Training under stress

MJM

MJM

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been doing some thinking about something i have been hearing a lot about recently, training "under stress". Had a discussion with a friend regarding a training course he took in Tennessee this year. He told me that during this course he was made to run, lift heavy objects, do push-ups and sit-ups immediately before most live fire shoots. He, as a slightly older guy, was not really happy having paid a pretty penny to "work out" before shooting as he called it. He was told by the instructor that it was to "simulate" what the body would experience during a deadly threat encounter and help him train "under stress" to better be prepared for such encounter should it ever occur. I did see a recent post regarding a similar training technique, but the OPs regimen seemed to focus more on general physical prepardeness or endurance training, not preparing oneself for how the body would respond during an actual encounter. I get that; however fight or flight does not pertain to exercise and only few physiologic parallels exist between the two(including but not limited to elevated BP, heart rate..etc). the differences are so great and cannot be trained for on any range through any course but i hear this type of training being touted as meritable.

getting your heart rate and blood pressure up and improving your overall conditioning by swimming everyday will not prepare you for the s*#t show of trying to outswim a Great White, its just that different.

I am just curious to see what people think about this type of training?
 
We incorporate stuff like this, our instructors will ask questions and if you cant answer it you jog, lights,smoke , disassembling and reasseembling weapons all kinds of great stuff to raise your stress level....not during any qual just training..I highly recommend this type of traning it just sucks for the average person who can't do this at most ranges.
 
I agree with your assessment, however, simulating "Fight or flight" is not an easy task. Even is your instructor was firing blanks over your head you would still know they were blanks and it would only influence your chemical cocktail so much.
 
it's a tool to "replicate" stress, comotion, distractions ect... the training is meant to condition the person to function under stress.

it works... it's not a 'catch all'

it just one of many training methods out there.
 
Mike-Mike said:
I agree with your assessment, however, simulating "Fight or flight" is not an easy task. Even is your instructor was firing blanks over your head you would still know they were blanks and it would only influence your chemical cocktail so much.
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agreed
 
Even a small amount of stress will make people's skill go down the crapper, so any artificial stress that can be added is a good thing. If you can shoot straight after doing push up, you certainly won't shoot straight in a real fight
 
MJM said:
been doing some thinking about something i have been hearing a lot about recently, training "under stress". Had a discussion with a friend regarding a training course he took in Tennessee this year. He told me that during this course he was made to run, lift heavy objects, do push-ups and sit-ups immediately before most live fire shoots. He, as a slightly older guy, was not really happy having paid a pretty penny to "work out" before shooting as he called it. He was told by the instructor that it was to "simulate" what the body would experience during a deadly threat encounter and help him train "under stress" to better be prepared for such encounter should it ever occur. I did see a recent post regarding a similar training technique, but the OPs regimen seemed to focus more on general physical prepardeness or endurance training, not preparing oneself for how the body would respond during an actual encounter. I get that; however fight or flight does not pertain to exercise and only few physiologic parallels exist between the two(including but not limited to elevated BP, heart rate..etc). the differences are so great and cannot be trained for on any range through any course but i hear this type of training being touted as meritable.

getting your heart rate and blood pressure up and improving your overall conditioning by swimming everyday will not prepare you for the s*#t show of trying to outswim a Great White, its just that different.

I am just curious to see what people think about this type of training?
Click to expand...

I've never been in a gunfight or really had my life threatened, but I think everyone has had an "oh, shit" moment at one point. Maybe you were "this close" to stepping out in front of a bus, or maybe you get into a car wreck. Anyway, immediately afterwards you can feel your body's chemical response to the stress, and suddenly even walking takes effort. That's basically just a form of fight-or-flight, even though the threat has passed.

While run-of-the-mill exercise will not really simulate anything except fatigue, if you do some serious conditioning right before trying to shoot, your body will release endorphins and it does kind of feel similar. But you'd have to be pushing yourself to the limit, not doing a few pushups at your own pace.
 
Supermoto said:
Even a small amount of stress will make people's skill go down the crapper, so any artificial stress that can be added is a good thing. If you can shoot straight after doing push up, you certainly won't shoot straight in a real fight
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Ayup... You don't need to work too hard to deal with this IMUO, no special equipment required...

Lots of muscle memory training and a little running will do about as much as can be done...

