Hick’s Law and Krav Maga

Hick’s Law is often either referenced directly or alluded to by many “reality-based” self-defense practitioners. It is one of the core principles at the foundation of Krav Maga and one of the main reasons why Krav is such an effective system. Hick’s Law, or the Hick–Hyman Law, “describes the time it takes for a person to make a decision as a result of the possible choices he or she has”.

If we simplify the formula at right, it looks more like this:

ReactionTime = MovementTime + ProcessingSpeed • log₂(n)
ProcessingSpeed • log₂(n) is the time taken to come to a decision and n is the number of choices

(If you’re interested in the math behind this, check out the Wikipedia page.)

A couple examples:

1. Imagine you’re hungry, not craving anything in particular. Travel times and relative indecision being equal, in which scenario will there be the shortest time between the beginning of the decision making process and chowing down?
   1. You’re in a one-horse town. There’s one restaurant and a convenience store.
   2. You’re in downtown Boston. There are restaurants, fast food joints, convenience stores, and supermarkets on every block.
2. Imagine some miscreant, unprovoked, suddenly grabs you by the throat. All else being equal, with which background would you most quickly and efficiently defend yourself?
   1. You’ve been studying a traditional martial art. You’ve learned six different (but fundamentally sound) techniques to use against a stationary choke from the front.
   2. You’ve been studying Krav Maga. You’ve trained the two-hand plucking defense against a stationary choke from the front.

Scenario II is, of course, the one that matters to your safety (and to the relevance of this post!). A versus B, the time difference is probably almost negligible, assuming proper execution of both techniques. As anyone who’s ever been choked “realistically” in training can attest, an almost negligible time difference—isn’t. Every extra fraction of a second that oxygen is kept from the brain is that much closer to lights out. Hesitating for one second to mentally rifle through a library of techniques could make all the difference.

You could make the argument that with enough training, the traditional martial artists could be just as fast or faster than the Krav Maga practitioner. But this takes time. A lot of time. The goal of Krav Maga is to quickly and efficiently train people to defend themselves. This is possible due to a number of training principles, but the essence of Hick’s Law is built right into two of them:

• One defense must work against a variety of attacks.
• The system should be integrated so that movements learned in one area of the system compliment, rather than contradict, movements in another area.

One more example highlighting those principles: Some rabid lunatic charges at you and cocks his arm back to strike. Is he empty handed? Does he have a broken bottle in his hand? A knife? Many self-defense systems treat these three cases very differently and have multiple options for each. In Krav, we address the angle. Inside Defense for a straight attack, 360° Defense for a round attack. Granted, this is a slight oversimplification. The follow-up combatives and disarms would vary slightly based on the weapon, but the point is that the initial defense would be the same regardless. Fighting is dynamic, and I am in no way implying that “all’s you have to do is” x-y-z. Bottom line, with fewer options in the response tool box, the reaction will be faster and could make all the difference in your safety.

Explaining it better and more succinctly than I can is Tony Blauer . What he discusses in the video below applies to his S.P.E.A.R. system specifically, but it has strong parallels in form and function to Krav Maga.

(Click here for the direct video link)