How does distance, speed and timing effect our ability to defend ourselves?

Why does a preplanned physical response to surprise violence cause you to lose a confrontation? 

We must agree that generally there are only 2 self defense situations you will face.

They are Ambush situations and situations that you have prior warning of and/or prior knowledge of potential physical contact.

That being said, if we have an understanding of pre-contact psychology then we can control, manipulate and pre-empt those situation that offers us warning signs, so we don't have to worry much about physically defending / blocking those attacks.

So that leaves us with ambush attacks which is what most people should be concerned about. In ambush situations we do not have time to cognitively calculate our responses. Our brainstem, cerebellum and mostly the amygdale take over and cause the Startle / flinch response as well as Adrenaline Dumps and fight or flight, all of which bypass cognitive processing. So the very first affect will be the lose of technically specific responses and training which rely on cognitive processes. Our only hope is that we can work with in the flinch response to enhance our built in defensive mechanisms.

The next issue is purely biological, if we are cognizing our responses we have to work with in the OODA loop and that increases our natural reaction times similarly even with the flinch response our neurology is not fast enough to protect us from all attacks.

Let see why.