I recently pointed out the inherent dangers of falling or fighting on hard surfaces like concrete, and, as expected, the responses came in. People sharing their experiences – “I fell off my bike and did a perfect roll”, “I’ve fought on pavement and I’m fine”, “I used to train on concrete all the time.”

The underlying sentiment is always the same: “Nothing bad happened to me, therefore it’s not dangerous.”

But that’s not how reality works. You don’t judge risk by the times things went well; you judge it by the times they didn’t. Surviving something once doesn’t make it safe, it just means nothing went wrong that time.

The problem is we only ever hear from the person who walked away. We don’t hear from the person who didn’t get back up, or the one who did but was never quite the same again. That’s the part that gets ignored when people talk about what “worked” for them.

I’m not talking about what can happen when everything lines up and you’re at your best. I’m talking about what happens when it goes wrong, because that’s the part that actually matters.

The physical side of karate isn’t for when everything goes to plan, it’s for when everything goes wrong. If your thinking relies on the ground being forgiving, your timing being perfect, or the other person making mistakes, then you’re not really dealing with self-protection, you’re relying on things going your way.

And sometimes they do. But sometimes they don’t.

Training should account for consequences, not just the times things worked. It should consider what happens when you slip, when your balance goes, when your distance is off, when something doesn’t land the way you expected. Those small moments are where things change, and they’re the moments people tend to ignore because they don’t fit the story of “it worked for me.”

You might get away with it nine times out of ten, but it’s the tenth time that matters. That’s the one you don’t get to redo, and it’s the one your training should be preparing you for.

Real progress comes from narrowing the margin for error, not pretending it isn’t there. It’s about understanding that just because you walked away from something once doesn’t mean it was a good idea in the first place.

Don’t mistake being unscathed for being prepared.

Training value depends on whether it matches the realities a person is actually likely to face.

Because when it does go wrong, that’s the only time that matters.