Tony Blauer, a sports psychologist, had an interesting point in one article I read. He mentioned doing strenuous pushups and situps (pushups with hands in a triangle position, pushups where you push off the ground and "clap", etc. and situps where you do double punches on each "up" move) and seeing how many you could do. Say you do 10. Could you do 11? 12? Where is your breaking point? Okay, say your breaking point is 25 "clap" pushups. Now, what if someone had a gun to your head? What about your spouse's/significant other's head? Your kids' heads? Could you do one more?
It's all about the motivation, seriously. You will most likely react the way you train. If you train hard and train seriously, then it will benefit you when and if you need to use it.
One fighter once described his attitude in the ring as something like this: He saw his opponent as the person that was trying to take food away from his kids. If that person won the sparring match, and won the tournament, then his kids didn't get to eat. This provided him the motivation to get more involved than just participating in a "match"--it became a little more serious. (The competitor in question never actually *hurt* anyone, btw--it was all his psychology, no brutality involved).
Anyway, I agree with the saying: "The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat". Train seriously; look and question.....analyze, break things down, re-arrange.....whatever it takes to give you more dimensions to what you do.
And have fun doing it....
.....that smile on your face at the end of training should always be there.....
Peace--
