Improvisation

A major road block, my view only, of why self-defense often fail is improvisation. To improvise you need to use your intuitive abilities. In a nutshell the self-defense curricula needs to address this aspect of training and practice. How this is done is it must have plans and procedures, i.e. tactics/strategies and techniques if you will, that will still allow the person to improvise and use their tuition. 

As skilled martial artists who utilize what we do for self-defense we need to build on what has gone before while remaining open to new possibilities. You can't plan this stuff and to assume simply that practicing set combinations in response to set attack combinations is to stagnate or completely still any intuitive improvisation. Your intuitions are critical to improvisations, i.e. when a technique/strategy/tactic does not work many do it again and again - stuck in some infinite looping process while receiving damage. You have to have the ability to judge when things are going wrong and it is intuition that allows us to adapt, to make an adjustment, to improvise. You need to change the tactics and techniques to not lose.

When martial arts dojo move into a detailed, leave nothing to chance, model they stifle intuitive thinking, practice and training. The details are fine initially but one must move into a more holistic approach allowing the culmination of details to fall into the subconscious. If you over stimulate and inundate your mind with specifics/details the more easily those details/specifics fall apart in the chaos of violence. You expect things to go a certain way and when they don't you repeat, repeat, repeat to your detriment. 

Plans are good, tactics are good and strategies are good but too much of good make you insensitive to any anomalies that arise in violence that mean, improvise, change and adapt. If you have plans/strategies/tactics make sure they include contingency actions. Simplistic example, when you feel the freeze your contingency is to move - now. Once moving then other tactics can be adapted or improvised. You need to try and cover as many different difficulties in violence so you don't miss new opportunities to adapt and adjust and improvise to not lose, not receive damage and find a safety zone. 

Realize that those many combinations your being taught to combat those many attack combinations must be optimized and remain fluid by injecting differences so that they are not ingrained as related to one specific action vs. counter-action vs. action. 

Does this make sense? In closing, plan to adapt. Plan to improvise. Plan to intuitively train and practice for adaptable improvisational ability.