Brian Jones
Moderator
- Joined
- Jan 17, 1999
- Messages
- 7,560
About 20 years ago,when I first started corresponding with Ron Hood, and Greg Davenport (who were my initial co-moderators here when we started the BFC Wilderness and Survival Forum here in 1999), both Ron and Greg heavily emphasized the need for people to train while experiencing various degrees of fatigue, from calorie loss, to wet conditions, sleep deprivation, dehydration (a big factor), hunger, and even injury and possible blood loss.
Greg was a top instructor at the US Air Force SERE school, and they put him through absolute hell in every environment on the planet before he was considered qualified to teach. He had to do it for real for six months in four different environments. And they tried to capture and torture him while he did it!
The lesson most learned is how fatigue influences mindset. Loss of micro motor movements. Sloppiness and carelessness that could result in deadly injury. Tripping and falling while trying to move through an environment, half dead, dehydrated, and hungry.
Learning to operate under this extreme stress is a key to knowing how to survive for real.
We saw this on Alone. Most of these guys practiced skills but didn't practice under exhaustion conditions. They had no idea that the fatigue and fear would be the critical factors for them. None. It's the common factors that made them give up. Their own heads.
When Ron and I did his wilderness instructional video, Solo Survival, back in 2001, we went into the Idaho wilderness under what turned out to be some of the wettest, crappiest, hypothermic stormy conditions you could imagine. In that case, we had each other to rely on when one person got a little down. Six backpacking parties had to be rescued during the time we were in there. We dealt with predator threats, waking up soaked in water after freezing in subzero temps the night before. So many things.
Thank God Ron had emphasized training under duress and exhaustion in the earlier years. We smiled and ate it all up. Why? Because we knew what to expect, and we already knew how well we could handle it.
Back in 95 or so, way before the video trip, I stayed up for 36 hours straight, no food, no water, and kept myself slightly chilled. I then went out into the woods to see how I could handle my skills while being deprived of all that. I brought my favorite huge chopping knife with a thick 1/4" spine and serrations. I was shivering, dehydrated, cold, and hungry.
My first thought? God dammit that 1/4 thick honking sharpened prybar was friggin heavy and hard to use! (It wasn't, when I used it to practice for fun, without fatigue before).
When you're alone, you only have you. And you have to deal with your exhaustion, slower judgment skills, inability to do grand endeavors that worked fine in your backyard practice. You will probably devolve to being able to use only gross motor movements. So, train using those movements.
Train for exhaustion. Train to know how you will operate when you're miserable, and when laying down to die starts to seem like the more desired alternative.
Know exactly how your mind and your heart will perform when things are at their worst.
Then work backwards from there.
Greg was a top instructor at the US Air Force SERE school, and they put him through absolute hell in every environment on the planet before he was considered qualified to teach. He had to do it for real for six months in four different environments. And they tried to capture and torture him while he did it!
The lesson most learned is how fatigue influences mindset. Loss of micro motor movements. Sloppiness and carelessness that could result in deadly injury. Tripping and falling while trying to move through an environment, half dead, dehydrated, and hungry.
Learning to operate under this extreme stress is a key to knowing how to survive for real.
We saw this on Alone. Most of these guys practiced skills but didn't practice under exhaustion conditions. They had no idea that the fatigue and fear would be the critical factors for them. None. It's the common factors that made them give up. Their own heads.
When Ron and I did his wilderness instructional video, Solo Survival, back in 2001, we went into the Idaho wilderness under what turned out to be some of the wettest, crappiest, hypothermic stormy conditions you could imagine. In that case, we had each other to rely on when one person got a little down. Six backpacking parties had to be rescued during the time we were in there. We dealt with predator threats, waking up soaked in water after freezing in subzero temps the night before. So many things.
Thank God Ron had emphasized training under duress and exhaustion in the earlier years. We smiled and ate it all up. Why? Because we knew what to expect, and we already knew how well we could handle it.
Back in 95 or so, way before the video trip, I stayed up for 36 hours straight, no food, no water, and kept myself slightly chilled. I then went out into the woods to see how I could handle my skills while being deprived of all that. I brought my favorite huge chopping knife with a thick 1/4" spine and serrations. I was shivering, dehydrated, cold, and hungry.
My first thought? God dammit that 1/4 thick honking sharpened prybar was friggin heavy and hard to use! (It wasn't, when I used it to practice for fun, without fatigue before).
When you're alone, you only have you. And you have to deal with your exhaustion, slower judgment skills, inability to do grand endeavors that worked fine in your backyard practice. You will probably devolve to being able to use only gross motor movements. So, train using those movements.
Train for exhaustion. Train to know how you will operate when you're miserable, and when laying down to die starts to seem like the more desired alternative.
Know exactly how your mind and your heart will perform when things are at their worst.
Then work backwards from there.
Here is what I did on 9/2 simply because I had an afternoon with nothing to do. Not only wasn't I sore today but ran tonight's 5.25 in under 1 hour which was faster than yesterday as paddling seems to take more out of me. These aren't olympic numbers but fatigue is greatly reduced with conditioning. 
