March 2006
HOCK'S DAILY BLOG
"Read by thousands every day!"
31 March 2006: See ya' Next Month!
Stand by for more stuff next month.
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29 March 2006: Some London Notes
Hock teaching the Special Operations Officers of London Police, at their Special Courses Academy.
Rather than draw at targets, it is better to draw at people who are drawing their weapons. This bulds better muscle memory. I play differing roles of irate and emotional people before I draw. Of course, we do this with sims guns also. This is a dry run.
Riot Police must run through these bags, as well as deal with instructors hiding in there to attack them.
Inside the Academy sims city is a subway station, with a "sims" subway for all sorts of training.
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28 March 2006: Everything but the Kitchen Sink
The predators came out on Friday and Saturday nights. Their hunting ground was a section on our city that once boasted scores of apartment complexes for college students. Somehow this district slowly degraded into busted up, run-down, graffiti-scarred tenements with the telltale, unbreakable amber streetlights surrounded by mesh, the abandoned cars, drugs sales and prostitutes. As the rent dropped, the owners' cash ability to repair dropped, the rents dropped and the downtrodden members of our society could afford to melt into them. These were mostly illegal aliens at the time. Good, hard-working folks, and then too, a lot of scum which knows no bounds in skin color. This environment brings with it a lot of police work.
The process started in my early years in patrol and culminated in my years as a detective. Patrolling and investigating those streets at night gave you an eerie war-zone feeling. Back in the late 70's, a few of these residents starting robbing people for their payday cash.
The suspects were local. Illegal Mexicans in an illegal Mexican area. The victims would hesitate to call the police. On weekends, these street muggers armed with Saturday Night Special pistols hold up anyone they could. They started shooting. Gun wounds were reported to the police. We police started patrolling for weekend, armed robbers as we made our rounds.
My old buddy Greg Dunham and I were working this beat one Friday night, when we actually stumbled upon one of these in progress on the outskirts of an apartment complex. From our squad car, first we saw the startled reaction of a few people, and then looked deeper to see the drama of a street robbery at gunpoint play out. A Hispanic male with a pistol bolted form the scene and we slid to a stop and Greg and I bailed out, hollering a string of expletives of death and destruction should he continue to hot foot away. Needless to add, he continued to hot foot away.
He dashed across the street with Greg and I, revolvers drawn; young and fleet of foot (Greg was marathon runner) were after him. He slipped into an apartment complex and mounted a stairway. To lose sight of him now would be bad. But, Mr. Quicksilver Greg was close enough to see him enter a specific apartment.
“Here!” Greg declared as I crested the second floor and without hesitation, Greg and I, working like madman pistons, kicked down the door right off its frame in seconds. In the eternal words of Sheriff Buford T. Justice,
“we wuz' in HOT Pursuit!”
...and a mere door shan't dally us. Greg and I attended the Texas Police Academy together and we were search school partners, and vets of numerous, real-world searches. We knew what to do with each other. Gun barrel first, we peeled off to our respective sides of the living room. We fully expected to shoot down this son of a bitch right then and there.
Nothing. Dark. It was a cheap, one-bedroom apartment, with a clear view of the bedroom ahead of us. Someone was in bed with the covers over them! What is this? We made our way to the bedroom door. The living room and kitchenette was clear. With a quick peek into the bedroom, I could see the one, small bedroom window was closed, nothing under it disturbed as if someone climbed out the window. Was the body in the bed our suspect? Had to be! Was his pistol aimed right at us under the covers? Could be. What of the half-opened bedroom closet?
Greg and I exchanged glances. I stated yelling commands in broken English/Spanish about… “get up! Wake up! Put your hands up!” Greg took over with better Spanish.
Nothing. No one could possible remain asleep with all this door breaking and yelling.
I looked around for innovative and new ways to…wake him up. While Greg kept up the surrender banter and pointed his .357 at him, I holstered mine up and grabbed some cups and saucers from the kitchen bar. Like Nolan Ryan in a play-off, I fired those babies a hundred miles an hour at the body in the bed. They hit hard and I mean HARD, then bounced to the wall and shattered. Nothing. Not a movement. Not a peep. I got the frying pans and pots. These pans fly like spinning rockets! I got the plates. Greg was starting to laugh out loud, and frankly, so was I.
