Men, often young men, want to be thought of as "dangerous." They do things to make them selves look intimidating. Lift weights, shoot guns, train martial arts. The want in their head the thought of "I'm a bad ass."
Many martial arts feed of this desire. Interestingly enough, nearly all martial arts gym have something in their advertisement about confidence and self defense. Unfortunately, most martial arts do not do what is necessary to ensure that their practitioners are actually dangerous. It takes hard work to be dangerous. It takes constant testing and preparation. The simple and unavoidable fact is that many martial arts are as easy as possible because they want to give their students a feeling of being dangerous, with as little exertion as possible.
This is spoke about and hidden within the walls of the gym as how to keep membership. A typical BJJ gym is not run like a collegiate wrestling team because the vast majority of paying members would walk out if it was. Many "fighting gyms", gyms that support and train actual sport fighters, have classes and sessions for "normal" members, and competition classes for their more elite fighters. Competition classes, just like the collegiate wrestling teams, are normally by invitation only. The intensity is much higher, and so is the repetition.
In a typical Judo class, you might work on 3 to 4 techniques in a class, then do some rondori to work out how the throw might work in a live environment. Same with a typical BJJ class, Tae Kwon Do, you name it. You get a few reps in for each technique, before moving on to something else.
The overall result is that you know a good deal of techniques, but you don't really know how to execute a single technique very well.
In a competition class you are likely to work a single technique until the point of exhaustion. The focus of the competition class is to be able to execute that technique perfectly in all situations.
This kind of thing does not, and never will sit well with the general public. If you take martial arts, take a look around at everyone after a technique has been demonstrated. Questions will be asked about "how many times do we do this?" After executing about 5 to 10, students will be looking around the room wondering "what's next?"
In my own class, I became dissatisfied with showing a series of techniques over the course of a week, then asking a student to review and do the techniques of that week towards the end of the class on the last day. Many could not recall or execute the techniques. This told me that they weren't learning. If they weren't learning, they couldn't incorporate the techniques in their own game, let alone defend against them.
So I changed it up. I started doing one technique a day, with the focus of the week on expanding on that one technique. Many more repetitions.
I implemented 2 weeks of technique, followed by two weeks of sparing with questions.
What I found was that the technique taught in class was used during the two week sparing sessions. I found that the techniques were retained and incorporated. I found that students were much more confident in the techniques, and were able to try them out in their typical games.
I also found that the students felt much more "dangerous." The felt like they could actually DO the technique against someone.
All was not rainbows and unicorns, though. They didn't "like" the drilling weeks. Those were "boring." They would much rather have the sparing weeks. However, most realized that without the drilling weeks, they wouldn't have had the new techniques with which to use in the sparing weeks.
It solidifies a single idea. Men wish to be dangerous. But many don't want to put the time and the effort in to being dangerous. To defeat other men in physical, unarmed combat, you MUST be able to work your techniques against a strongly resisting opponent. A man will never, ever just give you his back. You must TAKE his back. To take his back, you must drill and prepare and be ready for his resistance and defenses. You must be able to take his back with him actively NOT wanting you to take his back.
That takes time and practice. The group of people willing to put in that practice is thin.
