Killer Instinct and CMA Psychology

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Killer Instinct

By Paul Vunak

Trying to explain killer instinct to someone who has never experienced it is a bit like trying to explain “sweet” to someone who has never had anything sweet. Killer instinct can mean so much, but when it comes right down to it, it’s impossible to accurately describe it. Throughout this writing, I will use many devices to try to help you understand the true essence of killer instinct. I only ask that you don’t get so caught up in the words, that you forget what they are trying to symbolize.

Killer instinct is the desire and ability to finish your opponent. It is a sadistic urge driven by the savage side of human nature. It is not how loud you scream or how many expletives you spew at your adversary. It’s not the ugly faces you can contort yourself into. It is certainly not mindlessly hurling yourself into the fray in an uncontrolled, incensed rush of adrenaline. Killer instinct is finishing the race, closing the deal, accomplishing the mission. It is the burning lust to damage your opponent. It is the cold, hard, calculating application of bad intentions.

Of course, the end result of the successful application of killer instinct is the resolution of the altercation. While this is easy to conceptualize, it is not so easy to actualize. “Doing what is necessary” to win the fight is a nice thing to quote from the armchair, but things get exponentially more complex when you hit the street.

Killer instinct is the correct choice of tactics and the merciless, relentless application of those tactics. It is every choice and action that leads to the downfall of your opponent. It is easy to confuse it for the mad-rush, see-red, wailing banshee mode that we may have experienced, but that is really only one aspect of killer instinct. It’s an attribute, but it is also a mentality.

Killer instinct is the firm-gripped control over some of our most intense emotions. If we are to fully realize the maximum potential of our killer instinct, we cannot be slave to our emotions. Think of any predator and the manner in which they stalk their prey. Take, for example, a cheetah. It may not have eaten for several days, but it will still wait patiently for the appropriate moment to attack to ensure its next meal. Its nourishment depends on its skills as a hunter so it is only logical that it is quite proficient at this task. In the wild, if you aren’t proficient, you are dead. It knows, innately or by experience, that if it allows a nagging belly to impair its judgment, it will only have to wait longer until the next meal. It calmly waits while collecting data that will shape its attack plan. Which gazelle will be the easiest victim? Which gazelle will stray into range first? Once the appropriate moment arrives, it unhesitatingly launches its attack, mercilessly closing in on the target, with single-minded determination. It tears the victim down in the most efficient manner, not stopping until there is no struggle left. This epitomizes killer instinct through all its stages.

There is a vast wealth of knowledge to be gained from predatory animals. If you compare the jeet kune do game plan with that of the cheetah, you will find many similarities. In the embryonic stages of a streetfight, we make our preliminary analysis. This will include any observations about structure (boxing, karate, etc.) and the gut-feel we get from the adversary. Our preliminary analysis must be as accurate as possible, because tactical choices will be made from this data. It cannot be tainted by too much uncontrolled emotion or adrenaline.

Just as the cheetah looked for the weakest gazelle, we look for any apparent weaknesses in our opponent’s defense. It would not be a particularly wise move for the cheetah to hunt the strongest, fastest gazelle, nor would it make much sense to try to outbox a stronger, faster boxer. In our case, we don’t stand around waiting, for an opportunity, but try to create one by moving and probing. Through this process, we can get the opponent to reveal much more about himself than he would probably like and possible even make a mistake that we can capitalize on. When the time is right, we enter, straight blast, and finish our opponent with an unrelenting barrage of headbutts, knees, and elbows. This is the fail-safe, the point of no return. We must assume that our life depends on success and our emotional intensity must reflect this belief.

To achieve the full potential of killer instinct, we must absolutely be able to control our emotional makeup. We have to go from a cold, unfeeling machine to the uncontrollable rage of a berserker grizzly bear and back again in a second, if the situation calls for it. In kicking and punching range, we must be a cold machine, free from any emotional tension or anxiety. We dispassionately view the situation and react to it as if it was a blatantly obvious course of action. Once we enter into trapping range, we must become a wild animal, oblivious to pain or reason. If the fight continues to the ground, we must kick back into machine-mode so we can effectively make the correct tactical decisions. This level of control is not easy to reach. It can only be reached if we are aware of the changes going on inside ourselves. As the biofeedback axiom goes, “control follows awareness.”