“A-MI-GO! Wake the fuck up!” I ordered, heaving everything but the kitchen sink at him as hard as I could. With each object I flung, Greg and I got more cracked up. I got a dining room chair. I had to fully stand in the door, but I pitched the heavy chair as hard as I could onto the body in the bed.
Finally, with a chair crashing on him, he uttered a painful mutter. The bed covers went half-back and this dufuss sat up, pretending to be confused and awakened from a sound sleep. He was fully dressed in the very suspect clothing of the man we chased.
“Hands up!” we ordered in Spanish. He did. Greg moved to the closet. Empty. I cuffed our bruised Sleeping Beauty and rolled him onto the floor. I threw back the covers and there on the bed was his small semi-auto pistol.
We had our man, but we lost our victim! When we escorted the suspect to the street, it was empty. The complainant and friends ran off into the night, probably fearing extradition back to the homeland for their illegal status.
Greg and I wrote up what we saw and did, submitted the pistola and a handful of squashed cash from the guy's pocket. Still, minus a victim and within days, our detectives were able to amass some kind of case or charges on our gun-toting suspect, but armed robbery was not one of them. And of note, the robbery rate in the neighborhood dropped, as this bandito was most likely responsible for a goodly number of them...and as ex-con, Martha Stewart would say, “that's a good thing.”
There was always a bit of “tsk-tsking,” and “cluck-clucking” by SGTs and LTs when a door was busted, but in the end, our old Police Chief Hugh Lynch enjoyed a good action story. And beside, it was clear we were operating under the Buford T. Justice doctrine! (There was an unofficial/off-the-books "door fund" for just these sorts of situations.)
Through the years, this “hood” received rehabilitation and once again became a college-based, residential area. Entire rattraps were demolished and replaced. City management found government funds. Owners were encouraged to build and rebuild. Decent owners and residents of all races took a stand and fought back. I like to think we cops took a front-line, stand too.
Greg Dunham went on to become city manager in several cites in the U.S. and a respectable, church-going, citizen and family man. He and I have had many, many misadventures together in the thrilling days of yesteryear. I can't repeat half of them, in case he runs for mayor somewhere. Don't let the three-piece suit fool you; he is just as crazy as I am. Next time I print this somewhere, I may change his name.
That's the hood update. The Dunham update. Me? You know me. I'm just hanging out.
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27 March 2006: Animals that Kill
It is postulated by modern fighting experts, and also Killology's David Grossman, has danced around the subject that "humans are the only specie that kills its own." I read an interesting anthropological article recently by Dr Robert Sapolsky of Stanford University, which said:
"It used to be that humans were the only savagely violent primate. That view fell wayside in the 1960s as it became clear that some other primates kill their fellows aplenty with cold-blooded stratagems (and tools) worthy of Richard III."
Jane Goodall learned that "bands of of related chimps carry out cooperative border patrols-searching their geographic boundary separating their group from another and attacking neighboring males they encounter, even to the point of killing off the other groups entirely.
Dr Jared Diamond has published a lengthy list of insects and animals that kill each other (see the next issue of Close Quarter Combat Magazine-due out in Late April)
Any comments? Continue the thread on the talk forum!
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24 March 2006: Met Riot Training
After teaching Weapons Response Teams and "SWAT" tactical officers of the London Metropolitan Police, a Met Riot Police Instructor gave me and my assistants Joe Hubbard and Alan Cain a grand tour of the attached, outdoor riot training facility. It is in fact a small, replica city constructed to cover various crowd control problems from passive/aggressive crowds, angry crowds, hooligans, prison riots, fire bomb throwers, and doomsday in general. The course program looks top notch, effective and thorough (not too often attending a common police course runs the risk of your being set on fire!)
What struck me was how riot training has changed since the old Rex Applegate Kill or Get Killed book days, or the military and police training I'd received in the 70s and 80s. Shields for one main thing! Defensive and aggressive methods for two types of shields were demonstrated for us. Special handles for the smaller, round models cleverly allow an officer to let a hand loose and control and contain rioters if need be.
We made over 30 Police Judo/CQC Group instructors while there. The training culminated with outdoor gun sims scenarios concerning airport gun fights, since we had access to a plane, a bus and fuel truck at our disposal to maneuver in and around. I am set to return next October to cover the hand, stick, knife and gun Arm Wrap Trap module.
