How do you prepare for the stress of a real self-defense situation?

Question

How do you prepare for a real stress situation, in which you are forced to defend yourself or others? I'm not talking about avoiding conflict; assume that you have already tried all that is possible to resolve the situation without it becoming physical.

What is the training like when you really want to find out if you can withstand the attacker's verbal and physical abuse, and effectively neutralize the conflict?

From experience, I have see people who either collapse under the pressure and cannot apply their training, or people who go overboard and have no control whatsoever over their rage.

Answer 1

First, each art and instructor is going to approach this differently. Most everyone that I've trained with over the years has, at least somewhat, agreed that aliveness is a vital component.

Unfortunately, there's no way to truly prepare; at its worst, we still always know that our training partners are not going to kill us. Part of the mental preparation then can not be physically training to prepare yourself for death. The best we can do in training is find ways to release adrenaline, and become more or less accustomed to the feeling (in the way a drug addict can no longer get high from the same fix).

Therefore, some of the best methods (in my opinion) that I've encountered have been:

• Training while exhausted – Before practicing techniques (waza), and certainly before randori or sparring, elevate the heart rate by running, doing pushups, etc. From this elevated heart rate, greater stress is more likely to induce an adrenaline dump.
• Play acting – Both parties in a technique's practice must resolve to act their role, and feel the intent to harm or be harmed, as they would in the circumstance. Method acting can do wonders for the martial artist wanting both to learn a new way to train, as well as deception in his execution.
• Getting hit – The serious practitioner should realize that fear is what motivates him to move offline or to strike away an incoming punch, and learn two things: 1.) being struck does not hurt quite so bad as we imagine it to hurt; 2.) that we have plenty of time between the point when we see the fist begin to move forward, to when we're actually impacted. Knowing these two points, the serious practitioner should resolve then to learn to move at the last possible second. Interestingly, this serves the purpose of both forcing him to have the adrenaline response from realizing he will get hit if he does not move, and frighten him enough about moving that he'll be in a constant adrenal cascade. Over time, this lessens the fear response, and we become resistant.

Really, this is what, on a modern level, mushin (the zen concept of "no mind", or freedom from distracting thoughts) is all about: when you perform the exercises above, you are forcing yourself (in all three cases, albeit in different ways) to be in that moment. Mushin can be achieved through far easier methods, including meditation (which, if you've not been informed, is not about sitting around and not thinking... Meditation happens at every moment), but the above give you a short-cut glimpse into this oft-misunderstood principle.

Answer 2

I train in Krav Maga and ICS (Israeli Combat System) at a place called Masada Tactical which trains in preparation for exactly what you are talking about. There are a couple of things that they do and teach to prepare their students for real life situations:

1. Practice real life situations in the most realistic conditions possible

   • For example, when practicing ground survival, we won't train inside on a padded floor, but instead, we train outside, in the parking lot, on concrete
   • In addition, we will, during some of the drills, in fact yell vulgarity at each other when playing the attacker.
   • Another thing we will do is occasionally use real weapons to defend against. Obviously we won't go as hard or as fast with real knives, than if we were using rubber knives, but it still is very unnerving when training. Once you get used to it though, it makes it much easier to defend against the real thing. The idea is that practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent, so we practice how we actually fight.

2. No hesitation

   • The following has been taught to me over and over again by multiple experts in the field of self defense, and is, in my opinion, one of the fundamental mentalities that people need to learn. One thing I have heard people say, even on this post, is that since you are going to need to justify your actions, you should use minimal, or what they call "proper use of" force. This is a mentality that will likely get you killed!!! What is taught in many gun training classes, is that if you pick up a gun to defend yourself, you don't shoot them in the leg like you see in the movies, you shoot them in the chest, and you keep shooting until either the person is down, or your gun is empty. The same is true in self defense with hand to hand fighting, you go all out, and don't stop until the other person can no longer fight you. I am in no way claiming that if someone comes up to you saying "give me your wallet", that you should kill them on the spot instead of simply giving them your wallet. What I am saying however, is that if you engage in a fight, you should not hesitate in any way. You deal with what ever legal trouble you get into afterwords, but you make sure that you can get home alive!!! If you feel that you are in enough risk that you are required to fight, then you are in enough risk that you do whatever you have to, to get away, even if it means killing the other person. (Obviously this does not apply in every case, if you are in a situation where you don't feel your life is in danger (Eg. a kid on a playground, being bullied) then you should of course use minimal force, to avoid killing the person, but if you feel your life is in danger, you go all out, and don't stop you are sure the person will not get back up) I would always rather have an ugly trial, than nice funeral.

