Fighting for Survival

Breon Gravatt II dan

Phil’s years of working as a bodyguard, security guard and bouncer have exposed him to many of the real-life situations with which self-defence is intended to help you. He has been attacked by single opponents, groups of opponents, opponents on P, and opponents with knives. He uses these experiences to simulate what they’re like, as close to real-life as he can make it. His ability to switch instantly from a pleasant, reasonable guy explaining concepts to us, to a swearing, yelling, bundle of ferocious rage, was truly remarkable (and somewhat frightening).

Want to know how much force it takes to rip someone’s ear off? How long it takes for an FBI agent to pull their gun and shoot someone? These and other little snippets of information were all part of the day, which combined theory, explanations of behaviour from both physiological and psychological perspectives, drills, and simulated real-life encounters.

The principle behind what Protect teaches is that when we get into real-life violent or potentially violent situations, our mind casts around desperately for something it can use to deal with the situation. It looks for either experience or theoretical knowledge. If neither is available, we don’t know how to respond, so we don’t. We panic and freeze.

Protect tries to overcome this by giving you experience of these situations, so if they happen for real, you can use that experience as a blueprint for how to respond.
They avoid long, complicated series of techniques, relying instead on simple responses that you can still do when the adrenalin is surging, the more refined parts of your mind have shut down, and your body is operating on fight or flight instincts.

To achieve this, we did a number of drills that were intended to give you an adrenal response. This could be slow, which is what you’ve experienced if you’ve ever had butterflies in your stomach, or fast, which is what happens when you’re in a car accident or are suddenly surprised by something.

It was a very interesting day and all of the participants got a lot out of it. It was an opportunity to see how we would actually respond if our day turned really bad. And it may save our lives one day.

Thank you to Phil and Athena Thompson!

Read more about Protect at http://protectselfdefence.co.nz/.