Everyone played Rock-paper-scissors when they were kids. We had a brief discussion of this via this blog – Magic of 3.
Rock-paper-scissors can be applied in martial arts to illustrate the concept of “Every technique has a theoretical counter. However, at an instant, there will be a win/lose”. Rock-paper-scissors is not totally random either. Each person, knowingly or not, tends to have some natural/default patterns. These patterns differ from person to person. Furthermore, what your opponent picked in the last round do affect what you do next and vice versa. The number of wins (e.g. two out of three) required may affect your tactic. If it is not one-on-one but many people doing the game together, again, it changes the dynamics and strategy.
When new students learn martial arts, this question often pop up – “What do you do if someone did this to you?”. Instead of focusing in on perfecting the first technique, once they are exposed to a possible counter, their focus quickly switch to “How do you counter-the-counter?” . The “counter-chain” never ends and just like the game of rock-paper-scissors, it eventually loops back.
In martial arts, knowing a technique is quite different from living the technique. Furthermore, there are all kinds of little details that can effectiveness of an otherwise a simple attack. With the ‘right packaging’, anything can be made to work. Do understand the possible counters but try to focus in on making the simplest thing work.
Exercise
What ‘right packaging’ have you learned in the martial arts context?
You may find this blog relevant “All in the details”