Bruce Siddle described in his book, Sharpening the Warrior’s Edge, in a violent encounter your heart rate can jump from 60 or 70 beats per minute (BPM) to well over 200 BMP in less than half a second. Elevated heart rate is an easily measurable symptom of the effects of adrenaline, one that can be used to index what happens to you when adrenalized:
• For people whose resting heart rate is around 60 to 70 BPM, at around 115 BPM many begin to lose fine motor skills such as finger dexterity making it difficult to successfully dial a phone, open a lock, or aim a weapon.
• Around 145 BPM most people begin to lose their complex motor skills such as hand-eye coordination, precise tracking movements, or exact timing, making complicated techniques very challenging if not impossible.
• Around 175 BPM most people begin to lose depth perception, experience tunnel vision, and sometimes even suffer temporary memory loss.
• Around 185–220 BPM many people experience hypervigilance, loss of rational thought, and inability to consciously move or react. Without prior training, the vast majority of people cannot function at this stress level.
Breath control techniques can help you minimize or recover from the effects of adrenaline, particularly if you have enough time to see an attack coming. Begin by breathing in through the nose and out through the mouth following a 4-count process for each step—inhalation, hold, exhalation, hold. In other words, each cycle of combat breathing includes:
• Inhale for a 4-count.
• Hold for a 4-count.
• Exhale for a 4-count.
• Hold for a 4-count with empty lungs.
When men are confronted with extreme emotional or violent situations, their adrenaline kicks off like a rocket, surging quickly and then dissipating rapidly afterward as well. In a home invasion situation, for example, when the male homeowner shoots the suspect, the killing is likely to take place near the front door. When police officers arrive, they will typically find that the suspect has been shot perhaps two or three times, just enough to make sure he is no longer a threat.
Women, on the other hand, get a much slower, longer-lasting adrenaline surge. It takes longer to get going and dissipates a lot more slowly than you find in men. In that same home invasion scenario, police often find the dead robber in a back bedroom where he had chased and cornered the female homeowner. But here’s the kicker. Rather than shooting him a couple of times, she’s emptied the gun into him, perhaps even reloading and doing it again.
Interesting difference, huh? An implication is that women have more time to think, but must often defend themselves before becoming adrenalized, whereas men get the advantages and disadvantages of adrenaline without the clear-headed ability to plan.
The rest of the book lays out several levels of force in a logical order, covering (1) presence, (2) voice, (3) touch, (4) empty-hand/physical restraint, (5) less-lethal force, and (6) lethal force. This by no means implies that these levels are stages on a ladder where you must move from one to another. Select the level you need to safely prevail/escape. If your choice is not working, you may have to change levels quickly.
* For self-defense. Other levels of legal force, such as refusing to leave the premises after a lawful order to do so, also require I.M.O., but at a different level.
* Law Enforcement Officers have a “duty to act” and can’t be expected to retreat. In some states, “Stand Your Ground” laws appear to remove the preclusion requirement. “Castle” laws give great freedom for self-defense in the home provided the threat feloniously enters. If someone breaks into your home, a castle law essentially grants that I.M.O. are givens.
** The justifications for defending a third party are essentially the same as for defending yourself. Though you, yourself, might be able to leave safely if another potential victim would be left behind and helpless, you can articulate why you needed to engage.
Skillfully doing nothing.
Level 1 and Level 2 (presence and verbal) and to a lesser extent Level 3 (touch) are intended to make the threat quit being threatening without anyone getting hurt. While higher levels of force are aimed at an adversary’s body, the lower levels work through the threat’s mind.
In social violence, presence and verbal skills primarily aim at preventing or diverting the attention of someone who wants to monkey dance. Normally, that is easy—just don’t play. Walk away. Disregard the challenge. Don’t get caught in your own little monkey brain.
In asocial or predatory violence, particularly in a predatory ambush, the purpose of presence and verbal skills is to keep you off the victim list. As such they must become habits. You may never even know if they worked. If a predator scans you—which will happen several times a day in the crowded part of a big city—and decides to pass, chances are good that you will not even notice. Success, in this subject, is often invisible. If your habits of presence—how you walk, how you scan, what you do with positioning and your hands—are good, the bad guy quietly moves on, never even coming to your attention.
If you are under assault, it is too late to apply Levels 1 and 2 as primary techniques. Go ahead and scream, “Let me go!” while fighting back to help create witnesses sympathetic to your cause, but don’t be stupid enough to scream instead of fighting back. If you are in danger and taking damage, you must be working from much higher up on the force scale than verbals.
These two lowest levels (and the third level, touch) often come into play when intervening as a third party. That does not always mean breaking up a fight. The simple presence of potential witnesses can prevent much crime. More so if the witness looks like he or she is paying attention or dialing a cell phone.
Generally, your goal with presence and verbal skills will be:
• To raise the stakes. The presence of witnesses or involved citizens may make committing a crime too risky.
• To give the threat a face-saving way to leave. If the threat has ego invested in his bad act, he may be afraid that walking away will make him look afraid. However, walking away from a group or a uniform or whispered advice that the police are on the way is often acceptable.
• To instill doubt. This can be a very effective strategy in that if the threat does not know who you are or what you are likely to do, he cannot be sure what the outcome of his actions will be.
• To give the threat a better choice. Sometimes you can get past the emotion and show the threat that his actions will not achieve his goals.
On the second of September 2008, I did something stupid. I hadn’t quite been in Iraq for two months and was