My personal experience with a true fight or flight was that ability to implement what I did or did not know was a tiny fraction of the problem. Realizing that I needed to do something at all was a far bigger issue... Once you reach that point, you can do whatever you've done before - the more repetition (even without stress), the better...

Not surprisingly in the grand scheme, we aren't all that helpless as animals... The bigger trouble is that once you've been identified as food, you are competing against another, relatively speaking, highly intelligent predator... GAME ON!
 
MJM said:
I am just curious to see what people think about this type of training?
Click to expand...

I get the impression that he went to a class expecting to learn about shooting, and was surprised when they taught him about fighting.

cekim said:
Doesn't MA have a law against human targets? [wink]
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The law only applies to ranges with a "club LTC," and as far as NES knows the only range with such a license in Mass. is one in Andover. Yes I got the humor, but I don't want people to get the wrong idea about the law.
 
I'm a big fan of raising the heartbeat and getting some stress involved. With any weapon you shoot. One example: Years ago when I used to teach at USMC Designated Marksman school in Dam Neck VA we used to do a lot of drills with the students to improve their ability to deal with an increased heart-rate, and a little stress. The school was six weeks long; once the students checked in we sat them down and gave them each one a live round. They used Designated Marksman Rifle's or DMR's, modified M-14's that were hand built for us up in Quantico. We told them at some point during the school they would be given instructions on a hostage scenario and would be required to eliminate the threat. Everything and every=where they went at this school was done as a team, but they shot and were graded on this event individually. We usually never started the drills until week four, when the bulk of the range time was over and we moved in the last two weeks, which were the evaluation phases.

What we would do is get a hot range cleared by the RSO, (we shared the range with the SEALs on Dam Neck so it wasn't tough to get one of our ranges hot 24/7) we would pick a student to test, and then go find them. They wouldn't be on the range at the time of the call out. That is important to note from a clean weapon and cold bore standpoint, because that is the condition of the weapon if they ever got a real call out. Sometimes they were at chow, sometimes in the classroom, sometimes they would be in the woods doing KIM's games or during the maaany hours of observation exercise we put on for them.

The basic point of the drill was to see how they would respond, act, and deliver once called to duty when they were not expecting it.

If the students didn't pass this drill, and they got one shot at it, they did not graduate the school. Even if they were the class top-shooter, reguardless of rank, or if they were the best guy in the world, they did not get a graduating certificate, only a certificate of attendance.

Below is a YouTube clip from one of those drills -- these Marines when called out were about a half mile away, cleaning weapons outside of the pistol range classroom. Get some.
 
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GSG said:
I get the impression that he went to a class expecting to learn about shooting, and was surprised when they taught him about fighting.
Click to expand...
nope. nothing to do with any training i have ever taken. just read about this recently and was curious about others take on its merits. Again, what i have read talks about "stress" likening it to the "stress" one may experience in a confrontation or atleast strongly alluding to it. I disagree with the concept of the stress of exercise being similar to the stress one would experience during a confrontation and see some instructors are using them interchangeably. raising the heartrate does not equate "stress". i do agree with importance of repetition and that during a confrontation one will likely default to their lowest level of training, this i find to be extremely useful.

Jose said:
Short of going to the two-way range, do you have any better ideas?
Click to expand...
for what?
i suppose that if the overall concept of training is to prepare for a real life encounter then i believe that repetition of the basics, ie. drawing from concealment, retention/point shooting and combat accuracy as well as force-on-force training would be much more useful than exercising before training.
 
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TheWookie said:
The basic point of the drill was to see how they would respond, act, and deliver once called to duty when they were not expecting it.
Click to expand...

+1

MJM said:
I disagree with the concept of the stress of exercise being similar to the stress one would experience during a confrontation and see some instructors are using them interchangeably.
Click to expand...

I disagree with that as well. It's not identical, but it's supposed to give you a taste of what to expect, because when you're tired you won't be operating at 100%. It'll also get you out of the habit of only focusing on trigger time on a quiet range in nice weather.

MJM said:
i suppose that if the overall concept of training is to prepare for a real life encounter then i believe that repetition of the basics, ie. drawing from concealment, retention/point shooting and combat accuracy as well as force-on-force training would be much more useful than exercising before training.
Click to expand...

