When you can create hesitancy in the person you are dealing with, whether it’s when sparring, competing, or dealing with a real-life aggressor, you create for yourself opportunities. The same is true if you can make a person over-commit; in fact, it is often hesitant people who end up over-committing, in order to overcome their hesitancy e.g., they figuratively – and sometimes literally – close their eyes and swing in the biggest haymaker they can, with the fingers of their other hand crossed – hoping that it will deliver the result they were looking for; in many cases they have no plan beyond this. Hesitancy can occur due to a number of reasons other than just fear, and if we can understand what causes people to hesitate, we can help create an environment/situation where a person may do so, and if we can learn to recognize when this happens, we will have created a moment and an opportunity that we can exploit. In this article I want to look at some of the ways we can do this.

Two of the biggest reasons I see people hesitate when sparring is: a fear of the consequences of an action, and over-analyzing the problem i.e., seeing/making it much more complex than it is. The two of these often go hand in hand, with those involved creating complex “what-if” patterns in their heads, that always result in them getting punched, kicked, or thrown etc. When forced to do something, because you have to do something when sparring, the result is something that is either half-hearted or over-committed. This means that if I want to create and exploit hesitancy in the person I’m dealing with, I need them to start thinking about the consequences of their actions, and making it appear as if the problem they are dealing with is more complicated than it is. This is one of the reasons I emphasize the use of the De-escalation/Interview Stance, in the Pre-Conflict phase of an altercation, and am a firm believer in the use of pre-emptive striking. A good, solid Interview stance when you are dealing with an aggressor who has not yet thrown a strike, should see you standing tall and looking confident i.e., you should appear as if you know what you are doing. Communicating that you are in control of the situation and that you know what you are doing is a good way to get the other person to question whether they actually are. By keeping your hands/arms out in front of you and controlling range, you are creating a problem for your aggressor i.e., they don’t have easy access to you, and must find a way to gain access to you. All of these things make you appear a much more complex problem to solve than if you stand there with your hands down, letting the person have an easy opportunity to swing at you etc. Putting a few doubts in the other person’s head concerning their ability to manage the situation goes a long way to start creating an assailant who is hesitant and is likely either to under- or over-commit. Most people are not that confident in their fighting abilities and if you are able to slow things down for a few moments their confidence soon drops.

Whenever you make physical contact with somebody, they should experience pain and discomfort, and so start to fear the consequences of getting physical with you. This is true of blocking. Every time you make a block, and your assailant’s limb comes into contact with you they should experience some form of pain, whether that comes from the block itself or your simultaneous attack. If you can think of an outer/360 block involving you ramming the blade of your forearm into your attacker’s arm, as an offensive rather than defensive movement with the aim of causing pain and trauma, your blocks will start to become attacks. If an assailant comes to experience pain every time they expect to cause you pain, they will soon begin to hesitate when attacking. Not only are they experiencing unexpected consequences, but they are also starting to understand that the problem they are trying to solve is somewhat more complex than they first expected, which should result in them either hesitating more or over-committing. In turn when you attack them, they need to experience pain and disruption, whether this is a thumb to the eye, or a punch designed to deliver concussive force. I have dealt professionally with people who could suck up punches all day long (or who realized after a while that getting hit/punched wasn’t as bad as they’d expected), which means you must have other tools that you can use to get round their pain management systems. Eye pokes, rakes, and gouges may be unsophisticated, but they are easy ways to deliver pain, and also elicit responses that can be used to your advantage e.g., most people’s natural reaction to have fingers and thumbs in their eyes is to try and grab the arms and wrists of the person attacking them, which means that they are not hitting/punching you in that moment, and they are vulnerable to other attacks that you can launch whilst their arms are in this position. Another good way to deliver pain and get attackers to experience and think about consequences is to throw them. People may think that some of the punches you land are “lucky” ones, however there are no “lucky” throws and people understand this vey clearly when they find themselves on the ground looking up at someone. Having a number of ways – rather than just one – to deliver pain is a good way to get assailants to start thinking about consequences, and when this happens it creates hesitancies that can be further exploited.

Just as we look to create hesitancy and force over-commitment, we should recognize the things which make us hesitant, whether it is over-thinking a problem, or a fear of the consequences etc. This means we should test ourselves and our abilities concerning these things, to make sure that we have met and dealt with them before we are tested for real.