Dr. George Sheehan was a medical doctor and author, and was a high level runner. He once said this:

“We need all three activities. Exercise is a science. Play is an art. Sport is both. Exercise is mechanical. Play is free-flowing. Sport is exercise with rules and a reckoning at the finish. Sport is exercise with consequences.”

This is an important distinction for training. We need all three of these components to maximize “training”. Don’t get bogged down in semantics and arguing about what is practice vs training or similar nonsense. We need them all to achieve our best performance.

And for those who are focused solely on self-defense, yes, you need all three just the same. If you like, you can substitute well run Force-on-Force scenarios for competition in this context. But remember even that is only one part of the trifecta.