I'm in the midst of reading Rory Miller's latest book, Facing Violence. For those who haven't read it, he covers seven stages of self protection in a very clear and in depth manner. One issue that got me thinking is trained responses. Miller writes that in cases of being ambushed or surprised with an attack, one should use one technique that has been trained to a conditioned response. He shows a few variatons, both excellent, which protect, attack, and close distance simulataneously. The reasoning placed behind this is that taking extra time to think about specific responses is far to slow and unworkable. I thought of this in terms of karate training. Is there a downside to learning so many kata and so many techniques? Many karate-ka have a tool case of weapons for everything, but does this not complicate the matter as they are much more likely to think before acting? Is it the responsibility of the karate-ka to find their particularly favorite response and train and condition it? How many actually do this? Hope my question was clear and would love to hear some opinions on it.
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