Training Outside Your Comfort Zone

We all have areas of our fight/self-defense game that are better than others e.g. some people are better strikers than grapplers etc. However, it is all too easy to take comfort in our strengths and fail to address our weaknesses. This doesn’t mean that you have to give up your striking game to become a grappler, however it does mean that you have to take a step out of your comfort zone, and practice developing skills which will be unfamiliar to you. The importance of this was brought home to me many years ago when I’d been practicing BJJ for several years. In talking to one of the coaches at the academy I trained, I told them that I was never comfortable when on top, and preferred playing a bottom game e.g. pulling guard or half-guard, rather than being in mount or side-mount (I think I was enjoying the “luxury” of being able to work from these positions, as in Judo – my grappling background - the top game is the only one that you can realistically win from when on the ground). I was immediately told that this was the wrong way to look at things, and that I should work to get really efficient and effective at my top game, because if I only ever found myself in such positions infrequently, I would have to be quick to notice and exploit any opportunity that was provided me; A good top-player who was comfortable in these positions, would have the luxury of spending time consolidating their position and searching submissions out, whereas I would have to get good at immediately identifying and going for a submission, because being uncomfortable there meant that I would soon lose such a position. This attitude stressed upon me the need to be a “comprehensive” fighter, who could work from every position, as opposed to a “specialist” who was forced to work from one or two, or have to get to these before being able to do anything.

In real-life confrontations, you have little room to be surprised. You stay surprised for too long, and the other person has a puppet they can use how they want. This is why the person who throws the first punch/strike in a confrontation usually enjoys the most success i.e. the other person never recovers from the shock and awe of being punched – usually due more to a sense of disbelief, than any physical consequences. The person being hit is on unfamiliar territory. In many cases they probably believed the conflict wasn’t yet at this stage, and it was still in the trash-talking/posturing phase. When you find yourself in the unknown and unfamiliar you need to act fast to recover, as it may not be the first punch that puts your lights out but the second or third. The problem with a lot of Reality Based Self-Defense training is that it rarely puts people in such situations, due to the instructor’s need to give the student a “win”; and this is necessary and important, but it can’t be at the expense of reality. One way to train how to recover from the aftershock of the first strike punch, in a safe manner, would be to make the student dizzy first (rather than hitting/punching them to get the “real” effect), and then forcing them to deal with continuous attacks – delivered in a controlled fashion. This isn’t the type of position that anyone “wants” to find themselves in, but a student needs to know what they can do, are able to do, and should expect from themselves when found here. In fact, they need to get really good at being able to deal with such situations, because they are ones they’ll rarely experience during training.

The same goes for knife attacks. There are a lot of instructors who appear competent at dealing with such attacks, when they are given the room and distance to operate e.g. the attack starts from distance/range, the environment is uncluttered etc. In some cases, it helps when the student with the knife knows what their instructor is liable to do, and so is anticipating the kick or strike they are likely to deliver. However, in many cases you will feel, rather than see the knife, first. This is why developing good self-protection skills is essential for making physical self-defense techniques work e.g. you spot someone who has harmful intent towards you early enough on to get away, or at the very least better prepare yourself to deal with them (this “preparation” is essential for most techniques to work). Many people neglect this part of the training, because they feel/believe it is better to know what happens when avoidance isn’t available and things do kick-off, not realizing that when things do get physical they’ve probably already been stabbed a couple of times. Training from such positions, may appear fatalistic, and negative, however if we find ourselves in an unfamiliar position, we need to be able to react instantly in order to be effective in preventing things from getting worse; we need to be able to respond from every position, not just the ones we are comfortable in. I have worked with and seen experienced doormen who have been stabbed and failed to realize what had happened to them, and so responded according to their “game plan” rather than the situation they were in e.g. try and chase somebody down when there’s claret running out of your body, and blood loss will soon see you crash to your knees.

Real-life violence isn’t a chess board where you get to see all the pieces, and play your game/strategy, you’re lucky if you have a few seconds to understand what’s going on and make some preparations. This was one of the big differences I saw between the violence that doormen typically face – which is somewhat protracted, with longer dialogue – compared to that of the disputes between drunken punters that soon became physical. You may believe that you have a game-plane that would see you do this, then that, then this etc. and that is great if you can always work within your comfort and familiarity zone, however you are going to have to be ten times quicker and more effective when caught in unfamiliar territory; and that’s why you may want to start dedicating a larger portion of your training time to this.