3. Full contact fighting even in practice

   • One of the things that we do that is different from many traditional martial arts, is that when we practice, we go %100. We'll do groin kicks, and even eye gouges (while wearing safety goggles of course) even while training.
   • In addition to regular full contact fighting, we will also have simple absorption drills. These are basically where we stand with our hand over our head, and practice getting hit without pads. This way, we get used to the idea of being hit, and it doesn't surprise us in a real fight when we miss the block on at least one of them (that is absolutely guarantied to happen in a fight, so you gotta get used to the idea of it.)
   • Another thing that we do is when practicing, is continue regardless of what happens. While sparring in a class once, my instructor made absolutely sure that no one gave up. His exact words were "I don't care what your partner does to you, if I see anyone tap out, I will kick them in the balls." The whole idea behind this kind of training is the idea that "It's better to bleed in peace, so you can win at war"

4. High stress drills and testing

   • One of the most dreaded days where I train is taking a belt test. The reason for this is that they are, for lack of a better word, insane! The belt test will take anywhere from 5 to 7 hours. The first 2 to 3 hours are comprised of nothing but exhaustion drills to tire you out. Usually your muscles will start to quit on you at that point. The next part (usually 1 to 2 hours) is the skills test, where we simply show that we truly know the skills that we were taught. The next 2 hours though are the most challenging. The first one, we spend fighting each-other, being that multiple attackers, or just one on one (this is all after we are exhausted and our muscles have almost no strength left in them). The last hour we spend, where each student has to fight the head instructor. If he gives up, he fails the entire test, and has to take the entire 7 hour test again.
   • The point of this test is to prove to ourselves that no mater what kind of situation we're in, no mater how tired we are, or how much pain we're in, we can still keep fighting. And we can know, that when it all goes to hell, we will still go home alive.

I would recommend training in something like Krav Maga, or ICS, the reasons being that not only do they teach self defense and fighting, but unlike other "martial arts" (the quotes are because Krav Maga and ICS really should not be categorized as a martial art) they teach you the the mentality of real street fighting that will insure that if you get into a fight, you will be the one who goes home alive.

Answer 3

I had 3 types of training I feel helped me mentally preparing for a real life senerio.

1. role playing - my coach told us: he wanted to rape your girl friend, kill him. when we were shocked he started describing what I "did" to my friends girl friend.. that person attacked me like never before, I was really afraid, the fact that i took him easly sparring didnt matter in this point.
2. mass attackers, circle training - 1 person stands in the center of a circle and people attack him from all sides, he may not escape from the circle. this exercise will get that survival instinct out of you.
3. weapon training - same coach from before gave my friend a real comando knife, in its case and told my friend to kill me, again no real danger (the knife is in the case) but its way scarier then a plastic knife. the use of the word kill also has a part in it i assume.

I wanna say that this kind of trainings will not work with any group, the coach needs to know for sure that this things will "pass" before he tries them. even then Im not sure doing those stuff is a good idea in general, just saying it helped me.

Answer 4

For the physical aspect, you have to ramp it up to as close to the intensity of an actual fight as you can. That is to say your training partner will be trying to knock you out, they'll be throwing kicks that if unchecked will have you limping for a week, throws are aggressive and quick, and takedowns are often done as slams. You'll get hurt in the beginning with this, and it'll really suck, but gradually you'll get used to it. When you get poked in the eye you keep going, you don't bother checking if your nose is bleeding or if it's just snot, you don't take a time out for getting hit in the groin, and if you get a minor joint injury, ignore it and keep going (obviously stop if it's a full break). You want to get in the habit of dealing with any damage you take later, and your immediate concern is your opponent and taking him out of his ability to do any further damage to you.

Some attacks will be worse than that training, but I haven't yet encountered one that is - for me the training has been more intense and more stressful than any of the real fights I've had. The injuries have been worse too (the most I've come away with in an actual fight is some skin scraped off, although I don't recall how it happened as I didn't feel it at the time), which brings up an interesting question of how much you want to get hurt in training to protect yourself from getting hurt outside of training. Particularly since getting attacked shortly after sustaining a training injury really isn't good (same goes for getting attacked after a long, hard class that has your quads so sore from plyometrics drills, squats and horse stance that you can't really bend your knees). Still, preparing for the worst means experiencing something that's at least pretty close to it.

