
Personal Defense Preparedness: Mobility
Rob PincusDescription
Here's another important video from the Personal Defense Network. We talk a lot in the combat focus shooting program about learning to do complex skills in a dynamic environment. Not staging and choreographing, so that we're standing perfectly still when we do something we should be doing what we're moving, like presenting our firearm. The overwhelming majority of the time that we recognize the need to shoot, we know that we're not going to be able to instantly shoot. We're going to have to get the firearm from our holster or from our ready position into a shooting position.
And we want to do that while we're moving. Talk to me a little bit about the science of mobility. What's interesting about the way humans integrate is that they're, after they move into extension what they will do is they will move laterally. Usually. Sometimes they'll just retreat and and throw it into reverse.
But the way they gain advantage, especially in a fight, is to move laterally. For example, a rodeo clown is outweighed by a bull by thousands of pounds, but the way he's able to manipulate that two ton animal is he's able to move laterally and in a circular motion. And you see that historically in martial arts is to move to the side of your adversary and getting lateral movement is very, very important. Modern day fitness routines are a lot of people spend a lot of time running when in actuality what they need to be doing is moving side-to-side in rapid repetitive motion so that they engrain that neuromuscular junction into moving from side-to-side and building that musculature and increasing the flexibility when they do that. Yeah, it's important to train in the context that you actually are going to be applying your skill.
Something like the sport of racketball gives you a lot of practice in that side-to-side quick movement. You can be very, very fit the first time you go out and try to play a sport like that, you twist your ankle, you throw your back out, you fall down and you don't look like you know what you're doing. Combative sports are the same way and in a fight, which is not a sport, but it's something that we can train for in a very athletic way, needs to be trained in context. Does the human body lend itself to that lateral motion? Or is that more of a psychological behavioral lateral motion?
No, it's designed that way. And although the knee moves forward and back, the ankle is unique to humans. There's only a few other species in the world that have that capability. And that capability of planting and increasing the surface area to being able to move laterally is specifically designed once again, in the in the example of a bull to a rodeo clown, that clown is able to move to the side because his surface area that initiates that mobility is much larger. And so humans are designed that way and have specific muscles that that's what they're designed to do is to move laterally.
And doing linear sports, such as swimming or running don't develop those that musculature, nor did they develop the proprioception and the footwork to be able to do that. So it all ties in. And humans are designed to be able to move and be able to move into extension. And one thing we should probably mention that, that people at home don't know is that before you started practicing as a physician on humans, you also are trained veterinarian. That's right.
I made my living working exclusively on horses. And what's interesting about that, with the human weapon system is as a veterinarian, sometimes we have to do things that the horses didn't appreciate but they sure needed. And so periodically it was humans versus horses. And as a result, some of what Darwin has developed and some of what we talk about and how we integrate that is actually called ethology. And it's the comparative anatomy and comparative physiology.
That background and that training kind of integrates into this. And what we found was, usually when we were doing something to a horse that they didn't want us to do, we moved in a circle and we moved, we increased that mobility. And they weren't able to do that, so we won. So, understanding anatomy, not only anatomy in general in studying what we have, but being able to make those comparisons and being able to say this works one way, this works in other way. So if we're gonna train humans, we're gonna practice to use our human weapon system as efficiently as possible.
We really need to understand the strength and weaknesses of the body. Absolutely. Mobility is a huge part of winning a fight. It can be a huge part of surviving and weathering a storm, that initial ambush that you can get even into the fight. Understanding how best to move and practicing to move in realistic ways are important parts of your preparation for self-defense.
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