Are Cops Who Do Martial Arts Better Than Ones That Don't?

Publication

Peter G. Renden, Annemarie Landman, Geert J.P. Savelsbergh & Raôul R.D. Oudejans (2015) Police arrest and self-defence skills: performance under anxiety of officers with and without additional experience in martial arts, Ergonomics, 58:9, 1496-1506, DOI:10.1080/00140139.2015.1013578

What Was the Issue?

This is a little older study that looks at the impact of stress on performance. It was motivated by the authors’ observation that Dutch police officers only do 4 to 6 hours of arrest and self defense training per year. The authors acknowledge that this amount of training is not enough to produce expertise. They wanted to explore whether officers who voluntarily participated in martial arts training on their own time performed better in both low and high stress arrest and self defense skills (ASDS) tests.

How Did They Look at It?

Sixty-six police officers participated in the study. Eighteen practiced kickboxing, 14 practiced either jiu-jitsu or karate (No - I don’t know why they put these together - in most of the article, they are called the karate group), 15 practiced krav maga, and 19 did not practice any martial art. The authors were particularly interested in the performance of the krav maga group. This group practiced once a week and the authors felt that this was a reasonable amount of training for a police agency to consider adopting. The other martial arts groups generally practiced multiple times a week and had practiced for years.

The tests involved the participants completing a series of actions against an attacker in both a low stress and high stress condition. The participants were verbally instructed to kick, punch, block, or act freely. The attacker was constrained in some situations to perform a specific type of attack and in others to choose between a kick or a punch. All participants completed the low stress condition first. In this condition, the participant faced the wall, the experimenter told them what action they would use (e.g. punch), the participant would then turn, attacker would approach, and the participant would execute their action. Strikes were done into a pad and blocks were performed against an attack from the attacker.

After the low stress condition, participants were blindfolded and taken to another training room for the high stress tests. As they approached the room, the attacker started banging on the wall and threatening the participant. The participants again started facing the wall and were given an instruction by the experimenter (e.g. punch), but this time when the participant turned they faced an attacker in a bullet man suit (the silver suit in the picture at the top of this post). This suit is similar to the red suits used in the US. The participant actually struck the attacker in these tests. Also shock knife, foam baton, attempted tackles, and more complicated attacks were added to the high stress tests.

The sessions were video recorded. An instructor rated each participant’s performance during each sequence on a 5 point scale with higher scores indicating better performance.

What Did They Find?

The figure below shows the average results of the coding for each group. The darker bars are the for the low stress conditions and the lighter bars are high stress conditions. Not surprisingly, the police officers that were practicing martial arts did better than those without experience; however the differences between the krav maga and no martial arts groups were not large. You can also see that everybody did worse on the high stress tests. I should note that the figure below only compares the scores for actions that were included on both tests.

The authors also did an analysis of the attacks that were only performed during the high stress tests (e.g. the shock knife, baton, and more complex attacks). The results of this are presented in the figure below. On these tests, all the martial arts groups performed better than the non-martial arts group and the differences between the martial arts groups weren’t large. It is also worth noting that the average scores for the non-martial artists on these attacks was below the mid-point of the scale which indicates that the coder thought their performance was “insufficient.”

So What?

The authors argue that these results show two primary things. First, participants with martial arts experience did better than those without. Second, everyone did worse under stress. They additionally argue that the performance on the attacks that were only conducted during the high stress tests (represented in the figure above) shows that adding practice once a week is sufficient to enhance performance. They believe that you don’t see the big differences in the first chart between the krav maga and no martial arts group because the tasks covered by that chart are less representative of the real policing environment. I generally agree with these statements.

My $.02

We can all quibble about how this study was conducted. I am sure we can all think of ways to improve on what was done, but this study adds to the literature showing how stress impacts performance in a policing type environment. I think it also adds to the argument that representativeness is important. As I have said before - If you want to get good at something, practice that thing. Hitting bags and performing set sequences of actions might have some value, but the really difficult part of defensive tactics (or any fighting) is dealing with an uncooperative and unscripted opponent. Working against an uncooperative and unscripted opponent is the only way to learn how to read what your opponent is doing and react effectively. As much practice as possible should be focused on these things.

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