Glitches and Denial

Friday, September 11th, 2009

In self-defense, catastrophic failures come from glitches, Rory Miller says — from choking:

I’ve put a man through scenarios, a big, tough jail guard with probably a hundred fights under his belt and he could not point a real gun at another human being. He wasn’t even aware that he wasn’t doing it. I’ve seen another who curled up and ‘died’ when hit with a plastic bullet. I’ve seen the 6’4″ former marine who ran and hid from inmates and the 5’2″ single mom with no training or experience who fought like a tiger. And the blackbelt with a roomful of trophies who still freezes though no one could ever call him a rookie. What you believe about yourself, all the stories, all the logical progression (I’ve been training for this for ten years, I’ve been hit by blackbelts, surely I won’t freeze!”) doesn’t have a whole lot of bearing on how you will perform.

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