Awareness In Combat

In combat you absolutely have to be aware at all times and I know it sounds obvious, but I have seen many people winning a confrontation only to ‘not see’ the other guy coming at them from behind with a bottle or something more sinister.

You need to develop a wide range of vision and it is more than just peripheral. You have to imaging that you can literally ‘see behind you’. Before you say this is impossible and from a physical point it is, you must learn to develop your instinct or feeling.

There is no easy way to do this other than simply feeling aware of what is around you. How many people get out of bed in the night to go to the bathroom and stumble into a piece of furniture or stub their toes etc. Before you go to bed, take a ‘snapshot’ of the room and imaging that you have just planted a photograph in your head of the surroundings and then forget about it. Don’t dwell, just picture the room and go to sleep. When you have to wake up, you immediately access this photograph and then slowly and carefully walk around the room touching all of the objects that you have seen in the ‘photograph’. Your husband/wife/partner will think you are mental if they happen to wake, but this has a lot of use.

Everywhere you go you should do the same until it becomes second nature. From here we move into the video or ‘real time’ phase. The photographic element was the start and now you are going to concentrate on your real life ‘live’ surroundings, noticing exactly who and what is around.

One point to note is do not ‘look’ at any single item or person, rather just notice them. Think of driving a Ferrari at 150 miles per hour down a country lane and if you notice the bull in the field you will stay alive, look at it however…

To develop instinctive feeling is much more difficult and beyond the scope of this article. However a great way to start is to work with a partner and sit or stand blindfolded and have your partner slowly and simply walk up to you but no closer that a foot to you. With practice, you will gradually learn to ‘feel’ his or her presence. Don’t believe me? Just give it a try!