“For real sports journalism, the highlight of Pride is Sakuraba’s winning streak. […] It was officially the end of the illusion of Brazilians as being the strongest fighters, that Brazilian Jiu Jitsu was not the perfect fighting system and that a pro wrestler proved to be the strongest martial artist of all.”
—Tadashi Tanaka

A fascinating fighter, part catch-wrestler, part showman, part psychologist, Kazushi Sakuraba demonstrates how much of fighting involves expectations.  Brazilian Ju-Jitsu dominated the early decades of the UFC due in part to their being there at its birth.  The rules of UFC and the emerging expectations of how such fights would be fought plus the inate advantages of the strategy and technology of BJJ led to early dominance by fighters who had this skill.  Sakuraba came along, a wild card, and threw a bit of a monkey wrench into what had become a prevalent belief that every UFC fighter had to have BJJ to succeed.  Of course, there were a number of UFC fighters who came from a Greco-Roman wrestling tradition, but I think Sakuraba is interesting because of his unpredictability and his showmanship.  This ties in to my belief that in many streetfights, there is a very important element of theatre.  Savvy streetfighters know that the first punch is extremely important and that fights can be won or lost based on how got the first shot in.  The sucker punch can be a very potent weapon.  So streetfighters (or straight up criminals) master the art of dissimulation.  They smile and put the opponent off-guard.  They watch and wait for the opponent to look away.  They ask a question, then strike.  They strike in the moment of distraction.

The fighters opposing Sakuraba were clearly surprised and perplexed by his unorthodox attacks and hi-jinks.  He came to one fight dressed as Super Mario.  He did cartwheels.  He attacked the feet, ankles, and legs of his opponents.

Wing Chun says “if it works, its Wing Chun.”  I take this to mean, we do the unexpected.  Back when it originated, many styles were circular, so Wing Chun took the straight line.  Other styles were using jumping high kicks.  Wing Chun only kicked low.  Wing Chun is first and foremost a way of thinking about fighting.

“True philosophers who are burning with love for truth and learning never see themselves . . . as wise
men, brim-full of knowledge . . . For most of them would admit that even the very greatest number of
things of which we know is only equal to, the very smallest fraction of things of which we are ignorant.
Nor are these philosophers so addicted to any kind of tradition or doctrine that they suffer themselves
to become their slaves, and thus lose their liberty.”
William Harvey, English Physician

One of the reasons I study Wing Chun and honor the system is because of its clear logic and scientific rigor. While they may not have called it the scientific method when they were developing it in China, by the time it reached us in the West, after passing through the hands of Western-educated Ip Man and Western-boxing enthusiast Wong Shun Leung, it had been subjected to a great deal of filtering and design modifications which fit very well with what we call the “scientific method.” My observation is that the most successful practitioners of this art are the ones that hew most closely to these ideas, which include testing hypotheses and practicing skepticism. I’ve found looking at the system through this lens has helped me achieve more and more clarity.

I appreciate those teachers who have followed Harvey’s definition of “true philosophers,” who never see themselves as complete, who understand the many things they don’t know, and who stay free through their skepticism and constant condition of student.  Certainty in martial arts is stagnation in my opinion.  We have theories which are in need of constant validation and which need to always prove themselves true for today.

“Bushidō is in being crazy to die. Fifty or more could not kill one such a man”. Nabeshima Naoshige

Preparing for violence is one of those “Catch-22” situations.

You’re trying to learn how to avoid violence, but have little experience.

But you don’t really want to go out and get experience, right?  So you have to find a workaround, something that is proven to be useful.

I looked into how cops prepare.  These are people, especially in certain specialties and locations, who can be reasonably certain of experiencing the real thing.  How do they prepare?

In Deadly Force Encounters: What Cops Need To Know To Mentally And Physically Prepare For And Survive A Gunfight, Dr. Alexis Artwohl (behavioral science consultant to law enforcement ) and Loren W. Christensen (Vietnam vet, ex-cop, and Eastern martial artist) detail their recommendations for police who wish to prepare intelligently for extreme violence.

Unsurprisingly, the big problem is dealing with fear.  The surprising thing is its mostly the physiological effects that are out of your control, aka what your nervous system does in your body when it perceives a life threatening situation.

Its a weird area, because you have to start talking about the brain as two different entities.  There’s “you,” the conscious actor, and then there is the rest of your brain, the unconscious process, doing its own thing in the background.  But these unconscious automatic parts of your brain are “intelligent” too.  This part of the brain is watching and listening to the same sights and sounds “you” see and hear.  The information coming in through your senses follows two paths.  The faster path runs through your amygdala and other ancient parts of your brain.  This part of your brain will evaluate the information based on very old assessments going back to the African plains.

Is it a snake or a spider – JUMP!!!!

This part of the brain is jumpy and paranoid and when it gets startled, it will cause many effects in your body.  This is the challenge of a modern person in a dangerous situation.  You need to use your higher brain and keep yourself under control while affected by the intense physiological symptoms of fear.  Or, more precisely, what they call a state of arousal of the sympathetic nervous system.

The Autonomic Nervous System is made up of two parts, the parasympathetic (which controls low arousal states) and the sympathetic (which controls high arousal states).

I first heard about this stuff in Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s books.  While the information is slowly being processed by the prefrontal cortex (basically the conscious “you”), your body is already responding according to ancient scripts.

“When you perceive a threat, the sympathetic part of your ANS will kick in and your body will start to experience a high arousal state.” Some people enjoy this feeling. This is the rush from jumping out of a plane.

When we are in fear of our lives, a whole host of sensations and physical responses might occur.  These are the effects that cops have to control when in a gunfight or dealing with a knife wielding assailant, as in the video clip below.  They are trying to calmly deal with the threat, while they have a pounding heart, trembling, rapid, shallow breathing, dizziness, nausea, sweating, dry mouth, tingling in limbs, the urge to urinate or defecate.  Tunnel vision, auditory exclusion, time distortion, dissociation.  Automatic behavior.

Automatic behavior is what they call it when after the fact you say, “it just happened.” My gun appeared in my hand and he was dead. My hand hurt and he was laid out on the floor in front of me.

How do we prepare for all of this?  It helps if you anticipate it will happen..

A “deadly force encounter” for a civilian will almost always happen unexpectedly and will involve people who are probably irrational and volatile

The only way to prepare is to rehearse. You really can only rehearse by using your imagination. This is where Stress Inoculation Training comes in.

In Deadly Force Encounters, Artwohl and Christensen break Stress Inoculation Training into three parts, the first of which is the most important: conceptualization of the stressor.

You have to run through scenarios in your head and rehearse what you would do.  I suspect this is the reason for Walking Dead’s huge popularity.  The news makes people anxious.  So many of us are instinctively drawn to entertainment which helps us visualize dangerous scenarios.  What would i do if…?

So the best thing you can do is accept the reality and likelihood of fear and stress responses in these situations.

Expect it will happen. You may freeze. You may piss yourself. Whatever.

Practice controlled breathing. Practice visualization.

In this clip below, the poor cop does not want to shoot this guy, but the man seems suicidally determined to force the cop to shoot.  This is so common they call it “suicide by cop.”   Note the cop wisely keeps this guy at the 21 foot foot limit.

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