." I have come to think though time, that trapping gets entirely too much attention and many spend a disproportionate amount of training time on it, compared to other bigger, longer events.

And the actual Four Ps:

Pinning
Passing
Pulling
Pushing

...are so very simple when you dilute them into their essence, then connect them to hand, stick, knife and gun. I aim to de-mystify trapping! It is indeed the four Ps in the clock directions. And they are easier and smarter to learn when directly connected to bigger events such as the striking and kicking that comes before them and the grappling that comes after them.

Hand trapping is a very short, brief, bridging event, virtually, seamlessly connected to the bigger events before and after the trap.

In fact, it works for people to remove the "Trapping Range" from their range list and simply add traps to end of long-range, or the beginning of grappling range. Giving them their own range, automatically over-emphasizes them. Over emphasizing traps...is well..a trap...and confuses people and steers them off into too much trapping (see Remy Presas notes that follows)

Most simple takedowns involves a brief trapping entry and/or trapping connection to the body. In this mixed weapons world, I thought it would be a waste of time to just do the hand-to-hand, trapping-only methods, and given the naysayers and criticisms (some just by the way) I decided to bury trapping into the bigger crashing and grappling events. Naysayers of trapping say-

"That can't work!"

"That won't work!"


They are really observing and commenting on the systems that over-do and over-emphasize trapping at the expense of other range training. YET! These people trap too! And they never make the connection that they do! A UFC fighter will laugh at trapping hand class, yet they do the fundamental moves too! Automatically and seamlessly attached to the end of the crashing and striking range material and the beginning of the grappling range. They just don't travel to a Chinese temple or overdo the study. They seem to do pretty well!

I mean to say that these big crash and takedown fights often contain a quick trap, and in so subtle a fashion, people don't even notice there was a trap involved! Look at jujitsu. It is full of pinning, passing, pulling or pushing the opponent's limbs to get in, get on and do a takedown. Any manipulation of the limbs, these four Ps, are traps, and everyone is doing them as parts of bigger movements. Silat traps. Jujitsu traps, UFC traps, Karate traps...well, everyone traps. But they don't know it? And in this context, the Unarmed Combatives course is already full of "trapping."

I have once even changed the title of the trapping subject to Invading Hands, to escape some of these blind criticisms in an attempt to re-think the whole subject. Trapping ALONE really has never appeared in my UC course. Yet, the course is FULL of traps as they are seamless attached to bigger events.

Many trapping-based systems innocently have bongo-playing moves because in the trap-world, some people think advanced trapping must therefore lead to 4 and 5 deep bongo-playing on the arms. I think this is a misappropriation of training time.

I think what has happened to the Remy Presas system, now almost full time trapping/Tappi-Tappi, and is a classic example of the worst of over-emphasizing trapping. How did that happen? If you spend too much time with the tapi, a Dog Brother is just going to split your head open with a power swing, while slap/tap happy people are waiting to bongo the attackers and go 4 deep with cool, arm manipulations....and BANG! Goes the club to the head! With the over-emphasize on tapi-tapi, you wind up redefining stick fighting and it is well...its wrong. (Old-school Remy was not this way, by the way, only new-school tappi-happy, tapi-tappiers)

To me, trapping transcends just hand-to-hand, and its Four Ps movements occur in a hand, stick, knife and even gun (pistol and long gun) fighting. Anytime you do the four Ps. Given this big, mixed-weapon picture there is enough, good important information to justify a whole hand, stick, knife gun study module, where even bayonet trapping is connected to the basic principles used with the hand. And here is the study worthy of inspection to me.

So, in answer do those asking, "where did the trapping hands go? in the Training Mission and course levels?
Pretty much in the entries to grappling. They almost become invisable! And the critics go away!

Invading Hands, Sticks, Knives and Guns will have its own Training Mission Theme Module and DVD (like Arm Wraps) http://www.hockscqc.com/shop/product162.html (an arm wrap by the way, is also trap, an immobilization of a limb). In fact, there is so much uniqueness to knife-only, entry, dueling and trapping with knives, it deserved its whole DVD onto itself, but not a whole knife level.

In summary:

Trapping is the pinning, pushing, pulling or pushing of the opponents limbs to clear a path to a better target.

Trapping skills are mandatory, yet...

Trapping is often over-studied at the expense of other things.

