Want some hormonal help for training? You won’t be taking any steroids for class … this is the free version (and it works better, too). The following is a lesson from learning and sports psychology, merged into our Budo, and applied directly and relevantly to our preparation for violence.
Cortisol
A release of Cortisol in your blood helps you think better and faster. It signals glucose release, giving your body AND brain the ability to adapt fast to challenging situations. There is lots more to say about this, including the relationship between adrenaline and cortisol (not obvious), and gender differences, too. For our purposes, let’s look at how our Dojo training is best improved by understanding this basic key part:
Cortisol spikes under stress. The trouble is that training/practice is usually unlikely to recreate that hormonal change. You can exert yourself physically, have the experience of pushing yourself to exhaustion, but “fight or flight” type stress doesn’t come from that kind of training. Even “pressure testing” by going harder and faster and less predictably isn’t the same. But be careful: intensity like that feels so strong that it’s easy to convince ourselves that it feels like real-life stress.
The truth is, your training partners (hopefully) care about you enough that they’d stop beating you once you’re unconscious; but you know that’s not necessarily true of real violence – and that’s scary. So somewhere in the back of your mind, there’s a little bit of that safety remaining in training like that. It’s still dangerous, and does have some similarities to the stress of violence, but many who use this approach convince themselves that it’s more valuable than it might be.
Then, we are faced with the difficulty of including enough safety to help even beginners improve, with enough intensity to create the hormonal dump that is experienced in confrontations outside the comfort of regular training. It seems difficult, but it’s actually quite possible. You CAN do a very good job it simply by indicating that the participants will be evaluated.
Evaluation
That’s really the big key: Evaluation.
If you know that your skills will be evaluated, your Cortisol level goes up starting 4 hours in advance, spikes during performance, and then stays elevated for 2-4 hours afterwards. Note: This means that training AFTER the evaluation is extraordinarily useful.
Stress Equation for Training
In a “Motivated Performance”:
[Social Evaluation] + [Unpredictability] = Highest Stress Level
Motivated Performance
A “motivated performance” exists any time you want to do something well. If you don’t care how well it goes, it’s not “motivated” … For a simple example, the physical skill of typing at the computer is just a means to an end right now, but if I wanted to type very fast, or very accurately, (or both) then I’d be “motivated” to do it well. If you told me that my typing speed would be evaluated, and the results would matter to me in some way, then I’d start introducing that cortisol stress.
Unpredictability
“Unpredictability” adds a lot to this stress and cortisol rise, as well. For our purposes in martial arts, that could mean an assignment to “find the opponent’s hidden weapon” or “use a throwing technique” without any other clues. That’s normally only a slightly harder task than simply “punch” or “kick” but if you also introduce the idea that these unpredictable factors will be included in skill evaluation, then stress levels will rise accordingly.
You’ve seen (and probably experienced) this in your own training and testing. Even when a student knows exactly what’s expected, and how to perform well, the addition of evaluation for testing increases stress. I’ve seen very well prepared, mature, confident, grown men become sweaty and shaky standing in front a group to show basic martial arts maneuvers on big testing days.
Remember the magical formula:
[Social Evaluation] + [Unpredictability] = Highest Stress Level
But, how realistic is this?
That’s the best part: The stress response from social evaluation and unpredictability is very close to exactly the stress response from real-life, non-training performance of the same skills. If you’re a teacher of martial arts, and you want to keep the “pressure testing” aspects of speed and power? Awesome – just remember that you’ll significantly improve your training results if you take those same training moments and use them for evaluation, in front of peers (social evaluation), and keep the unpredictability.
Make it even better: Announce that it’s part of the next class. Everyone will begin their cortisol (stress response) climb a few hours before class, and be at maximum during performance of their skills under pressure. Just be sure to take full advantage: Do it early in class. That way, you can use the same stress feelings during corrections and re-training based on the evaluations you made. This will bring training much closer to reality for the emotions, which really are a critical part of good training. [Read the post about training for emotions.]
The really good news is that, this works multiple times. If you are told that you’re going to be evaluated, then your cortisol levels go up, even the hundredth time you do it. You can expect we’ll be doing more “peer reviews” in class from now on. We had done this in the past only for folks interested in rank advancement, but the research is showing us an easy way to continue improving our skills … and we’re listening.
Important Note:
I assume you already know this, but … In the long term, you’ll tend to have a healthier life without so much stress. There is plenty of data pointing towards the value of: good nutrition, meditation/deep-breathing, and exercise. Make sure to use the stresses of training to enjoy the relative peace and ease of your “normal” life outside the Dojo.
Training for difficult challenges will involve some stress – but, since I’m assuming you’re not a feudal-era Japanese samurai in battle, or a ninja sneaking into a castle in ancient Japan, maybe the rest of your day doesn’t have to be quite so stressful. Train hard to live easy.
