Police arrest and self-defence skills: performance under anxiety of officers with and without additional experience in martial arts

Abstract

We investigated whether officers with additional martial arts training experience performed better in arrest and self-defence scenarios under low and high anxiety and were better able to maintain performance under high anxiety than officers who just rely on regular police training. We were especially interested to find out whether training once a week would already lead to better performance under high anxiety. Officers with additional experience in kickboxing or karate/jiu-jitsu (training several times per week), or krav maga (training once a week) and officers with no additional experience performed several arrest and self-defence skills under low and high anxiety. Results showed that officers with additional experience (also those who trained once a week) performed better under high anxiety than officers with no additional experience. Still, the additional experience did not prevent these participants from performing worse under high anxiety compared to low anxiety. Implications for training are discussed. Practitioner summary: Dutch police officers train their arrest and self-defence skills only four to six hours per year. Our results indicate that doing an additional martial arts training once a week may lead to better performance under anxiety, although it cannot prevent that performance decreases under high anxiety compared to low anxiety.

‘Gun! Gun! Gun!’: An exploration of law enforcement officers’ decision-making and coping under stress during actual events

“…Therefore, it may be beneficial to include some instruction in emotion-focused coping within police training and to ensure that tactical, technical, and physical training in confrontation resolution takes place under stressful conditions (Renden, Landman, Savelsbergh, & Oudejans, 2015).…”

Effects of reflex-based self-defence training on police performance in simulated high-pressure arrest situations

“…We expected no effect of the ASDS training on performance because (a) of the above-mentioned weaknesses of the current training methodology, (b) the less efficient ASDS performances of officers in threatening situations in previous experiments (e.g. Renden et al 2014;Renden, Landman et al 2015), and (c) because officers are familiar with regular ASDS training (they do not learn anything new, this is what they normally train).…”

“…Anxiety has been demonstrated to have a negative influence on ASDS performance (cf. Renden et al 2014, Renden, Landman et al, 2015, Renden, Nieuwenhuys et al, 2015. In short, the limited time for training and the difficulty of performing under anxiety put a strain on officers' ability to perform well in violent situations (Nieuwenhuys and Oudejans 2012;Ericsson 2014).…”

“…Previous research has shown that more training experience (i.e. officers practised martial arts in their leisure time) results in better performance, but also that negative effects of anxiety are difficult to prevent by more training only (Renden, Landman et al 2015). Training in reality-based scenarios, especially with increased levels of threat and anxiety, has been shown to hold much promise in improving performance under pressure in discrete far aiming tasks such as handgun shooting (Nieuwenhuys and Oudejans 2011;Oudejans 2008; see also Oudejans andPijpers 2009, 2010, for examples in dart throwing and basketball shooting).…”

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“…There is consensus among experts that a negative mood state increases fatigue and anxiety, which can affect the performance of the combat athlete (Brandt et al, 2018). Anxiety effects have been an imminent concern on many studies which investigated performance of the athletes in karate (Terry & Slade, 1995), judo (Renden, Landman, Savelsbergh, & Oudejans, 2015), kendo (Choi et al, 2013), jiu-jitsu (Renden et al, 2015), taekwondo (Capranica et al, 2017) and wrestling (Gould, Eklund, Petlichkoff, Peterson, & Bump, 1991) championship tournaments. However, so far the effects of competitive levels on emotional intelligence and MARÍA MERINO FERNÁNDEZ, FÁBIO DAL BELLO, LINDSEI BRABEC MOTA BARRETO, CIRO JOSÉ BRITO, BIANCA MIARKA,…”