The Moment Before, The Moment Inside, The Moment After: What Violence Demands From the Human Body
Violence is not one moment.
It is a timeline.
Long before the first sound, strike, or scream — the body begins reacting.
And long after it ends, the body keeps remembering.
Survivors do not speak of “the attack” as a single thing.
They speak of before.
They speak of during.
They speak of after.
Three phases — each with its own rules, its own biology, its own cost.
Understanding these phases is not morbid curiosity.
It is prevention.
It is preparation.
It is reclaiming control in a world where the unexpected sometimes arrives uninvited.
▣ 1. Before Violence — The Body Knows First
Research in threat recognition shows the nervous system detects danger milliseconds before conscious awareness (source: Joseph LeDoux, neuroscientist; amygdala fear pathway studies).
That means the earliest phase of violence is not visual.
It is physiological.
A stomach drop.
A breath that tightens.
A step you do not want to take.
All before a single observable event has happened.
Criminology studies — including interviews with convicted offenders — show that predators often “test” before they act: watching who notices, who hesitates, who will not respond (FBI VICAP victimology data; University of Portland deception research).
Violence begins with selection.
With someone watching you to see if you will watch back.
And this is the phase where most safety is won or lost —
before anything ever reaches your skin.
▣ 2. During Violence — When the Brain Goes Silent
When threat becomes undeniable, something ancient happens inside the body.
Adrenaline floods the bloodstream in seconds.
The heart rate accelerates — sometimes past 160 beats per minute — where fine motor skills begin to deteriorate (U.S. Force Science Institute).
Blood leaves the hands.
Vision narrows into a tunnel.
Language function decreases — because the prefrontal cortex goes partially offline.
This is why so many survivors later say:
“I couldn’t speak.”
“I couldn’t think.”
“I forgot everything I thought I would do.”
It is not weakness.
It is biology.
The human body is built to survive danger — not to debate it.
The body will reach only for what it has done before.
That is why training must include stress — because the brain, in crisis, does not grant us new skills.
It only grants us access to what is already ours.
▣ 3. After Violence — The Quiet That Isn’t Quiet
When violence ends, the body does not know it is over.
Adrenaline remains in the bloodstream for hours.
Cortisol — the stress hormone — can remain for days (Trauma & Stress Response literature; McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School).
The brain replays what happened, because it is trying to learn “how to never let this happen again.”
Some survivors describe guilt.
Some describe relief.
Some describe nothing at all — numbness — which trauma research calls emotional blunting.
Healing is not linear.
There is no right reaction.
There is only the nervous system, trying to make sense of what was too fast to understand.
And this is where community matters —
because isolation turns the after-phase into a second injury.
Why This Matters — Before Anything Ever Happens
Violence is not cinematic.
It is not symmetrical.
It is not a fair fight.
Understanding its phases is not about living afraid.
It is about knowing where power lives.
Power lives in the before — where intuition can pull you away.
It lives in the during — where a single movement can create escape.
It lives in the after — where being believed and supported can stitch someone back into themselves.
Preparation is not paranoia.
Preparation is self-respect.
Where We Stand
At California Defense Academy, training is not just strikes.
It is learning:
How to notice.
How to move.
How to return home.
How to keep living after a moment tries to change you.
Violence has phases.
So must the training that prepares you for it.
California Defense Academy – Murrieta, CA
Krav Maga | Self-Defense | Personal Protection
Serving Murrieta, Temecula, Menifee, Wildomar, Lake Elsinore, Canyon Lake