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20 March 2006: Canvass
David Street is a Federal law enforcement officer in Florida who was recently involved in an accidental shooting of a suspect during an arrest. he was fighting with the subject and his M4 discharged. He was hands-off the weapon. The suspect he was struggling with caused something on his tactical gear he was wearing to engage the trigger and fire the weapon.
Street asked for a canvass of other operators for similar incidents. Contact him at ezeestreet@earhlink.net
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17 March 2006: It is a Foggy Day...
It is a foggy day (and VERY cold) in ol' London town...I am in England and wavering internet connect-ablity as I travel from city-to-city. Will do the best I can.
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16 March 2006: Training Modules...How They Fit!
The big four that I believe must be in any practical and modern fighting/survival system. The guidelines I'd like to use.
Strategy Training: This is an overall plan. Big picture. This training can be done in a classroom, in a lecture format. "Today we are talking about the defeating the mugger." "The laws say..." "He will statistically attack you by..."
Tactical (and practical) Training: These are the general tactics that seem to cross-over into so many applications, such as ...working on a pistol quick draw, slashing a knife, or palm-striking a heavy bag. You might call this basic training.
Situational Training: This requires more study. What are the situations you will be in. Where? This is crisis rehearsal in replications of scenarios. Who are you? Where do you think you will be? What will you need to make through? You might call this the start of advanced training.
Positional Training: This is pinpoint right down to it. The general tactics may well work here, but where precisely are you and the opponent? This is the real fine tuning of tactics as needed. The finite situation. Like...bottom-side ground and his left leg is out. Arm Wrap trap or your knife hand/arm warp trap of his empty hand. His left hand is on your throat and you are up against a wall. Sometimes, solutions relate to finite positioning.
Think about these terms for a minute and the progression from macro to micro. When you oversee the military, the police and/or civilians, this is volumes of information.
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14 March 2006: Speaking of Sky Marshals
I have many very close friends in this businesses and I hate to report that the turn-over rate is quite high. Being a Sky Marshal was recently listed as one of top ten most boring jobs.
Massad Ayoobe recently wrote:
"There are already reports that even the most recently-hired members of that service are burning-out at a rapid rate. It's not hard to understand why. This may be the single most boring job in law enforcement. The sky marshal has none of these options. He or she can be fired for literally sleeping on duty. Typically, these operators are on their own, without partners to talk with. (now changed) Indeed, if an inspector from the service is aboard to rate the marshal's performance, striking up an animated conversation with a seatmate would be seen as turning away from vigilant watch. Reading is forbidden for a similar reason, as is shutting out ambient sound by putting on earphones, or narrowing the visual scan by tunneling in on a movie screen. My old friend Don B. Kates, a noted criminologist, says this same thing was observed back in the 1970s when the Sky Marshal program was a hot item after a wave of "sky jackings." He wrote, "The problem for sky marshals, especially, is boredom so extreme that it resulted in endless resignations from the marshal program of the 1970s. The job is not like ordinary police patrol which is likely to provide officers with a lot of interesting activity on each shift, between dispatch calls and routine interactions with people. Instead, unless there actually is an attack, (statistically RARE beyond rare beyond rare) the poor sky marshals have nothing at all to do on flight after flight they travel on day after day. Four months, and you're liable to be sitting in a little rubber room."
Hmmm, weren't these exciting flights once called counter-terrorism missions by someone? Who was that?
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13 March 2006: That Which Distinguishes..
In furtherance of the 12 March post and how people's lives can be summarized in one paragraph, I wonder what your paragraph would be? Not just in martial arts or martial studies. What would the paragraph of your instructor's be? What are the things that distinguish you or them, from others? Makes them special?
Off the cuff, first draft? I think I'd like to remembered for being a tireless proponent of practical, tactical, positional and situational, hand, stick, knife and gun training. And eventually, as the author of the Training Mission Books and DVD series- the most comprehensive collection of such material found anywhere.
(For the record?
a) my bio does does not/should not include any matial arts achievements.
b) and, that makes me more of a filter, an amasser, an evaluator, and way less an inventor of anything new.)
What about you? I guess the motivational experts would say you need to define your goals and mission statement to achieve them?
