The so-called Flinch, Fight, Flight and Freeze responses are the common reactions to a sudden, unexpected or perceived threat to our personal safety. We have evolved these reactions to keep ourselves from harm.

However, it is possible that these responses may have a negative effect when we consider the increasing level of violence and aggression in today’s society. Let’s think about each in turn:

Alone, the Flinch response can only ever buy you a brief moment of safety. Most people will flinch away from any initial attack, losing balance and turning their head away, and thus any subsequent attacks can now utilise this loss of position. No serious assailant throws just one attack.

Freezing is probably the most dangerous response of all. Your utterly static position leaves you at the complete mercy of your attacker.

Sadly, these two reactions are extremely common in the untrained person, a fact which attackers use to their advantage. This leaves the Fight response, and the Flight response.

Flight is the safest and easiest of these two options, but in many cases this option is not always available. This could be due to the environment, multiple assailants, the tactics employed by your attacker(s), an injury which prevents you from escaping, or simply your job: Police and professional Security personnel do not have the option of running away.

So this leaves the Fight response: If you come out kicking & punching wildly, you may gain a valuable advantage against your opponent, although success will be largely down to surprise, luck, and perhaps a lack of ability in your attacker. The chances of a similar outcome against a trained attacker, or a group of attackers is not as likely. However with correct tuition you can learn to channel the fight response so as to make a positive outcome more probable, both physically and mentally.

With regular training we can utilise our natural responses as an aid to our defence. The flinch response is used positively in our training – when the hands come up to protect the head, this is our natural Pre-Fight position. We can further assist ourselves by becoming more familiar with consistent attacks from a training partner. The flinch response happens when we are either scared, or expecting pain. Becoming more comfortable with being attacked and possibly injured during a confrontation is far from normal, unless you train.

To become an effective martial artist or fighter requires a re-tuning of these natural biological responses. The more we place ourselves in the firing line (in the form of realistic delivery from our training partners) the more comfortable we get with fists, kicks and even weapons coming towards us. This enables us to defend, control or defuse the situation more positively and effectively, without having to overcome our own natural reactions.

Constant training and gradual progression allows us to experience a vast array of varying attacks, from multiple training partners of different sizes, speeds, strengths and abilities. The better our training partner is, the more competent & relaxed we become when faced with the need to defend ourselves.

There is no substitute for consistently training hard. The knowledge gained allows us to react positively with a clear mind when threatened, instead of allowing the untrained Flinch, Fight, Flight or Freeze reactions to take over. Which option would you prefer to rely on when your safety is on the line?

When asked which martial art they study, how many times have you heard people say “I do MMA”?

A common misconception is that MMA is a martial art system of it’s own, however this is not the case, and in fact couldn’t be further from the truth.

MMA’s origins date back to an ancient Olympic sport called Pankration, a method which utilised a combination of striking and grappling skills much the same as MMA competitions do. Pankration originated in Ancient Greece and was later adopted by the Romans. In fact as early as the 1880′s there are documented examples of practitioners of Greco-Roman Wrestling, Catch Wrestling (Catch-As-Catch-Can), and other grappling styles meeting to compete in no-holds-barred tournaments around Europe.

In 1899 another early example of MMA was created, called Bartitsu. This was used in the 2009 Sherlock Holmes movie starring Robert Downey Jnr, and was a combination of Judo, Jujutsu, Western Boxing, Savate and Canne De Combat (French Stick Fighting). Bartitsu was founded in London by Edward William Barton-Wright and is believed to be the first martial art to blend Asian and European fighting styles together. By the early 1900s these ‘blended’ contests were becoming increasingly popular throughout Europe and across Asia. In Japan such contests were known as Merikan (a Japanese term meaning “American Fighting”). Victory would be determined either via a points decision, the best of three throws/takedowns, or by knockout/submission.

At the end of World War One, the art of wrestling experienced a sad decline in overall popularity, and subsequently split into two distinct genres called Shoot and Show. Whilst the Shoot Wrestlers continued to compete in combat tournaments, the Show Wrestlers developed the modern professional wrestling events that we see on television today.

The modern MMA scene stems from Shoot Wrestling, Vale Tudo, and Brazilian Jui-Jitsu (BJJ). This latter style gained popularity after the now-famous “Gracie Challenge” issued by Carlos & Helio Gracie, and indeed the Gracie name is now renowned within the MMA world. In 1993 Royce Gracie entered and won the the first Ultimate Fighting Championship tournament (UFC) in America, bringing the art of BJJ and the world of Mixed Martial Arts into the public eye. This echoes the work of Bruce Lee, who gained public exposure after blending a variety of martial arts and western styles together to create his now-famous Jeet Kune Do concept.

If you look carefully, you will discover that behind every good tournament fighter there is plenty of time and effort spent building a foundation of specific arts, styles, and systems that they then adapt to work within the rules of Mixed Martial Arts competition. So it would appear better to learn one complete art, style or system, than practice & prove what you’ve learned, instead of trying to take many small elements and not see the bigger picture.

The general thinking of many people who take up “MMA” is that it is a quick fix, or shortcut to learning a martial art or martial sport. So, wouldn’t you rather have mastered at least one art, instead of being a jack-of-all-trades and master of none?