G'day Mate,
First of all let me tell you a little about myself, not to boast or infer i am better or superior to you (or anyone else), just so you can see where My thoughts come from.
I've been studying Martial arts, self defence and real world violence for just on 25 years now ( around 20 of them dedicated to real world application). I have studied and researched psychology both informally and at university level with a particular interest in the psychology of violence.
My articles have been published in Australia's largest martial arts magazine (Blitz) a number of times over the last few years.
I Have been personally involved in more then 100 violent encounters, this was due to the work I did at the time (and isn't that unusual of figure taking that into account), These are only the ones that had gone physical I have deescalated many times more potential situations.
The information I gained through my personal experience and research has been supported by the information given to me by some of the worlds leading Reality Based Self Defence (RBSD) Instructors, victims of violence and perpetrators of it.
like I said I provide this info not to boost my ego but to provide you with a little background on my thoughts
heres the thing
if its self defense then i shouldn't be getting all worked up emotionally
Yes you should, unless of course if your not human or have some damage to your hypothalamus or limbic area of your brain. In fact I would say if you had not emotional response to the threat then it would not be a threat and therefore not self defence.
In every one of my encounters (even the ones that didn't go physical) I had some kind of emotional response, usually it was a fear response such as Fight or Flight (which is an emotional response BTW)
From your statement I imagine that you have not had many real world violent encounters, this is a good thing. I don't walk around with a 100+ tattoo or anything, it may be impressive to some but they were all unfortunate in my eyes, although necessary.
the point being is that YOU WILL have an emotional response, it is human it is automatic and it is only partly under our control
it would be the attacker thats either pumped up on adrenalin or scared out of their mind (unlikely)
I would pretty well bet that the attacker is feeling both of these things though they will probably perceive fear as anger ( which coincidently is a very similar emotion with similar physiological response to fear) either way they will be under an emotional response, if not why would they attack (think about this)
... as long as i keep my head on my shoulders and aware of my surroundings i should be okay against an attacker that i did not provoke
yes chances are you will do OK, awareness is king in self protection. but heres the question have you trained under the emotional stress that is involved in real world violence, have you trained or at least become familiar with the behavioural delivery systems that are used in the real world.
sparring can go a long way to familiarize yourself with adrenalin etc but it does so under conditions contra to real world violence. for eg street violence does not start from a fight stance, seriously look at all the cctv footage of street violence and you will not find many where the attacker shapes up before throwing the first punch (I've viewed 100's of hours of this type of stuff, I only wish I had of statistically recorded some of the info). there is no verbal attack and no ego-emotional attack coming from your sparring partner.
Sparring is a great tool for developing physical and mental qualities of fighting, but it lacks a lot the real world delivery systems. this could be said for most TMA (in relation to real world violence management)
but THANK YOU for answering my question
now i just need to take a look at TMA and see which i like the best
No Probs my friend. please don't take my words as anti TMA, I still love it, but with my focus on real world violence, TMA needs to be adapted (same goes for spot MA) it is the lack of BEC that is it's greatest weakness (for the street)
i took a couple of years of karate back in the day
so i know the practice routine
yep I read that in your post, which tells me that you should have the patience to develop the system to a workable level (but how long will it take and what do you do in the mean time)
Its not so much as practice as muscle memory,repeating the same movement over and over again your muscles remember how to do that without the conscious thought of your mind
True, but it is a conditioned response, your muscles develop a memory of a response to a particular stimulus, after a while it becomes the conditioned response for that stimulus. simple eg you block a punch in a particular fashion.
To reflexively activate the muscle memory action you have to have learned it as a response to a stimulus under the same, or at least similar, conditions.
Take blinking for eg. Many fighters have conditioned their Blink reflex so that they don't blink (well at least blink less) during a fight. take that fighter out of the fighting context for eg at home with the kids and they will blink just like their 5yo does to any unexpected stimulus threatening the eye. the reason for this is because the conditioning of not blinking was learned under the conditions of a fight.
now because of the vastly different variations between the training conditions and the real world conditions (in particular the different delivery systems) the conditioned response may not be activated, it will use the default setting or it will become confused as to what to do. the greater the diference between the training and the realworld the greater the confusion as to whether to use the conditioned or instinctive response. simply put you brain has to ask the question "is this the same as that ?", then decide and act.
this is why it is so vitally important to train your responses under conditions that mimic it's intended application as close as possible regardless whether that application is in the ring on the street or in a kata comp.
so when you enter into a confrontation you really dont think 'okay i need to put my foot here, grab here and throw'
your muscles remember what to do and you then act on what can now be called an instinct
which is what it has become now
I'm being a bit semantic but it's not instinct. Instinct is a NON-LEARNED automatic response, muscle memory and conditional responses are by definition learned responses. they may act in an instinct like manner but they will always be slower then true instinctual responses simply because they have to access the memory during the activation phase which instincts don't need to do. (I'm not talking great lengths of time here, but there is a difference)
Any way I could waffle on for ages about this stuff, and lets be honest I drifted off the original topic ages ago.
before I go I do want to wish you the best of luck with finding a martial art for you, I do recommend at least briefly looking into the theories and practice behind RBSD as a compliment to your TMA training. many see them as being opposite ends of a scale I just see them as complimentary to each other.
Good luck and choose peace