Self Defense Training 2.0
Adrenal stress training and self defense - What doesn't kill you only makes you stronger! First lets start off by clarifying what adrenal stress training isn't! It isn't a silver bullet that will guarantee you will be as smooth as Jason Bourne in life or death altercations. But it will help save your backside when the proverbial stuff hits the fan. Once you are in the face of danger or the precursor to danger a cocktail of adrenaline and cortisol are dumped into your blood stream. How you react to this biochemical cocktail depends largely upon how many times you have been in this state before. This is where training comes in. The adrenaline dump has some immediate effects on your physiology. 1- Loss Of Fine Motor Movement This is why gross motor skills are the best foundation for self defense techniques. Hands will tremble and your manual dexterity will be limited. Have you ever been so jacked up and mad over something that you were not even able to write your name? 2- Limited Cognitive Skills Your brain basically only lets you think about survival. In other word you go back to your primate / caveman brain! This is why incorporating stress training into your self defense workouts is important. You cannot rely on the techniques and moves that were taught to you over the years in your martial arts training, because you can’t think or remember them! You need to train those techniques is an adrenalized state so that the muscle memory is hard wired and then the ability to be recalled when adrenalized happens more on a subconscious level. 3- Tunnel Vision, Poor Depth Perception And Auditory Exclusion Tunnel vision will make you less aware of the rest of the environment and can cost you dearly if one of the attackers friends is standing beside you and ready to pounce. Depth perception poses targeting problem and makes people and objects like guns, knive and clubs appear larger than they really are. Your brain will be so focused on survival that it will choose to ignore hearing certain sounds. Countless reports of struggling with an armed assailant discuss how when the gun actually went off, they didn’t hear it. Some people call it “ear blinking” 
4- Time Distortion Time will appear to slow down or speed up. If you’ve ever been in a vehicle accident you may have experienced the phenomenon of everything moving in slow motion. 5- Muscle Contraction Some muscle groups will tense up and contract. Consequently once everything is over and the adrenaline and cortisol have run their course, you will start to feel pulls and strains in parts of your body that you never even thought were hit or affected by the altercation. 6- Pain Tolerance Your tolerance for pain will increase. This is why pain compliance techniques have no place in the world of self defense. Some people even when adrenalized will feel and yield to a pain compliance techniques but there are some who will not. There are more physiological effects that the body experiences when under life or death stress but the above are the main ones to be aware of in order to incorporate adrenal stress training into your self defense training. I will share with you one more physiological response to extreme stress. You may have heard the saying that someone was “scared sh&#less” or “pissed their pants” because they were so scared. This is a reaction by the body to stress and it happens more frequently in combat but is rarely if ever talked about. The body is excreting fluid and waste due to muscle contractions and to make the body less heavy for running away or fighting. Chances are you will not get to this charged a state in your self defense training but if you are ever in a horrible life or death situation, you are better off knowing that it is a natural response to the stress. I’ve heard about cops joking that you might want to bag it for evidence just in case the defense attorney questions whether you were in real danger and actually feared for your life! Would they like to see exhibit A! Because of the adrenaline dump and the subsequent physiological responses that you experience the first time you experience adrenal stress training, you will be absolutely horrible at defending yourself. It doesn’t matter what style or martial art you are using, everything you have learned in the past will go out the window. This is not to say that all previous training is poor, it just means that you will need to condition yourself in a new operating environment to remember your past training. This is why adrenal stress training is so important. The only thing that makes you better is not style but exposure and action! You need effective role play and in your face action to train your body to harness the power of the adrenal rush. Without adrenal stress training you will freeze or be useless when exposed to life threatening situations. Go Back To Self Defense Conditioning From The Adrenal Stress Training Page
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