003 Freezing in a Fight - Krav Maga Podcast

Freezing in a fight is one of the biggest fears I find in myself and my students. We train hard to try and eliminate the fear of freezing but when it boils down to it, we can’t eliminate freeze but we can decrease it’s power over us with proper training, understanding, and knowledge of this topic. Let’s cover the different types of freezes there are according to Rory Miller in “Facing Violence”. Bye the way, I did not invent these ideas. This is my interpretation, research, and takeaway from Rory Miller’s Facing Violence and my own experiences. Types of Freezes Tactical Freeze.This is when you freeze on purpose to not expose yourself (you freeze to not be noticed) or to gather more information (you feel something is wrong so you freeze to gather information to find the problem. Also a strategic way to use this freeze is while in a situation where you freeze (or stop interacting) with the threat to let them cool down. But not  if the fight has already started. This is more of a pre fight strategy.  You must be aware of this freeze and be able to snap out of it at anytime when the situation starts to progress or change.  For example, if you freeze to be unnoticed (which is very instinctual, just look at animals when they are “caught” in the act of seeking up on you during play, they freeze hoping you don’t notice.), you must be able to recognise when situation has changed so that you get out of the freeze. Sometimes we don’t know if we are in this freeze on purpose or if our body is doing it automatically. Physiological Freeze. This is the time when your body is switching form passive mode to fight mode. Some people transition faster then others, usually depends on training and previous encounters. This is why when we train we train techniques and counter simultaneously or near simultaneous to shorten time to transition to fight mode. It is important to turn into the fighter as soon as possible.  Non-Cognitave Metal Freeze. This is the freeze where you think you know what to do or what is going on and it suddenly changes. For example, you're walking someone you know out of a heated argument and you suddenly you find a knife in your stomach with the attacker repeatedly stabbing you. This freeze is similar to you needing to switch gears again and into the fighter. The situation is not what we were expecting. We were expecting to walk out calmly when instead we are fighting for our life. This is a tough freeze to get out of but can be done. Miller says from his studies it usually takes two actions to snap out of the freeze. Any actions that you purposely do can regain your mental function and enable you to break the freeze.  Cognitive Freeze. Too many attacks happening at once. Our brain is trying to analyse each swing coming at us and decide an appropriate response. But if what we are analysing is disrupted by another attack we can’t finish the analysis and continue to try to analyse what is happening. Causing us to freeze. Too many things happening at once and we can’t figure out what’s happening causing a sensory overload. It’s our thought process that is causing us to freeze. Sometimes, asking ourselves what is happening or why is it happening is another cause of this freeze. This is a critical time to try and STOP your thoughts and instead ACT. Once you are acting, then you can think, but every second spent thinking about what is happening or why it’s happening is allowing more damage to ensue on yourself. Sometimes, a problems occur with MA training. If a fight isn’t going exactly how we trained it to go, our brains automatically try to make sense of what is happening, causing us to freeze. One way we try to solve this is by having the attacker always act differently when you are defending in training, expanding the possible scenarios and not creating a habit. Social Cognitive Freeze. I can see this being a very common freeze among typical people. We are raised and conditioned with rules and laws of violence. We get pu