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In sparring drills, the use of stimulus and response is simple to practice. All the basic sparring drills are centered around the proper response to an attack, whether it be shifting, dodging, or blocking and countering the attack. Once this ability has been mastered through basic training and sparring drills, the responses of the fighter in free sparring will be automatic. Thus it is necessary to practice basic sparring drills continually, in order to develop automatic responses. Those who simply train in free-sparring and neglect the myriad of drills available to them will not be able to reach their full potential as fighters.

Stimulus and response training is also possible in kata, except that it is much more difficult. If an instructor is counting as the student performs each move in the kata, then the voice may be used as stimulus. However, in the free performance of kata, the practitioner must create the stimulus in his or her own mind by imagining an attack and responding to it. This stimulus and response reaction is extremely difficult to attain in the early stages of training. When such a stage is reached in kata practice, performers truly feel the presence of attackers and their concentration is so developed that they will find it easy to sense the attacks of actual opponents. This is one of the reasons why karate practitioners in the past spent so much time in the practice of a single kata. It enabled them to devote full concentration to each movement and develop the ability to provide their own stimulus to which they could respond.