As anyone who attends my classes at Raptor knows, I am all about the drills! If you have any understanding of the human brain and how patterns are formed therein, you must recognize the benefit of repetition. Neuroplasticity refers to the brain’s ability to restructure itself after training or practice. In many ways, neuroplasticity is what makes personal growth and development possible at its most basic level. One of the fun sayings around neuroplasticity: “neurons that fire together wire together… and neurons that fire apart wire apart.”. Effectively this means that when neurons activate at the same time as a response to an event, the neurons become associated with one another and the connections become stronger. This is why people talk about “neural pathways being set” with respect to increased practice – the more practice you accumulate, the more ingrained or grooved the pathways become. Of course the inverse happens as well: if those pathways aren’t utilized, the space will be used by other pathways needing room to grow. Use it or lose it! Many martial arts teachers will give you some sort of formula; "Ten times and you know it well enough to do the technique in class, one hundred times and you know it well enough to use it in a tournament, and ten thousand times and you can defend yourself with it in a street fight".
When we use our 'circular drills' ie. 5,4,bob,6,3, etc. we get the benefits of repetitions that reinforce our neural pathways and the additional benefit of flowing from one move to another which sets up the next logical defense or counter. The result being, for example, that the fighter looks like they are phycic when they seem to know what punch is coming next when in reality they simply drilled that sequence enough to react instinctivly.
In the near future, I will be adding video of these teachniques and drill to the blog, so stay posted!
Remember, practice makes perfect!
Coach Toby
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