Nigel Plum wrote:James Marwood is our real expert on this stuff, & will be able to explain better than myself. I'll see if I can get him to pop in.
I dunno about expert but I have been enough of a masochist to go in for a fair bit of stress-based training so I'll add what I can.
I'd firstly like to say that what I write below is my personal opinion and I hope I don't ruffle any feathers. From the ARMA guys I've encountered on other fora I know you to be a robust and practically minded lot so hopefully I won't raise any ire (unless of course it encourages you to be more aggressive in your training in which case I'll consider it mission accomplished).
In my experience a lack of aggression can manifest itself in either genders, although women are frequently more socially conditioned to shy away from physical violence. Aggression and forward drive is the absolute key to victory outside of structured bouts and so is something that I feel it is vital to train if one wishes to do a martial art. Training without aggression is simply a slightly more complex version of patticake.
There are a number of different approaches I have seen to aggression training, from classical army milling and screaming bayonet drills to complex NLP-based approaches programmes. What I have learnt from all of these is that you absolutely cannot force someone to be aggressive. They have to want it for it to be possible. If someone doesn't want to access their inner beast then no amount of training will do it. It is possible to reason with people to lead them to accept that this is necessary but that is a whole different topic I think.
One of the best and most successful approaches geared towards increasing aggression (specifically for females) is the Nikita and Valkyrie programmes formulated by Dennis Martin and Marcus Wynne. This is an NLP based approach and is discussed in more detail
here. This approach is based around building the desire to win and is possibly summed up best by an inspirational quote from a woman who successful defeated 3 attackers in South Africa - "I may lose but by God raping me will be the hardest thing you ever do".
Another very successful approach I have seen is that of visualisation. By leading a group through visualising a scene which leads to rage an instructor can increase the aggression levels and through drills reinforce this state. Frequent visualisation/usage leads one to be able to access the aggressive state more readily and more quickly. However, this training is VERY uncomfortable - being part of a group imagining walking in on someone sexually abusing their children is not a fun experience for anyone. It also really needs to be quite graphic. It can be done one-on-one, as a private exercise or as a group exercise - it all really depends on how open your group is and how hard it is for them to deal with the stresses the aggression brings.
The final technique I have seen (and the least successful) is to mock and abuse the students until they respond with anger. This is problematic as it will not work if people explicitly understand the stated aim. Also, people who are un-aggressive will be more likely to simply give up or leave than respond with anger - hardly an ideal solution. However, this is the approach I most often see!
For all of these you have to give explicit permission to 'lose it' and give an example. Often a class will be shy until the first one starts screaming expletives as they batter the pads. It is also common to experience laughing and joking as this happens. This is very, very natural - it is simply a way of dealing with the stresses of seeing an obviously angry person. I'd be inclined to let it go on for a while and then clamp down as people become more used to the stress.
It is important to differentiate between stress training and aggression training. Some of the things Nigel mentions above (the mental arithmetic tests and water assaults) are really geared to getting one to handle stress and respond well, drawing on you already existing rage state. If you are concerned with building the rage state then these kinds of drill will overwhelm the participants. For many the simple stresses of accessing the rage state and seeing others do the same will be hard enough to deal with.
The final vital point is to allow people to release the stresses that accumulate during these types of classes in a safe way. 2 or 3 times I have done an all day session of this kind of thing and got in the car to drive home pumped full of unused adrenalin and ready to demolish the first guy to look at me funny. Not Good! You must finish with physical activity to get people fatigued and give them a chance to socialise and communicate afterwards - a trip to the pub works very well here!
Hope that is of use!
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