Session 16: Reduction in Blood Flow to Extremities

Reduction in blood flow to our extremities, and specifically to our hands and forearms. The changes in blood flow that happen in the body. And there's several of them. There's several changes in blood flow that occur under critical incident stress. We need to think of them in terms of potential for work, right? The more blood flow, the more oxygenation, the more power potential any part of the body has. In the brain we also look at the electrical activity to represent capacity for work. So, if we have less blood in our extremities, less blood in our forearms and in our hands, we are less sensitive. Who's ever had their hand fall asleep? Your fingers get tingly and you aren't as sensitive. Less blood flow 'cause you cut off the blood flow. The nerves aren't being as energized, you aren't as sensitive. You'll also get less coordinated. Who's ever had their blood shunted from their hands because they were cold and wet? And now you're less coordinated. You can't control it as well 'cause you don't have as much power and energy in that system down here. That's exactly what's happening. All right. Terminology reduction in blood flow to the extremities. We don't call it a loss of fine motor skill, because there's a couple of problems with loss of fine motor skill. First of all, there are plenty of fine motor skills that you're still executing, even with a reduced blood flow to the extremities. In fact, on our kinesthetic spaces, the people who study human motions and human actions would tell you that anything you're doing with your hands, pulling the trigger, running the slide, inserting a magazine, hitting the magazine release, all of those things are fine motor skills, as opposed to taking a step or opening up your hips and lifting weight onto your shoulders. That those are gross motor skills. Anything you're doing with your hand is really a fine motor skill. So we don't want to say loss of fine motor skills. It's bad terminology. What's the survival positive of having less blood in our extremities? Think about our external reactions. Our external reactions involve our hands moving into the danger area of the rock or the knife or the bear paw or hitting the ground or the dog bite. Well, if we're putting these things in harm's way, then again, let's go back to... There's less pain, nerves. That you get less pain and less blood flow. Blood flow out of the holes being created. So for any given injury, you are going to bleed less over any given period of time which allows in the natural world, more time for clotting to occur. And in the more evolved world, more time for medical attention. So less blood flow in the extremities that we're putting in harm's way. Against a .308 rifle, rounds going right through the arm and into your chest, it's not gonna help. But against natural survival issues. Bears, rocks falling. Against natural survival issues, this loss of blood out here, slowing down is really important. That's a huge survival positive. So we have to accept that. We do have a reduction in blood flow which means a reduction in capacity for work. The physiology isn't a draining. It's not like it takes time. I don't want you to think of it as, "Oh, well I'll have five seconds of fine motor skills. "Fight will be over in three." It's actually a shunting of the capillary system and the vascular system. So it's an electrical chemical signal that gets sent to the body at the beginning of this shock and startle that squeezes the blood out of the extremities, and puts it in other places where it's needed. But not just, people will sometimes go, "Oh, I have my gross muscles are bigger, more energized, "and it allows me to run faster." That's true. But let's not forget there's still an isolated positive of just having less blood here. Even if the blood just went away it didn't help anywhere else. It's better that we're losing less blood from any injuries we sustain in our hands. So what's the effect on training? Well, the effect on training's very simple. If we know that we're gonna have less dexterity, less sensitivity and less control, then we want to rely as little as possible, on the finer motor skills. In any of our technique, in any of our motor skill execution, when we select the type of gear we're gonna use, and certainly we think about our tactics. If our tactics for home defense include opening up a safe that requires me to spin three times to the left, four times to the right and feel the little locks engage, that's probably not great. 'Cause that's a lot of fine motor skill control that I have to get right in a row with a somewhat less sensitive and less coordinated hand. So if I can just have four big push buttons. If I can just have that and boom, it's gonna pop open, that's a lot better, even better than a key, that I have to be able to align and turn properly and not bend or break in my massive uncoordinated panic. So we rely on fine motor skills as little as possible. I'm doing a reload, I have to hit the magazine release. What's a finer motor skill, hitting the slide lock lever, or reaching over and grabbing the slide and pulling? It's finer to have to hit the slide release. So if I can, I have to hit the magazine release, I don't have a choice. But if I can choose after I insert a magazine, on hitting the slide release or grabbing the top of the slide and pulling, I'm gonna choose grabbing the top of the slide and pulling if they're both equal. And if they're both equally as effective, fact is grabbing the slide and pulling is even more effective, because it works even when the slide was forward after a malfunction or something like that. So when we look at the defensive shooting stuff, it's really easy to pick out moments when we would rely on grosser motor skills rather than finer. But this actually applies to all of our training as well. Anytime you can reduce your reliance on fine motor skills, you're working well with what the body does naturally. Those are the seven natural reactions, that's really important that you understand in regard to your personal defense training, especially if you're building a counter ambush model. Counter ambush model is based on the idea that you're gonna be startled. You're gonna be surprised. You're gonna be caught off guard. And when you are caught off guard, when you are surprised, when you are startled, these natural reactions kick in. You need to understand them and integrate them into your training so that you can be able to respond as efficiently and as appropriately as you can, recognizing what to do because you've integrated this into your training in the first place.