Practice! Part 3

Recapitulate

 

Reflective learning enables you to reflect on how you would use your skills for future situations.  I recommend keeping a “reflective learning journal” where you “collect” your ideas and interpret what you have learned previously.  This way you are always linking the skills you have learned to some type of active application. 

It is also useful to discover what methods of training benefits you the most.  This could be through private training, small group training, seminars, personal experimentations with friends and training supplements such as DVDs and books, etc. 

 

Stringing Simple Ideas Together

 

All combat scenarios are just simple ideas put together!  Much of this is achieved by starting with the fight and working your way backwards, breaking down the individual components involved for accomplishing your mission.

These “ideas” are not confined to the technical, but also the tactical, conceptual and interpersonal skill sets that you need in order to survive a violent encounter. 

 

Understanding – Repetition – Short Term Memory – Long Term Memory

 

Understanding the skills that you are attempting to learn is the first step.  If you don’t understand the who, what, where, when, why and how, you will find it increasingly difficult to make steady progress.  However, all the “understanding” in the world will not produce any movement.  As Einstein once said, “Nothing happens until something moves.”  With this in mind, “understanding” is merely a tool in which we set our sights on to reach our target.

"Nothing happens until something moves." --Albert Einstein

Trial and error enables you to refine particular movements that you are learning.  Repetition allows for visceral-reflex long term motor memory.  This is often referred to as muscle memory, which is a flow of physical and mental reflexes rather than individual bodily and mental instructions. 

Once you learn how to do something is when you will have it in your short term memory.  Have you ever gone to seminar and trained through a series of drills and techniques, only to forget everything you learned a few days later?  The reason for this is that you didn’t transfer this knowledge into your long term memory.  One simple concept for transferring material into long term memory is building up your ability to train at real-time speed.  Remember, to do this effectively you have to have already spent some time working out whatever it is that you are practicing – an exercise, a drill, a combat scenario – in a slow and deliberate manner.  Speed practiced effortlessly increases and deepens your long term memory.

Relax- Don’t Become Obsessed

 

Scientific experiments have shown that it is impossible to feel negative emotions such as frustration if the muscles in the body are relaxed.  There are many ways to evoke this relaxed awareness, which include breathing exercises and visualisation.  The key though, is to apply a relaxed feeling throughout your actual practice time and to become aware of it.  This is where a coach comes in handy to point out when you are tense; the most common cause of this is holding your breath while performing a move.

Break things down into small chunks and loop them into a drill.  Once you are able to perform that particular chunk, isolate the next three or four movements in the same manner.  There are definite advantages to working on a combat scenario in this way:

1. It keeps your practice interesting
2. It keeps confusion and frustration at bay
3. Allows you to absorb the practice session subconsciously

 

After Action Review

 

Always finish your session by reviewing what you have been working on.  In fact, an effective method is also starting each new practice session with a short review on previously learned skill sets.  Just touch on it, don’t spend hours on this! 

You can also insert review sessions in between successive learning modules within your one to two hour practice session; constantly moving from new material to old material.  This is a great way to insure the addition of the new material to the previously learned foundation material.

Hopefully the ideas presented in this series of blogs will be a helpful guide when organising your practice regime.  By utilising just a portion of the material listed will lead to leaps and bounds in your day-to-day progress.  The reason?  Most people do not practice!

Dedicated to YOUR Survival

Joe