Does practicing in dojo or studio apply in reality ?

Does practicing in studio or dojo apply in reality?

Well, the answer to this question is a Yes and No! Now let us try and understand this, what we practice in studio or dojo is a synchronized move wherein the role playing attacker attacks or threatens in a certain manner and the defender tries to defend it in the way is ‘supposed to’ is ‘taught to’. The ability to think beyond and improvisation reduces drastically if the same drill is practiced over & over again without any changed scenario, environment of attack methodology. It is good to an extent that the same is internalized but the flip side is that the response gets skewed if there is a slight variation in the attackers design.

To address this acuteness I have always recommend the following 2 ‘Cs’ :

1.      Conceptual Understanding – Always focus on the ‘concept’ , which means what may happen in a certain condition and what should be the outcome? This will leave the ‘approach leverage’ with the executor. I shall try and explain this with the help of an example – An attacker is holding a brick and threatening you, now logically he has picked it up to scare you and has a capability to hit you. Whether it is only a scare tactic or he intends hitting is not known to you. You also do not know whether he will toss it at you and in what manner. So the best possible or safest bet here is to disarm him as soon as you see him with the brick, do not give him an opportunity to ‘charge it’ (hold it in a way so as to throw or hit with it.

2.      Choose your approach – Having had the conceptual understanding of the situation you can now decide on various courses of action you may follow – get away, use your shirt or bag as shield, go closer so that the force of attack is reduced & more.So you need to have atleast 3 if not more techniques for a single situation which can work with various permutation combinations. Practicing a single technique will make you a ‘master of one’ but would compromise on whole lot other dynamics which is a the reality of a real situation .

      Conclusion 

      Think real , practice real so that you may handle 'real life'situations more effectively.