exhaustion/injury rates from police fights

[david welch]

I picked this up from another board, and I am looking to find a primary source for it but it is interesting information none the less.

Here is a very good reason to train to win a fight quickly, violently, and decisively:

These stats are from a trainer that presents Use of Force liability training to police agencies.


The "average" officer, when engaged in fighting with full muscular exertion for 15-30 seconds, will probably need at least a 15 minute rest, but be capable of going back out and finishing the shift.

If the "average" officer has a similar combat for up to around a minutes time (60 seconds), that officer will generally be so fatigued and probably injured so as to require the rest of the shift, and perhaps another shift or two off, to recover.

Of the "average" officers that engage in a serious physical combat at full muscular exertion for over 60 seconds, 50% WILL MEDICALLY RETIRE DUE TO THEIR INJURIES.

Something to think about, huh...


In WMA, would the view of a more violent, committed use of the techniques be supported by the idea that it is better to have a short fight with a relatively uninjured winner, instead of a protracted fight that results in the equivalent of a double kill?

[Aaron Pynenberg]

OK, good stuff here...totally within my world- there are many sources for these kinds of facts, each state agency keeps records of Officer involved use of force incidents....the type scope, etc...results....all these are used in court for all diffrent types of cases. Training and standards boards also use this info, along with the INternational Chiefs of Police Org. to study how Police use of Force incidents effect communities, police officers, taxes, training etc...liberal groups also like to spin this data all the time so they are always asking for it under open records laws, and last but not least the FEDS all require police agencies to compile data as well.

When you look at the data many things will strike you, police fights, the longer in duration they go, as well as the more Officers invovled increase the amount of damage, injury, death etc..that occur. You can spin this many ways, but the truth of it is the bigger the problem, the officers required, the more dangerous, etc... but on an individual level..i.e. one Officer vs. one bad guyor/girl(to be politically correct here!) means this: The Officer is always better to use overwhelming force quickly in the shortest possible timeframe tham to drag it out- the situation ends quicker with less potential of injury to the suspect as well as Officer and to damage to property. Now, keep in mind the force applied by law, can always be one level above, that of the suspect-in most cases, but not all-so as always to give advantage to the Officer. Example quick- I am bad guy you are Copper, I have broken bottle in my hand -you may have gun- Y- because I can cut you to ribbons with a broken bottle, so deadly force could be applied- and on and on.

How does this apply to our studies? I think in all these techniques and styles, many of the masters recognized these facts and this is what they are referring to and hinting at in the fightbooks- get it over quickly and use one strike instead of two-and hit him/her-somewhere where it will cause max. damage, and therfore stop the threat of you getting maimed, simple, but true and effective- check out the other post on working out in the gym, as well because all this stuff is related- Aaron

[Aaron Pynenberg]

Something else to add...the ":average officer" even though it's thier duty to be potentially in life and death situations spends less time, working out, thinking about use of force, training for it etc...because they are living it everyday, the stress of the everyday grind causes laziness in terms of the desire to stay on top of these fitness, and readiness issues. so, when it does happen the shock to the body is tremendous...not to mention the injuries they actually sustain in the fight, no that's not all Officers mind you, but a fair percentage....plus

Officers get older, have kids, lives etc... young crooks get older and usually go off to jail or get killed or reformed, but they are replaced by younger, faster crooks, much quicker than the Cops- who still makes his living doing the same job he/she did at age 20- maybe our historical knights were not much diffrent?

[david welch]

What interested me in this, is that in all the fightbooks almost all the attacks are all out committed attacks, and almost all the defenses are defending from an all out committed attack.

If this transitions over to the battlefield in some form or the other, committed attacks only makes sense... it is your only hope of living. It supports the idea that when you engage you only have 15-20 second to win or be killed/maimed for life, you have to make a committed attack and try to finish it as soon as possible.

[Mike Cartier]

What interested me in this, is that in all the fightbooks almost all the attacks are all out committed attacks, and almost all the defenses are defending from an all out committed attack.

I'm not sure I get the logic here, if all the defenses are against commited attacks doesn't that tell you that its expected?
So How do you come to the conclusion that the proper way to fight is to attack all out?

I disagree with this by the way, yes most people cannot last more than 30 secs to a min of all out fighting. But this is precisly why i take my cardio training so seriously. I work my cardio in all 3 phases so that no matter where I am in the fight I can outlast my opponent. The best time to beat a more skilled opponent or stringer opponent is when he is exhausted from all out fighting, using all exertion. only well trained people can do this for any extended period of time

By the way this is precisly why martial artists train, so that we fight more efficiently, usingl ess energy and exertion to do the same thing the other guy is doing by using all his energy.
When you gas your form goes to hell. This is precisly how a 150 pound guy like me can win a fight against a 250 pound guy, not by going balls out but by exposing the opponents weakness whtehrr its cardio, footwork or speed.

