Counter Ambush Concepts: Preparing Your Response Session 4: Preparation: Readiness vs. Anticipation

If we take a counter ambush approach, to preparing for the things that are most likely, and then preparing for the things that are reasonable in our lives. We still we'll look for opportunities to control. We still will look for opportunities to be prepared and we should, then we will be more ready. So now I'm ready. I've trained, I've got the gear.

I've got the awareness of pre-contact cues. I've I've done the research. I know what the most likely events are for me and my family, could be little, could be big, could be, we look at natural disasters. What natural disasters are we most likely to face as well as violent interpersonal crime? What violent interpersonal crime are you most likely to face?

We get ready for those things. But there is a marked difference between readiness and awareness. They're very closely related but there is a difference, readiness and awareness. And we deal with this a lot on the range. Like I said, my specialty is defensive shooting.

So we'll talk a lot about things that happen on the range and we'll relate this to defensive shooting but this could be unarmed defense. This could be home security. This could be medical. This could be anything. Understand the concept, understand the principle readiness versus awareness.

If I buy the gun, these are training guns by the way. You can look in there and see there's no barrel, no actual ammunition in here. I buy the gun. I get the holster, put the gun in the holster. I get the training.

I am ready to defend myself with this gun. I make the mental commitment. I am ready to defend somebody else. Maybe my family members with this gun, but if I am not aware, if I am not aware of the fact that there is a guy standing over here that is about to shoot me, is about to try to shoot everybody in this room. That readiness is irrelevant.

That readiness doesn't magically take the bad guy out. And this gets us back into this counter ambush concept. We can understand what is most likely. We can understand what we're most likely going to need to do. We can prepare for it.

We can be ready for it, but if we're not aware, if we're not at that moment under the influence of the knowledge that we need to perform the skill that we need to use the tool, it's all for nothing. And this is where we start to bridge the gap between when we're in control and when we're not in control. And how do we recover from not being aware? On the range we give commands obviously for people to shoot now in some training models, you're told ahead of time everything, right? All right, when I blow this whistle you're going to draw your gun fire two shots at the chest.

Come back into the ready position. Assess your environment. Find a fresh magazine, drop the partial magazine insert the fresh magazine. Make sure it's seated. Assess your environment again.

Make sure you don't need to defend yourself and place the gun back in your holster. Everybody understand, everybody ready? Okay, here we go. Whistle blows. Well, you were ready to do it, right?

And in theory, if that that instructor wouldn't tell you to do all those things if you didn't believe you could do them safely. You're ready to do it. Now you're up. We're aware that you're going to need to do it. Whistle blows and you do, great.

Except, you're probably not going to be told by the bad guy at the convenience store. Hey, are you going in there to pay for your gas, get a beverage or use the bathroom, cool. Just wanna let you know while you're in there in about 15 to 30 seconds, I'm gonna come in, pull out a gun shoot the clerk. Start to turn towards you. At which point I would suggest you shoot me twice in the chest, pull the gun back in look around make sure I don't have any friends.

When you realize I don't have any friends, reload your gun, double check make sure I'm still down. And then holster and call the police. Probably not gonna happen. So there's a difference distinct difference between that training model and what you're most likely to face in that ambush moment. So instead you're standing there trying to figure out like which brand of water you're gonna buy, which shape of bottle is most intriguing to you?

And why you're not just putting water from a fountain faucet into a glass like you did 10 years ago. You're standing there having that dilemma and a gunshot goes off. Now I'm aware that I need to use my gun in some way at some level. But if I never prepared for that if I never built that into my training model, if I never actually took in that counter ambush mindset of it's not gonna be a stage briefing. It's not gonna be a choreography.

It's not going to be a warning order that it is gonna be surprising. It is gonna be chaotic and it is gonna be threatening. And I am going to in the heat of the moment need to process that information something's going on, then execute my complex motor skills while making decisions in an overwhelming moment of chaos. I'm not really as prepared as I can be. And the missing element, the missing word 'cause these words get talked about a lot in the training community I think.

We talk about readiness. We talk about awareness. You have to be aware of your surroundings and you have to be ready. While you train to be ready and then when you go to the restaurant you sit with your back to the wall, your eyes on the door, you know where all the exits are. You're watching the people.

You have two options, you can either only go to restaurants with plastic acrylic or glass menus that you can see through while you choose your food, or you learn to read braille and you select your food by brailles so that you can constantly keep your eyes scanning the entire environment. or you take turns. You could do that. You could okay, you look at the menu. I'm gonna, okay, you're done.

You're gonna have chicken, okay. You ready? Give me the menu. You watch I'm gonna read. You can do that.

I tell, I go to lunch with students a lot. I go to lunch with the students and this awareness model. I'll sit down and I'll my back to the door. Say, oh my God, Rob Pincus is sitting with his back to the door. What are you doing that for?

