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Drilling vs. Experimenting
Mark Hatmaker
"If it disagrees with experiment it is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn't make any difference how beautiful your guess is, how smart you are, who made the guess, or what his name is. If it disagrees with experiment, it's wrong. That's all there is to it." --Nobel-Winning Physicist, Richard Feynman
Now that is one heavy-duty, clear-thinking, says-it-all quote from a mighty brilliant man. Nothing I say that follows will better that opening wisdom but I'm still going to try, in my clumsy way, to borrow that wisdom from the realm of the hard sciences and apply it to the easier to understand world of human beings smacking and squeezing each other into submission. More specifically, how we can try to think like Feynman when we're drilling.
In the past, when discussing training, I have used the analogy of an actual train, a locomotive that stays on track with no deviation chugging forward inexorably to its destination. Also in that analogy, to skip or hamstring your training in any way was to de-rail yourself. I think that analogy still holds--the discipline portion of it that is.
Drilling, if we stay with literal analogies, is to bore through material until you are able to punch through the other side. Literally piercing the subject matter. Actual drilling, in the mechanical sense, is accomplished via a revolving bit applied with pressure. Metaphorical drilling can feel bit like its real world correlate--applying pressure while you run the same revolutions of physical tasks again and again.
In this sense drilling and training can be taken as being two words for the same concept.
Combat drilling is often (in most forms I see) rote repetition of skills, technique, and responses performed hundreds if not thousands of times. Now, don't get me wrong, there is a wisdom in this repetition-it is, in fact, the wisdom of training, of discipline, of commitment, of staying on track. But literal drilling, as a bit through wood as we have already said, is also called "boring" and, let's be honest, actual drilling of the rote repetitive nature can also be called boring in the "not so interesting" sense of the word.
We have a dilemma, we do indeed need lots and lots and lots of repetition to seat skills but passive, or disinterested repetition may not necessarily be the best or even the quickest way to contribute to our progress. It is because of this potentially mind-numbing aspect of the repetitive aspect of drilling that I think we do our selves better service if we embrace every letter of the opening quote.
Every individual technique, every isolated tactic or strategy is an experiment. Not an experiment by analogy but an actual experiment. Will this particular combination work in this situation? Will this particular submission work on an opponent this size? Does this gun disarm advocated by such-and-such renowned instructor actually work? All are experiments. By looking at each and every aspect of drilling and competition as an experiment, an experiment that needs to be monitored at every step we re-awaken our interest, re-engage our intellect.
We begin to see throwing 1000 leg kicks on the banana bag not as a chore to get through (well, some of that will remain) but as something to pay attention to; we must monitor every kick of the way. Was the hip turned over on that one? What if I shifted my striking surface an inch up? An inch down? Is my pivot heel too high? Too low?
Is my rear naked choke tighter with my hand on the lowest portion of my biceps? The mid-portion? Or, up near my delt? Is my lead hook best served by advancing my shoulder or allowing it to drag slightly behind the punch? Is a sharp flexion of the wrist upon impact of any benefit to my punch? And on, and on, and on.
If we approach each and every training task, each and every drill as an experiment to be monitored, a task to be calibrated, quantified, and qualified we move closer to full engagement with what it is exactly that we're trying to educate. We also gain experimental feedback regarding faulty hypotheses. We won't force the drill where the work is futile. This isn't to say we shirk hard work and invent creative excuses to avoid certain "experiments" but, we should always be open to an honest assessment of the material we are working on. We must determine whether any difficulties encountered are ones that can be tweaked via the experimental method or, are we actually wasting time on a hypothesis that needs to be scrapped? I have an experiment for you. Before your next training session, read the opening quote and strive to bring that inquiring mind-set to the gym and determine for yourself which is superior: Drilling or Experimenting. | 
