Session 13: Grasp Reflex

Forth one we're gonna talk about, the last external piece, is related to the hand movement and its important to understand and its grasp reflex. Part of the physiology of the hands moving towards the line of the stimulus to protect you, is that your hands tend to open up. Your hands split and you see this. You don't ball up into a fist. You'll see guys do that sometimes in a training environment, right?

They'll... Okay, pretend you're startled, right? That doesn't happen. You don't get a karate hands. You don't do fists.

You open your hands, your hands... More surface area the better. Remember if I'm trying to block the rock, more surface area that better. If I'm trying to catch the incoming bear paw, more hands the better. If I'm trying to absorb the energy of falling towards the earth, cause to the brain in this mode, there's no difference between a big rock flying at your head and your head flying at a big rock, right?

That's why skateboarders break their wrists a lot, right? And inline skaters and stuff. That's why you get the wrist brace because that's reflexive. You don't tuck and roll reflexively. Your hands go out to intercept the thing coming towards your face because the hand is expendable in this moment.

Better than losing the face, I'll lose the hand. So grasp reflex plays a role here. The reason its not as common to talk about it as it is the other three is because it only plays a role when something's in your hand. And one of the reasons its important to talk about it, is because of a misunderstanding of this one. The hands moving to protect you.

You'll see some research that has been done in the past, talking about the amount of power that people squeeze with when they're startled, right? If in other words, if I say to you, you know, squeeze this gripometer as hard as you possibly can. 100% of your strength. You squeeze it. And its whatever crushing pressure you have, 7,000 kilo newtons of crushing pressure.

And then... Approximately. And then you say, okay, hold onto the gripometer and watch this beautiful fish swimming in a stream. And then as you watch the beautiful fish swimming in a stream a giant shark shows up on the screen and you get startled and you grasp down on the gripometer. And it turns out its 7,001 kilo newton of pressure.

So you find out, wow, you exerted 102% of what you thought was your maximum strength when you were startled. Well, that's an interesting body of research for human potential for strength and all that kind of stuff. But unfortunately, if you take that out of context and your takeaway is aha. "I used Google badly. And now I know that when people startled they clasp their hands down and all this stuff we were told about hand splaying protectively as a lie." The missing element is that something was in your hand to start with.

If something is in your hand to start with and you get startled, you do clasp down on it. That's not the case if your hands are empty. You don't make a fist around nothing. Your hands splay. Whoa, that's two different things.

Yes. Sometimes we have to learn two different things. That's what happens. The brain is complicated. The body is complicated and our natural reactions can be complicated.

If something is in your hand, you tend to clasp down on it. Probably a good thing. What's the natural survival positive of that. If I'm climbing a ladder and I get startled by a squirrel, I don't wanna go, ah! I wanna clasp down on that ladder.

More importantly from a natural world standpoint. If I am climbing a tree. If I am a little baby monkey holding onto my mama monkeys back and I get startled and my mama monkey starts running through the trees in the jungle, I wanna hold on really tight. I don't wanna let go. And we see this with human children, too.

Human children tend to cling to their parents when they get scared, right? That's good. That's a positive. That's what we want. So this grasp reflex is a built-in survival positive, right?

It allows us to hold on to our tools that allows us to hold on to each other. It allows us to not fall down the steps and hit that railing or off the ladder or off the tree when we're holding on to things. So grasp reflex is good. How does that play a role in firearms training? You may be familiar with the concept of not putting your finger on the trigger until you are ready to shoot.

If I have my finger on the trigger and I'm on the phone with the police and somebody kicks the door in and I have grasp reflex because something's in my hand and the bullet goes off and that was my mom, that's bad, right? And you can find those videos on the internet as well. The police officers who are reaching out to grab someone who pulls back from them and they grasped down cause now they're startled, The person pulled away from them or the person throws a swing at them and around goes off into the ground even though the person was unarmed and we didn't need that to have to happen. Sometimes unfortunately rounds will go off into people because of grasp reflex also. So one of our effects on our training, we know what the physiology is.

We know what the terminology is. We know what the survival positive is. What's the effect on training? For one thing, we're gonna make sure that we train to keep our fingers somewhere distinctly other than the trigger until we are ready to shoot. Cause if we do get started with a gun in our hand we just wanna squeeze the gun.

We don't wanna fire a shot. Another effect on our training. And this is especially prevalent with law enforcement is that we need to train to let go of things, right? If I'm standing here with... Writing a ticket and some guy throws a punch at me I don't wanna try to fight him with a ticket book in my hand, right?

I wanna train myself to let go of things that I don't need to have in my hand because behaviorally I will clasp down on them. The extreme conditioning, learned the natural reactions turning into a learned response combined with grasp reflex was for a long time in some places, it was a big thing that as a police officer, there's certain state troopers you can never let your hat fall off, right? And if the wind was blowing, or if you were, you know truck's driving by the interstate, driving by you on the interstate really fast or whatever. If you ever lost your hat, that was a big deal. You couldn't be out of your car without your hat on.

And there were instances where people were so ingrained at protecting their hat when their hat would come off that their natural reaction to being attacked, their conversion of the startle response wasn't to do something protective. It was to protect their hat. And it became a thing. One of my instructors, years and years, was telling a story about how he would work in a part of the remote part of the state. He was a he was a trooper and they had Indian reservations there, native American populations.

And when they were called to go out for a fight call or if there was a problem at the local bar or whatever it was, it became a little bit of a signal that if the trooper left their hat in the car they were ready to fight. That became policy. If you know you're gonna get into a fight, take your hat off. Don't worry about that at that moment. So the, you know, the locals would figure it out.

Take the hat off. And the troopers come in, you might, wanna not get hit with a nightstick and just surrender. Now, until they figured out, oh, "they're leaving their head on purpose. Let's see if they made it." So you get all these like layers and layers and layers of conditioned and learned response. But it all starts with this stuff.

If you're grabbing something and its in your hand and you're trying to fight, you're not gonna Intuitively let go. You instinctively, in fact, grab it. And you have to learn to let go of something you don't wanna be holding. And in our safety role also plays a role there with guns. So these three, always a factor and one especially in firearms training, natural reactions, the external natural reactions.