Operating inside the Attacker: Part One (Compressing time in CQC)

The compression of time in an attack is more often than not omitted when teaching students or not understood conceptually.

 

 

Your ability to navigate time is as essential to winning the fight as is the offensive mindset. When an Attacker pulls a weapon on you (we will use a knife in this example) he begins to limit or compress the time available to you in order to act. This happens because your initial reaction is slower than his action and you are already moving slower in the loop (Boyd) amidst the finite amount of time made available to you.

The reactionary gap (in case you are now thinking about this as a whole equation) requires time…in order to work. But what if, there is not enough time for the creation of this gap? This is where the breakdown of CQC occurs for front line Officers in during real time conflict and they are left to luck and improvisation to survive. 

The creation of what I refer to as “pockets of time” is crucial if you want to perform at a higher level than the person in-front of you with bad intentions. Before an altercation occurs you should be already starting the analytical process and gathering as much intel as is avail.

Where are his hands?

What is in his hands?

These first two questions are a good place to start. Kicks are much slower than the criminal accessing a hidden weapon so identify the hands as soon as you can, to pick up on pre-cursors to an attack this way. Identifying a threat cue prior to the attack…enables you to start moving faster through time than your opponent.

Your flinch response…MUST be followed by an ACTION from preconditioned variables (Pavlov) available to you on an unconscious competence level (Burch). These decisive actions create intervals of time in which transitional use of force options OR the reactionary gap can be employed. Simply put, you become the aggressor (through a trained response) as opposed to the victim (unconscious incompetence).

None of this can be easily accomplished without a commitment to a training regime…Yes; I must always bring you back to this issue as it is the crucible from which we will continue these discussions on “operating inside the Attacker.”

Be safe Guys!