Trapping is better attached to before-and-after methods of a crash and takedown fighting

Trapping is simple and needs to be de-shrined.

Trapping is misunderstood and disrespected because of all of the above

Trapping can work and does work all the time for all systems

Trapping involves hand, AND stick, knife and CQC firearms

Trapping is so quick and deeply embedded in these bigger events and systems, unsophisticated people cannot see it.

As I started this essay out...


"There is nothing wrong with isolating and developing skills in parts of any movement.
Trapping is a part. It is when we erect a shrine in that one part, we start to lose our way."



Hock

Realistic Combat Scenarios

"It is extremely difficult to control one's biological, psychological, and emotional reactions to life and death circumstances. But it is even more difficult to do so without adequate, realistic, and prior training--along with proper mental and physical preparation. Training often determines which persons survive and which ones suffer injury or death. Training that is realistic, repetitive, understandable, and believable potentially reduces the non-adaptive effects of human evolution. In preparing for a highly-charged emotional event, effective and realistic training can reduce its intensity (levels of arousal), allowing higher cognitive functioning to prevail." -

Violent Encounters (U.S. Dept. of Justice; 2006)


This is a fancy, shamncy-pants way of saying "do relaistic combat scenarios," in case someone needs to quote the Feds sometimes.

Hock

Police get stabbed for stupidity

The police in this video paid a very high price for their lack of training and good tactics. Perhaps we can learn something at their expense. Take a look at the video and then tell me if I have missed anything in my list of goofs below.



Here's what I saw:

The cops had no understanding of range or the danger of knives.

The cops placed themselves in each other's line of fire. Oops! Handy way to shoot your partner by mistake.

The cops were not prepared [Side arms still holstered, rifles loosely held]

The attacker was patient and waited until the police got too close. He was smart. He was a predator. The cops were prey and they almost all died.

Did I missing anything?

A Nation of Sissies

By Joel Persinger

Nothing brings out the sissies like being injured. Whenever I have a martial arts related injury, the sissies seem to come out of the woodwork just to gawk at me with pained expressions on their faces and to say, “That looks like it really hurts.” I don’t mind when women do such things, but when men do it I begin to wonder about the state of manhood in this age. For the record, my wife is NEVER flustered by my injuries and my daughter always thinks they’re cool. This just goes to show that many women are stronger souls than all of you sissified men out there.

So, what am I talking about? I broke some bones in my hand in a training accident a few months ago. I was attending a “Unity Gathering” of Filipino martial arts practitioners and their instructors. The event was the third or fourth of its kind and was designed to help bring the various Filipino martial arts families together. This is a big deal because Filipino martial arts groups have been deadly rivals as far back as anyone can remember. It was a terrific day, I learned a lot of great lessons and I made some great friends. The one thing I received that I was not planning on was a broken left hand.

The broken bone in my hand was a result of a full power stick strike during training. It was a complete accident and was treated as such. The Guru who injured me was quite humble about it and I just figured it was time to move on and get back to training. It should be said that I expect to get hurt during training. That’s why they call it fighting. When you’re practicing fighting, you sometimes get hurt.

As it turned out, my hand still worked well enough to continue training. I was still able to grasp my sticks and I was still able to use my left had as a “check hand” even though it was broken. So, we trained for the rest of the day and I put some ice on it whenever we took a break. Since the gathering was during the weekend, I called the doctor to make an appointment the following Monday.

The hand was indeed broken. It required two hours of surgery and a metal plate to reconstruct it. It’s been seven weeks since the surgery as of this writing and my hand is back to about 75% and will be 100% in another month or two. No harm, no foul. I just spar with my broken hand tucked into the back of my pants. This is what I did this past Monday when Guru Greg Moody (one of the three elders in Cannibal Combat) and I traded sticks in my back yard. Greg is a touch fighter and a man whom I can truly call my brother in arms. Between Guru Greg and Guru Mike Ritz I found myself being hit quite a few times and left the day with a complete collection of bumps and bruises like the one on my right arm (Pictured here).

[by the way, this is nothing. Greg has more cuts, stabs and broken bones as a result of training and fighting than anyone I have ever known. Mike has quite a collection as well]

Two days later I went to the doctor for a check up on my hand. She noticed the bruising on my right bicep and said, “You need to get a new hobby.” I told her, “It’s not a hobby.” Later that day one of my employees came into my office. When he noticed the bruises he winced and said, “Why do you do that?” He went on to tell me that he didn’t like pain and could never imagine himself doing such things. I wish I could say that these responses are unusual, but they are not. These are the same types of responses I get every time I am injured.

