Out of my family, I am the only one who chose to practice martial arts (I’m still trying to convince some of them). However, one of my sisters is highly interested in Korean culture, and that provides a fun way for us to connect since Taekwondo is a Korean martial art. The other day, my sister introduced me to a Korean drama on Netflix called “Strong Girl Bong-Soon”. Ok, so the name might lose a bit of punch in the translation… despite that, the show is really enjoyable! The basic plot is that there is a young woman who is blessed with immense strength despite her small size. Unfortunately, she is really just a normal person other than that. Unlike most super heroes, she isn’t given unusually high intelligence or wisdom to match her strength. She struggles from day to day with the normal difficulties of relationships, work, and education. Unfortunately, her abilities often complicate things terribly.
One of the episodes that I saw last night reminded me of a part of martial arts training that is often overlooked. During the episode, Bong-Soon (the heroine) comes across a villain beating her female friend with a section of pipe in preparation for kidnapping. Bong-Soon grabs the pipe and bends it in half around the man’s hand and promptly delivers a solid kick to his midsection sending him flying off screen. She then proceeds to collapse in tears beside her friend for fear that the young woman is dead or permanently injured. Now, her initial response would seem to be pretty good, but let’s look at what happened after the adrenaline stopped.
Bong-Soon stopped the threat, but afterwards, she was unable to cope with the situation at hand. She simply collapsed into tears and became mostly useless. Believe it or not, this is a pretty common reaction for both males and females when exposed to a violent encounter. The body does pretty well while the adrenaline is flowing, but once the threat has been eliminated, we can go into a sort of shock or fear response that causes weakness, shaking, and loss of higher brain function. This is NORMAL. The key for a martial artist, is that we aren’t supposed to react in a “normal” fashion to a violent encounter. We should be the ones able to stop the threat and then pursue a productive course of action after the event. Doing this requires training specifically for that type of response.
With my students, I practice something called “stress inoculation”. It is a method of teaching in which I gradually increase the realism of the situations until the students are able to perform their escapes and responses in a highly stressful situation. Real violent encounters are messy, often loud, and very frightening. Students need to be able to operate under those circumstances. As an instructor, I cannot in good conscience allow my students to become over confident in their skills simply because they can perform them in a static drill situation. Often (particularly during belt tests), my students will find themselves unexpectedly emotional after completing a series of escapes or responses to a simulated violent encounter. At this point, students must be taught that it is a normal physiological response to an adrenalized experience, and that they must now overcome that response and focus on the next task at hand. It isn’t wrong to cry, but it is dangerous to allow the physiological and emotional responses to overcome your ability to function.
Going back to the TV show… let’s analyze Bong-Soon’s reaction and see how it could have been improved with better training. Her first reaction was to immobilize the attacker’s weapon. An excellent choice, however, I probably would have opted for removing it from the villain completely to prevent it being used again should he recover. Her second action was to deliver a forceful blow to the attacker’s center of mass. Depending on the situation, this could be a great tactic. A well-aimed punch or kick to a person’s xiphoid process or upper groin can be temporarily debilitating. However, the key word here is “temporarily”. Once the kick had been delivered, Bong-Soon immediately turned her attention to her friend and ignored the fact that her enemy was still within a few yards of her. Someone who is already hopped up on adrenaline can recover from significant impact with frightening speed. It would have been better for Bong-Soon to remain alert while assessing her friend for signs of life. Secondly, breaking down into an emotional wreck doesn’t help an injured person in the least. Unlike Rapunzel in the recent Disney re-make, our tears don’t heal people. A better course of action would be to immediately call for help or carefully move the victim to a safe location. If you have one with you, use a cell phone to contact emergency services. Remember that your adrenaline will cause you to speak VERY fast, so take a breath and try to speak slowly and clearly to the dispatcher. When it is all over, consider seeking out a wise friend or professional counselor to help you work through the many feelings and thoughts you will have in the following days.
We all know that TV shows don’t usually depict real situations, but sometimes they make a pretty good tool for assessing our own responses to bad situations. Next time you are watching a show that depicts some kind of violent encounter, take a moment to pause the film and think about how your response would differ. Does it make you feel more confident or less? If less, consider spending some more time working through scenarios or stress inoculation drills to prepare you for such an encounter. Train on!