prepared, or not prepared

“How one is prepared, or not prepared to handle the adrenal stress effects of combat is often more important and decisive than one’s skill with one’s weapons.” - Peyton Quinn, Book of Five Rings: Explained in Plain English

Comment: Practice, practice and more practice is not enough. When time comes to apply skills in combat the mind-state will encounter the effects of the adrenal stress conditions, the chemical/adrenal dump. When they hit, especially for the first time, the effects will most times obliterate those skills leaving the lizard to pull up the ancient freeze, flight or fright response. In modern parlance that equates to the OO bounce where your mind is blasted by the chemical dump cutting off its connection to all that training and practice, practice and more practice so that it locks up in the loop trying to find some semblance of an actionable item to implement in the fight. Bummer.