Situational Training Pt.2

    

The first that I heard of this concept was when I was a kid working as a flooring installer with my father on a military base in the prairies. As a matter of course we would get our carpet in massive rolls like you would see in the machines in the flooring departments of larger hardware stores. We would then have to cut off "drops" of material for the different sized rooms. The biggest challenge was to find areas large enough for this practice and the only suitable spots were often parking lots.

In summer or winter the first order of business would be to thoroughly sweep the lot clear of any debris that might dirty the material, not a small job in itself. This all done two people would push the roll out the back of the truck and two more people would pull the roll the rest of the distance so that it fell flat along its length so we didn't damage the material. Next came the cutting and re rolling of the smaller cut offs and reloading them into the truck. Keep in mind this is all in the freezing cold (or alternatively caught in a heat wave, 30 c and up) with a roll of carpet that has a starting weight of roughly a 1000 lbs. Oh, and just to keep you on your toes in the winter the backing of the carpet was frozen stiff giving it the texture of a file and edges that cut like a serrated knife...

But hey, at least you can't bleed on the material in the winter as the blood simply freeze over.

The soldiers began to ask me about the work and were constantly referring to this thing called Situational awareness that I think I likely thought was just soldiers telling random tales. Until I began to notice how quickly people get derailed by their lack of observation, which leads to a lack of adaptation, to their environments.

 I have spent time with people who show levels of situational awareness that almost seem supernatural. These folks are, of course, NOT displaying supernatural abilities and because of this it is all the more impressive. Its simply a matter of being "free", if the will is free the result is a blended notion of personhood, the complete human animal devoid of intersecting lines between mind, body and whatever else can be dreamed up to cut us to pieces.

 Magicians use this sort of ability to read the crowd and to play on the average attention span to influence an audience's perceptions of the events on stage. If the attentive span is properly judged by the performer an individual's attentional window then becomes influenced resulting in the aforementioned changes in perception. The easiest example of this sort of manipulation is in the old joke of telling someone they have a spot on their shirt and then tapping their nose. For the *"joke"* to work the best the persons attention needs to be properly manipulated and there attentional window fixed on the illusionary spot.

 We can use these kinds situational abilities in our physical training by utilising closed chain kinetic exercises in a variety of conditions. As the overall malleability of the self increases we begin to be able to manipulate our own attention spans and attentional window, thus allowing us the freedom to perceive events as they are rather than how we project them to be. The best part of this for me has been to realise that a lot of our perceptions about pain or what is painfull are way off base and actually quite damaging in themselves.

 Thus my swinging a kettlebell in lake Ontario in -5c barefoot and up to my shins in water. It was cold and the footing was not what could be called stable. As I swung I was actually sinking into the lake bed and having to really manipulate feet to be sure that I could recover should I came across something sharp. Or as happened in a couple of cases I broke through a hard layer of ice and into softer lakebed below. The beauty of it was the challenge of maintaining my footing while still "taming the arch" while running through two handed hard swings to soft style one handed swings, clean and press and finally to move to the snatch.

 I have worked and trained in a myriad of different settings through the years and as a result when I was in the lake my situational awareness did its thing for me. As I had no shoes I ALWAYS knew where my balance was or where it was going (look here Centre of Pressure) . I also knew as a matter of course which direction to fall or toss the kettlebell should I lose my balance during a swing or fixation phase. Physically for me this was easy to "crush" but the central nervous system load was beyond belief. I gassed twice in less than the space of 20 minutes from the cns load and knew it was time to step back.

I suspect that there will be many parts to this series.

See you all next time.

*As an aside if you use that "joke" you're an asshole. If its in the past and never touched again for the shame of being an asshole, you're fine. If you use it as a matter of course and as a way of "making friends and influencing people", you're an asshole and nothing except not being an asshole will take that away.