Answer 5

There's a good article called "The truth about violence" by one Sam Harris which explains the necessary mental preparedness nicely, imo. With regard to your question, I'd say the key takeaway is this:

This is the core principle of self-defense: Do whatever you can to avoid a physical confrontation, but the moment avoidance fails, attack explosively for the purposes of escape—not to mete out justice, or to teach a bully a lesson, or to apprehend a criminal. Your goal is to get away with minimum trauma (to you), while harming your attacker in any way that seems necessary to ensure your escape.⁠

Note that "for the purpose of escape" part. Even if it has to get physical, you still want out. It might always get worse.

For this to work, you have to handle your anger, pride, and fear such that they don't get in the way of your judgement. As a male, knowing what testosterone does to you is critical to that. You can't avoid your biological setup, but you can handle it gracefully.

Answer 6

Note that this answer generated a lot of debate. This is good, in my opinion, as I hope it prompted people to think about the issues of how we all should react to violence. However, it made the comments really argumentative which is not the purpose of this site. Thus, I have added some of the comments after the section. I believe that the section I added reflect the opinions of many. If you have a problem with this post, please add another answer of your own.

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If you are at the stage of a physical confrontation, in my opinion, you have already failed as a martial artist*. You have missed dozens of clues, failed to run to safety, and in all likelihood helped precipitate a physical confrontation. Do you carry and know how to use a whistle for self-defence? If not, you should.

That said, put them down hard enough to be able to run towards safety. Remember that you may be asked to defend your actions in a court of law. Did you use "reasonable force"/"minimal force" to get out of trouble? This requires control and self-discipline.

As for training, all of your classes should be about using your might in a controlled way. This is what sparring is all about. Can you remain calm and controlled when someone really is going for you? Fight in a ring (or at a competition event) and find out.

No nonsense self-defense is a good site to read on the matter of self-defense in general.

Note that I am assuming that the question is aimed at civilian self defence and neither law enforcement and military self defence advise is sought. Those latter two are utterly different beasts that would require their own answers and those above advise would no longer be fully applicable.

Edit: Anecdotal evidence is never acceptable as proof for any argument whatsoever. It is a logical fallacy. Just because you know of someone that had something happen to them where they had to stand and fight, does NOT mean that it is good advice to do it in all cases. Are there cases where you must fight? Sure: soldiers do it all the time. Their job is to kill the enemy. They even use martial arts for that -- look up the etymology of the word if that confuses you.

I can think of a thousand cases where without any fault of your own you must fight. I can think of a billion cases were you could have avoided it. But, in my not so humble opinion, any martial art teacher that says that you should stand up and fight in all or most cases is a dangerous cretin that will get his/her students killed.

(*): Yes, this is a general statement. Yes, it does not apply to 100% of cases -- soldiers or police for example will have to use up to lethal force to defend themselves and others. Yes, all martial artists, in my opinion should have enough common sense, learned ability and intelligence to avoid getting into trouble. Sun Tsu said that Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting. Surely, that is what all martial artist aspire to. The rest is just excuses for having failed that goal. </flame war baiting></do not feed the troll>

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These are additions from comments, with credit

GrandmasterB states that "In an ideal world, yes, the martial artist should be picking up on indicators and know how to avoid putting themselves into bad situations. But its not always up to the defender whether or not a physical attack occurs. It could be a home invasion, carjacking, or (as is more common) someone you know/are familiar with. Or you could be defending someone else. Short of living in a steel safe there's no a priori guarantee of a non-violent way out of all situations."

David H. Clements adds "I think there is a confusion of different types of confrontation that can occur and what you can realistically do to avoid them. There's a difference between a "monkey dance" (which is a mutual engagement), other social violence dynamics (sometimes mutual, sometimes avoidable but not trivially so, etc), and what happens with a predator who has specifically isolated you in a situation you aren't realistically always going to be able to avoid (e.g., in an apartment alone)."

Swift quoth "The point that I'm trying to make is that just because it's a violent situation doesn't mean you automatically have to resort to violence on your side, i.e. the mugging example, Id just give up the money. In the CCW example I said "deadly physical force would be warranted", we should all be aware of the legal ramifications of our actions with or without weapons. Nothing is ever black or white, every situation is different. The vibe I got from Sardathrion post was that we, as martial artists, should avoid violence whenever possible."