People do not like the idea of experiencing anything that might be unpleasant and they simply do not see the value in the struggle of life. As a result, martial arts schools have dumbed down fighting by employing every kind of pad and protective gear they could possibly imagine and by turning every martial style into a point sparring sport. People won’t come if they think they might get hurt. But, they WILL pay to experience the thrill of fighting as long as there is no risk of pain or injury. That’s why most successful movies, TV shows and video games incorporate a large helping of violence.

This “risk free” thinking has gone well beyond the training of men to fight. It has become part of our every day existence. Consequently, I have come to the conclusion that we live in a land of sissies. We want the government to feed us, protect us, pay our doctor bills and keep us comfortable in our old age. Like the employee who commented on my bruises, we don’t want to feel any pain. We would much rather plop on the couch and live our lives vicariously by watching the adventures and struggles of mythical characters from our safe position at the opposite end of a remote control. Well, my dear reader, not I! I’ll live my own adventures and fight through my own struggles, thank you. I’ll be responsible for myself, pay my own way, feed my own family and when trouble comes, if it does, I pray that God will be merciful to the one who brings that trouble to my door, because I won’t be.

Do you hear the call of Manhood as I hear it? If so, then I will leave you with the salute that Guru Greg Moody always gives before a fight, “Courage, Strength and Honor.”

Hicks Law? Reaction Time In Combat? No!

Hicks Law?

Reaction Time In Combat? No!

By W. Hock Hochheim

Action beats reaction. If you are reacting to an attack, as the good guys generally are, you are already behind the action curve. How behind, scientists have labored intensely to discover over the last 50 years, and like splitting the atom, they have split the single second into one thousand parts to do it.

It was about 25 years ago when I attended a police defensive tactics course and was rather insulted by the attitude of the instructor. We were treated like Neanderthals. He declared, "KISS! Keep it simple, stupid. Hick's Law says that it takes your mind too long to choose between two tactics. Worse with three! Therefore, I will show you one response." I wondered then and there, "Am I to stay simple and stupid my whole life? Who is this Hick and what is his law?"

And, it takes too long? How long was long? How long is TOO long? I wondered? We learned one block versus a high punch that day. What about against a low punch, I thought? My one high block fails to cover much else but that one high attack.

Later that evening while coaching my son's little league baseball team, I saw this very instructor coaching his boy's team on another ball field. He was teaching ten year-olds to multi-task and make split-second decisions as his infielders, worked double plays with runners on base. It was clear the coach expected more from these kids than he did from we adult cops that morning. Hick's Law was not to be found on that kid's diamond.

Next, I slid both feet into this thing called Hick's Law, to discover it was a growing favorite among law enforcement trainers. Other famous police trainers kept mentioning Hick's Law :

" - lag time increases significantly with the greater number of techniques."

" - it takes 58% more time to pick between two choices."

" - it takes 'about a second' to pick a tactic."

"Selection time gets compounded exponentially when a person has to select from several choices- "

What is the definition of "significant time?" 58% of what? What exactly is "about a second?" Exponentially? Compounded? I had to delve even deeper into these cavalier statements. They seemed to have an agenda. The agenda was to sell training courses and dumb-down people and training? If I was going to become this pessimistic, I needed more proof. I hit the textbooks and contacted the experts.

The actual Hick's idea was based on a computer study, a paper written in 1952 and simply set up an equation that states it takes time to decide between options. Just for the record, the equation is TR+a+b{Log2 (N)}. A computer performance study? Do you think that 1950 computers ran a bit slow? The 1950 idea was then extrapolated into human performance, based on very primitive, 1950 push-button tests. The lab method had the testee selecting from several buttons on sudden command. From this, the mythology of the slow decision making brain developed.

Exponentially decision making? Any exponential function is a constant multiple of its own derivative. Many modern tactical instructors still just blindly associate a never-ending doubling ratio to Hick - that is, for every two choices, selection time doubles per added choice. Yet, despite all these quotes on times, Hick made no official proclamation on the milliseconds it takes to decide between options.

