We train Krav in my department, and I think it's a relatively effective system... it's effective because it covers encounters like I described above, and if you don't get a technique "perfect", you can still stay in the fight. I wasn't going to be trying a twist lock or some other type of joint manipulation on that armed suspect. I just hit him as hard as I could, repeatedly, until I gained the upper hand in the situation.
Use the hard parts on soft parts, repeat until desired outcome is achieved. In the sole lethal force encounter I've had, that's what worked as well. I really didn't have any options at all, other than to submit, and if I did that I probably wouldn't be here.
Worth noting, training kept me from freezing, or from losing those vital 2/10ths of reaction time, since I didn't have to "think".
Ingrained reactions you get through training are instantaneous, and happen subconsciously. It's why most folks can accidentally knock something off a table and instinctively grab it. It's also why my step dad took a knife through the leg once. He (along with most other male humans) have an instinct to clamp his legs to catch something when sitting at the table. I later trained that reflex OUT of me after watching him bleed all over the kitchen that day. Unfortunately I really honed the reflex to catch something falling in my line of work, and I've injured my hands multiple times doing so (the latest being an x-acto knife blade through the palm)
I've also honed the threat response to a punch. I've had folks throwing punches and kicks at me for over 30 years, and it's REAL tough to get one to land on me. Someone can (and friends try sometimes) to catch me off guard and invariably, without fail, I'll not be there when the punch would make contact. Either my head moves, my body shifts, I gently tap the punch past me, or (if they're particularly slow and telegraphing) they'll get knocked on their rear end before they can get it to me.
None of those are conscious reactions. It's subconscious reaction.
I truly believe you can train ANY response in or out of subconscious reflex. Once something is reflex it happens automatically without that decision loop that costs you time. And that's why we train! It works with firearms, it works with blocks, punches, kicks, throws, knives, etc. Any movement can become an automatic reflex.
BUT ONLY IF YOU HAVE BUILT UP NOT ONLY THE MUSCLE MEMORY FOR THE MOTION BUT *ALSO* THE TRIGGER THAT SETS IT OFF.
From a firearms perspective, I do like competitive shooting, a lot, but there is one very real drawback to it. You are training yourself to draw at the sound of a buzzer. It becomes automatic.
This reminds me of a point I wanted to bring up earlier but didn't.
Competitive shooting kind of sucks in a very real way, from a self defense perspective. You get the muscle memory but the stimulus that triggers the automatic response - which eventually speeds up your drawing time in competition - is NOT a reflection of what is going to happen in the real world. You have trained your mind and body to begin a motion based on a sound. When challenged in the real world you will not hear the buzzer. You'll still have a reactionary delay on drawing your gun in a self defense encounter.
It is good training from the perspective of acquiring targets, quickly putting shots on target, etc. But it does NOT prepare you for the most important part of self defense - the first two seconds of a violent encounter are not a buzzer sounding in your ear.
Force on force training is good because it trains you to draw a firearm (or initiate some other response) based on visual and physical stimuli. You train different ways of reacting to different threats based on what you see and distances involved.
Example; If you saw the gun and you were, say, 10 yards back, Kevin, your hand would have begun on the gun and it would have been moving to draw the gun before you made the conscious decision to do so. You wouldn't have had to think about it because your brain already knew what to do at that distance with that visual stimuli (seeing the motion to go for a gun triggers it, because you have TRAINED for that response).
Standing closer, with your mind aware that the subject was physically smaller, your brain elected to do a different response. If you lost 2/10ths of a second on reaction time you wouldn't likely have been able to close and hit him before he had the gun clear - it only takes a second for him to draw and you were already on the losing side of that time scale, since he took the initiative.
However, you'd trained in close quarters and you instinctively going to respond in a certain fashion.
If the guy had been a linebacker, your default, automated response would have been to take a step back while drawing your gun instead of taking a step in and popping him in the jaw. (You also would have been several feet further away and probably waiting on 5 or 6 more guys to show up before putting handcuffs on! )
I have repeated it over, and over, and over again in the thread but it damn well deserves repeating.
You want to train, and you want to train with a partner in a controlled environment with someone skilled watching over and providing feedback.
That is how you build timing, distance, muscle memory, and develop those "automated reactions."
Nothing else will do it.
You have to put in the time. You can't READ about it. You can't watch videos. That provides knowledge without any understanding.
YOU PERSONALLY HAVE TO PUT YOUR BODY IN A ROOM WITH OTHER FOLKS AND GO THROUGH THE PROCESS.
I can watch a video on how to do any number of things and gain a profound understanding of the how's and why's. Doesn't mean I can DO any of it.
(As I've proven time and time again in real life with plumbing and carpentry failures... sigh)
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