Adreneline Dump

When a person is attacked, the human body reacts by dumping Adreneline into the bloodstream, which makes your heart very beat much faster. Your heart starts pounding, you take deeper, faster breaths... These physical reactions to stress were designed to give you more oxygen in the blood so you can FIGHT or TAKE FLIGHT.

The adreneline dump can even make you impervious to pain. (You will feel it afterwards, but not during the melee.) This body reaction is well-known as our 'fight or flight' response. And all human beings were born with it.

Sometimes the body gets hit with so much adreneline, that all you can do is stand still and shake. I know, it happened to me once as a 21 year old. I witnessed a furious cook chase after a skinhead with a kitchen knife in his hand.

The cook caught the skinhead and held him at knifepoint until the cops came. He didn't cut him. But I still got the shakes.

Again, this is natural. It might have been the way the caveman stayed safe from saber-toothed tigers millions of years back. If the human kept still, the animal might fail to see it. But who knows? Were you there to see it? I thought not. But don't worry. I wasn't there either.

Some traditional martial arts use sparring or tournaments to get their students to handle this adreneline rush, but many don't.

Aikido is a martial art where most styles prohibit competitions or tournaments. They teach students to remain serene while being attacked, but it takes many years. Also remember, the street is a hellava lot different from the dojo.

The thing about Self Defense is to be aware of the big adreneline dump and try to find a system that handles this, and which you are happy with. Books, videos and DVDs are of some help, but they're best used to supplement what you're learning hands on from an instructor.

You also need to practise your self defense moves again and again, so you cannot 'train' alone.