by Dennis Martin

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The following article was first printed in the REALITY CHECK column of COMBAT magazine. Used here with permission from Mr. Martin

NLP is excellent for training, for programming motor skills more quickly and efficiently, and for installing aggression.. It may help with defusing a potential situation by behavioural/ verbal tactics... but there comes to a point "when the talking ends"....... then the fight is on, and it's down to sheer offensive, all-out aggression. 

Marcus Wynne spent several years in Government counter-terrorism as a US Federal Air Marshal, the unit with the most exacting training of any Federal Agency. He flew worldwide as an operator in the Unit, and later became a Tactics Instructor and a Team Leader. During these years he worked in numerous countries and liaised with many foreign agencies. He was sent on various firearms and close-combat courses with many outstanding instructors. Since leaving government service he has been involved in training tactical personnel in advanced training technologies. In the last couple of years he has concentrated on writing, and his first book NO OTHER OPTION was reviewed here.

I guess my biggest response was one of dismay and anger -- as a security professional I and others have been banging the gong about the vulnerabilities in the domestic United States for a long time. Especially those vulnerabilities in the civil aviation security system, which were underscored by the terrorist attacks on 11 September. Those terrorists didn't kick holes in the security fence around aviation, they utilised long standing loopholes and utilised them very well. 
As for preparing against terrorist violence, the biggest tool we need is our own situational awareness. We need to pay attention to what is going on around us and make sure we notice what is out of place, and if we're not in the security business we need to know how to bring attention of the authorities to what we think is out of place. And we need to be prepared to take matters into our own hands, as did the passengers on the fourth hijacked plane, the one that went down in Pennsylvania. 
That leads to the implications of the attack for self protection. There is the matter of situational awareness and being aware and educated as to what to look for. And it's not enough to know what to look for and to recognise it when we see it; we have to be prepared with a plan to deal with it. That plan might mean bringing suspicious activity to the attention of the proper authorities, or it might mean that we will have to stand up in the aisle of a plane being hijacked and become part of the solution. That means you need to be prepared, first mentally, then physically, with all the elements of your training. That then leads to be being responsible for your training, making sure that you are getting the best possible training as well as getting the best possible out of your training, which means you must ensure that you are training the mind appropriately as well as the body, whether with empty hand techniques or with weapons. That requires a serious commitment, and one needs to be sure that they pursue their training with that seriousness. 

DM: You mention the importance of "situational awareness" How can the individual train to increase and develop this? 

Situational awareness in the individual is formed from three things: genetic predisposition to general alertness, which you're born with and can't do anything about. Secondly, your life experiences, which is the sum total of everything that has happened to you since the womb, and thirdly, your training. Some people's life experiences predispose them to greater situational awareness, especially people who have suffered physical abuse at an early age or been exposed to violence like living in a war zone or a blighted neighbourhood. The training is the biggest variable that can increase situational awareness. Training needs to concentrate on creating experiences -- training that adds to the experience leg of the tripod is much more effective than that which is presented in a sterile "classroom" manner. Situational awareness has a physical component directly related to use of the vision; you've done exercises with me and on your own on enhancing the use of peripheral vision and its concomitant effect on general alertness. The other part is learning how to utilise one's own individual OODA loop, which I assume you'll talk about at some point, and understanding how an opponent utilises their OODA loop. Learning how to use one's senses, and increasing one's acuity to behavioural cues, and utilising the OODA loop -- that's how you can increase and develop the basic sense of situational awareness you're born with.

DM: You were the first to research the work of Colonel Boyd and introduce it into the Tactical Training Community. Since then, everyone and his dog is teaching the OODA Loop. We covered the concept in an earlier part of this interview, but how do you see training in Situational Awareness, specifically utilising the OODA Loop has developed in the past couple of years?

Situational awareness has made it into the vocabulary of trainers in the course of recent years. There was a lot of talk about general awareness, but the specific language didn't make it in until I and others such as yourself introduced it. There's been a sea change in training in the US in recent years, with a greater emphasis on aspects of mental preparation and mindset. The standard for many years was the Cooper Colour Code and the Principles of Personal Protection; now as an adjunct or supplement (but in my mind equal partners, as they do complement one another) the OODA loop and the concept of situational awareness has come to the forefront. I think the tactical training community, especially in the field of law enforcement and private sector and government, anywhere they don't draw directly from the military, has realised that inculcating the appropriate mental attitude is the essential part of training that has been overlooked. There's been too much emphasis on tactics and gear in the past, and while mindset is mentioned as the third leg of the combat triad, not enough has been done to ensure the appropriate mindset is trained in. That's changing now. I think the difficulty was that mindset was something easy to describe but not so easy to train in. Also, it tends to be hard to evaluate on the same way a tactical scenario can be scored or basic marksmanship can be used to qualify. That's where the paradigm of accelerated learning and compressed curriculum drawing from neural based learning can be of so much use, as you've seen in your own brilliant work on utilising neural based learning for combatives. 

DM: You broke new ground in the training of women with the NIKITA PROJECT, which was a big success. How did you differentiate between training women and training the guys? 

Training women, especially women with a history of violence done to them, is a whole different ball game from teaching men. With any student group, you have to understand the students and have a clear picture of what it is that is motivating them to come to you for training. Then you have to figure out the right language and presentation to communicate that to them. With the NIKITA PROJECT I was working with a large number of women who had survived violence. So I had to find a way to get them to overcome the social inhibitions against women being violent and accessing the state of self defence that everyone carries around with them. I had to find a way of first accessing their anger and then channelling it into appropriate actions. With guys, it's pretty easy to find a way to do that. Women have more societal inhibitions about both dealing with violence, whether receiving it or delivering it. So you have to think through clearly and spend the time up front understanding what it is they want and being sensitive to the special needs of the abused. And you have to be switched on in front of the class and pay attention to what is working and what is not. That's very important. Lots of instructors, they get on a roll from their lesson plan and they're not paying attention to the feedback they get from the students, all the nonverbal and verbal cues that tell you whether they're getting it or not. It's especially important to do that when teaching female abuse survivors, because they can shut down or have a nervous breakdown right in front of you if you're not careful. I found it to be very helpful to have women assistant instructors in he class with men who could be a sympathetic ear to women that were foundering.
© Copyright 2001 Dennis Martin

Stay tuned for Marcus Wynne: The Way of the Jedi (Part 4)

He has been a guest instructor at the annual training conferences of the International Assocotiation of Law Enforcement Firearms Instructors and the American Society of Law Enforcement Trainers. He regularly presents programs for police units in Southern Africa and the USA. Currently he writes the Reality Check column for COMBAT Magazine. He can be reached at RealityCheckUK@Hotmail.com