Finally, Rophuine gets irate "I'm not saying the sentiment isn't on the right track: most violent escalations involving a martial artist will involve a failure on the part of the martial artist. It's important to keep that in mind. But it's also important to be ready for violence when it is unavoidable, and that flexibility is the whole point of martial arts. To stick to the argument that it's always a failure of the martial artist is an insult to every martial artist who's stepped in once a situation has already turned violent and defused the situation."

Answer 7

I've heard and grown fond of this statement:

Martial arts without meditation are like a loaded gun in the hands of a baby.

There is also the well-known statement by Musashi:

Make your warrior's walk your everyday walk.

And one shouldn't forget the analogy mind like water, or the japanese word mushin (see @Sardathrion's comment).

What do all these mean? Well, the first one means that if you don't meditate, training in martial arts will get SOMEONE hurt. You or someone else. Meditation helps calm the mind, and not be overtaken by emotions when something happens. It also helps you learn to see things clearly. @Sardathrion's answer is quite on topic here - if you get to that point, you probably have made a series of mistakes, but that's not what we're discussing :)

Musashi's quote - do you really want to go around all day on hair-trigger-alert mode? You'll punch your boss, elbow your wife, choke out a good friend -- who knows. You'll have an overzealously defensive reaction that is unwarranted. Meditation helps you. It means that your warrior's walk (the ready state) is the same as the everyday walk.

Mind like water - one of my favorites! The water in a pond reflects the moon. No matter what you do to the water, it reflects the moon. Your mind should be like the reflection of the moon on the water. No matter what goes on outside, and how turbulent things are, you should be calm and centered inside.

Serious training, it goes without saying, means learning how to control, neutralize, disable, hurt, maim and kill, and you have to be ready for these. Meditation also helps you get in a state where you start contemplating the questions of what it means to be alive, dying, taking a life, so you are not troubled by doubt or uncertainty should the moment come.

Answer 8

This is a huge and complicated topic, with active academic research ongoing. I am not an expert; any summary I give will be incomplete.

With that said: Everyone's heard of "fight or flight" mode: That's what happens when someone perceives an immediate danger, and has a rush of adrenaline.

Those who've been to a psychology class more recently will recall the "fight/flight/freeze" model by Walter Cannon. This has also been called "flight/fight/submit," because the freezing corresponds to that of a wolf accepting a lower place in the pack hierarchy.

Traditional martial arts try to avert the adrenaline rush entirely, by training you to fight in calmness, without experiencing fear or anger. Modern "reality-based self defense" arts like Krav Maga teach you to feel the fear, and use it to trigger violent action instead of immobility.

If you're interested in the psychological theory of stress from a martial perspective, I highly recommmend kojutsukan--it's an accomplished martial artist researching deeply into the emotions behind combat, and how to leverage them to win.

Answer 9

Rory Miller has written a few books that talk about this topic extensive and provide a variety of drills focused around the mental aspects of self defense, specifically:

• Facing Violence: Preparing for the Unexpected
• Drills: Training for Sudden Violence

In Facing Violence he talks about the various stages of escalation in the real world and what, your options are in each stage, and some of how to recognize the various stages when you are in them. It also tends to emphasize ways of avoiding a physical confrontation if you can avoid it, but committing to it fully if you need to be engaged.

In Drills he provides specific drills (section IW: Internal Work) that are entirely geared around the mental aspects. There's also a section (WW: World Work) that includes awareness. The internal work exercises includes both "psychological first aid" as well as techniques to identify your own "glitches" or limits. There's also a section on articulation.

He has his own particular style and biases, but I've found these books to be very valuable in this regard.

Answer 10

One of my instructors used to say that martial arts is only good if you know you are going to be in a fight. If you are attacked unexpectedly what will likely happen is you will have a natural instinctive reaction (fight or flight, flinch response). This is because you weren't in the mental mindset of expecting a confrontation (as you would be in a class or a competition).

One thing you can do is to train a little everyday. This will allow your mind to be thinking about the martial art more often. When you are thinking about your skills you are going to be more likely to use them in a surprise situation.

Of course conflict should be a last resort. There may be situations where you need to use your martial arts skills to defend yourself, but it isn't going to be very often.

I invite you to read Terry Dobson's account of a conflict situation called Aikido In Action. At the end of the article he says:

As the train pulled away, I sat down on a bench. What I had wanted to do with muscle had been accomplished with kind words. I had just seen aikido tried in combat, and the essence of it was love. I would have to practice the art with an entirely different spirit. It would be a long time before I could speak about the resolution of conflict.