One example of this can be observed in the way police officers conducted range training with revolvers for almost a century. Because they wanted to avoid having to pick up all the spent brass afterwards, the officers would fire six shots, stop, dump their empty brass from their revolvers into their hands, place the brass in their pockets, reload, and then continue shooting. Everyone assumed that officers would never do that in a real gunfight. Can you imagine this in a real situation? “Kings X! Time out! Stop shooting so I can save my brass.” Well, it happened. After the smoke had settled in many real gunfights, officers were shocked to discover empty brass in their pockets with no memory of how it got there. On several occasions, dead cops were found with brass in their hands, dying in the middle of an administrative procedure that had been drilled into them.
Stories like this would be hard to believe if you heard them in a bar. It is “passing strange,” indeed, but after hearing about this repeatedly in personal interviews and seeing it in scholarly research we know that it is actually happening. In biomechanics and kinesiology this is called the Law of Specificity. In other words, you cannot get stronger legs by doing push-ups; you must train your specific leg muscles to get stronger legs.
One police officer gave another example of learning to do the wrong thing. He took it upon himself to practice disarming an attacker. At every opportunity, he would have his wife, a friend or a partner hold a pistol on him so he could practice snatching it away. He would snatch the gun, hand it back and repeat several more times. One day he and his partner responded to an unwanted man in a convenience store. He went down one isle, while his partner went down another. At the end of the first aisle, he was taken by surprise when the suspect stepped around the corner and pointed a revolver at him. In the blink of an eye, the officer snatched the gun away, shocking the gunman with his speed and finesse. But no doubt this criminal was surprised and confused even more when the officer handed the gun right back to him, just as he had practiced hundreds of times before. Fortunately for this officer, his partner came around the corner and shot the subject.
Disarm practice
When you practice gun, knife, club, and arnis stick disarms, do you hand the weapon back to you partner each time?
After reading this chapter you might want to reevaluate whether that is a good way to train.
Whatever is drilled in during training comes out the other end in combat. In one West Coast city, officers training in defensive tactics used to practice an exercise in such a manner that it could have eventually been disastrous in a real life-and-death situation. The trainee playing the arresting officer would simulate a gun by pointing his finger at the trainee playing the suspect, and give him verbal commands to turn around, place his hands on top of his head, and so on. This came to a screeching halt when officers began reporting to the training unit that they had pointed with their fingers in real arrest situations. They must have pantomimed their firearms with convincing authority because every suspect had obeyed their commands. Not wanting to push their luck, the training unit immediately ceased having officers simulate weapons with their fingers and ordered red-handled dummy guns to be used in training.
Consider a shooting exercise introduced by the FBI and taught in police agencies for years. Officers were drilled on the firing range to draw, fire two shots, and then reholster. While it was considered good training, it was subsequently discovered in real shootings that officers were firing two shots and reholstering - even when the bad guy was still standing and presenting a deadly threat! Not surprisingly, this caused not just a few officers to panic and, in at least one case, it is believed to have resulted in an officer’s death.
Today, in most police agencies, officers are taught to draw, fire, scan, and assess. Ideally, the warrior should train to shoot until the deadly threat goes away, so it is best to fire at targets that fall after they have been hit with a variable number of shots. Today, there are pneumatically controlled steel targets on which photo realistic images are attached. The shooter might fire two rounds and the target falls, or the exercise can be designed so the target is supposedly wearing body armor and remains standing even after it is shot multiple times. To knock it down, the shooter must hit it in the head. Even better, in paintball or paint bullet training, the role players are instructed not to fall until they have been hit a specific number of times.
You do not rise to the occasion in combat; you sink to the level of your training. Do not expect the combat fairy to come bonk you with the combat wand and suddenly make you capable of doing things that you never rehearsed before. It will not happen.
There must be a continual effort to develop realistic simulations training so the warrior develops a set of skills that will transfer to reality. One two-tour Vietnam veteran put it this way.
“In Vietnam, I was always surprised to find I had done the right thing in tight situations. I sort of went into automatic and didn’t think about what I was doing, or even remember it later. I’m a firm believer in training, that dull, boring ‘If I have to do this one more time I’ll scream’ training that every GI hates. I hated it but in the end it let people like me perform in combat when common sense was telling me to run like hell.”
How you train is how you will perform for real is a truism for law enforcement, soldiers and martial artists. Some martial artists adamantly object to this, saying that they would never react in a high-stress situation in such a way as the examples given above. To them I say simply, “Sorry, but your opinion is wrong. There is too much evidence to the contrary. And if you don’t change your ways, you could be dead wrong.”
Here are a few ways that some martial artists train that could come back to bite them on the behind:
Train to miss: Punches and kicks are pulled three or four inches from their opponent.Has never been hit: Because students are taught to pull their techniques several inches short, they are not conditioned physically or psychologically to take a hit.Take one, give one: Never been trained to take a hit and respond immediately by hitting back.Train to pass by or pass over the target: High kicks are thrown so they pass over the opponent’s head.Ingrained ritual: Every drill or sparring exercise is preceded with a salute (sometime elaborate), a nod, a grunt or an “ooos,” and a pronounced step into a fighting stance.Excessive politeness: Accidental contact is followed by a partial salute and an apology.Acknowledgement of getting hit: A poorly controlled punch or kick hits and the recipient grabs the spot and calls time out.Acknowledgement of hitting: A punch or kick scores and the hitter raises his fist in triumph, turns his back, and walks back to his starting position.Over recognition of an error: An error in a drill receives a curse, a foot stomp, a shake of the head, or some other overt sign.Stop on an error: When a defense move misses or a takedown technique is done poorly, the action stops and everyone starts over.Stop in range: A technique is stopped for whatever reason and the attacker stays in range without doing anything.Stop after one hit scores: The attacker slams one in then stops, backs away, and basks in his glory.False confidence: Believes his weak hits that earned points in a tournament would stop a real attacker.Too many Hong Kong movies: Attacker does an excess of flippy-dippy kicks, somersaults, and tornado kicks.Dropping hands within range: Being in range with guard down and not attacking.Over reliance on safety equipment: Relying on the protective helmet to the extent that the head isn’t covered well. Relying on padded hands and feet too much.Telegraphing: Excessive wind up before punching.Never hitting low: Low blows are not allowed because they are illegal in sport.Targets ignored: Grapplers struggle for a hold while the opponent’s eyes, throat and groin are open and vulnerable.Opponent can’t punch or kick: Grapplers defend against other grapplers who are not trained in how to throw quality kicks and punches.Focus on one technique: Over relies on his favorite technique, no matter how many times it gets blocked, misses, or fails to have an effect.Hands the weapon back: Defender disarms a knife, stick, or gun and then hands the weapon back to the attacker.Doesn’t