This title is a paraphrase of sword master Miyamoto Musashi’s defining principle “you can only fight the way you practice”. A quote written in his book, The Five Rings, in the 1640’s. It’s true today as it was then because humans haven’t changed, we all learn and function the same way as our ancestors.
Whether it’s practicing brushing one’s teeth, hitting a golf ball or training defenses against punches; repetition lets the body build ‘muscle memory’ (known as procedural memory). Which is to say that your brain puts movement (done over and over) into autopilot-mode, allowing you to perform the action without conscious thought.
The upside is that, over the course of a day, this saves your brain a lot of decision making energy and makes you proficient in doing the practiced task. The possible downside to this is that your brain isn’t discriminating and will run whatever actions you programmed into it, regardless of whether it’s a desired (good) habit or an undesired (bad) habit. So you must be careful and conscious of what you practice and program into it, bad habits are hard to break!
In a confrontation with real danger your body triggers stress responses: adrenaline kicks in and decision-making can slow down, eating up valuable seconds that you can’t afford to lose. However, if you’ve done enough self defense practice against that kind of threat, your brain won’t ‘think’ but instead will automatically ‘do’; which makes you respond instantly.
Fortune favors the prepared! In the case of personal protection, drilling self defense skills will familiarize your brain with potential problems and develop your lightning fast responses to dangers.