Compliance to Resistance (non-compliance)

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What is often forgotten in the excitement of training and practice is that at some point down the road the natural tendency toward compliant behavior between tori and uke must gradually move toward resistance. Most instructors become dependent on compliance because it makes them look and feel superior and good. Many simply do not know that resistance reality based training is a requirement if you train for self-defense.

All too often the drills remain in a pattern state where chaos would result in failure. Failure in self-defense is not acceptable. Using compliance behavior is necessary to learn what it is you don’t know and what it is you don’t know you don’t know but once you know of it then resistance must be applied in a gradual increasing amount in order to understand and apply the principles under the adrenal stress conditions of defense. 

As I watch those who have taken up the responsibility of teaching self-defense especially those teaching combatives to professionals, i.e., military, police and corrections officers, etc., I see the compliant model where the student tends to follow the instructors lead allowing the techniques and principles to work. This is fine to teach what one may not know or what one may not know they don’t know but there is more to what is not known and that is when those teachings face the obstacles of non-compliant behavior, resistance. 

Very few who teach, especially martial arts self-defense, ever test that teaching and knowledge by inserting non-compliant resistive effort, one that increases in frequency and effort as the student progresses. The worst part is most students, even professionals, who have yet to be exposed to reality tend to readily accept things as they are rather than test them to see if they actually achieve their intent. It comes down to what they don’t know they don’t know.

Resistive non-compliant training and practice are critical to achieve a level that allows one to train the adrenal stress-conditioned reality-based training that takes the student closer making the first step shorter and somewhat easier when they encounter that first situation. 

When I am witness to such drill training I often wonder how well all concerned would perform if even a slight non-compliant resistive effort were introduced. I have seen one or two actually try this with a result that the instructor gets indignant because the student isn’t following the lesson plan. In reality one must deviate from that lesson plan to achieve understanding and proficiency. 

One caveat to all of this, another critical aspect even to non-compliant resistive effort is to “Have fun” with it!

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