Hesitation Hurts

Decisiveness is a critical skill.

It is sometimes instructive to take a mental step back in training and take in the bigger picture. During a lunchtime class this week — and for no particular reason I’m aware of — I did just that. We were training to deal with impact-weapon threats and attacks, and in the group were two police officers. They were relatively new and not particularly skilled, but it struck me that they were training with a vigour that was not matched by the other students.

I decided to up the ante a little and replaced the padded sticks we usually use (especially with beginners with undeveloped skills) with my collection of baseball bats, hockey sticks, golf clubs and billiard cues. I find having a collection of items such as this and ‘playing’ with them in training highlights some interesting issues. I find the hockey stick more of a challenge than, say, the baseball bat, as the shape of the stem of the hockey stick (one side rounded, the other flat) means it has a sharp leading edge. This means defending against a strike will likely entail more pain than the bat, and the hook on the end of the hockey stick will likely deliver more pressure (smaller surface area) and therefore do more damage than the bat… but I digress.

Adding these items to the training only seemed to encourage these young officers to go a little harder and they got banged up a bit. It was training they wouldn’t normally receive through official channels, with its unfortunate overriding paranoia about occupational health and safety matters, and to avoid having officers get injured during training (and all the paperwork that follows).

As it turned out, coincidentally, I noticed a similar situation that night with some students who work in security, apparently at locations where violent incidents are frequent. Their training had an edge to it that may have gone unnoticed to the casual observer. On reflection, it was understandable. Both the police officers and the students who worked in security had the motivation of knowing that there was a real chance they may have to execute these skills in the course of their paid profession, while for the ‘average’ student, the training seemed to be more a hypothetical. Violence is not part of their daily life.

But that wasn’t the real point of interest. In the course of training the police officers, I had given them a number of options, depending on the distance of the threat, the angle of attack and the stage of the attack (early phase, middle phase, etc). Of course, that was a typically martial-artsy approach — angles, stages, options etc. — which only serves to confuse people with minimal experience.

So I gave them the defensive-tactics version: lunge (close the distance fast while protecting the head), latch (smother the weapon and the attacker) and smash (neutralise and disarm with strikes). More fundamentally, I emphasised the critical ingredient to all such defensive tactics movements, especially where weapons are involved: decisiveness. This is the ability to commit to the technique and act without hesitation so as to not lose precious milliseconds. That gave greater edge to their training as I could see the processing of distance, angles and options, etc. slowed them down. Now they really went at their techniques, as did the security students that night.

I was reminded of a TV program I saw some time ago of the selection test for one of the State’s special operations police units. At one stage the participants were led to an open pool of ‘slop’ — a concoction of the most disgusting items the examiners could gather. Those in the selection test were directed to the edge of this stinking cesspit and on command were to jump into it in full kit, not knowing how deep it was. The command was given and anyone who hesitated for even a fraction of a second failed the whole selection process, regardless of how well they may have done to date. It was an absolute test of decisiveness and not everyone was up to it — but the selectors for the special operations group clearly placed a premium on that attribute. Lives depend on it.
It underscored what I already knew: that the ability to develop in students mental decisiveness, especially under pressure, must be a foundation stone of training. Without it, techniques only become dance moves. The difference between the police officers and security professionals and the average students was clear — it was this decisiveness. The challenge is to develop it in all students.

Graham Kuerschner is a 45-year veteran of the martial arts and can be contacted through his website at www.sdtactics.com.au