You what, I know, you watch the door. When the bad guy comes in and you go like that, I'm gonna duck. That's my plan. That's my plan. So that's my, I'm aware that you will go, ah and I will then duck.

I am ready to duck. That's not how things work, right? I probably told the story for like last couple of years about a blog I read, a guy, a smart guy, ended up becoming friends with him, but he wrote a reported block. I mean, just went like not thinking slow and dull of mind and not making sense. Like, I don't know how else to describe this.

He actually said, he actually said in this blog but it was really annoying to go out in public and see people who paid attention to their food while they were eating, and weren't watching their environment. And the worst offenders were like young couples in love who would stare into each other's eyes while they were eating in a restaurant, and talk intensely to one another. Completely oblivious to what was going on around them. If I don't make eye contact with someone that I'm having dinner with, I will probably get slapped. So I don't know what what's going on there.

Readiness, awareness, the missing word anticipation. That's the word that's been missing from the dialogue? That's the word that's missing from the training environment is the difference between how we think about readiness and awareness, and truly having anticipation of what is going on or what is about to happen. And especially what we're about to have to do. If I'm in an environment where everything is choreographed, and everything is controlled, and everything is sketched out I have 100% anticipation of exactly what's gonna happen.

Go back to the range scenario. If I say, I'm gonna blow a whistle, you're gonna shoot two shots. You're gonna reload your gun. You're gonna look around. You're gonna reholster and I'm gonna tell you what we're gonna do next.

You have 100% anticipation. How many people have ever done anything athletic? It's everybody? My class participation points. So if you've played sports, you've been involved in some element of a plan, right?

Even if it's an individual sport, wrestling, or tennis, or golf. I'm gonna try to hook the ball around the dogleg, may or may not work but you have a plan. You have, you know, I'm gonna pass the ball to this guy on the basketball court. And he's gonna throw the ball in the net. I'm gonna kick the ball to that guy.

I'm gonna run down there. He's gonna kick it back to me. And I'm gonna score a goal in the soccer. There's a plan. You anticipate that your plan is gonna work, right?

You're ready to do that kicking, and you're ready to do the passing, and you're ready to do the hitting. You have the awareness because you know how the shape of the golf course, you know, that somebody is gonna blow a whistle and throw the ball in. So the guy's gonna blow the whistle. The guy's gonna throw the ball and it's gonna hit your feet. And you're gonna be able to kick it.

You're aware that these things are gonna happen. So you have a very high level of anticipation of being able to do what you're gonna need to do. Baseball, baseball has to be the closest thing to a non sport that we call athletics. It's like a break interrupted by athleticism every once in a while. Exactly the opposite of football, which is athleticism constantly interrupted by breaks.

So how many, but baseball is pretty easy to choreograph, right? I was gonna come in, the guy's gonna hit it. It's gonna come off the bat. And somebody like 400 feet away is gonna be able to watch it come at him, catch it. Some guy like 150 feet from him is gonna watch all this happen, and then wait for him to throw it to him.

Because the other guy has to run in a pattern around the shape. And so here he comes, it's pretty pretty predictable. High level anticipation what's gonna happen. Until the guy out there in the outfield picks the wrong cutoff man, right? Who's seen that happen.

Doesn't happen a lot professional baseball but haven't little league, right? Whereas the second base man in the shortstop, we're both standing here a second baseman standing like this. Shortstop's standing there watching him and the ball goes bouncing past the shortstop. 'Cause the kid in the outfield didn't know the plan wasn't shared with the shortstop guy, the cutoff man. And he threw the ball to him and the guy just stood there.

He could have caught the ball. He was ready. He had the skills, but he had no awareness that the outfielder was throwing him the ball. So there was no anticipation of the need to catch the ball until it bounces in front of them. And then you got your chaos, 'cause that's surprising.

So now you got the poor like nine year old kid who sees the ball bouncing in front of him towards the pitcher. the guys running at him, he's looking at the second baseman. Like you were supposed to catch it. I was, who was supposed to catch? And he looks out in the outfield and then finally decides to run over and grab the ball, which he was ready to do the whole time.

He just wasn't aware that he had to do it. And then he has to execute the rest of the play. And maybe they get the guy out or maybe the guy gets a triple instead of a double. I don't know what happens now because it's chaotic, because we can't predict it, because we can't choreograph it. Even in a controlled sporting environment.

And quite often we try to make our defensive training whether it's armed or unarmed a sport. We try to make it an athletic endeavor. We try to control it. We try to have this super high level of anticipation. We get people out on the range.

We have a target that we use that has a lot of different options. It's got, you know, a big box in the middle and a couple other boxes down here. And this is sort of supposed to represent a human body. And there's a triangle and a circles out here. There's a lot going on.

