The autopilot in combat

The autopilot in combat, “thought without thought.”

Whatever you start doing at the beginning requires an important effort for your physique and your mind.

For martial art this is even more evident because when you start practicing martial art especially if you do not do it with professionals who have qualified programs and methods you are overwhelmed by many concepts and techniques:

shots, parades, hand, foot, joint levers of all kinds, projections, sweeps, footwork, attributes, etc. and some limbs even more than others and this sometimes is that cause abandonment because it discourages the student so much that it makes him feel unfit.

If you add to this the hard physical work that is present in many martial arts and psychological KO comes with the result that people abandon one of the most beautiful life paths that a person can do because martial art especially to some people can give so much.

The physical and mental effort required to memorize the various techniques is remarkable and the work required to master them requires different training methodologies that are related to the development of attributes that are often sidelined by poorly prepared masters and that instead are the things that make the techniques you are studying work.

One of the questions that a martial arts practitioner who attends personal defense courses asks at some point is:

“But all these techniques that I have learned and arelable to apply them in reality if someoneattacks me?”

If you ask yourself this question already you have to understand that you are not going to the best school you could find, I tell you honestly and I am sorry for you and this is where there is the difference between those who use professional methods with educational paths oriented to develop attributes and work in a non-cooperative context.

For this reason some arts are said and are more effective, for the space they give to a work that makes art more functional to yourself,because let us remember that your psychological and physical characteristics remain two aspects of work that should not be overlooked.

The collector of techniques and autopilot

Knowing hundreds of techniques are useless if you have to think about applying them.

In the reality of sports and real combat you rarely have time to reason and act consciously, even if you face a person inexperienced in combat but very aggressive and motivated.

The more experience and sparring hours increase, the more you think in the midst of the chaos of combat by tidying up and you only get that when your autopilot is aligned with your mind.

The concept is clearer when you consider the classic example of when you start learning to dance or drive a car: at first it is very tiring, you sweat, you get agitated, you have to think about every movement, you make a huge mental effort even to perform the simplest actions such as stepping forward or backward or leaving the clutch , change gears, put the arrow, etc. and despite knowing exactly what to do, your body and mind are not coordinated and you feel like you have to use a huge force to make a simple gesture.

After a while and doing not too much practice if you think about it, you start to understand some things, but then you happen to come across a good dancer or dancer, or music with different accents, a messed-up city intersection and we realize how slowly and clumsily you can move again and perform maneuvers that you thought you knew , and you understand that there is still a lot to work with and that it is a continuous study that does not have a predetermined arrival, but a trip, a lifestyle, for this reason martial art makes you better if you practice it with the gaze of those who want to go beyond taking some belt or diploma, because it is for you.

You’re only really rich when you have something you can’t buy or steal!

Finally, after several evenings of dancing and hundreds of kilometers spent driving, and magically you will move lightly and drive the car unconsciously,perhaps doing other lawful and illicit things such as arguing animatedly with the nearby motorists, writing with the mobile phone but if it is necessary to react instinctively to any risk or unexpected sudden.

If you think about it you realize for yourself that the reaction times necessary to thwart the danger are never compatible with a reasoned action and that only an instinctive and unconscious reaction can solve the situation.

In combat it’s the same thing!

The practice in driving has meant that the maneuvers necessary to dance or to guide yours have gone from the tanning part of your brain to the unconscious part, that is, that you have to think before you act, to the unconscious part, the one that instinctively activates automatically to deal with sudden dangerous situations or perceived as such freeing your brain from being able to do other things or focus on doing other things while you already do another , like dancing and talking to one near the track or driving and writing on your mobile phone (no you don’t have to).

Similarly, the hundreds or thousands of techniques contained in your fighting style must be trained repeatedly and passionately to make them move from the conscious to the unconscious part of your brain.

Only then will your body have acquired the ability to react instinctively and allow you to face any danger quickly and effectively.

Automatic responsive, respond to a certain input with a certain output

 

Anyone who has had the misfortune of arguing with someone or being assaulted will have grasped the huge difference between a match in any combat sport and the reality of the road.

In combat sports, those who enter the ring or on the tatami are prepared and aware that the opponent will use his own “weapons”, will have to abide by a precise regulation protected by a referee present always ready to intervene.

The skills of the two contenders will make a difference and for this the matches begin with a study phase in which there is room to reason and act consciously to understand the openings, what puts him most in difficulty but when the match comes alive, the intensity grows, you are more tired and the shots follow quickly on both sides, reason gives way to instinct because only the latter will be able to instantly find the right answers for the right answers. respond to those inputs pulled with force, speed, explosiveness.

The time to think becomes small and takes the place of the automatic responsive that you develop in training and training that go to act on attributes.

On the street, however, it is different because an attacker hardly warns you and gives you time to understand his abilities, there is no regulation and code of ethics to rely on, no referee.

The attackers always act cowardly by catching the victim behind, hiding behind weapons of all kinds using them as equalizers to lower your reaction and suffer violence.

In this psychological situation the reaction times are zeroed out and there is no room for reasoned action, only instinct can find an effective solution.

The amount of techniques an athlete is able to perform unconsciously depends on the training methods and the effort he has put into the gym.

I want to give you a data, about 5 of the trained techniques pass to the unconscious level and are performed instinctively in a tight fight, usually it is the techniques trained most of the time or those preferred by the athlete.

