Myth Busting and Building Confidence using RBT

[justken2u]

Recently, a couple of trainers from a Southeast police academy flew all the way across the country to attend one of my 5 day schools in the Pacific Northwest. Amazing dedication to getting this type of training, given that their agency wouldn't foot the bill to bring me to their organization. Kudos to them, and to their organization for making the trek and footing the cost of sending them that far. One of them returned to their agency, and writes:

"I just got back from the RBTI course in Seattle and I remembered you and one of your assisting instructors from FAM describing the pshycological effects of being exposed to inert OC. Our academy did our OC course for a recruit class on Thursday, which involves being directly exposed to a close range 2 second burst of issue strength OC and then being able to navigate a simple obstacle and perform a two hand check on an aggressor with a bag. The exercise is conducted outdoors and the students watch each other get exposed until their turn comes.

I told another instructor I believed that the majority of the initial effects of OC are psych and not physical and he raised an eyebrow. To test, we sprayed several of the recruits with inert OC instead of the real thing. All of the recruits except for one reacted exactly as though they had been sprayed with the live gas - despite spraying each other with inert all day and having no adverse reactions. They pawed at their eyes, coughed and gagged, and had difficulty opening their eyes. The one who recognized that he was unaffected was a combat experienced Marine who immediately turned around after a few steps and told the instructor that he was sprayed with inert.

Immediately after being told that they had been sprayed with inert, all of the falsely exposed students stopped exhibiting OC exposure symptoms and had to go back through and be exposed to the real thing. Believe it or not, they handled the first few seconds of exposure to the real thing better than the inert!

I write to first off tell you that my partner and I had an incredible experience in your course and have implemented several of your ideas into our program. Second, you were absolutely correct in saying that performance in RBT scenarios creates a permanent notch in their confidence in dealing with adverse conditions (I now know I can fight through OC exposure because it's partially in my head...). But last, at what point do you say "this is not the time to research combat psychology" when training and testing using RBT?????"

My answer follows below.

[justken2u]

The first time I heard about this phenomena was from a fellow trainer by the name of Dave Young who now runs RedMan's training division. Dave was one of the early experimenters with OC and a real forerunner in developing training protocols. Dave did this exact same thing in a class - spray someone with inert and obtaining all of the "effects" of conventional product with the coughing, eye closing, etc, up until the point where the person being sprayed was told it was inert.

The psychological effects of any type of use of force cannot be overstated. In some cultures, simply having a bone pointed at you by the village Shaman has caused death! This is one of the reasons why it is essential that our people truly understand what is - and what is not - truly effective with all of our tools and to stop basing our tactical training on mythology.

We must spray our students and have them experience fighting through the effects. There are some who argue "we don't have to shoot our students even though they are carrying a gun!" To those nay sayers, I respond, "YES, we DO!!!" We just don't shoot them with conventional ammunition! We shoot them with NLTA. It hurts, and we fight through the effects of being "shot".

We must condition the Win Reflex no matter what. We must build up their real confidence - not a false sense of security where some 100 lb. diminutive officer falsely believes some wristy-twisty is going to bring a 250 lb. monster wimpering to his knees.

That said, however, the ultimate answer to your question is that we never stop testing ... we just don't use the training forum as the testing laboratory. Remember, we are not using RBT for experiments where we don't know what the outcome will be. If you are curious about various training issues such as what might happen if you spray a bunch of people with inert OC where those people unknowingly believe it is actual chemical agent, then design an experiment. Scenarios shouldn't be experimental - they should be experiential. We should already have a good idea about what the student should or should not be doing since we trained them for such instances and we should have a high degree of confidence in what the predictable outcome should be. If the trend is that most of your students are not performing as predicted, this demonstrates a huge hole in our training that needs serious repair. Our drills should be the place to teach the skills that are tested during scenarios, and our scenarios should be the fondue pot where all of the ingredients come together under a little bit of heat and agitation such that they blend into something amazing.

Researching combat psychology is something that happens to be a byproduct of high quality RBT. Seeing gaps in our students' combat psychology, however, must be a call to action for us - it is time to evolve our training to address their deficiencies. To not do so, to my mind, is tantamount to product negligence. Remember ... there are very few bad dogs, just bad dog owners. There is a school of thought in computer programming that holds credence when it comes to training people for critical encounters, garbage in equals garbage out.

Hope this helps, and glad you were able to get a few useful things out of the 5 day school!

[jpaynter]

Gentlemen,

Your post was fascinating, as was Ken's reply. I think that the most telling part of your training event was the experienced Marine's reaction- having been there before, he knew when he was really exposed to a chemical agent. The same issues apply when training officers to respond to physical aggression, which is just as toxic as a good dose of OC. Until they experience being punched in the face, that event will be as psychologically loaded as the OC experience. Despite the potential for injury, some contact is necessary in RBT in order to inoculate officers to the realities of fighting. Exposing officers to that in training is essential and it exposes the tactical myths quite quickly! Keep up the good work...

Jeff Paynter

[justken2u]

Hey Jeff ... I wholeheartedly agree with the concept of exposing officers to the realities of fighting. I think we need to be careful, however, in that many trainers don't understand the complexities in doing just this. Failure to understand these complexities will put people in wheelchairs or pine boxes. Just ask Texas DPS. As with any other form of realistic training, those employing the various techniques need to understand exactly what they are doing lest they get bitten by the unintended consequences of well intentioned training. To use a weight training analogy, putting the right amount of weight on the bar when getting stronger in the gym ensures strength gains without debilitating injuries. Unschooled gym rats, however, can crush a newbie and kill his enthusiasm for fitness.

Just sayin'.

[jpaynter]

Agreed, the unintended consquences are the ones that really come back to bite you. Even a low level drill that involves "light contact" can turn around and cause hellacious injuries. I think the key is to provide necessary experience with agression without causing injury. That balance is somewhere in the zone with tightly controlled mini-scenarios (what Tony Blauer would call a ballistic micro fight) that are closely monitored by an instructor, with a ratio of say 1 instructor to 2 students at a time. Officers that train on their own and find more intense experiences will be the better for it, however while teaching "on company time" I don't suggest that running full contact sparring should be considered. As you said in your post, the consequences can be fatal if something should go wrong. I think that training should always be cooperative vs. competitive. Sparring by nature is competitive (meaning that there is a loser at the end of the round) and it's training value is nil for folks who aren't ready for it.