[James Sterrett]

Something that's bugging me about the source material:

It seems to pack together two factors: duration of full muscle exertion, and duration of combat.

I can well understand that, in general, the longer the fight last, the more likely the participants are to become seriously injured as a result of combat, and therefore the "fight to finish it fast" makes perfectly good sense.

However, the continued use of the phrase "at full muscular exertion" suggests that full-out exercise for 60 seconds (outside of combat!) stands a good chance of permanently injuring the exerciser. This I find harder to believe, though that could be ignorance talking....?

[Aaron Pynenberg]

James, I can undersand your confusion, and this probably gets into how they broke these facts down, but I'd like to point out that "exercise" and "combat" as in a fight scenario are totally diffrent. If an Officer is fighting at "full muscle exertion" for 60 seconds- they are probably fighting for thier lives against a "committed attacker" who means to kill them, which is a whole seperate animal then just trying to take someone into custody. It also makes no mention of weapons etc...keeping in mind that a weapon could include all sorts of objects, rocks, sticks etc..

So, while the data sounds very exclusive to just physical exertion, one would have to place the "fight" back into context and then look at the data again. We also have the unique problems of bringing a gun to every fight no matter what kind-so if it starts out just punches/kicks etc..I have a nice sidearm sitting on my hip, that they could deceide to try and use against me- so we could end up fighting over that, etc...

You see this kind of stuff all the time with Police Data- they always pull it out of some context, try and take meaningful numbers and stats, but then forget to set out all the variables-

Like Taser related deaths- good example- I saw an article which said something like 20 % of current Police in-custody deaths are now taser related- seeing that you'd think wow, ban tasers, but what they don't show is that in the majority of taser deployments, these are being used against EDP's (emotionally deranged persons)-who are very dangerous or against someone who is so "high" on drugs that they are literally "walking dead" in other words whatever they took for however long has reached levels in the body that will eventually kill them anyway, trouble is they don't know it yet and so will typically strip naked, smash out anything made of glass, attack people, or animals etc...think the cops will get called to deal with that guy?-u bet. Short of shooting the person the only tool we have currently is the taser-and many times if we use it soon enough and get the to the hospital, they have a better chance of living! They didn't say all that in the study did they?-

Police data is very muddy so you have to be careful when using it, etc..but in this case I think it does convey the meaning, get the fight over now, less chance of them getting you-does that stuff make sense?-

[Jaron Bernstein]

Think of your last sparring session with wasters or paddeds. If you replaced them with live sharps (do NOT do this in actuality!!!), who long would the fight last before one or both were dead? 15-60 seconds?

[Mike Cartier]

oh absolutley Jaron, weapons are a different beast entirely.
I was speaking mostly about unarmed combat.

[Jaron Bernstein]

For the unarmed and exhaustion....

Look a good MMA fight for exhaustion on conditioned athletes.

There are any number of "street fight" videos on line to show fatigue on real people fighting.

As for cops, most (not all! Aaron <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" /> ) of them are out of shape. Law enforcement is just plain unhealthy in terms of wierd hours, spending your working day with 20 pounds of gear on, bad food and the like. You really have to make an extra effort to make conditioning part of your daily life in addition to your work and family commitments or you risk losing that fight with a invincible and immortal (just ask them) 20 year old suspect.

Which makes this ARMA thing so fun and useful.....

[James Sterrett]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

If I'm understanding the replies, then you are telling me that the real thrust of the data is not that longer fights are worse because of the exertion itself, but because longer fights mean there's more chances for the other guy to damage you (with whatever is being used in the fight). That makes perfect sense to me - as does the notion that fatigue increases over time, and as it increases, it increases the probability that you'll get hurt because it screws you up in various ways.

Therefore, fight to win the combat ASAP - full out, fully committed. (How well I could put this theory into practice is another issue. <img src="/forum/images/icons/crazy.gif" alt="" /> )

Am I tracking now? <img src="/forum/images/icons/smile.gif" alt="" />

[R.J. Stringer]

Fighting is exhausting work, even after you do it often enough to control the adrenal rush its still exhausting..the "average" person has about 2 minutes of fight in them (and thats an eternity) Conditioning will allow one to fight longer but raw "wind" is rarely enuff, experience and conditioning will allow one to fight substantially longer if necessary. But an experienced fighter will likely end it before it gets tiring <img src="/forum/images/icons/wink.gif" alt="" />