Originally Posted by
Mike Nall
There are people that have great success with mostly live rolling, like Marcelo Garcia. I hate to be a prisoner of the moment and look at the current "hot team" but Atos is leading the way for competition success and all the top guys have insane drilling practices. I think for pure enjoyment, drilling can get old, but every transition or technique that I've really gotten great at has usually been because I was disciplined enough to drill it. I also think that now even winning the Worlds at purple belt is putting you up against people that train like full time athletes, and drilling a huge part of that. If you want to be successful in competitions you pretty much have to drill. You might be a natural or an outlier but I wouldn't bank on that.
I would argue that creativity comes from drilling as well. If you've drilled something into muscle memory, you're just doing it and your mind is more free to spot things in scrambles and transitions. if you're not using as much muscle memory, your mind is having to be engaged more, your mind isn't as clear because you're thinking, so if you can get the active brain out of the process then it will be free to spot new opening and creativity in the middle of grappling.
I think someone that has drilled a passing sequence 10,000 times is more likely to be able to successful improvise something crazy on the fly during a match, over someone that hasn't really drilled.