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Thursday, September 24, 2020

Mental Preparation for a Fight: Some Videos

 


    The video is a good summary of the factors into winning a gun fight, including individual preparedness. What you should pay attention to is the discussion on "stress inoculation"--getting use to the adrenal rush and controlling it. Other factors raised are resilience and mental toughness, what he terms "never a fair fight" (including situational awareness/know your environment, and recognize signs of impending violence), don't going and looking for a fight, know the laws of your jurisdiction, physical fitness and training.  It is also noted that winning a gun fight is often a case of avoiding a gun fight.

    Somewhat similarly, Marcus Wynne's recent post, "Neurophysiology and The Real Fight", includes a video featuring Geoff Thompson talking about the difference between martial arts and real street fighting. One of the key issues raised in that video is that to win means controlling the adrenal rush, and preemption of the other opponent--i.e., striking first. But to do so, you need to recognize the signs of someone preparing to attack (there we are back at that topic). 

    Wynne discusses the neurophysiology of a fight, and states: "An essential factor in superior performance under combat or 'immediate threat to life' stress is the optimal neurophysiological state, AND the ability to control that state at a pre-conscious/sub-conscious/unconscious level to maximize performance when it counts the most and when failure equals death." He also links to an article, "The Jedi Project" that discusses a study performed by the military looking at neurophysiological training for shooting weapons. One thing that Wynne has emphasized, and which is discussed in the article, is the importance of visualization in training our minds--visualize the task we are doing before hand. For instance, the article mentions that a couple of participants actually went so far as to visualize and shoot a shooting match in their heads the day prior to the competition. It also involves removing negatives from your thoughts. One thing that stuck out to me in this regard, because I've done it with my children and others that I've shown the basics of shooting, is to move a target close enough that they experience success on their first shooting rather than failures. Poor accuracy can be corrected later, but a poor experience can be forever. 

     (BTW: Wynne is going to be having a discussion in the near future with Chris Berka at Advanced Brain Monitoring to further discuss the research, so you might want to keep checking his site or sign up for an email notification as to when that will be available).

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