And by the middle of the second day you've kind of figured out that you aren't supposed to know what's gonna happen. I can say left the middle circle when you got to shoot that. But that lack of awareness of what I'm gonna say next and where I'm gonna want you to put bullets. The lack of accurate anticipation doesn't change the fact that you are ready. You are standing on a gun range.

You've been shooting a whole bunch of rounds. You got hundreds of rounds down range. The guns in your hand, you're focused on that piece of paper. The pattern of command and break. You've got it figured out.

It's very intuitive. You know that I am about to give a command. You're about to shoot the gun. It's about to go bang and you're gonna put bullets in the target. And there's one point in the day where hopefully, you know, you guys get to train with me.

If you haven't already been on a range with me. So I don't wanna completely ruin it as far as telling you exactly what happens. But there's a point in the day where I give a command that realistically people have about a 0% chance of having anticipated. And yet it is incredibly obvious what I want them to do. Intellectually it's not challenging.

It's not hard to figure out. They're ready to shoot but they have no anticipation of that potential command. They're capable of shooting it. They're physically ready to execute on that command, but they had no awareness that it was coming. I didn't say, hey, I might say blue, right?

Maybe this, this targets blue. Well, if I told you that red is a command and I said red and you shot that red target. And then I said, blue, there's some level of awareness that I might use colors to indicate targets. You might've had a little bit of anticipation especially if you've caught on to this whole counter ambush thing, where I'm trying to keep you thinking keep you processing information. But this command that we give is really there's no warning for it.

And we see hesitation, and we see not only hesitation in terms of timing, but then that hesitation turns into a panic sometimes not a literal panic. You don't run off the range screaming, right. But then they run then they have to rush, right? Like what, What'd he say? And they look around and then some guy figures it out, and he does it.

And then, oh, I got to do that. And they go to do it and they rush and they screw it up. So even though they were ready and capable, right. 'Cause that's my job. I'm not gonna give them the command unless I think they can actually do it in this to make my point about anticipation.

So I give them the command. They were technically ready but they weren't aware, they had no anticipation and there's either one or both have a hesitation to execute or an inability to apply the skill. And that's really what we're talking about. Are you ready to apply the skills that you need to apply even in a surprising and chaotic threatening moment? Or are you only ready if you have a high level of anticipation?

And if you have a high level awareness, and that's the difference between a general I'm gonna get ready to defend myself approach and a true counter ambush approach. When you take the counter ambush approach you're training to make a decision at the same time that you execute the complex motor skill. You're training to process information congruent with or immediately proceeding the execution of the complex motor skill. You're not relying on anticipation. You're not living in a safety blanket of awareness.

You're not misunderstanding readiness to do something with the ability to do it without a warning, general readiness versus specific anticipation. So I challenge you to change the way you approach your training. Approach your training from a standpoint of zero anticipation. When I go to the mall, I am not anticipating that I need to shoot somebody. If I was I wouldn't go to the mall, that that's the reality.

Let's go right back to where we started. If you could control your environment. If you could control whether or not you were gonna get attacked. if you could control evil having access to you or your family wouldn't you avoid it? Wouldn't you had use your awareness to stay away from the bad man?

Absolutely, that's common sense. So the very nature of personal defense training, starts with the acceptance that you can't be in control. And then there are violent predators out there and you could be visited by evil. Keep that in mind, own that. Let that drive how you train.

Don't forget that along the way, because you forget that along the way you start putting in anticipation in there. Now you have a problem. I go to the mall, I'm anticipating spending money. That's what I'm anticipating. I'm anticipating finding the thing I'm shopping for, or having the family member, or the friend I'm with whatever, find the thing they're shopping for and people having a financial transaction, and we leave.

That might be traumatic depending on what you're shopping for, but I'm not expecting, but I'm not expecting to have to pull my gun out. I am ready. And I do go through the mall with I think a certain level of awareness. But to think that we're not gonna have task fixation. To think that we're not gonna focus on, you know, the red shirt or the blue shirt.

To think that we're not gonna be focused on the where's that store, where's the directory. I gotta look at the thing, and that somebody can't come up behind us, or that the shots can't ring out before we see the guy with the bulky jacket walking around the mall in July, that's foolish. That goes against everything you said you were gonna do. When you stepped across that line and said I am gonna prepare. And that's real easy to forget.

That's the core of the counter ambush, understanding the difference between the readiness you need, the awareness you want and the anticipation that you're probably not gonna have in the worst case scenario. Get the processing of information into your training. That's the key processing information as part of your training to alleviate the reliance you have on awareness. And to take you from zero anticipation to accurate application of skill, when you need it most in that worst case scenario.