Practical Situational Awareness Training: Prepare for the Ambush
Situational awareness is often described by suggested methods of observation in color-coded categories of perception: observing surroundings to avoid trouble; locating exits in a room to quickly escape trouble; or achieving advance knowledge of travel routes to change course in the event of sudden trouble.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Jeff Cooper’s Principles of Personal Defense ]
The familiar color-code is White for “totally unaware,” Yellow for “relaxed but aware,” Orange for “potential threat identified,” and Red for “threat verified, engage self-defense action.”
[ Read the SemperVerus article, A Simple Chart for Situational Awareness ]
Professional firearms trainer, author, consultant, and executive director for PersonalDefenseNetwork.com, Rob Pincus, identifies one area that might too often be overlooked; he calls it the “fantasy of situational awareness.”
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Situational Awareness Building Exercises ]
He says it’s impractical to limit our situational awareness development only to the extent of keeping our head on a 360° swivel at all times, trying to gather advance warning of possible danger wherever we are. Because, in the course of a day’s living, one’s attention necessarily must be hyper-focused for certain reasons (looking at a menu, reading a map, etc.), and it’s at those times that an ambush could occur.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Situational Awareness: What Do You See? ]
He says regular self-defense training must include honing your skills for how you would successfully handle being ambushed:
“Remember situational awareness doesn’t make it so that you can’t be ambushed, it simply means that you’re lowering the odds of the bad guy sneaking up on you. When you train, remember you are going to avoid the situations when situational awareness helps you. When you think about your learned responses they really should be trained for response to the ambush.” Rob Pincus
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Situational Awareness: What Are You NOT Seeing? ]
Watch his 7-minute explanation video:
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Lessons in Situational Awareness from Columbo ]
Also watch this video in which Rob speaks of two facets of situational awareness that are often misunderstood: scanning and assessing the environment. In this video, he clarifies how you should approach them.
[ Read the SemperVerus article, Situational Awareness: 14 Ways to Walk Like You Drive ]
[ Read SemperVerus articles on the topic of the SITUATIONAL AWARENESS ]
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