There is a general, consensus in the modern Kinesiology community that Simple Reaction Time, called SRT, takes an average of 150 milliseconds to decide to take an action. That's considerably less than a quarter of a second-or 250 milliseconds, or half-a-second, or "about a second." Lets re-establish that there are 1,000 milliseconds in one second-a fact that makes all these time studies fall to include into a proper perspective. 1,000 of them! More than 1,000 milliseconds passed before you can read the number aloud.

Based on the doubling/exponentially rule with the commonly discussed SRT average, then choosing between two choices must take 300 milliseconds. Run out that time-table. Three choices? 600 milliseconds. Four choices? 1 second and 200 milliseconds. A mere five choices? 2 seconds and 400 milliseconds! Six? 4 full seconds and 800 milliseconds. Should a boxer learn 5 tactics? That would mean 9 seconds and 600 milliseconds to choose one tactic from another? You would really see people physically shut down while trying to select options at this point and beyond. Has this been your viewing experience of a football game? Basketball? Tennis? Has this been your experience as a witness to life? Under this casual, exponential increase rule, it would seem athletes would stand dumbfounded, as index cards rolled through their heads in an attempt to pick a choice of action. Every eye jab could not be blocked if the blocker was taught even just two blocks. The eye attack would hit the eyes as the defender sluggishly selects between the two blocks.

One then begins to wonder how a football game can be played, how a jazz pianist functions, or how a bicyclist can pedal himself in a New York City rush hour. How does a boxer, who sees a spilt-second opening, select a jab, cross, hook, uppercut, overhand, or to step back straight, right or left? If he dares to throw combination punches how can he select them so quickly?

Simple, modern athletic performance studies attack the doubling rule, but we need not only look to athletes. How can a typist type so quickly? Look at all the selections on a computer? 26 letters-plus options! How can you read this typed essay? How can your mind select and process from 26 different letters in the alphabet? It is obvious that the exponential rule of "doubling" with each option, has serious scientific problems when you run a simple math table out, or just look about you at everyday life.

New tests upon new tests on skills like driving vehicles, flying, sports and psychology, have created so many layers of fresh information. Larish and Stelmach in 1982 established that one could select from 20 complex options in 340 milliseconds, providing the complex choices have been previously trained. One other study even had a reaction time of .03 milliseconds between two trained choices! .03! Merkel's Law, for example, says that trouble begins when a person has to select between 8 choices, but can still select a choice from the eight well under 500 milliseconds. Brace yourself! Mowbray and Rhoades Law of 1959, or the Welford Law of 1986, found no difference in reaction time at all, when selecting from numerous, well-trained choices.

Why all these time differences? In 2003, I conducted an email survey of 50 college university professors of Psychology and Kinesiology. It is crystal clear that training makes a considerable difference. Plus-people, tests and testing equipment are different. Respondents state that every person and the skills they perform in tests vary, so reaction times vary. One universal difficulty mentioned by researchers is the mechanical task of splitting the second in their testing - that is identifying the exact millisecond that the tested reaction took place. Many recorded tests are performed by under-grads in less than favorable conditions.

The test-givers themselves have reaction time issues that effect time recording! Milliseconds are wasted as the tester sees the testee react, then reacts with a stopwatch device, either estimating or losing milliseconds in their own reaction process. Common test machinery takes milliseconds to register a choice. Results can get vague and slippery within the tiny world of a single second. Documenting milliseconds in the 1950s was almost impossible even in the most sophisticated labs, yet modern instructors ignore modern research and use the 1950s numbers to base their training methodologies. But test-gathering technology is rapidly changing.

The KISS Method- not well thought out as a doctrine.

Many unintended messagesand consequences are involved.

Discoveries made in 1990s, decades after the 1950s Hicks law began, blowing the original, antiquated "mental rolodex/task selection" concept out of the water. The brain has a fast track! Below, researchers Martin D. Topper, Ph.D., and Jack M. Feldman, Ph.D. write about them:

"Currently, the best explanation is provided by psychologist Gary Klein in Sources of Power: How People Make Decisions. He's proposed that the human brain is capable of multi-tasking. Gary's theory works like this: A visual image is picked up by the retina and is transmitted to the visual center of the brain in the occipital lobe. From there the image is sent to two locations in the brain. On the one hand, it goes to the higher levels of the cerebral cortex which is the seat of full conscious awareness. There, in the frontal lobes, the image is available to be recognized, analyzed, input into a decision process and acted upon as the person considers appropriate. Let's call this "the slow track," because full recognition of the meaning of a visual image, analyzing what it represents, deciding what to do and then doing it takes time. Some psychologists also refer to this mental process as System II cognition. If you used System II cognition in critical situations like a skid, you wouldn't have enough time to finish processing the OODA Loop before your car went over the cliff.