You understand only the 5 but this number can increase up to 20 with proper training. An example of 5% of a boxer would only use Jab Cross.

Often we hear speeches about the effectiveness or otherwise of a martial art or a certain style of combat, speeches of this kind are useless and are not correct because they do not take into account the relative complexity of the disciplines that are compared and above all that the difference the person makes and the way he attaches them.

For example, the boxing and boxing Kickboxing contemplate very few techniques in his repertoire, in a short time the students assimilate and use them instinctively in combat but it is a science that works a lot on strategies, mischief, attributes, to a practice based on non-cooperative sparring by teaching you to really use those few techniques and not to theorize.

Kung Fu,on the other hand, is a very complex discipline and includes a lot of techniques so practitioners need more time to get instinctive reactions of a certain effectiveness and often a non-cooperative sparring is never made from there the sports version, the Sanda to get out of the theory.

The Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and the Grappling are disciplines that have thousands of techniques and variants, where, however, a lot of fight is made on the ground not cooperating, so you really learn to finalize and subdue the opponent without limitations because when there is a problem you do the tap out that signals submission.

Of course, each style emphasizes certain groups of techniques and specific training methodologies designed to promote their assimilation at the unconscious level and to stimulate instinctive sensitivity, such as the practice of Chi Sao in Wing Chun and Hubud in Kali, etc.

Therefore, the effectiveness or otherwise of a discipline and the time it takes to achieve it depend on the training/training methodologies used and the commitment and application of the practitioner.

Clearly sport, which has rules, is easier to apply in a non-cooperative context because the rules place limitations but it is already a huge job, if you talk about self-defense it becomes all very complex because they take over even more variables, not only technical but also contextual but also if you do self-defense to train them you still need to do non-cooperative sport,otherwise it remains a theory of if and but that never allows you to understand where you really are.

A typical example is the study of Knife Defence, a subject that has been often covered and on which endless and sterile debates are ignited about what works and what does not work when it is enough to do the short fencing to understand what works and contextualize it because when it comes to self-defense there is nothing chivalrous and duel as the statistics and news cases say, because those who want to stab you the knife do not show it to you, or do it behind your back.

Some might say “but why not use a less complex system so as to get an instinctive response in a short time?”.

The answer that could be taken for granted is not at all.

To learn to be simple you have to learn a lot works so in all fields, it’s part of human nature, if I teach you 4 things it doesn’t mean you fight simple, you just don’t know anything, and the input responses where they’re missing means that the body freezes, doesn’t know what to do.

The system developed for example in Expert Fighting Tips covers a wide variety of arts and techniques ranging from bare-handed combat (punches, kicks, destruction, interception, joint levers, etc.) to armed combat (knife, stick, etc.), to ground combat (immobilization, strangulation, submissions, etc.).

The assimilation of such a wide training course takes very long time but without a didactic and a professional training methodology based also on the human factor on how it stores, on the work of input and output, conscious-unconscious is hardly understandable and comparable in reasonable time.

As you know I am a fanatic of specializations and not of a copy in glue in systems of techniques because you have to see it as a path of life, which goes to grow over time, if you are looking for magic wands and quick solutions, I already tell you that they are deceiving you and you are deceiving yourself by wasting your time and then forcing you to resume the road as I am showing you and I assure you that many would have liked these tips to avoid spend years learning nothing especially if the theme of personal defense is what interests you.

The goal in martial training or combat sports is to provide tools to act effectively in all circumstances so you have to provide them with all the tools you can to make them fit to deal with any dangerous situation but this requires a very large amount of information and only after you receive all this information that you can file, remove, etc. because it is a job that you can only do that you start to feel inside you the techniques , sport, fighting, you’re basically experimenting with your martial art.

A simple system can have the advantage of obtaining instinctive reactions in a short time as is often used in systems such as Krav Maga or other sports that use some limitations on shots that can be used but could prove simplistic in other contexts if such reactions prove ineffective in the specific context in which the allevi will operate.

Because for example if a boxer has to face a Thai boxer who also uses kicks or clinch, or a wrestler or one armed with a knife, as you can understand everything has to be adapted and for this reason simplifying is an important step in the learning process but you have to adapt it to what your goals and goals are.

You play sports, you do self-defense, etc. you have to be the one to guide your choices and rely on professionals.

Bruce Lee said, “My technique is the result of your technique.“, because it is just that, an input and output game, because you can not know in advance when, where and what will do your opponent or attacker, you have to possess a complete technical baggage to effectively deal with every possible eventuality as when you attack him will answer for how he reads your input.

Remember, you’re struck by what you don’t expect, not what you expect.

The ultimate end and the very essence of any martial art but which in Jeet Kune Do and Kali was theorized and applied as an obsession, it is the search for completeness combined with effectiveness by drawing on the best part of each martial art but not as a copy and paste of techniques but recognizing skills and studying them as art, those who make a copy and paste did not understand the concept.

Then consider that there is no martial art that does not evolve and therefore it must be adapted to the time and place where you are, how there is a time and a place for every martial art there is also its evolution because knowledge changes and time advances inexorably and therefore your martial art must also be adapted according to how you are today.

Evolution is also dictated by the increase in the general technical level, the diffusion of knowledge, the greater work that is aimed at the development of attributes that are fundamental in combat more than techniques per se.

As I have told you so many times you do not have to become a collector of techniques but a user.

Work on your autopilot!

Street Fight Mentality & Fight Sport

Andrea