Mistakes of the Vastly Experienced + Self-Assessment Battery by Mark Hatmaker

 

“But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident… of any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never had been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.”—Captain E.J. Smith, 1907.

Able and esteemed Captain Smith was to go on to be awarded, five years, later the command of the RMS Titanic, of which we all know what happened.

Walter Lord’s masterly volume A Night to Remember [1955] breaks down minute by minute the catalog of small errors that led to large-scale catastrophe.

Captain Smith was no amateur, no weekend sailor, no bumbler; he was an experienced seaman, well-trained and more than equipped to handle a transatlantic voyage.

Chance/Fate can and does always rear its head to render diligent preparation minuscule, but in the case of the RMS Titanic and many other incidences large and small, it is less an encounter with large chance encounters [an iceberg] than it is the failure to remain in a prepared state for small deviations by sheer dint of resting on our laurels of long-experience.

Complacency can set in after long trends of “no worries.”

This is often referred to as The Turkey Problem.

The instructive fable goes, that the turkey lives a pampered life on the turkey farm. The farmer solicitously sees to his needs each and every day, with ample food, and comfortable shelter. Day in, day out, 364 days of bliss.

To the turkey, all is coming up roses with a trendline of serene complacency.

What the turkey does not know is that the 365^th day is Thanksgiving.

State & Gear-Dependent Complacency

We can be lulled to Captain Smith/Thanksgiving Turkey levels of complacency not just by, “Well, it hasn’t happened in all my experience, so, I must be doing something right, and likely we’re good to go.”

We can remain trained and diligent within our domain, but perhaps become a bit state-dependent, a bit gear-dependent and wind up being woefully unprepared for hazards very similar to what we train for in the first place.

You Can Train It Everyday But Still…

Newton Rhodes writing in a 1961 issue of Underwater Magazine highlights the perils of even being immersed [in his case, literally] daily in the hazardous environment does not prepare one for subtle shifts in what may be required.

Mr. Rhodes relates a tale of a scuba dive gone wrong. He and his son return to the surface and find that their dive boat’s anchor has become unmoored, it is drifting out to sea—they are left floating miles from shore. The decision is made, that the father will dump tanks and swim for the ever-receding boat.

“Without slowing his pace, he could read the dial on his waterproof watch. Muscles in his arms and shoulders, used rarely in diving, ached with fatigue.”—Swim for Life

Rhodes account is harrowing. He honestly relates how he contemplates letting go and sinking to the bottom with fatigue. He relates how the ease of using dive fins in his daily dives led to less endurance when it came time for the long swimming haul on the surface.

So, here we have an experienced diver, who swam daily but…the mere alteration in circumstances of the swim altered his efficiency and effectiveness.

Add to that—swim fins as aid to good diving—wound up with their own Peltzman Effect and limited his zero-fin performance. [For more on the hazards of Peltzman Effects.]

Drill Complacency

The antidote to complacency is often assumed to be drill. Recreations of possible scenarios but…Well, let’s leave it to General Patton to point out the shortfalls here.

“There are no bullets in maneuvers, and things sometimes get a little dull. But play the game; don't lie in the shade… Try, above all things, to use your imagination. Think this is war “What would I do if that man were really shooting at me.” That is the only chance, men, that you're going to have to practice. The next time, maybe, there will be no umpires, and the bullets will be very real. both yours and the enemy’s.”—Address to the Officers and Men of the Second Armored Division, May 17, 1941

Drill must be endured. But drill does not ensure.

What is required, and is still not enough—is emotional content, a constant querying of realities within the drill itself, and a vigilant varying of parameters.

Anything less is an assumption that the Turkey Farmer is your life-long friend, or that “I swim great with fins, no need for anything else-swimming is swimming, right?”

A Complacency Battery

A few prods to self-check.

·        Do you text while driving? Do you remain attentive? Do you allow your “Well, I’ve never had an accident” streak of turkey luck color your technique and vigilance?

·        In sparring do you vary round times, round duration, rest duration?

·        Do you vary glove weight? Bag weight? Mat surfaces? Weight classes?

·        Do you handicap your sparring? Impair physical and sensory attributes? Do you challenge balance? Do you impose cognitive load? [See our Outer Limit Program for hundreds of ideas along these valuable lines.]

·        Are your smoke alarms up to snuff? Fire extinguishers charged and in-date? Does your family know PASS? Do they know the “My height and out” rule? [I offer that post-fire tragedy is too late to run this once per-month sub-three-minute test of gear and tactical review.]

·        How’s the air pressure in that spare tire?

·        All North and West exits from your city are blocked—what’s the alternative exit?

·        A solar flare or enemy directed Magnetic Pulse has knocked out satellites in your area [or perhaps a Russian jam ala Ukraine.] What emergency numbers do you know by heart? Do you need a GPS to get where you’re going? Will rendering a Smart Home dumb, lower your ability-IQ as well? [Technology, like swim fins is mighty useful and convenient, but let’s make sure we can swim just fine without it.]

·        If you are a striker, how often do you program grappling into your training?

·        If a grappler, how often do you strike?

·        Does your PT training program for variance?

·        Do you weight “cardio” over strength—one form of specificity is more transferable than the other?

Obviously, we could continue this battery—and we do just that in the No Second Chance Book of Drill Assignments—[available only to Black Box Members] but these should be more than enough to rouse us from Captain Smith/Thanksgiving Turkey/Skilled Diver complacency.

[For nothing but rip-roarin’ to the point Old School tactics, historically accurate and viciously verified see see our RAW/Black Box Subscription Service.]

Or our The Rough and Tumble Raconteur available on all platforms.