Skip to main content

Warrior Awareness Drills by Mark Hatmaker


THE Primary Factor in self-protection/self-defense is situational awareness. Keeping in mind that crime is, more often than not, a product of opportunity, if we take steps to reduce opportunity to as close to nil as we can manage we have gone a long way to rendering our physical tactical training needless [that’s a good thing.]

Yes, having defensive tactical skills in the back-pocket is a great ace to carry day-to-day but all the more useful to saving your life or the lives of loved ones is a honed awareness, a ready alertness to what is occurring around you every single day.

Here’s the problem, maintaining such awareness is a Tough job with a capital T as most of our daily lives are safe and mundane [also a good thing] and this very safety allows us to backslide in good awareness practices. Without daily danger-stressors we easily fall into default comfort mode.

A useful practice to return awareness/alertness to the fore is to gamify your awareness, that is, to use a series of specific awareness/alertness drills on a revolving basis that allow you to keep your mind a bit above the day-to-day routine while also making a bit of a game out of what may save your life.

In aid of that I use an extensive series of gamified awareness drills culled from historical warrior traditions across the globe. Where appropriate I have updated the drill to fit the 21st century environment.

Below you will find just three of these many drills that you can take into your day to day life starting NOW.

The 1st Awareness Exercise for Warriors is from “Puewatsi Nemito” (The Wild Walker or Walk of the Wild) a Comanche warrior tradition.

“Tuhoit’u” [The Hunted One]

Today: You are on the Menu.

  • Whether in an urban or a natural setting live as if you are a hunted man, a targeted woman, a person on someone’s Kill List.
  • Know who or what is behind you.
  • Look into the faces of the people around you, are they the one who hunts you?
  • Look at the hands of all around you—is the method of your demise in any hand?
  • Keep to the edges of trails or sidewalks-only confident or foolhardy animals cross open ground.
  • Treat all security cameras as tools to locate you. Avert your face when passing by or beneath them.
  • Treat all birds as possible drones.
  • In short, live with eyes wide open, mind alert. Live as if you are being stalked.
  • At the end of the exercise ask yourself what you learned from this bit of role play.

Warriors must be aware. Aware of what? Everything. A Warrior must be Awake. All detail is interesting, all detail may be important. We do not know what detail will change our lives. We do not know what detail will save our lives.



Here’s another Drill adapted from “Puewatsi Nemito” (The Wild Walker or Walk of the Wild)

 This is an inverse exercise of Hukhiap’u Puniti [Shadow Watcher] Drill.

Today: Look for Reflections

  • Today find all the reflective surfaces that you can. See what those reflections hold.

  • Find the trees in the windows of your home.
  • See the glint of the semi-truck in the window of a passing car.
  • See the rippled reflection of the sky or yourself in a puddle of water.
  • See the surroundings of the restaurant in the beverage glass before you.
  • See the reflections of the road in the heat haze on the highway in front of you
  • See the distorted you in the corneas of the person you are speaking to.
  • The only reflection to pay no attention to—that of any mirror.
  • Find any and all reflections-and mark how many surfaces provide mirror images.

I repeat:  Warriors must be aware. Aware of what? Everything. A Warrior must be Awake. All detail is interesting, all detail may be important. We do not know what detail will change our lives. We do not know what detail will save our lives.



The next drill is an adaptation of a similar drill found in both Northeast Indian Warrior Traditions and the Viking tradition.



“If you are wise, be wise

Keep what goods the gods gave you

Don’t ignore five good senses

Seeking an unknown sixth.”-The Viking Havamal

Don’t get caught looking for leaves in the trees in Autumn. Those leaves are on the ground.”-Comanche teaching



Or this short Puha [Medicine Man/Coach/Mentor] to a Ekasahpana [young warrior] exchange.

“Look.”

“At what?”

“Everything then you’ll never have to ask.”



WARRIOR AWARENESS DRILL: Take 3/Find 5

  • Select a 15-minute period in your day to execute this drill.
  • Take three steps, stop and list [verbally if possible] 5 distinct things in your environment that you can physically sense, These can be things you see, sounds you hear, scents, tastes on the wind, a breeze on the skin.
  • Take three more steps, stop and repeat cataloguing 5 more things. Do not repeat anything in any of your prior inventory.
  • Continue until the ¼ hour is completed with no repetition of what you noticed.

If you take the time to honestly commit to this exercise you will find there is far more to sense than we normally take in. We gloss over and glide through so much of life that what we miss can be astounding.

I repeat the above exchange:

“Look.”

“At what?”

“Everything then you’ll never have to ask.”



T’zare Tubunit’u Ekasapana! [Be Awake Warriors!]
[For more Warrior Awareness Drills consult the RAW Subscription Service and No Second Chance Program.]

Comments

  1. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  2. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Outstanding information on your site, appreciate it with regard to taking the time to share with you around. Awesome perception you have for this, it is great to find a site of which facts so much information regarding different designers. private detective london

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Apache Running by Mark Hatmaker

Of the many Native American tribes of the southwest United States and Mexico the various bands of Apache carry a reputation for fierceness, resourcefulness, and an almost superhuman stamina. The name “Apache” is perhaps a misnomer as it refers to several different tribes that are loosely and collectively referred to as Apache, which is actually a variant of a Zuni word Apachu that this pueblo tribe applied to the collective bands. Apachu in Zuni translates roughly to “enemy” which is a telling detail that shines a light on the warrior nature of these collective tribes.             Among the various Apache tribes you will find the Kiowa, Mescalero, Jicarilla, Chiricahua (or “Cherry-Cows” as early Texas settlers called them), and the Lipan. These bands sustained themselves by conducting raids on the various settled pueblo tribes, Mexican villages, and the encroaching American settlers. These American settlers were often immigrants of all nationalities with a strong contingent of

The Empirical Fighter: Rules for the Serious Combatant by Mark Hatmaker

  Part 1: Gear Idealized or World Ready? 1/A: Specificity of Fitness/Preparation If you’ve been in the training game for any length of time likely you have witnessed or been the subject of the following realization. You’ve trained HARD for the past 90 days, say, put in sprint work and have worked up to your fastest 5K. Your handy-dandy App says your VO2 Max is looking shipshape. You go to the lake, beach, local swimmin’ hole with your buddies and one says “ Race you to the other side!” You, with your newfound fleet-of-foot promotion to Captain Cardio, say, “ Hell, yeah!” You hit the river and cut that water like Buster Crabbe in “ Tarzan the Fearless ” with your overhand stroke….for the first 50 yards, then this thought hits as the lungs begin to gasp for air, “ Am a I gonna die in the middle of this river?” This experiment can be repeated across many domains of physical endeavor. ·         The man with the newfound Personal Record in the Bench Press getting smoked in

The Original Roadwork by Mark Hatmaker

  Mr. Muldoon Roadwork. That word, to the combat athlete, conjures images of pre-dawn runs, breath fogging the morning air and, to many, a drudgery that must be endured. Boxers, wrestlers, kickboxers the world over use roadwork as a wind builder, a leg conditioner, and a grit tester. The great Joe Frazier observed… “ You can map out a fight plan or a life plan, but when the action starts, it may not go the way you planned, and you're down to the reflexes you developed in training. That's where roadwork shows - the training you did in the dark of the mornin' will show when you're under the bright lights .” Roadwork has been used as a tool since man began pitting himself against others of his species in organized combat. But…today’s question . Has it always been the sweat-soaked old school gray sweat suit pounding out miles on dark roads or, was it something subtler, and, remarkably slower? And if it was, why did we transition to what, and I repeat myself,