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12 March 2006: Street Fighters and The World According to Vito
I have received a number of emails of late about the newest issue of Black Belt Magazine- the "reality" issue, in which an article written by a guy named Vito Angeles (sp?) from southern CA. listed the top 20 street fighters. The emails reported to me, "you were not on the list!" Some reported that this article was listing the top ten, reality-based instructors. Some even misread the article as top-ten toughest men. But it was street fighters. Folks need to read slower. I was not in the top 20 street fighters and that is perfectly fine with me. In fact, I thank them. I am a professional tactician, not a thuggish, street fighter. Other people, like former Sky Marshal Jim Wagner and Canada's Tony Blaur weren't listed either to name a few. (Wagner-with a "search engine" powered by Black Belt Magazine itself)
And not many listed I think, are thuggish, street-fighters either. None of us know all of the names listed and in this world according to Vito, a British bouncer named Terry O'Neil is number One! Who? Well, I have yet to meet a British bouncer who wasn't tough, but that is me, as I am sure my bouncer friends across the pond could supply quite a list. But anyway, in summary I am proud not to be on that list. Whether it be by ignorance or design, thanks, Vito.
"Benny the Jet" Urquedez is listed? A nice, squared-away, professional kick boxer, giving of his time to kids and doing good in sports for decades?..is listed as a street fighter?
Paul Vunak is on the list, number 14 or so? And, in Paul's summary/synopsis is the story of how Paul purposely roamed the streets, starting fights to "test" techniques and making his students do the same, all great fodder for tough guy stories. Who really knows the scoop on the real deal of that? You've heard the stories. I am not a witness to this and at times I wonder could Paul really be that stupid? REALLY!? Or, are students trying to exaggerate their experiences with them with tough guy confabulations and fibs? But, this BB article, seeing Vu on the list, and reading Vito's version of "that which distinguishes" him in a single, short paragraph, reminded me of few instances with him back in the late 80s, earlier 90s.
I, and several of my friends back then were once a very dedicated PFS practitioners, hosting him and very close to others who hosted him in our region. In very casual conversations, Paul told us of several times he was in bad jams and did his best to outsmart the situation and AVOID a fight. These experiences by the way, often put him in somewhat of a bad light, admitting to bad life choices and therefore had a ring of truth to them.
One night about 1990, we were going out to see a pay-for-view fight at a bar after a seminar, just me, Paul and a guy named Ray Medina. We settled into a college club/restaurant where the match was featured on the big screen. Our table was near the bar and by some knuckleheads at the bar drinking and somewhat rowdy. After a few minutes, Paul leaned over to me and asked, "is there some other place where this fight is showing?"
"Why?" I asked.
"I just don't like the looks of these guys behind us," he said. We left and found another, quieter place. He was actually avoiding potentially trouble, not prowling to test his skills. Yes, yes, yes, I was a cop and he was well-aware of that, too. I am just telling you all what happened. I really don't think he was acting solely to convince me he was a good guy.
Look, the guy has his problems which is no secret to anyone anymore due to the internet, and there is lot of crazy things Vu may have done, or not done in his time. I am not defending him, but after seeing the BB magazine article, reporting that Vu takes to the streets looking for fights, I just thought I'd mention this. He was a key, pivotal character in my training back then. I have chosen other methodologies now and moved on. I don't think it is fair to categorize his life's work as some maniac looking to start fights every night of the streets of Los Angeles.
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12 March, 2006: The Fall
Looks like we cannot organize the planned big East Coast Steel Knife seminar this November/December. The planned Virginia hotel will be under re-construction during those times. And, as the Thailand camp settles in, we had to move the Counter- Crime School from August to September.
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8 March, 2006: The Arm Wrap Traps
I have been working for years now trying to problem solve the Arm Wrap Trap problems, especially in the knife course, where the subject appears in the "In the clutches Of" Knife Module.
In general, I call the Arm Wrap the "undiscovered trap" because it REALLY immobilizes the arm and no trapping hands systems, qualify it as such.
When sport fighters crash, or when reality fighters trained by sports fighters who are naive crash, they don't always clinch like perfectly trained Greco-Roman wrestlers. In fact, something way more chaotic will probably occur. Years ago, I put together a list of 4 Stops" that appear in my Unarmed Combatives Course. Folks should have one or two solutions for each one of these common "stops."