Fortunately, there's a second track, which we'll call "the fast track," or System I Cognition. In this system, the image is also sent to a lower, pre-conscious region of the brain, which is the amygdala. This area of the brain stores visual memory and performs other mental operations as well. The visual image is compared here on a pre-conscious level at incredible speed with many thousands of images that are stored in memory. Let's call each image a "frame" which is a term that Dr. Erving Goffman used in his book Frame Analysis to describe specific, cognitively-bounded sets of environmental conditions. I like to use the word "frame" here because the memory probably contains more than just visual information. There may be sound, kinesthetic, tactile, olfactory or other sensory information that also helps complement the visual image contained within the frame - fortunately, the fast and slow tracks are usually complimentary, one focusing on insight, the other on action. Together they produce a synergistic effect that enhances the actor's chances of survival.

But even though these two tracks are complimentary, we know that some people seem to be much more skilled than others at integrating System 1 and System 2. These especially competent individuals seem to resolve critical situations and also adapt to rapid changes in those situations. They invent routines they have never before performed and act in a fluid, seamless manner without employing full focal awareness."

So at this point in our understanding, we have newer models discovered and developing that tell us something about how the brain can operate on two tracks at the same time, but we don't really have a good idea of how the two levels interact, except to say that the interaction is very fast and complex, and some people do it better than others. We really don't know everything we'd like to know. But we do know that specific types of training can help a person develop unconscious competence, and this is enough to make some suggestions about the kind of training that will help make relatively unskilled people more competent in finding solutions to potentially violent encounters.

And then this news on BDNF: Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor :

"If I had to make a signal that could write messages on the brain from the environment, that would be BDNF."

Scientists at Johns Hopkins and the National Cancer Institute have found a "missing link" brain chemical that rises and falls quickly in response to stress, fear or an upbeat mood, and then sculpts nerve circuits in the brain accordingly. Their report, on work done appears in the Dec. 21, 1999 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Further, because research at Hopkins and elsewhere shows that BDNF levels vary with subject's experience as it goes down in stressful situations..."BDNF has all the right features to be the critical signal by which environmental and psychosocial interactions impact on the brain," says neuropathologist Dr. Vassilis E. Koliatsos. "It's very rapid, it's sensitive, and it affects a system critical for emotional life and behavior. "What we believe we've found is a link between what happens to a person on a daily basis and the way the brain responds, from an emotional standpoint, over the long term."

Dr Susan Greenfield has written The Quest For Identity In The 21st Century, in which she discusses the natural ways the human brain grows and adapts. " I'm a neuroscientist and my day-to-day research at Oxford University strives for an ever greater understanding - and therefore maybe, one day, a cure - for Alzheimer's disease. But one vital fact I have learnt is that the brain is not the unchanging organ that we once imagined. It not only goes on developing, changing and, in some tragic cases, eventually deteriorating with age, it is also substantially shaped by what we do to it and by the experience of daily life. When I say "shaped," I'm not talking figuratively or metaphorically; I'm talking literally. At a microcellular level, the infinitely complex network of nerve cells that make up the constituent parts of the brain actually change in response to certain experiences and stimuli. The brain, in other words, is malleable. The surrounding environment has a huge impact both on the way our brains develop and how that brain is transformed into a unique human mind.

Doctors Richard A. Schmidt (a decades long expert) and Timothy Donald Lee, in the , ground breaking, 1980s book and subsequent new editions since, Motor Control and Learning reported that task selection is made up of two parts, RT (reaction time) - seeing the problem, and MT (movement time) - physically moving to respond, and thus may be a "few milliseconds " for fast, simple chores, not this compounding, exponential, doubling, half-second format.

