“You can’t hit and think at the same time”, Yogi Berra.
In self defense we talk of ingrained and automatic fighting skills, or simply put “Don’t think, just fight.”
While not thinking in a fight is certainly an exaggeration, ingrained and almost automatic fighting skills requiring very little conscious effort has a long history in traditional Martial Arts with such key concepts as the development of Zanshin and Mushin, and also in the science of Psychology where we talk of Automatic Processing and even in sport as we know from various athletes such as the above quoted Yogi Berra. The following article will try to explore these key concepts in order to help understand and therefore improve our fighting tactics and skills.
Many activities we perform rely on a very controlled, or in other words, effortful cognitive processing. For example, playing cards, filling out a form or studying. These activities employ a voluntary use of attention and conscious effort. Normally one would expect that “fighting” would fall under this concept as well, and for many inexperienced fighters it does. However, let’s explore another more ingrained and “flowing” state of mind while fighting and whether it is more favourable than the controlled conscious or effortful thinking during fighting.
Some activities can be performed with little or no conscious effort, which occurs most often when we carry out routine actions or well learned tasks particularly under constant or familiar circumstances (Ouellette & Wood, 1998).
Normally learning to type or to drive a car or even walking all involve controlled/effortful processing, however, as we all know, with practice all these skills become more automatic. Normally over time people have the ability to perform highly complex skills very successfully with minimal effortful conscious thought.
Although, automatic processing has a key disadvantage, as Ellen Langer(1989) points out. Specifically, chances of finding new problems can be reduced. While controlled processing requires effort and therefore is slower, it is also more flexible and open to change if and as needed. Of course, that means that what automatic processing offers is speed and economy of effort and many actions are processed this way in our lives. Automatic processes are fast and do not require attention.
Many of our everyday behaviours are often seen as best performed when our mind is seemingly disengaged, or on “autopilot” so to speak. As the famous baseball player Yogi Berra captured this idea very well in his classic statement that “You can’t hit and think at the same time”. While Yogi Berra certainly did not have self defense or combative arts in mind when he made that statement, the idea stands on its own merit and is worth delving deeper into and exploring.
As we have all seen time and time again, from athletes to people giving speeches and beyond too much self focused concentrated thinking can hurt the task performance by resulting in “choking” under pressure. An excessive amount of focus can have the same debilitating result while fighting off an attacker in a violent confrontation.
Any activities we perform need to be practiced extensively so that in a fight, we are not relying on our upper cognitive mind for giving us instructions on our next move, but we instead rely on our lower “reptilian” brain to command our body. This automatic processing is much faster and relies on a simpler process thus having the advantage that it is difficult to disrupt which is obviously very important in a violent confrontation.
In traditional Martial Arts the concept of an effortless or automatic conscious processing while performing actions such as fighting have a long history with the concepts of Zanshin and
Zanshin for example is understood as being state of relaxed alertness which can certainly be compared to a form of automatic processing.
Mushin similarly is thought of as a state of mind where a higly trained and skilled warrior enters when he is without any emotion, without anger or fear or ego, and thus he has a greater feel of everything around him without excessive cognitive thought. It is ofcourse a state of mind that takes many years of training for a fighter to achieve and must be practiced repetitively, whereby
Combat becomes sort of a flowing state of mind in which you act instantaneously without thinking, specifically you feel and know instinctively what's happening. In this sort of flow state you see in your mind, not with your eyes, and you act from trained instinct.
We’ve seen how the importance of training your mind to win cannot be understated and that automatic processes can have a positive effect on fighting skills. But furthermore you must also condition your body to enable yourself to win, and practice your combative skills repeatedly so that your mind doesn’t have to expand a lot of effort to consciously thinking about the next move so that it can instead concentrate on winning.
As the Chinese martial arts saying goes, “first mind, second body, third technique”. One must not concentrate on one aspect of fighting while ignoring the rest. It’s a fine balance, one of any area is not enough.
Developing an automatic process or effortless state of mind while fighting, through a great deal of practice, will improve your interaction with opponents and it is this increased training and combative practice that will give you an edge over any adversary.
Emanuel Roth
ROTH Tactical Solutions
Owner/Operator
Custom Knives/Special Weapons Manufacturing
Combatives Training Services
