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Dash3
Dash3's picture
Inducing stress/distress

On one of the other threads (regarding wrist locks), Stuart Akers mentioned two methods of getting worked up prior to pressure testing: essentially, eyeballing each other during an aggressive approach and slapping each other.

I think this is an important point in pressure testing techniques and people and was wondering what methods people use to simulate the stress/distress of an actual confrontation or if you think it unnecessary. Looking for how to get that chemical dump, reduced fine motor skills, tunnel vision/hearing...

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Great topic!

Realistic role play, screaming, shouting, inducing extreme physical fatigue before a drill (while partners / enemies are fresh) can all help. Having people free to attack others at any point in the class can also induce genuine surprise (especially if some don’t know that the case). Getting the students to close their eyes before beginning an unknown drill is also useful i.e. they have no idea how many people there are facing and how they are going to attack. Even something as simple as spinning people around so they are off balance and disorientated before a drill can work (obviously taking suitable safety precautions) and that’s not a bad way to simulate some aspects of getting struck either. As has been suggested, “hard eyes” before and after drills can also help (although folks get desensitised to that pretty quickly).  

What methods to others use?

All the best,

Iain

Mark B
Mark B's picture

I think Iain has most of them there

I sometimes have a look at my online bank balance, that never fails to cause me stress and distress, although clearly that will only work on an individual level :-)

Regards 

Mark 

Iain Abernethy
Iain Abernethy's picture

Mark B wrote:
I sometimes have a look at my online bank balance, that never fails to cause me stress and distress, although clearly that will only work on an individual level :-)

Love it! I do a similar thing, but ignore the minus sign at the front until the last second for that full on adrenal dump :-)

All the best,

Iain

Mark B
Mark B's picture

Oh yes indeed.

Imagine my horror when I discovered that the little line was in fact a minus sign, not a hyphen.  

Seriously though, I think any exercise that takes you to a place you don't want to be is appropriate,  whether by inducing exhaustion,  a sudden addition of a "fear factor " or any other method/exercise that individual instructors can think up.

An example would be tomorrows training session at my dojo. The guys know we're practicing Naihanchi templates, what they don't know is that intermittently one will get the boxing gloves on and attempt to deliver full energy strikes, their partner will need to practice their Uke Waza with that element of stress/fear and make it work.

I don't think it needs to be any more complicated than that 

Regards 

Mark