Hard Target Training Weekend
“We assume that vehicles drive on roads” is a line made by “Hard Target” pioneer, Mo Teague to illustrate the problem with complacent thinking. He backs up this point with a tragic anecdote. A mother was walking hand-in-hand with her child down a high street when a lorry mounted the pavement and hit the child. It was reported that the incident happened so quickly and the vehicle was travelling with such velocity that the child was hit before the mother saw the lorry. Horrifically she still held her child’s arm after the lorry had passed by. The incident was witnessed, on holiday, by one of Mo’s instructors. It’s a shocking and terrible story. The mother who was affected by the tragedy doesn’t need to hear about what she could have done and there is no way anyone with an ounce of human sympathy would attempt to do this. Sadly, however, those who teach the soft skills of awareness and attitude need to build on from such bad experiences. This is why such an incident serves as a strong anecdote or case study to illustrate the importance of not making good assumptions in potentially dangerous situations.
It might seem a little sanctimonious or idealistic to say that we should always be prepared for the unexpected and react accordingly. In response to the example given, the average parent might furrow their brow and retort with something like “So you are saying that you would hear an approaching lorry when walking down a busy pavement with numerous noisy vehicles passing you by and have enough time to respond to the speed of said approaching lorry?” The truth is no one is always ready. In self defence we work in, for want of a more accurate label, “the real world” and cannot give absolutes, guarantees or easy solutions. What we can do, however, is use data derived from credible sources and valid experience to improve training methods in order make a person better equipped for worst case situations. On from this we can routinely update this data and test the students practicing it to confirm a better chance of them avoiding or surviving said situations. This is how Fire Safety, Road Safety and just about every other robust form of self preservation training was and continues to be developed. So, yes I can say that a person who is adequately switched on will have a better chance of recognizing a situation or environment suddenly changing, giving them enough time to react appropriately. A switched-on person will routinely and calmly take in their environment, looking ahead and around at what is going on, just as a good driver will look ahead of the traffic, regulate their speed accordingly and have trained responses to correctly execute braking, steering, gears when appropriate.
I grew up in a family that lived on the edge, travelling from showground to showground not knowing what to expect as they exposed themselves strange environments. To make matters even edgier, my father is a wild animal trainer as is my uncle and some of my cousins and as was my grandfather, great uncle, and other relations. A wild animal’s actions are unpredictable and their propensity for violence is backed up by far deadlier natural tools and far faster reactions. So, how does a wild animal trainer cope with this? He has to use the one thing that elevated the rather pathetically equipped naked ape to the top of food chain: his brains. By being prepared with proven and tested game plans and by being in a state of relaxed awareness, Jeff Cooper’s code yellow, a wild animal trainer puts himself ahead of his far more savage and ferocious charge. He assumes the worst case situation and is ready for it. For those of you who have never observed this, it is a piece of self defence poetry to watch how a person brought up around or who works with wild animals acts when they see a potentially dangerous animal. My cousin in South Africa remarked to me how one of my Dad’s trainers immediately and instinctively looked around for a stick when he entered a pen that contained two cheetahs. He had been assured by cousin about the dog-like nature of these particular animals, their mild temperaments to anything but their prey. Cheetahs fair pretty poorly against other large felines as they sacrifice pretty much everything for their incredible speed, making them no match for a leopard that might even consume them. Nevertheless, my father’s trainer had been brought up his father, who was also a wild animal trainer, around circus folk and received tuition off my father, to always be pessimistic about a situation that involves a wild animal. Even a large dog will elicit a similar response in most wild animal trainers. It’s all in their specific safety training.
Going back to Mo’s anecdote it is important to mention that the victims involved in the incident were holiday makers. One might speculate that the mother was normally a very alert and switched-on person when it came to her child’s safety. Unless most of the child’s upbringing was done by other members of the family, we might assume that the child had been capably brought up and protected from lethal dangers around and outside the house. The child was nourished appropriately so that it lived to the age when the tragic accident occurred. The child was probably inoculated against dangerous diseases and awareness of taking correct medical attention was followed when any small mishaps had occurred. Dangerous substances and objects were kept away from the child as she or he grew up. Power sockets were plugged up or kept out of reach, as were electrical appliances and so on. In addition to this we might assume that the parent tutored their child on basic safety rules. The child had reached an age where it could walk; demonstrating a degree of basic parental competence and holding the child’s hand demonstrated at least one good safety habit. Unfortunately without the sense of awareness behind holding a holding a child is comparable with the person who installs fire alarms but fails to test them.
