Chapter 26: Come on, “Everybody Does IT!”

Yeah, its a human survival thing and everyone does it. There are certain stimuli that cause it to happen and when it does, sometimes it is a very gratifying thing but when it is not gratifying it can be a pretty darn hurtful thing. If everyone is doing it then why are we talking about it in a martial art and karate context? Good question because to survival all humans have this conditioned response often referred to as, “Fright or Flight.” When we are frightened what is it that humans, and a lot of animals, instinctively do? They … wait for it … “FREEZE!”

If you are going to use your martial arts or karate for defense-protection and you have that first encounter there is a likelihood that you will freeze. Even if you don’t and even if you work in a profession that deals almost daily with aggression and violence, like police and military, and even if you have a bunch of experience under your belt there are always going to be circumstances that will trigger, “The Freeze!” It how you mentally prepare yourself when it hits that matters and it is how you take it psychologically after it, if you survive, that matters and any professional who knows and understands and accepts this fact will probably tell you, “It’s ok, we all do it, don’t sweat it.” Then you have to say to yourself how did it come out after, are you alive and did you survive? Simplistic I know but acceptance of such things is important. 

Freezing can be misunderstood as something male macho manly-man thing making the mind, do the monkey dance on your ego, self-talk you into thinking you are very bad and did something very unmanly thus making your status in the tribe less and lessened. Stop right there bloke, it ain’t true mate and don’t let the monkey fool you into diminishing your self and self-esteem because doing that is much worse for you and the tribe then simply, everybody does it, freezing. Oh, did you or were you able to break the freeze? This is the question you ask now and this is what you must find in your training and practice of defense-protection, “How to break the freeze.” 

First, train not to freeze; second, when you do freeze train to break the freeze; third, when you fail to break the freeze then go back an address that training and practice to make sure you have that right and continue on because, “Everybody does IT, at least sometime in their careers.”

Take this serious because even in sport people will freeze. Remember also, you may actually not totally freeze as in eyes wide and frozen like deer in headlights freeze but what you trained to apply, some method and force application, may not rise up to the state of action, a form of freezing the methodology, but break it by training to shift that tactic when you detect the freeze much like using a method that immediately fails, don’t just keep doing that over and over in a loop, break it and move on, also a type of freeze by freezing into performing an action over and over while it fails miserably. 

Don’t freeze but don’t assume it’s bad; everyone does it one time or another in his or her careers.