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Knuckles&Knees-I've had a lot of anger and because of that sometimes people view some of my actions or response to other men as courageous when in fact it's not. Anger can give false impressions. I can fight a thousand men when I'm angry - partially because I feel I have already died. You can't kill me twice. It is that feeling which makes me potentially dangerous.
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Some folks need help ramping up for the fight while others need to come down for the fight. Stress inoculation drills help folks calm down enough to fight without having the adrenal response get in the way.
As an example of the adrenaline problem, I had a discussion with a guy not to long ago who has been training in martial arts for many years. In the encounter which happened at his workplace with a homeless man who came into the building and had been harassing clients and refused to leave…anyway, this guy related to me that he threw a preemptive elbow that missed, he was complaining to me how embarrassed he was because folks (friends and collogues) who knew he was a martial artist saw him miss. I said “Awe adrenaline” and he admitted to being really hyped up, scared, and excited. Anyway, a classical example of how the adrenal dump can interfere with your control, timing, and distancing. There are drills that deal with this problem effectively.
However, in this case the fear is you won’t be able to ramp up enough “emotionally”. This takes a different approach than the first problem.
You want to anchor an emotional state. This is not hard at all, close your eyes and think back to a time when you were really pissed off, I mean really pissed off. Imagine being there again. Now, take that image and magnify it making the picture really big in you mind, see it through you own eyes and give it color, smell, touch, etc. Notice how you feel and how you are breathing, let yourself go and get angry again just like you were then. At the height of the emotional peak you want to anchor that emotional state to a trigger.
If you cannot think of a time when you were that pissed or angry, make something up…you brain cannot tell the difference anyway however, an intense emotional state that you have already experienced in the past often will be a stronger emotion. Imaging coming home to find your mother, wife, or daughter tied to the bed and a man standing over her with his pants down. You wouldn’t hesitate to attack him right? You would use whatever comes into contact with your hands (brief case, lamp, kitchen knife, stool, whatever) hitting him with it as hard and as fast and as often as you can until you have destroyed him right?
Setting the trigger-
Tactile stimulation, at the height of the emotion when you are really feeling it the strongest and the images are really vivid tap you shoulder or pectoral muscle hard, not hard enough to leave a mark but hard enough that it stings. This should anchor that emotion to the tap. When you tap again sometime in the future this should cause the emotional state that you have anchored to occur. Practice this and remember the more intense the emotion the easier the state is to anchor. Now, before hitting the bag or going into combat tap your shoulder in the same way for a change in state (there does come a point that you won’t have to do this anymore).
Verbal stimulation, this is an alternative method. It works the exact same as above except instead of using a tap, squeeze, or pinch you can anchor the emotion to a word like “GO GO GO” but not something that is so common that you use it a lot in everyday conversation.
Bag/pad work-
Every time you hit the pads or heavy bag imagine that scenario or another one. Imagine a scenario in your mind while you hit the bag and visualize the effect your punches/strikes are having on your opponent. Hit the bag to destroy it and imagine your opponent being destroyed by your punches/strikes. Do this every time you hit the bag/pads. Over time you will no longer have to use your triggers or mental imagery the act of striking or the thought of engaging an opponent will be the trigger for switching states.
The elite folks can do this at will. In other words the desired emotional state is at his finger tips and he can switch states like flipping on switch turning on a light. He can turn it on and off at will.
We have a saying within the tactical community that goes like this, “If the experience is intense enough there is no need for repetition.” This is refereeing to “owning” that state or skill. This is refereeing to anchoring--a form of re-wiring--the state to some type of trigger.
Athletes do this with their Hoo-yah’s, slapping each others shoulder pads, hi fives, and chants. Different variations of this are used in education as well. Badguys often do it when they are woofing you up, they are building up the nerve to strike/attack. This is stuff you do everyday in one form or another…it isn’t mystical, it isn’t voodoo, it is a natural way of accessing information like a math formula or someone’s name, a skill, feeling and emotion.
We do this in firearms training as well. A scenario I often use for my students is “your wife just got shot in the face. She is laying there screaming for you to help her. The badguy is now turning his gun on you…FIGHT!” The word “FIGHT” is his cue to start the drill. He has to engage the threat before he can help his wife. I want to him to move off line draw his gun from concealment and engage the threat with extreme emotional prejudice shooting the threat to the ground. He should pull his trigger as hard and as fast and as many times as he can while imaging that the target he is shooting is falling to the ground with his hits also following him down.
The idea is to be able to ramp up from 0-1000mph in a controlled way and for our purposes we want to be able to access the state without having a prolonged building up period. This takes some practice but it works and before you know it you can access this new state at a flip of the mental switch and you can engage your opponent with rage. This new state has replaced the old state such as fear and you cannot be afraid when you are pissed off or in a state of rage.