So if control follows awareness, how do we reach this “awareness?” First of all, we must see killer instinct in a light unobscured by any moralistic, idealistic, or institutional shade. Any time we try to categorize it in a neat little package, we are rationalising and not seeing it truly for what it is. Awareness is being cognizant of the mental, spiritual, emotional and physiological ramification of the moment.

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Awareness is being in tune with your surroundings, sensing your effect on them as well as their effect on you. It is definitely not making a judgment call on your observations. For example, if someone cuts you off in traffic and fails to signal an apology, and you experience an overwhelming urge to separate this person’s head from his body, you don’t instantly clamp down and suppress this urge while berating yourself for your Neanderthal behavior. You simply acknowledge what you are feeling at the moment, what caused you to feel this way, and how you can use this knowledge to your benefit should a real situation arise.

Awareness can be cultivated in many ways. Specifically, right now, we are only concerned with awareness in oneself, but the attributes necessary for street awareness can certainly be useful here. However, the catch is that we are dealing with something intrinsically more difficult. We come from a culture of distractions. Television, radio, video games, endless juicy tabloids.., all serve to distract us from dealing with our, supposedly, mundane lives. By divorcing ourselves from reality, if only for a moment, we lose touch with the one thing that determines our potential for accomplishment, ourselves. How many of us have actually spent any time by ourselves free from any sort of distraction, even hunting or backpacking. I mean time spent walking or sitting, listening only to your own body. This is no easy task. Sitting quietly for twenty minutes a day for a week will tell you volumes about yourself. You will find all kinds of intense emotions surfacing for no apparent reason. Your mind will concoct very persuasive arguments against this course of action. This will not be a pleasant experience. I must make it clear that I am not espousing any religious and / or spiritual doctrines for this practice. This is simply an exercise to cultivate awareness, because if you can’t listen to your body sitting still, you aren’t going to hear a ****ed thing when Gunnery Sergeant Pat Bagley is poking jabs in your face.

Now let’s say that you heeded my advice and now have a working level of awareness. Here’s where we get to work on the control aspect. This is actually the easier part. Now that we are aware of the changes going on in our body, we simply try to effect gradual control over these changes. The more acute your awareness, the more successful your attempts will be. Any situation that causes your blood to boil or your heart to beat a little faster is an opportunity for training. It could be a fight with your mate, a particularly condescending teller at the bank, or a check that was supposed to be in the mail. Anything that gets you going is fair game. Instead of flying off the handle, causing considerable damage to your home and furnishings, or completely suppressing the powerful emotions at play, thereby causing you an ulcer, I suggest that you take a few deep breaths and acknowledge what is going on in your body. You may still be angry, but now it is a controlled anger, which provides eminently usable energy. Make no mistake; anybody can throw a temper tantrum. Losing your cool is not a sign of strength, but a lack of control.

A lot of this may seem esoteric and obscure, but it really isn’t. Think of any great sports figure and pay attention to how they thrive under pressure. They feel the emotions as strongly as the next man, but they know how to channel and not be overwhelmed by them. Try to recall any accidental killing where the husband or wife took the life of their beloved spouse. Through all their regret and grief, one thing is clear, they lost control and didn’t realize what they were doing until it was too late. As martial artist, we must always be aware of our actions. For the safety of others, of course, but more so we can act appropriately, decisively, and ruthlessly when the need arises to defend our loved ones or ourselves.

The killer instinct that we seek to develop is not a sledgehammer but a scalpel that must be continually honed. Killer instinct will allow us to prevail in an ear-biting, eye-gouging streetfight. It is the savvy that clues us into our adversary’s weaknesses. It is the ruthlessness that drives you to mercilessly capitalize on those weaknesses. It is the impetus that turns your training into fighting. This topic should not be taken lightly and if you intend to be a “fighter”, it behooves you to implement a killer instinct aspect into your training. If you are a forms man, this is for the most part unnecessary. I have given you one way to train killer instinct. It is perhaps the most beneficial, but frustrating way. The physical logistics of integrating these concepts into your art is up to you but they must be grounded in these immutable principles. In a crisis, you will not rise to your expectations, but fall to your level of training. Don’t let your ignorance of killer instinct be your downfall.