The Flinch Response and The S.P.E.A.R. System

Here is another important video from the Personal Defense Network. One of the most important things before you start practicing or thinking about the system is understanding the origin and the physiological basis of the system. Uh, initially this is confusing to people that are trained in other self defense systems. Uh, and the reason for that is a lot of what we do is based on what our opponent triggers in us. And that's basically the pushing away danger, the turning motion.

And, and what we've done is researched this whole startle flinch, ah, um, component, of our survival system. And there's three stimuli that trigger flinch. There's auditory, there's visual, there's tactile. All of them are present in most real attacks. And what the S.P.E.A.R.

System does is basically... Um, lets start with the acronym, Spontaneous, Protection, Enabling, Accelerated, Response. So the spontaneous part is that startle flinch mechanism that all of us have. You touch something hot, your hand pulls away. Uh, you look down, you see a golf ball near a stick, you immediately think the stick is a snake.

And you will flinch away from that and then recover. So you body always airs on the side survival. Um, and, it will then look around and make sure that it, that it's safe. But the first thing it'll do, survival system kicks in, we push away from danger, we turn away from danger. So what we did many years ago, in fact this is circa nineteen eighty eight.

We started doing these drills at our facility, where we would try to set up an, uh, ambush attack. And what I recognized very quickly was the conventional wax on, wax off tactics that we all practice in martial arts, didn't work when we didn't know that attack was happening. Um, and this is huge, so even if you're a layperson at home, and you've never done anything, the, the physiological basis of the system is, is going to work perfectly for you. What's vital to understand here, is there's, there's a myth and a misconception in all training, that if we do thousands and thousands of reps, we're gonna do this. of reps, we're gonna do this.

The bottom line is your body, before it can access your complex motor skills, will go through this short, short, short, uh, uh, gap between stimulus and response. gap between stimulus and response. So what we do, is is, we tell people to remind them, that the S.P.E.A.R. System, and it's research is a bridge to your next move. The complex motor skills that you've been practicing.

Check out more videos just like this one at the Personal Defense Network.