Session 12: Hands Move Toward Stimulus

Hands move to the line of the stimulus. And I'm gonna put a parenthetical there too, which overwhelmingly, is going to be our line of sight. Because we already talked about it here, now if someone, grabs me right now from behind, swings me around and throws me against this wall. And pushes my head against the wall, I may not be able to physically turn and put my eyes on them. But am I oriented towards that threat?

Am I focused on that threat? Do I stop worrying about the presentation? If somebody grabs me and throws me up against the wall. Amongst to the effective training, I'm gonna start fighting that guy. I'm gonna start worrying about that situation there.

If the guy is hitting the back of my head, into the wall, I am probably gonna move my hands towards that tactile stimulus of being hit in the back of the head. At least at first, that's my natural reaction, then I might get into some level of control where I think, "Okay, I've got one hand protecting my head, let's use the other one to start affecting that guy. Or to get a tool out. Or keep both hands up there, and I'll use my legs. Or push my hip back and create some space and turn," Something's gonna start happening, right?

But it starts, with a natural reaction. Which is if a mosquito, bites my shoulder, my hand's gonna move towards that tactile stimulus. If a dog comes out of that doorway, my hands are going to move to here, between me and the stimulus, which is a line of sight thing. If the dog tries to bite my leg, my hand isn't gonna stay in my line of sight. What's gonna happen is the proximity changes.

My hands are going to move to here. I'm gonna try to keep the teethy parts away from my fleshy parts. The stimulus, the tactile stimulus. That's where the hands are gonna go. So hands move to the line of the stimulus.

When we talk about defensive shooting, and a lot of this stuff, it keeps coming back to defensive shooting, because that's the primary focus of our defensive training model. It's not the only one though, right? And that unarmed moment, your hands are gonna cover up and then you've still gotta do something. But in the shooting moment, when especially when we're shooting at extension, that indicates that the threat is beyond arm's reach. Beyond two arm's reach.

I'm driving the gun out to extension. So my hands, dealing with a threat that is beyond two arm's reach, are initially going to move towards my line of sight. Hands move towards line of sight. We usually just end up defaulting to your hands come up to your line of sight. But we have to remember that if I'm carrying a box, and I'm putting it up on top of my truck, before I unlock the door, if my hands are here, and that dog comes running around the corner, my hands don't move up.

If that guy comes around the corner, to point a gun at me, I don't surrender, right? My reflexively move my hands towards the line of the stimulus. Towards the line of sight. The physiology is just that. What's the survival positive, of putting your hands into the line of the stimulus?

Well, if somebody's throwing a rock at your head, and that rock coming towards your head is the stimulus, and you put your hands up, and the rock hits your hand instead of your head, that's the survival positive. Your hands are put in a position, to absorb damage that would otherwise hit, your other more important body parts. The hands become expendable, In the fight mode. Your hands and forearms are physically put in the way of danger. Because A for no other reason they're are the parts of the body that can get there.

You can't just put your spleen in front of your face. Right? Your hands can get there your hands get in front of your face, right? That can happen, that works. You'll see people, lying on they're back, being attacked their feet come up.

Right? That's a natural reaction. So it's really an extremities thing. But when you're standing, then that doesn't happen. We're gonna default to a standing mode, for our training model.

But absolutely, if you look at people, look at somebody being attacked, who's sitting at a chair at their desk. Their feet don't stay on the ground. They bring their feet up protectively. Right? It's a big part of training.

Right, for ground fighting. Somebody throws you down on the ground and they're trying to get on top of you, use your feet to defend yourself, not just your hands. So the feet play a role here in some moments. But in the general most probable, remember our plausibility principle? Most probably, we're talking about our hands moving to the line of the stimulus.

