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I have always liked Bruce K. Siddle and his PPCT organizations psychophysiological research on close combat violence so here is a excellent article by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Bruce Siddle on realistic violence and its effects on martial skills and psychological barriers.
Its Lt. Col. Dave Grossmans Killology research group site and there are many other excellent articles there for those who wish to read through them.
Cheers,
http://www.killology.com/art_psych_combat.htm
I wonder where their credibility for the heartrate chart comes from?
How or when did they conduct their research...
I don't have the qualifications to question Siddles research nor I believe does anyone else here. Research of realistic adrenal combat stress has been tested by many other researchers beyond just Siddle and Grossman. By both sources civilan and military.
Here is Siddles passage which may answer that question-
Bruce K. Siddle's landmark research at PPCT involved monitoring the heart rate responses of law enforcement officers in interpersonal conflict simulations using paintball-type simulation weapons. This research has consistently recorded heart rate increases to well over 200 beats per minute, with some peak heart rates of up to 300 beats per minute. These were simulations in which the combatants knew that their life was not in danger. The combatant,in a true life-and-death situation (whether soldier or law enforcement officer), faces the ultimate universal human phobia of interpersonal aggression and will certainly experience a physiological reaction even greater than that of Siddle's subjects.-
Its first hand modern testing such as this that many martial artists don't want to acknowledge because it pokes very big holes in there misconceptions about traditional self defense training and the mythos of using delicate fine motor skills under exterme stress.
You don't need any qualifications to question research.
I think that heart rate table is questionable at best. I've had my heart rate well above 175 on many occasions, and I definitely didn't experience visual or auditory exclusion, irrational or submissive behavior, let alone involuntary bowel evacuation.
Maybe I'm a sociopath. "A flawed tool."
Tak,
I don't think its just about heartbeats per minute. IMO that is being to focused on one element of the study. Its more about the kind of stressor that places you in the situation which triggers the physiological flight or fight response.
Running on a treadmill untill your heartbeat is over 175 is a tad different than being placed in a enviroment of extreme stress.
Tak,
I'm curious about your experience of having your heartbeat at 175. Were these occasions where you were being shot at attacked by edged weapons or multiple assailants (in real life or training)? And were you able to (or even trying to) pull off techniques from your chosen style that involve fine motor skills? Before you answer I'll let you know that I'm a PPCT instructor but I'm a martial artist first. The heartrate reasearch and research they've done regarding combat stress answered some questions for me regarding performance (mine and others) during friendly sparring matches vs physical confrontations where you might die if you lose. PPCT as a system has it's strengths and weaknesses but the research is cutting edge. FLETC (Federal law enforcement training center) is in the middle of doing some research that takes about 100 different factors into account heartrate being one of them. Subjects undergo a battery of test and scenarios one being a gunfight with simmunitions that is pretty much a lose/lose scenario. It showed that heart rate isn't as large a factor and doesn't necessarily indicate failure to perform during combat stress. However the implication that complex motor action during combat stress is compromised stilll stands. From 115-145 it's all good but higher than that...
I gotta run but tell me what you think.
Black Jack: The heart rate table was the most concrete thing there; that's why I singled it out.
BaldMonk: The live-or-die situations in which I've been were similar to the following: My car breaks down, I'm at least 10 miles from the nearest house, it's -20F, windy, and beginning to snow. In these kinds of situations, I've been able to think coherently and use fine motor skills, even with numb hands. I wasn't wearing a heart monitor, but I estimate that my heart rate approached 180 at times. I'm also comfortable with most kinds of firearms, and I've hunted, but that doesn't inspire combat stress, unless you imagine that the deer is going to attack you and cut your spine out with its dewclaw. I think all of my hand-to-hand confrontations have been with unarmed opponents.
The point of my original statement was that heart rate wasn't the sole nor primary factor in the study - if so, I'd be involuntarily evacuating my bowels every time I did an interval workout.
If fine and complex motor skills are compromised during combat stress, to which nobody is immune, how do people still manage to shoot each other?
Yo man,
The deer claw technique is very scary. I don't evne gphsehbn ;snf;kbbf;jknbb x fbbn...
sorry about that I became so frightened I lost the ability to type due to elevated heart rate.:D
People shoot each other because they're determined to do so. Just because the fine and complex motor skills are comprimised it doesn't mean they're negated. Actually certain skills are easier to pull off between 115-145 BPM. We're in agreement about heart rate not being the primary thing. In fact I brought the FLETC stuff up to show that even PPCT is rethinking their previous stance on the prominence of heartrate during combat. The PHD's that did these studies took a long time to say that they can't really isolate the factors that determine sucess in combat. In that gun fight scenario they had people with heartrates over 200 BPM that were able to perform successfully. By performing successfully I mean doing the techniques correctly (shooting, fighting) and making the correct tactical decisions (not taking cover behind inadequate protection or taking on a suspect with a shotgun empty handed (although given the limited space and the fact that the test subjects were given a handgun designed to jam, not malf but jam, after one shot I didn't blame the guys that choose that option).
The one thing they did come up with was that when people train using the most realistic scenarios such as simmunitions and hand to hand drills with full contact these people have shown a signifigantly better chance of success in combat. They call it stress innoculation. What does that mean to us as martial artists. We need to incorporate these concepts into our training so that during combat good stuff comes out. We have discussions about this all the time on this board when we argue about realistic training methods and so forth. It's easy to get caught up in analysis paralysis and I sure that in 5 years or so the PHD types will have some definitive answers but in the mean time, I'm just gonna keep training.
Peace
I'm not attacking this research.
However, it is fair to subject it to a critical eye.
This is the same guy that wrote a book saying that violent TV and video games train children to be mass murderers. I'd say that's reason enough to doubt his objectivity.
Heh, I wanted to say something about the other content on the site, but thought I'd better limit myself to the subject at hand.