I have already written an article on awareness http://www.clubbchimera.com/?p=463 that demonstrates the difference between paranoia and awareness, so I feel there is no need to repeat myself here. Suffice to say that if you think living for the moment and being generally switched-on is the same as jumping at shadows and walking around a quiet suburban town with an armoury strapped around you then I think you need to look up the words “moderation” and “balance”, and not to mention the logical fallacy argument known as “the slippery slope”! Being aware means recognising, reading and responding what is actually happening around you rather than spending too much time thinking about the past and future. Is this really too much to ask?
The problem is that many of us are softened up the largely safe societies we have built up around us. Furthermore according to most scientific studies and the book “Mismatch” our bodies are out of sync with the world we have created. We feel stress, fear and various other emotional feelings in connection with non-life threatening situations. Because most of the time these aren’t life threatening situations there is a danger of becoming de-sensitized, making become less aware. Alternatively we over-react because we have little experience in coping with the real threat and our conscious mind doesn’t know how to cope with the fight, flight or freeze survival responses being fed to us by our mid-brain. More details for this and the research around it can be found in the works of Lt. Col. Dave Grossman (“On Killing” book, “Bulletproof Mind” lectures and “On Combat” book). However, the biggest threat to awareness is our general demeanour of just accepting a level of normality and, worse still, projecting that same level of normality onto another environment. The mother in the anecdote was at a holiday resort and had perhaps let her guard down for that very reason. She was feeling relaxed or preoccupied with the business of being on holiday, letting her mind go into autopilot.
Being around wild animals all my life I have seen and experienced bad mistakes made by assuming the best out of situations where there is a clear danger. My own hand had a chunk taken out of it by a hyena I had helped hand-rear from a cub. I was 16 at the time and my mother had warned me not to go near him. Up until six months previously I had walked this same hyena on a lead, but now the animal was fully mature and in a pen with a female. I had also changed a bit in appearance too since I had last seen him. I heard my mother’s warning, but being a 16 year old I did not heed it. I was making some dog food up in front of the pen and the hyena came close to the front, where I – accepting the normal way he and I had interacted previously – instinctively touched his head. A hyena possesses powerful jaws, designed to crush bones. Whatever it latches onto is not coming back. These thoughts immediately entered my head when the animal bit into my palm heel at the base of my thumb – fortunately not my actual thumb! My reaction arc made me snatch my hand back as soon as I realized what had happened. I was very fortunate it hadn’t taken a digit. Nevertheless the ugly scar left after some great plastic surgery involving a skin graft and 12 stitches, reminds me to be sanctimonious about other people’s stupidity.
Years later I have often taken on the unofficial role of managing volunteers and staff to man the various areas of my parents’ private when there is an Open Day. Because it is a private collection it is only usually geared up for film crews, still photographers and the like who rent my parents’ services. When we present an Open Day, it is a mammoth task that requires a lot of preparation. The advantage is members of the public get closer to animals than they ever would do at a zoo or even a safari park, but this also comes with having those minding the zoo being needed to pay very close attention. I have to drill all volunteers on what to expect from the large number of visitors and my advice is always to assume the worst. Volunteers are regularly rotated in order to keep them on the ball and not to become too familiar with their environment. Still, the day is long and the work can get tedious. Incidents are unlikely, as most people are sensible, read the signage, are kept back by safety barriers and are responsible with their children. Nevertheless, odd incidents occur that shock my volunteers despite my warnings. We have had adults hold their children up the bars of tigers and allow them to wrestle with a plant that the animal has caught hold of. Furthermore, children (and adults) will still their fingers in the bars of small primates, assuming that they will be cute and passive, and not interpret the fingers as being food.
The problem is we accept what is normal. This is why schools and workplaces are instructed to run regular fire drills and bring in fire safety officers to train them in the use of fire extinguishers. It is partly because of this regular system of drilling that death by fire is very rare. In fact, it is far rarer than death or injury by civilian assault, which is the area of interest we are concentrating on in the “Hart Target” training courses. This is, after all, an article relating to self defence. I just wanted to show a wider range of self protection and how the same principles apply.
In conclusion assuming the best of potentially dangerous situations isn’t wise. Assess the danger. Just because something hasn’t happened, doesn’t mean it won’t. Vehicles mainly obey the rules of the road that prevent them from hitting people, but don’t assume they always will. Don’t assume they will even stay on the road. Our road safety training that we learn from when we are very young is based on this pessimistic view. The same should go with our self defence training.
Useful links:
CCMA self protection information
http://www.clubbchimera.com/?page_id=262
DON’T MISS THE “HARD TARGET” TRAINING WEEKEND, 18 and 19 October LAUNCHING CCMA & WORLD COMBAT ARTS’ NEW SELF DEFENCE SERVICE FEATURING FOUR INSTRUCTORS.
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