Adaptability is essential to those who want to possess real skill for defensive encounters. I don’t care who your teacher’s brother’s roommate used to train with. What if the thug who tries to knife you at the ATM trained with someone’s teacher’s brother’s roommate too? J
These drills will give you ideas for improving your adaptability by increasing sensitivity (decreasing reaction time and enhancing fighting position), reducing the effect of surprise (using reactions as fighting foundations), and improving transitions (allowing you to fight between techniques). It’s up to you to prepare yourself for the worst. As I have said to many students, we train to fight so that we might not have to.
- Sensitivity
Concept: It is important to learn to feel when an opponent is moving or changing his attack. You don’t want to be in the position of constantly reacting to strikes and other attacks. If you can keep a point of contact at all times and relax a little, you can sense subtle shifts and changes in angle of attack. Your body’s natural reflex reactions will keep you one step ahead. So learn to use all 5 senses (including the sense of sight) to the highest potential, and it will appear that you have the power to predict the attacker’s next move.
Any training routine or drill you commonly engage in can be made fresh and exciting simply by removing the sense of sight.
Drill: Wear a blindfold while working on grappling, trapping, and striking skills. Start from a static position where both you and your partner are making contact. This could be standing face to face with your forearms resting against each other. Be creative and create interesting scenarios (sitting next to each other shoulder to shoulder, back to back, etc.).
Try to relax as much as possible. If you are too tense, you will not be sensitive to subtle movements. You will instead feel yourself move, not your opponent. So relax your muscles such that you can receive the movement as it starts. Then use that motion as the beginning of you counter. Work off of the tension from the attack, allowing your body to take a better position while finding an advantage (striking, leverage, etc.).
- Surprise
Concept: In training we usually know what is about to happen. But on the street, the element of surprise is enough to change the outcome of any fight. Attackers experience fear too, and that is why they use excessive force (weapons, surprise, greater numbers, etc.). So the more you train your psyche to allow your body to respond when under sudden stress the better. Don’t allow your body to freeze. It’s okay to be scared and afraid, as long as you respond. Hesitation is what we are trying to reduce or eliminate. It is far better to be uncomfortable in training than defeated by fear.
Drill: Stand in the middle of the training space, with other students at various positions and proximities to you. Close your eyes while they move into new positions. When you open your eyes to see them coming from unknown angles, you will experience (in a small way) the feelings that are realistic on the street. Learn to continue moving even when you panic. Don’t have too much pride. If you get hit, learn from it. Who cares if you could have blocked that punch if you were ready?! The key here is to respond with less and less tension until you are able to absorb a strike and keep fighting, move with a grab and find an advantageous position, shift off line and redirect a strike, etc. Do not let yourself tense up and pre-load by taking a strong stance. Just move fluidly from wherever you find yourself at that moment.
- Transition
Concept: Things change all the time. It’s what makes life interesting. It’s also what makes fighting dangerous. You may take an opponent to the ground and dominate him (until his friends come around the corner and join in the fun). You may be the better striker (until he pulls a knife). Get it into your head that there is always the possibility of an unexpected event changing the equation. You need to be able to adapt and keep fighting.
Drill: Work from one standard to another. For example, begin standing and transition to the ground. And then start out on the ground and work to get back to your feet. Or better yet, move fluidly from standing to sitting to kneeling, to lying down to standing, and keep transitioning as you learn to work against attacks of all kinds. Don’t think of certain techniques as “ground” and others as “standing”. You will be a step behind if you have to change approaches all the time. Continue to fight through changes and transitions as if there is no difference between them, because there isn’t.
Concluding remarks:
Have fun in training, and keep it as practical as you can. The key is to make progress, learning about your art and yourself all the time. Position yourself in a fight, as in life, for the best possible outcome. And above all else, don’t let others dictate the limits of your existence. Don’t live in fear. When others crumble, rise above.
Stand!
