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Training is the key to becoming a great martial artist; you must steadily train until you become one. Once you reach this goal, your brain will process self-defense or fighting decisions much faster than the brains of people that are not martial artists, or even of other martial artists who have not trained as long and hard as you have trained.

Only a tiny portion of the brain is dedicated to conscious behavior, the majority of the brain works behind the scenes to regulate things such as breathing, and to process the vast of amount of sensual input being received by the brain every second. If this did not occur, some addled brain people would forget to breath and suffocate.

The goal is to train at an activity until the activity becomes an unconscious behavior, a procedural memory, such as driving. An experienced driver does not think about driving, it just happens. Without adequate training at an activity, the mind must consciously monitor the activity, which takes time and may lead to confusion. The poem "The Puzzled Centipede" is an example of how consciously thinking about an unconcious action may lead to confusion:

A centipede was happy quite.

Until a frog in fun

Said, "Pray tell which leg comes after which?"

This rasied her mind to such a pitch.

She lay distracted in the ditch

Not knowing how to run.

A trained athlete’s brain operates at a speed much greater than the brain of an untrained person. In 2001, the Yankees were in an American League playoff game with the Oakland Athletics. Yankee Shortstop Derek Jeter saved the game and the series when he grabbed an errant throw coming in from right field and then gently tossed the ball to catcher Jorge Posada, who tagged the base runner at home plate. To make the play, Jeter had to master both conscious decisions, such as whether to intercept the throw, and unconscious ones, such as how hard to throw the ball. Jeter made these decisions correctly, in an instant.

On August 20, 1974, in a game between the California Angles and the Detroit Tigers, a Nolan Ryan fastball was clocked at 100.9 mph. This means the ball reached home plate in 4-tenths of a second. The unconscious part of a hitter's brain can process the visual data it receives from the eyes and cause the body to swing the bat in less than this time, else it would be impossible for batters to hit the fastball. The conscious mind takes about 5-tenths of second to react to the pitch so, if the batter thinks about hitting the ball, he will always be too late. This is also why a highly trained fighter is able to avoid a punch before being consciously aware of it.

A marksman’s task is easy; he simply points the weapon and fires it, and yet each shot requires many instantaneous decisions, such as how much to shift the aim in response to wind and temperature. Since the shooter does not have perfect control over his body, a slight movement in one part of the body may require many quick adjustments in other parts. Each shot is combination of minor adjustments made by combining previous experiences learned in training with whatever variations are being experienced at the moment.

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