Eight decades of performance testing and technology have passed since Hicks simple, little "Computer Choice Law", with new technology and testing on athletes as well as regular, everyday people. Not only are the testing methods better, and the understanding superior, so are the new methodologies created to increase SRT and selection times. Perhaps no better better statement damning the Hicks law model can be found than from neuroplastician Dr. Michael Merzenich, regarded among experts as a leading source on the human brain when reporting in the book, The Brain that Changes Itself, "we can change the very structure of the brain and increase its capacity...unlike a computer, the brain is constantly adapting itself." You will recall that Hicks Law concept first originated from a computer.

How can we change and improve? With training like:

* Sequential Learning - the stringing of tasks working together like connected notes in music, really reduces reaction and selection time.

* Conceptual Learning - is another speed track. In relation to survival training, this means a person first makes an either/or conceptual decision, like "Shoot/Don't shoot," or, "Move-In/Move Back." Rather than selecting from a series of hand strikes, in Conceptual Learning, the boxer does not waste milliseconds selecting specific punches, but rather makes one overall decision, "punch many times!" The trained body then takes over, following paths learned from prior repetition training.

Sure, sure, sure - simple is good. I am all for simple. Absolutely. And reaction time is an important concern when you are dodging a knife, pulling a gun, etc. And there may actually come a point in a learning progression when there are way too many reactions/techniques to counter an attack, and If these moves are a bit unnatural, and not guided somewhat by natural reflex, and taught poorly and out of context, a long list of movements may cause performance problems. Poor systems and poor training may lead to untimely confusion. But we are surely not as simple as Hick's Law misleaders have warned us.

It seems like the last 8 decades, Hick's Law has become a legacy of evolving research. But, Hick's Legacy is really telling us to train more and smarter, not necessarily to be stupid and learn less. Remember one of Einstein's Laws apply also - "Keep it simple…but not too simple." I like the sound of that much better than stupid instructors KISSING me to keep things stupid. And still we learn more.

Dr. M. Blackspear of the Brain Dynamics Center at the University of Sydney Australia reports that the: "...study of functional inter-dependences between brain regions is a rapidly growing focus of neuroscience research. This endeavor has been greatly facilitated by the appearance of a number of innovative methodologies for the examination of neurophysiological and neuroimaging data." This Blackspear statement was made about the amazing new discoveries in 2005 and of how fast, repeat HOW FAST the healthy, human brain changes and adapts "on the fly" (which is the medical, catch phrase for such studies on this now). People select and change options "mid-flight" in milliseconds split into milliseconds.

6 Choices? 400 milliseconds to choose or a full 3 or 4 seconds to rolodex through all of them? Let's go back to the ol' ball game - and back to the baseball analogy that started this article. We expect a common shortstop in baseball to perform a select list of actions instantly. The baseball shortstop is expected to:

- catch a ground ball to his left
- catch a ground ball to his center
- catch a ground ball straight at him
- catch a line drive
- catch a pop-up

Moves all to be executed in the sheer "splitest" of split seconds? Then, our ape man ball player has even more split-second, follow-up decisions to make with runner's on different bases. Even a child playing shortstop has a lot to decide and fast, AND can do it faster than 4 seconds! I hope that the police trainer I mentioned in the beginning of this essay is reading this this and not just when he teaches his kids in little league, but when he teaches his adults in law enforcement tactics. In fact I hope all martial instructors are listening?

Probably the single reason Hicks Law has been spread in the last few decades is as a sales pitch to sell training programs. If you still insist on dumbing things down? Then don't use Hicks Law in your argument. It makes you sound dumber. The more the truth is learned? the dumber you will sound.

ANYONE quoting Hick's Law today as a main basis for training, needs to open up an elementary school science book written since the year 2000, to see it is a decrepit, misleading and unraveled concept. They need to know the rest of the science since the 1950s. Hick's Law has become barely a casual nickname, a sketch or an outline for the thousands of performance experiments in laboratories since 1952. The ironic thing is? The center piece and point of all this reaction research? Even since the 1950s it is really about milliseconds. Milliseconds! Remember, there are 1,000 milliseconds in a second! Just how fast can we get? Start by asking a properly trained person with a healthy mind and body, in a proper system abreast of cutting edge science, medicine and psychology. Don't ask Mr. Hick from the 1950s. If I am not mistaken? Mr. Hick is dead, and his 1950's computer belongs in the stone age.

Much more workable!

http://www.hockscqc.com/articles/hickslaw.htm