In the Self-defense focused training community – both on the firearm centric and martial art centric sides – there is an ungodly amount of foolish arguments. 9mm vs 45acp, AIWB vs strong side, point shooting vs sighted, combat sports vs street arts, modern systems vs traditional fighting methods, etc and etc. to the point of head spinning nausea. If we harnessed 1/10th of the time and energy spent on such discussions, we would exponentially add to our time actually, you know, training.
One of the worst and most insipid debates is a fairly recent one. In this one, proponents will argue for the merits of “training” or “practice” and assert in the strongest fashion that one of those is better than the other. But is there really any merit to this?
To really grasp if this is valid, let’s look at the standard dictionary definitions of these two terms. First, training:
“ the skill, knowledge, or experience acquired by one that trains”
And now, practice:
“repeated exercise in or performance of an activity or skill so as to acquire or maintain proficiency in it.”
Um, that is the exact same thing. So arguing which type of activity to engage in because one is superior is akin to arguing that swimming is better than moving through the water on the surface by using your hands and feet for propulsion. Kind of a waste of time. Basically, both terms mean the same thing, and any attempt to differentiate between them is just an exercise in foolish semantic games.
Maybe we can get back to what really counts?