People stop at...
- The hands-to-hands stop
- The forearm stop
- The shoulder stop
- The bear hug/arm wrap stop.
At times, due to positioning, arms get entangled. And at times, in a reality world of mixed weapons, these entanglements are with weapons-guns, knives and sticks. 10% of the time, this entanglement is with a lefty. (Of course if you are a lefty, then this is 100% of the time!)
Last fall, 2005, I started working on these mixed weapon arm wraps. I started teaching them in a long theme in seminars. I watched how all kinds of people, military, police, citizens and martial artists followed the outlines, performed and problem solved. Hundreds of them.
I have evolved a very interesting collection of workable solutions for this situational and highly probable arm warp catch/trap. I could not help but put them in a two-DVD set because it is very educational. I have also filtered out three major, simple grappling moves, some people are quite familiar with, that once mastered into muscle memory may be very important to know. I put it all in a 2 DVD set because I think it is important to see, think about and know about.
Any comments? Continue the thread on the talk forum!
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6 March 2006 : The FFFFs - Part 8: Freeze Summary
(Please see parts 1 thru 7 below and in the February 2006 Blog)
All these biological Freeze responses are at the very heart of why ambush and surprise gets an advantage, and why action-beats-reaction. One might say,
"what do I care why he freezes? Its all the same. I mean, freezing is freezing and I will use this mental and physical stutter-step to my advantage!"
Yes, that is true, but a closer examination on the subject and greater understanding may lead to more enlightenment and wiser methods. It is not all a Hick's Law problem.
"He froze! He couldn't decide which tactic to choose!" some trainers might say. But trainers ignorant of these facts and topics, tend to over-emphasize the Hick aspect. If you are a hammer, you see the world as a nail. If you only know Hick's Law, you see every delay of action as a choice/selection problem. Over-emphasizing the Hick's Law aspect is to under-estimate individual performance and capability. Hick's law is so often used to dumb training down.
As one might tell by now, this series has been a look at the freezing, via many biological responses, most of which have nothing to do with fear or bravery, or the common conception of Hick's Law and tactic selection. People will freeze for many reasons other than tactic selection.
In fact, things like fear, bravery and Hick's may well come after the aforementioned biological topics. And, it is important to keep in mind these processes may take only milliseconds anyway. There are 1,000 milliseconds in a single second! But if you only see the world through Hick's law, technically, your Hick's clock shouldn't start quite so soon and your millisecond response time averages are askew.
The idea of Hick's law, in a very general, broad principle exists of course in a general sense....Dr. Gene Cohen, a brain specialist said, "in short, theories of development are not necessarily wrong, they are just incomplete. This is not an uncommon situation in science. Einstein's theory of relativity did not mean that Newton's earlier theories of motion and mechanics were wrong, just that they were limited and incomplete. The same applies for human development."
In the same sense, Hick's law is not completely wrong, but we cannot forget the human mind is an amazing, versitle and expanding miracle. We constantly create new maps in our brain and memory. Revisiting those mapped roads, re-enforce the trip and make each subsequent trips back easier and faster. Super-highways to tactics, not dirt roads. Ergo-muscle memory training.
I am a semi-educated layman in all this. I urge you to read the experts on the brain and the fantastic new studies done last year and this year so far. Apparently new, fast, deep and efficient MRIs are capturing all kinds of ground-breaking information.
The FFFFs are not over! We have Fear and Flight and Free Flow. Free Flow is research about being "in the zone," the concept, the place, the pesky principle that throws much modern adrenaline training, based largely on the negative aspects and effects, right back to the chalk board. Practitioners should strive for the high zone, not dumbed down to the basement.
Thanks for reading these notes and I promise I will do a better job organizing them all in Training Mission Ten.
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5 March 2006 The FFFFs - Part 7: Stupefied Afterstate Freeze
(Please see parts 1 thru 6 below and in the February 2006 Blog)
"When my mother or my husband sneezes, it startles me. I can watch my mother wind up and cover her mouth and sneeze. But, it so loud that it still startles me! It feels like I am frozen for a few seconds, like my mind has been yanked out of the room and my body is still back in there."
-says Dr. Ronald Simons...
