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Is repetitive practice a solid training model? The answer is not definitive because it depends, it depends on many other factors yet most martial arts programs advocate repetitive practice - often without fully qualifying what needs to be associated with repetitive practice and what the repetitive practice consists of to make it work.
First, note that in the martial arts world repetitive is repeating a movement over and over and over and over again with the perception, and explanation, that repetitive practice encodes the movement into your lizard brain so it becomes “Instinctive.” Now define instinctive. It should be understood that such repetitive practice does contribute toward a performance model that expresses, say kata, in a beautiful dance like presentation that looks really good but you still have to ask, “Will it result in a working model in the heat of adrenal stress conditional predatory attack situations?”
Second, simply repeating a move over and over again over a very long period of time does not make for what some call, “Muscle Memory.” Remember also that muscle memory, like the adrenal stress conditions or what some call the adrenal dump, do not explain the full spectrum of the effects of chemicals released in the body under the stresses of conflict and violence. They become a great placeholder to additional information and explanations toward a greater depth and breadth of understanding.
Third, repetitive practice - especially stand alone repetitive practice - is not “Operant Conditioning.” Repetitive practice may feel good, it does provide for greater fitness, health and a meditative well-being practice but it is not a reinforcement event, either positive or negative in nature. Repetitive practice of kihon, kata, drills and kumite contribute to the learning curve and as often found will train you to the “Way of Martial Arts” but when it comes to fighting, combatives and defense, not sport oriented although those forms due induce the flood but different, not so much if at all.
There are key factors necessary to achieve success through repetitive practice. The first thing that comes to mind and only achieved recognition in my practice from the written teachings of Rory Miller (and others) is to have “Fun” with it. Fun is operant conditioning because of its positive relationship to what you are doing. I am not talking about ROTE repetitive practice but a practice that allows the practitioner to learn, create, innovate and apply the lessons provided from kihon, kata, kumite, etc. Assuming that just repeating something over and over again will get the job done is a bit immature in nature as it obscures other factors that do make repetitive practice fun, etc.
Look at kihon, kata, kumite, drills and other repetitive practices as a means to achieve a goal of applying principles over the “Technique Based Repetitive Practice Model.” It is easy to become comfortable and begin to believe that TBRPM is doing the job especially when trading with others such as in the tori-uke form of practice. It appears so smooth and fast and applicable you can convince yourself that it works and will work in reality all the way up until you actually encounter “Reality-based adrenal stress conditioned training scenarios” or worse, you actually get attacked by a process/resource predator who marked you as a target.
My personal experience provides me some evidence this is true along with some experiences of other solid professionals who have told of the time when their proficiency went bye-bye leaving them getting their clocks cleaned even tho they would have sworn before that it couldn’t happen to them.
A true story: A high ranked black belt sitting in a restaurant was approached, the person threw his overcoat over the guys head, shoved him back into the booth and then began beating him about the head and shoulders. The black belt froze, could not break the freeze and ended up at the ER getting a lot of bruises, cuts, abrasions, broken nose, cut lip, etc. tended too. He thought he was capable and maybe he was but his training left him in the lurch. It turned out he had never been introduced to the reality of such attacks. The best part of this story, “He recognized his missing parts and made a concerted effort to make up for it in his training, practice and studies.”
There are other factors about repetitive but the most important is they don’t stand alone in encoding necessary abilities to accomplish goals regarding fights, combat and self-defense. Then there is the fact that repeating set patterns like in kata are only good for novices provided it is about principles over technique based training, Repeating your practice and training where you have fun and things flow and change naturally is the true repetitive practice to achieve mastery. Repeating a training model that encompasses all the needs through operant conditioning are the types of repetition you need to repeat.
Look at it like repeating a joint lock over and over and over again. It may be sufficient yet one professional tends to leave out repeating joint locks and advocates repeating practice of the principles underlying all joint locks, that is what I mean by repetitive practice over this TBRPM.
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