One of the major differences between MMA (and other combat sports including Boxing, Judo etc) and Reality Based Self Defense, is that combat and ring sports take part in a sterile and controlled environment – this is what allows for the physical skills of the fighter to be showcased. If in the Octagon there was a liberal sprinkling of sand on the floor, which competitors were allowed to pick up and throw in each other’s eyes, we might not get to see if a person’s grappling skills could overcome another fighters striking ability etc. This is not a failure or something lacking in the UFC it just isn’t the point of it. I get frustrated when Krav Maga practitioners argue that they shouldn’t spar because it’s not fair on them because they can’t eye gouge and groin strike. Sparring training isn’t there to reflect 100% what a street-fight actually looks like but rather to build skills that can be used in a street-fight. It’s an activity which takes place within a controlled environment so that basic fighting skills can be developed for later use.

I used to have this argument all the time when I was practicing Judo. Martial Artists from striking arts would argue that Judo was unrealistic because striking wasn’t included in Randori/”free practice”, I could argue that boxing, Karate and Tae Kwon Do are unrealistic because their sparring methods/format doesn’t include grappling. We could all argue all day about this. Judo taught me how to move, stay balance and keep thinking whilst larger people pushed, pulled me and grabbed my clothing (all things that happen in real life confrontations). It taught me a particular dimension of the fight, just as Karate and Tae Kwon Do sparring teach people other dimensions of the fight. Training each dimension distinctly, certainly leads to better martial development in that particular area – which is why tonight at 8:00 pm we spend a dedicated hour, as we do each week (and always have), training groundwork on its own without much focus on the parts of the fight that bring you to ground. We specifically control the environment to allow us to develop these distinct and necessary skills.

A real-life confrontation between you and another individual(s) is not simply an incident that involves you and this other person. This is not the Octagon, where the cage represents the boundaries of your world and the possibilities of what could happen are limited within the cage walls. Your focus cannot solely be on the one person you are facing – this is professional security 101 – if it is, you are bringing a sparring, combat sports mentality to the street and whilst this is fine in training it demonstrates a real naievety and “innocence” about what reality actually is and looks like. As I always stress there are 3 assumptions to make: 1) Your assailant is armed, 2) he is technically and emotionally competent and 3) he is not alone.

It has always amazed me the number of individuals who engage in what they believe to be one-on-one fights and confrontations whilst in social settings – I saw this so many times when working door in pubs and night clubs. Few people go clubbing alone, most go with friends or in a group, so why would you think that when you get in to an argument at the bar you are only potentially dealing with one person? Having spent enough time in garrison towns in the UK, I have seen more than enough times the consequences of someone engaging in a justified verbal exchange with a short haired guy at the bar, who fails to realize that the other 12 short haired guys in the bar are his mates who along with him have all just returned from a particular warzone or similar. This is the danger of “tunnel vision”: you only see what’s directly in front of you.

Nobody is 100% sure of why we develop tunnel vision when we become angry or fearful. There are obvious benefits to being able to focus on the direct and immediate threat as well as definite downsides – when our greatest threats were from wild animals and the like (or if you’re a certain presidential hopeful who believes humans and dinosaurs walked the earth at the same time then include T-Rex’s and Pterodactyls in that list of things to be scared of) having the ability to focus entirely on one thing and excluding all others is a definite advantage. It may be that we go tunnel vision as our brain switches of various sensory functions, such as hearing and the ability to see in color (two abilities that can go when under high stress) and so turns off or down our peripheral vision to martial its finite resources to be able to have enhanced reaction times etc in order to deal with the job at hand. Whatever the reason, under stress we suffer from tunnel vision and so lose our ability to understand the environment around us, including the third parties who may be coming to our aggressor’s assistance. Surviving a real-life encounter is about controlling the entire environment not just dealing with the person in front of you.

Scanning is a simple method of returning your peripheral vision and also understanding your environment e.g. third parties coming towards you, exits to escape by, obstacles to shield you and create barriers as well as objects to use as weapons. When you scan it has to be active. Scanning involves moving the head, not just furtive gazing, which means you must be able to control the range between you and the person you are first dealing with (good use of your de-escalation/interview stance will enable you to do this). By looking at and for objects around you, your eyes will focus on things at different depths/distances and it is this which causes your eyes to widen their field of vision. This will also have a secondary effect of helping to de-stress you.

Real life encounters happen in real-life situations and environments, where there are third parties, different objects and different terrain. The mats are the environment in which to master the techniques but they need to also be trained in different environments and in different ways to fully develop them.