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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bluenose" data-source="post: 7682696" data-attributes="member: 49017">I think anyone who goes into a battle believing that they'll improve their technique in the course of it is going to come out dead or maimed or beaten if they try. Hour after hour after hour of practice in a nice safe controlled environment - you learn how to perform techniques, how to move, how not to perform techniques. Practice a technique till it's natural and you can probably perform it in a battle, but that's not somewhere you can learn it. If you suddenly decide that a sword coming towards you is a great time to practice that stop-thrust you've never been able to get right consistently in training, the chance that you'll get it right is low. Not to say that there's nothing to learn on a battlefield, but it's nothing to do with combat technique and everything to do with paying attention.As for inventing new things, where do you think people try them out? On a battlefield under stress where you won't have any opportunity to keep trying them again and again until all the movement is right and the kinks ironed out, or in practice sessions under nice calm conditions where you can repeat it with a cooperative opponent who isn't trying to actually kill you and is willing to repeat the manoeuvre you're trying to counter until you can get your new trick to work. I'm pretty certain it's the latter place which is best suited to learning.</blockquote>