"A startle is a memorable sudden event that suddenly passes. Sometimes there is the perception of abruptly crossing a barrier. Then there is the stupefied afterstate, a freeze in which one is silent and motionless or acts like in some way like an automaton."
This stupefied afterstate can ocurr from any type of shock, not just one as mundane as a sneeze. This has nothing to do with bravery or cowardice, or trying to select a tactic from several choices.
Our Freeze Glossary thus far:
Stupefied Afterstate Freeze
Weak Heart/Poor Heart Freeze
No-Choice Freeze
Sensory Overload Freeze
Fainting/Syncope
Freezing
Evaluation Freezing
Tonic Immobility
Hyper-Vigilance
Any comments? Continue the thread on the talk forum!
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4 March 2006: The FFFFs - Part 6: Weak Heart/Poor Heart Freeze
Stunning the Heart (Please see parts 1 thru 5 below and in the February 2006 Blog)
A sudden shock, such as hearing news of a death in the family, can trigger a condition that appears to be a massive heart attack except that the victim suffers no lasting damage. Researchers report some patients are rushed to hospital with classic symptoms of a heart attack yet they go on to recover quickly and fully without any damage to the heart! Sometimes a day or two!
Johns Hopkins cardiologist Ilan Wittstein says. "Massive heart attacks don't get better within a matter of days." These people clutch their heart, gasp and freeze and may stumble or collapse, and not necessarily in that order." says EMT Victor Sattle.
Folklore long has held that traumatic events are capable of triggering an apparent heart attack, and recent studies solidify the link between the emotions and the heart, says Sidney Smith, a cardiologist at the University of North Carolina and a spokesman for the American Heart Association. "This is real, and it's important to recognize," Smith says. The condition, which researchers have dubbed the "broken-heart syndrome," mimics a heart attack, leading doctors to believe the heart has suffered severe damage.
Although no one has officially counted the cases, Smith says broken-heart syndrome, which often is misdiagnosed as a heart attack, ultimately will account for a fraction of the 7 million heart attacks that occur in the USA each year.
This is called stress cardiomyopathy. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine online, scientists from Johns Hopkins University in the US say they may have the explanation to this apparent heart attack, yet complete recovery.Soon after the event occurred, the doctors measured very high blood levels of catecholamines, which are stress hormones released after an emotional trauma. Subjects had catecholamine levels about 30 times higher than normal.
The surge of stress hormones overwhelms the heart, leaving the powerhouse unable to pump effectively, said Ilan Wittstein of the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore.
"How stress hormones act to stun the heart remains unknown, but there are several possible explanations that will be the subject of additional studies,' says cardiologist Hunter Champion. "The chemicals may cause spasm in the coronary arteries, or have a direct toxic effect on the heart muscle, or cause calcium overload that results in temporary dysfunction." These chemicals can be temporarily toxic to the heart, effectively stunning it and producing symptoms similar to a typical heart attack, including chest pain, fluid in the lungs, shortness of breath and heart failure. After the shock subsides, the level of stress hormones drops, and the heart's pumping power returns.
This 2005 research produces another evaluation other than the broken heart syndrome. Dr Kenneth Cooper of the Copper Clinic in Dallas, TX said on his March, 2005 radio program that pre-existing heart conditions and overall physical heath play a major part in now a person handles the sudden heart rate increase of a sudden surprise or ambush. If weak hearts are more susceptible to fear and shock, then strong hearts obviously handle such incidents better.
In a continuum of response from the healthy heart, the mediocre heart to the poor heart, you will find differing responses from a sudden surprise, be it a physical ambush or bad news. A complete collapse by the weak heart, or in the case of the hearty one-a sudden freeze when the heart rate jumps. This biological type of stun/freeze has nothing to do bravery or courage or a person's inability to select between two or more tactics as the laymen often concludes. The first, initial freeze may be the body's quick attempt at re-stabilization.
Our Freeze Glossary thus far:
Weak Heart/Poor Heart Freeze
No-Choice Freeze
Sensory Overload Freeze
Fainting/Syncope
Freezing
Evaluation Freezing
Tonic Immobility
Hyper-Vigilance
Any comments? Continue the thread on the talk forum!
