Originally Posted by
t_niehoff
I think it has to do with "what we are used to."
To explain -- in my mind what is interesting is how poorly the trained kendo guys did. I would expect that they should be able to easily handle poorly trained, unskilled guys with shinai. But they had all sorts of trouble. And that isn't because the judo guys might have played some kendo but because the kendo guys were facing an intensity (something judo instills) that they were not used to. And what happens when we face an intensity we are not used to is that our technique, our game, etc. crumbles. In a sense, skill is intensity-dependent.
IMO the lesson is we can only get good at doing what we are used to doing, what is famailiar. And what I mean by that is both situationally (are you used to getting out of headlocks? or dealing with genuinely resisiting opponents?) and in terms of violent intensity (are you used to dealing with someone going all out?).