So if your safety plan A, going back to what we were talking about before, relies on accessing this tool, that you keep inside of your waistband, or inside of a pocket, or inside of your purse, or inside of your scabbard that you wear on your back. Wherever your magic tool is that you're gonna depend on, If your plan A relies on getting it out and into action, And you're not incorporating the fact that your hands aren't necessarily going to move directly to that tool, but they're probably gonna move to the line of the stimulus first, and then you need to redirect the hands, back to the tool, you're not integrating your natural reaction. So that's our effect on training. Is that prior to, accessing our tool, we wanna integrate in any counter-ambush training model, the hands moving towards the stimulus first. And that's also in any unarmed technique.

If our unarmed technique is we're gonna throw magic elbows, just brain doom with our bone ridge and our sharp pointy elbow on somebody's head, whenever they're within one arm's reach, that's a great plan, but if you don't accept the fact that your hands are gonna be out here, towards the person first, towards that tactile stimulus first, and that you need to reverse that to get the elbow into action. If your plan is, to start throwing elbows with your hands up here protecting your head, like that's not a good plan, right? Cause your hands don't automatically come in here so you can throw elbows. If the guy's out here, your hands are gonna come out here first. And then you gotta convert that into your elbow strike.

If your plan is I'm gonna draw my gun and shoot, that's great, except your hand doesn't start here and Wyatt Earp style and draw the gun and shoot, right? Your hand is much more likely to be up here protectively, be over here protectively and then have to go back down. Gear selection, where you carry your gun. Not just your technique presentation, but also where you choose to carry your gun and the gear you choose. Should be affected by this natural reaction.

Some of you who've been shooting for a long time may remember thumb break holsters. I'm sure they still sell them somewhere. But you don't see'em much on the ranges. Well, in the 80s, you would have seen a lotta thumb break holsters on the ranges. The thumb break holster, was set up so that if your hand was at your side, and you brought your hand up, your thumb had to come over the top of the holster and your thumb would break the snap open, and you'd have your hand on the gun and you could come up and shoot.

And if you ask somebody in 1984, what's the worst case scenario, for where your hands would be positioned in a defensive moment, down at your side would probably would have been a really popular answer. You're completely complacent you weren't ready, your hand wasn't on your gun, your hand wasn't near your gun, your hand wasn't up here protecting yourself. You were just completely caught off guard your hand was down at your side. Well if my hand is not at my side, and I have this worst case scenario, having a holster system, that works well from that angle, in theory makes me more efficient. Problem is the hand doesn't actually start from down here.

Because before the cognitive execution of the learned response, the natural reaction of the hand coming up protectively, happens. Now my hands going back down. And when I go back down to a thumb break holster, if I haven't integrated this into my training, if I haven't learned to roll the thumb out and bring it back in, this is incongruent with the way my hand moves just to grab the gun. So we saw a lot of people in the early days of reality based training, struggling with what presumably was a very simple kind of holster. The thumb break holster.

So now, today in today's world, there's holsters you see that have some built in retention straps or buttons or snaps or levers. They're designed to integrate well with what the body does naturally. So you have thumb buttons that respond to the hand coming back and being driven down. And your thumb hits the button. You see levers that respond well to being released when the top of the hand pushes in on the grip.

From this upward angle. You see buttons, that and levers that are built into the side of the holster that when you grab the holster with your trigger finger extended where you want it to be when you come out so that you're along the frame of the gun. When you grab the gun properly, from up above down on top, your trigger finger hits a lever that releases the safety mechanism, the retention mechanism and your finger ends up right where you want it along the frame. Then you can move it to the trigger if you're gonna shoot or you can leave it up there if you're only going to draw to the ready position. But those pieces of gear integrate, the position of the hand.

The most likely position of the hand. So you integrate that into your training and you pick better gear, you pick better techniques, and you're causing the correct stimulus response pattern to be formed. Your hand essentially recognizes the draw stroke from up here, because you're training, with your hand up here. You're not training like this. You're not walking through a scenario with your hand hovering over your gun, waiting for some target to appear.

You're doing this, and then reaching for your gun.