‘THE ONE YARD RULE AND THE EGG TIMER’
I was recently impressed by an article in MAI written by Maurice (‘Mo’) Teague. Not because Mo is a BCA Instructor, rather because it once again brought home the gulf between how we train on a regular basis, what we train for and how events unfold in real life where we may need to resort to our combative skills.
Mo’s main point was that in a military context unarmed combat is rarely a skill you would be called upon to exercise and if you did you would probably have bigger problems than your hands and feet can get you out of. For Bob Sykes’ sake I’m going to try and avoid the use or abuse of the word ‘reality’, because both Bob and I feel it’s been done to death, but it is, in fact, a very hard word for which to find a suitable substitute.
I have instructed for some 14 U.K police forces on matters of Personal Security and Defensive Tactics and my sole purpose has been to endeavour to inject some sense of reality into the existing training programmes. Nowhere is the passing on of martial skills more difficult than to police officers, whose time allocation to refreshing unarmed and armed skills is probably less in a year than most committed martial artists put into training in a fortnight. The tendency is still, however, to try and teach what I believe are ‘high level’ skills which incline towards fine and complex motor skills, combinations of techniques, together with emphasis on combative stances and movement which one would normally associate with what we term ‘fighting skills’. Problems arise because many of the situations officers find themselves in rarely allow them to adopt even an appropriate fighting stance, never mind engage in a complex exchange of blocks and counters, yet this is the basis of how they practise.
More critically, though, to police training has been the introduction of a range of weapons and associated kit such as side handled batons, telescopic batons, improved straight batons, rigid handcuffs, incapacitant spray and a range of body armour. All seemingly of great value to officer safety by providing a ‘force multiplier’, whereas in practise probably of less value than many would care to admit. Let me try and explain. One of the concepts I try and get over in police training is the psychological condition known as ‘Risk Compensation’. This condition is applicable to every human being and broadly it states that we are all prepared to take on more risk in exchange for a ‘perceived’ gain in safety. Often it is only a perceived risk and the formula works against us.
The classic example of risk compensation at work is seat belt legislation. Following the compulsory wearing of seat belts there was a noticeable drop in the serious nature of injuries sustained in car crashes. What didn’t change was the number of accidents which, over a short period, actually rose. What was at work was risk compensation. People had believed the propaganda about the ‘safety’ of seat belts, which was not untrue, but the exchange they made, having taken on board the increased ,perceived safety of wearing a seat belt, was to drive faster and less carefully. There are many other examples of risk compensation and only this week as I wrote this article the subject was the main theme in a TV programme on risk and safety in motor racing. But coming back to police officers and weapons, it has had a major impact and a negative one I believe on matters of officer safety where the perception gained by most officers is that they are now safer and more competent with this range of kit than they would be without it. In too many cases it is just not true.
There is now a tendency to ‘go where angels fear to tread’ and take on situations they would not attempt without the new kit which, always remember, has been ‘sold’ to police forces by mainly U.S companies who demonstrate that their weapon is the answer to all conceivable problems. Believe one thing – if someone is unskilled in the techniques and concepts of unarmed combat they will be no more skilled when you put a side handled baton in their hands. Often an officer will resort to the use of an impactive weapon or incapacitant spray at inappropriate times which may result in either ineffective control of a violent assailant or a charge of unreasonable use of force. Officers have been found guilty of assault simply by drawing a weapon and threatening it’s use!
I was involved, albeit only marginally, in a scientific study of one aspect of police training which involved some 20 plus police officers taking part in scenarios where the aggression and violence increased, culminating in them being taken by surprise at close quarters. In every single case and where the assailant was at touching range, every officer attempted to draw their telescopic baton. About half a dozen had it taken off them, about the same amount had it jammed in the holster and most of the rest couldn’t bring it into play at what had become almost instantly grappling range. More critically when the baton couldn’t be used all confidence in being able to physically handle the assault went out of the window. All had been convinced through their training that the baton would be an asset in their personal safety and a false sense of confidence had, as a consequence, been invested in it.
Many years ago the more specialist military units found to their cost the same problem with close range firearms encounters when trying to deal with an armed opponent. If the opponent had the edge in drawing a weapon, it soon became apparent that trying to beat them to the draw would likely end in disaster. It brought about the principle known as ‘The One Yard Rule’, which in essence says that if someone is beating you to the draw at such close range your first ‘port of call’ so to speak should not be to attempt to beat them to the draw by going for your own weapon, but by applying empty hand skills and impacting hard – sometimes known as ‘punch to by time’. This is a very basic, well established close quarter combat (CQC) training concept, but it had escaped the notice of police training.
Weapon handling, particularly drawing a weapon under high stress is both a ‘fine’ and ‘complex’ motor skill and any technique which falls into this category is likely to fail and has been proven in numerous studies. A reliance on weapons is a foundation built on sand. Also, weapons can fail, weapons can break, weapons can be taken off you and equally as important you may be attacked when you don’t have a weapon with you. This happened to two police officers in a particular force who were attacked as they came off duty without their weapons and probably with inadequate unarmed skills.
As civilians we can draw a number of important lessons from such experiences and training deficiencies, not just related to weapons, and the point I am coming to is the broad issue of inappropriate techniques for the circumstances we may encounter. In ‘Streetwise’ I illustrate an additional problem we all have, police and civilians in self defence situations and that is the problem of having too many techniques and too many options. You may be thinking just the opposite that the more you know the safer you will be, but let me assure you it is just the opposite. This is the classic ‘egg timer’ syndrome. Picture the old fashioned egg timer filled with thousands of grains of sand. If, as you turned it over to start timing, all the grains of sand rushed to get through the narrow neck into the other half of the timer you would have the classic ‘log jam’. Many years ago when I started working the doors and in my first few months that’s in fact what happened to me – I simply knew too many techniques, too many combinations and too many potential responses at a time all I needed was one, very simple but very impactive technique when faced with a violent man. I had been presented, however, with a ‘technique log jam’ and failed to come up with any technique as nothing could get through the narrow neck. It’s happening to police officers with their range of kit options, unarmed techniques and fear of any action leading to a disciplinary post mortem.
We know too much for it to be of actual use and when stress hits us we also know from numerous psychological studies that the first faculty we lose is the ability to make decisions. The longer we allow an aggressive confrontation to develop the less ability we have to decide to act and with too many choices the problem is magnified. Like police officers with their weapons we have taken refuge in the belief that the more complex the Eastern martial art we practise the safer we will be, but let me remind you where we started with this and that’s ‘risk compensation’. Our perceived safety in knowing a great deal may lead us to believe, and falsely, that we can take on all comers, in all circumstances. The truth is that we will be successful in direct relation to what we discard not what we know.
In later articles I want to look at the concepts of personal combat, in particular the psychological, physiological and stress responses that come into play without our conscious involvement. If we do not have the knowledge and skills to enable us to make allowance for these fundamental issues we will seldom make the successful leap from the relative safety of the Dojo to the often unsafe reality (sorry Bob) of the street.
Peter Consterdine