Your situation may not turn lethal until you're already tired and worn out from fighting hands on, running away, or who knows what else. The hardcore career criminals train themselves to fight in a lot of different ways, including randomly increasing and decreasing their level of force to draw you out and set you up.
 
when I teach any attack prevention classes, I have each participant stand in the middle, close there eyes (hands over them), then we spin them around a few times to diorient, then have a random amount of people "attack" them (go up grab and shake a little, or push a little). that way they dont know how many or where from they will be attacked. Lots of yelling and low light helps this aswell. the anticipation also helps. i've seen people do everything from freaking out and jump/pumble the crap out of us (we were padded suits) to adults shriveling down and crying. all works well to get them to learn there adrenal responce and allows them to work with what they do naturaly.
 
think about the kind of training you get at a reputable karate school. You run and do push-ups, sit-ups, etc, and then go right into defensive drills.

This is why drills are so important. The key to being a disciplined fighter is not messing with fight or flight, but to drill to the point where the action becomes immediate, and the body reacts before the mind knows what's going on. Doing viciously repetitive duck/right hook drills over and over again make these defensive responses immediate. Same thing with the explosive move off the line of attack/lift shirt/draw from concealment/point aim/fire drill. If you do this over and over thousands of times this response will almost furnish itself from muscle memory when called upon.

I do push-ups at the range and then go in and shoot. Under even that much stress my accuracy goes down about 75%. Any simulation would help. I suppose it would be cool to ride The Superman at six flags and then try and hit a 10 ring at 50 feet.

When properly trained, you do what you have to do, and the adrenaline comes after you realize what just happened.
 
Wasn't it Ayoob that was using a stun gun in some of his advanced classes while people were shooting drills. I would think that would be enough different than push ups and jumping jax.

B
 
MJM said:
i suppose that if the overall concept of training is to prepare for a real life encounter then i believe that repetition of the basics, ie. drawing from concealment, retention/point shooting and combat accuracy as well as force-on-force training would be much more useful than exercising before training.
Click to expand...
The two training items that you mentioned are necessary but they are "not more useful".

Physical conditioning is necessary to win fights, even gunfights. Being made to exercise so that one's heartbeat and respirations are elevated and one's muscles are starting to burn then made to shoot accurately is probably a pretty damned good approximation of a fight that starts physical, distance is created, and a handgun solution is applied to the problem.
 
SIMS!!!!

Nothing like shooting at each other with REAL guns.....

Weaponcraft Training is one of the few places, anywhere local, with classes for civilians with SIMS.....

We ran a class yesterday, and eyes were as big as saucers when getting shot at by bad guys for the first time.

Talk about stress level, heart rate, etc.......

Stay tuned ....... more classes to follow......
 
bpm990d said:
Wasn't it Ayoob that was using a stun gun in some of his advanced classes while people were shooting drills.
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LFI-2. You only get zapped once. I took it, got zapped, and then hit the target. Ayoob was focusing more on a different lesson there, but I agree with the basic tenets of adding stress. There are a number of ways to add stress: exercise, competition, etc.

I've never been in a gunfight. I have had adrenalin dumps on a couple occasions. I agree that the typical techniques used to add stress don't measure up to a real adrenalin dump. But as supermoto said, if I can't hit the target during the stress of an IDPA match or a man-on-man competition at a shooting course, then I certainly won't hit the perp on a two-way range.

So I support the use of stress during training.
 
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I don't think it's very close to simulating fight or flight, but practicing while building up an oxygen debt is still very valuable. It's easy to get winded very quickly in any fight. Students should know how their bodies work. Though I have never been in a gun fight, I have certainly been to many serious medical emergencies. The patients don't read the text book; the calls that went best were the ones where all my equipment was readilly accessible and operating properly, and the ones where I had recently reviewed the drug doses or algorithms. So the key, I think, is preparation, practice, and visualization. Having a Plan B is also good, as is being able to punt when everything starts going south.

I like this quote attributed to Abe Lincoln: “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax”
Jeff
 
see how you do WITHOUT EAR PROTECTION, and with gloves on, if you want to know how badlly "stress" is going to affect you. :) Adrenalin makes your nerve-muscle connections "sloppy". Get into competition, see what mere "match stress" can do for you. Once that you and others expect you to WIN, you will feel a lot more pressure than when you were a nobody, believe that.
 

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