The Mindset Game.
It is said there is a hierarchy of factors when it comes to survival, be it the in sense of being lost in the wilderness, to combat or indeed self-defence. People often fall into the trap of thinking that all they need are the right tools and they'll be just fine, an attitude known in some circles as 'all gear, no idea'. In the UK, this is something of an irrelevance for self-defence as the carry of defensive weaponry is prohibited (and boy do I have some opinions on that), but we can see this tendency play out quite clearly in, say, the United States, where open carriage of firearms is routine. Unfortunately, the tool is only as good as the wielder. In fact, ‘equipment’ is at the very bottom of the survival hierarchy. A case in point was a video I saw comparing civilian firearms holders with a police officer in a simulated violent altercation: a woman with a pistol on her hip just stood there and waited for the simulated assailant to draw their own weapon and open fire, whereas the professional had their weapon raised from the outset, had cover, and took the initiative when they saw the attacker go for the draw.
So, if equipment is at the bottom of the hierarchy, what sits above it, and what's at the top? Well, ironically enough, the second-from-bottom in the survival hierarchy is in fact our bread-and-butter: skills. Of course, having the appropriate skills to deal with a given situation (see the example above) is essential to make best use of the tools you have, even if those tools are just your own physical and mental capabilities. However, the skills you cultivate must be appropriate to the conditions you expect to encounter. If you were about to embark on an adventurous trip across, say, the Australian Outback, then learning how to improvise a fishing rod or how to handle a sail boat in a storm won't help you, but knowing how to keep your car running in the desert may well be the difference between life and death. To bring us back to Krav Maga, this is why I de-empathise firearms techniques in my classes, because the odds of you seeing a handgun outside of professional, properly-authorised hands are extremely remote (unless you're keeping the kind of the company that I simply cannot help you with). Expending great effort in nailing those particular skills, fascinating though they are, would not be a effective use of your limited time. This is all a long-winded way of getting to the next level on the survival hierarchy: having the appropriate strategy, and thus cultivating the appropriate skills.
That brings us, at last, to the apex of the hierarchy, the single most important factor to surviving a dangerous situation: mindset. Put another way, this is the simple will to survive. Having top-notch gear is useless without appropriate skills. Having the skills to use your tools perfectly are no good if these don't suit the situation you're in, and having the right tools and skills for the situation you're in won't help you if you lack the will to use them. Now, this may seem faintly absurd in its obviousness: we all want to live. And yet, in the instant, people will freeze, not because of a sudden failure of ones survival instinct, but because of some mental block that prevents them from acting. In my experience of teaching, typically that block is related to the civility in which most (!) of us are properly raised: don't hit your siblings, don't raise your voice in anger, don't make a scene, and so on and so forth. And this is no bad thing: I'm not interested in teaching people to be better thugs. But that civilised manner can be a detriment when confronted with unrestricted violence. You can see it in training, where people who are powerful hitters with great movement and tactics suddenly turn into kittens when I ask them to really raise their voice – the internal prohibition against raising their voice in anger is overriding. A related issue is one of debilitating compassion and concern for the assailant; 'they've had an abusive upbringing', 'they're just desperate for drugs – they're unwell, not evil!', any one of a million justifications which may prevent you from acting appropriately in your own defence, out of kind-hearted concern for the attacker. To further compound this, people out there with predatory and malicious intent know that most of us carry these socialised barriers to action with us, and can and do use it to their advantage.
Developing the right attacking mindset for confronting street violence can be extremely challenging, but it is essential. We have methods to build it in our training, but a key element is in making some decisions long before we leave the house: if something kicks off, are you prepared to do what you need to in order to return home safe? Can you live with the consequences of action? What about the consequences of inaction? What if inaction brings consequences to your loved ones, should the worst happen and you come to serious harm? Are you prepared to prioritise compassion for yourself and your nearest and dearest, over a violent stranger who, regardless of their motivations, means to take whatever they can from you or in some other way cause you harm? None of this is to say you should go about your life being paranoid or belligerent – that would not be healthy, and no one wants to be around a person like that anyway – but by making the clear decision to get home safe no matter what will go some way to stopping a mental block from staying your hand at the crucial juncture. Everything else, from making the decision to learn self-defence, to putting in the time to developing the skillset, is ultimately secondary.
Beyond making the decision to fight, mindset is also about seeing the matter through to the end. Here we’re thinking more about grit and determination, continuing through pain, exhaustion and frustration until we can escape. This aspect of mindset is absolutely something we can and do develop in our routine training. This may be part of a technical stress drill, but we can also develop that relentlessness in its own right. One of my favourite drills for this is the ‘Pressure Cooker’, where the student is surrounded by pad holders and they just have to keep on hitting until the bell. Variations on the classic ‘Zombie Game’ can create similar effects. Feel free to have a poke around on my social media channels to see some examples of this kind of drill! Determination to persist is no less important than committing to action in the first place - giving up part way through has the same effect as not even trying - and so training in Krav Maga will absolutely develop this essential capability.
All blog posts are reflective of the private opinions of the author, and are not to be considered as an officially-held position of any organisation, including the IKMF and Pentagon Krav Maga. Pentagon Krav Maga, the IKMF and the author will not held be liable for any action or inaction taken by a third-party as a result of this article.