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3 March 2006: Part 5: The No-Choice Freeze
Please see parts 1 thru 4 below and in the February 2006 Blog
Much has been made on how long the mind takes to decide between two tactics. Or three? Or more. Any stutter-step or inaction on the part of an attacked person is often reviewed as a selection problem. This is an over-simplified observation.
Many people, perhaps most people in this attack situation…simply have no selection. No choices. Many people jumped or pushed or are ambushed, have zero training for fighting, may never have fought anyone in their lives and simply have no idea what to do. They are blank. Their inaction, kind of a freezing is easily misread.
Most people have no tactics. These are the people that are quickly beaten down or flee-run to escape. This freeze- inactivity has nothing to do with bravery or cowardice, or trying to select from a series of tactics.
Sensory Overload Freeze
Imagine sitting in the stands of professional basketball play-off game. At half time, the announcer suddenly calls your name and you are whisked to center court. On national TV and before thousands in the arena, you are handed a basketball. If you shoot one hoop? You win a million dollars. One moment earlier you were eating a hot dog. Now you are utterly stunned.
The crowd goes wild. The music roars. You are probably experiencing some level of sensory overload that is fogging up your brain and body. If you move, it is slow. If you can move? You feel almost frozen.
Many people describing this type of sensory overload use the term surreal. Or wild . I was freaked out. They have no experience in this situation to relate to. Our fan may play ball at the local park, but this event is sure different. He has but one tactic. Throw the ball into the hoop.
In 2005 the television news and the internet passed around a video of a enraged man beating up a customer at a pizza restaurant. Quite a few onlookers stood by and watched the stranger-on-stranger, severe beating. The witnesses did nothing to intervene. All were declared cowards for doing nothing, but I suspect that these people all felt like the man in the basketball game above, thrust suddenly into a total alien situation. Bravery? Cowardice? Confusion?Our Freeze Glossary thus far:
No-Choice Freeze
Sensory Overload Freeze
Fainting/Syncope
Freezing
Evaluation Freezing
Tonic Immobility
Hyper-Vigilance
Any comments? Continue the thread on the talk forum!
http://www.hockscombatforum.com
1 March 2006 : Part 4: Fainting and More on Freezing
Please see parts 1 thru 3 in the February 2006
Here is a direct reprint of expert work...
The "faint" response is a defense strategy that is mediated by parasympathetic arousal. Little is available concerning this response in the trauma literature and differences between the faint and freeze response are incompletely understood.
The faint response is a condition of parasympathetic arousal elicited in the face of emotional stress or shock, which results in lowered heart rate and blood pressure. The decrease in blood supply to the brain can lead to loss of consciousness such as fainting. In order for faint to occur, levels of sympathetic arousal must be moderate or low. The faint response is fairly common, can be elicited by environmental triggers such as the sight of blood, and is usually transient.
The freeze state is associated with the shunting of blood from muscles towards the organs in the body core (Scaer, 2001). Scaer (2001) states that during the freeze state, the racing heart slows to a crawl, blood pressure drops precipitously, tense muscles collapse and become still as a result of the assumption of an "apparent enforced vegetative state" (Scaer, 2001). During freeze, the mind becomes numb and dissociated, at least in part due to high levels of endorphins, and memory access and storage are impaired. Amnesia may be expected for at least some of the events occurring during a freeze state (Scaer, 2001).
Fainting is technically called syncope. More than one thing may be the cause of fainting. Fainting can happen when not enough oxygen flows through your blood and into your brain. You lose consciousness, or "pass out," for a very brief time -- just a few seconds or minutes.
A sudden drop in your blood pressure can cause you to faint. Sometimes your heart rate and blood vessels can't react fast enough when your body's need for oxygen changes. It can happen if you get suddenly very upset or overwelmed. Being upset can affect the nerves that control your blood pressure.
Cannon, W. (1923/1915). Bodily changes in hunger, fear, pain and rage. New York: D. Appleton and Co. Levine, P. (1997). Waking the tiger. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books. Porges, S. W. (2001). The polyvagal theory: phylogenetic substrates of a social nervous system. International Journal of Psychophysiology. Scaer, R. C. (2001). The body bears the burden: trauma, dissociation, and disease. New York: Haworth Medical.
Our Freeze Glossary thus far:
Fainting/Syncope
Freezing
Evaluation Freezing
Tonic Immobility
Hyper-Vigilance
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