Chapter 2 - Stress Inoculation Standing-Up
Most beginning martial artists learn, within the first 6 months of their training, that when somebody throws a punch at them they are going to flinch. This response from flinching gets slowly desensitized as the students get more and more punches thrown towards their face(in a small way this is stress inoculation). Obviously with our military paradigm, while training Navy Seals, everything has to be ramped up to the n’th degree. After the beginning student gets used to taking punches and kicks, now we spar two on one.
In the beginning everyone is going about 50%. Gradually this sort of sparring can be escalated to whatever degree is appropriate. It is important to know that the team of two, are acting as coaches and teachers at the same time, and must work in tandem when assaulting one individual. Sometimes knowing when to give the man a little rest and let him up, other times intuiting when to really put the “screws” in.
Once one has put in roughly 10 hours of 2 on 1 sparring, and then they go back to sparring with just one individual, the feeling is deliciously indescribable. The usual issues that intimidate you don’t any more, moments that you would normally be in an uncomfortable or panicky position, you aren’t any more.
When you have twice as many punches hitting your face, it almost feels like a machine gun. Just as you get out of the way of one guy, it seems like you are stepping right into another guys punch. One’s line familiarization, reflexes, agility, footwork and of course pain tolerance(the ability to take a punch) are all tripled as a consequence of this type of training.
Once this is accomplished kickboxing, the absolute same principles can be applied with single stick, double stick, stick and knife, etc… Most professional fighters will tell you, the most challenging issues of training is finding a sparring partner that even resembles the abilities of the fella you are fighting. Well when you are sparring two people, that issue becomes irrelevant. So in conclusion stress inoculation training, I consider to be one of the very very highest principles relative to training someone for actual functional combat. I wouldn’t recommend allowing your students to run rampant with this type of training, as this is advanced teaching, and should be done by advanced teachers.
See ya next week !
Please check the Table of Contents for links to other chapters of this Online Book.
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