Most long-term martial artists are familiar with flow drills, in some form or another. Simply put, they are drills comprised of either a handful of techniques repeated over and over, or a sequence of techniques meant to be performed one after the other, either to practice directly applicable combative skills and techniques, or to develop attributes which support your combative skills and techniques. There are a variety of reasons why one might choose to use flow drills instead of simply practicing techniques in isolation, but the biggest benefits tend to be efficiency in practicing a large number of repetitions, and training to transition from one technique to another.
In my opinion, the ideal purpose of properly designed flow drills is to teach the student how transition from on technique to another in response to the first technique failing. The intention is not for a student to do the entire sequence of A-B-C-D, as many people mistakenly believe, but rather it is to be able to go from A to B, or B to C, or C to D. With experience, you don’t really need these drills anymore, as you develop a sense of how to flow from one technique to another without it being pre-arranged, but they are great for getting students started. These can be designed for any context, but a flow drill for self-defense will likely look different than a flow drill for combat sports. A self-defense flow drill is going to be based on realistic, untrained attacks, and the likely reactions and resistance you’ll get from an untrained attacker. A combat sports flow drill is more likely to be based on getting your opponent to move a certain way, or block certain techniques to open them for others, using things like feints and setups. There are also flow drills which are designed to develop attributes more than specific combative techniques, which tend to be much shorter but more repetitive. Kakie/kakidi, for example, is technically a flow drill, but it is focused entirely on developing tactile sensitivity and structure, which can be carried over into combative techniques, and the drill, itself, isn’t directly combative. All of these are valid and beneficial, but there are certainly approaches to the development of flow drills which are less beneficial and, in some cases, actually detrimental. Of course, there are also flow drills which are poor quality because they are based on techniques that simply don’t work, as well, but I’m making the assumption here that we’re talking about drills comprised of techniques that, individually, do actually work.
There are flow drills which are designed to respond to the opponent’s reaction, but their reaction is based on your previous technique being successful, rather than the technique failing, or in some cases their reaction is to simply freeze in place. For example, one might strike the head, which is supposed to make the opponent lean away, exposing the groin, so one strikes the groin, which makes them double over forward, so then one throws an elbow the face, and so on. It assumes that your strikes are all going to land, or at least and make the opponent react as though they have been struck. This isn’t how fighting actually works, and doesn’t teach you to deal with your techniques failing, which is more likely to happen in a real conflict than having your techniques all work. There is something to be said for these flow drills being about aggression and overwhelming the opponent with attacks, but if the techniques you use are ineffective, avoided, or blocked, that aggression and overwhelming tactic is not going to accomplish much. Additionally, you can develop the same sort of aggression and overwhelming tactic through flow drills which are designed to cope with failure.
Some flow drills are just designed to practice a collection of techniques, without any actual consideration for WHY you would do them in that order, and they tend not to provide all that much value. This is very common in standing joint lock flow drills, from various arts, in my experience. Because there isn’t actually any reason for you to be switching from one lock to the next, there is little difference between memorizing a flow drill like this and simply memorizing the individual techniques. It is possible that learning them in a sequence does help some students remember the techniques, but the same can be said of more practical flow drills where the transitions between techniques are intended to handle reactions and resistance from the opponent. Essentially, there is nothing that these memorization flow drills provide which cannot be provided by more practical flow drills.
Even among flow drills which are practical and effective, it is still possible for them to be problematic if they are excessively long. Now, what constitutes “excessively long” is, admittedly, going to be pretty subjective, but if you have to worry more about remembering the whole drill than actually learning what it has to teach, the drill has lost the plot. Long strings of a wide variety of techniques can easily confuse students, causing them to make more mistakes in the drills and lose the ability to focus on the transitions from one technique to another in response to the opponent’s reaction and resistance. Sometimes, these drills are also simply designed to help memorize a collection of techniques, without regard to the transitions, making them even more problematic. If you find yourself struggling to remember the next move in a drill after a few hours of training it, more than actually getting a feel for when and how to switch to the next technique, then it is likely too long.
The takeaway is that flow drills are not all the same, and they are not universally good or bad–that is entirely dependent on the context, approach, and goal of the training. It is important to be critical of everything you learn, no matter how “traditional” it might be, and be open to accepting that some practices may actually be a waste of time, without the knee-jerk reaction of removing something from your practice that you don’t understand. Analyze the drill, determine what it is intended to teach, determine whether it is successfully teaching that, determine whether what it is teaching is actually an ideal method of teaching that material, and, of course, determine whether the drill will help you achieve your martial arts goals. Despite the traditionalist mentality that is popular in karate, we must remember that martial arts masters from Motobu Choki to Bruce Lee have warned against the trap of continuing martial arts practices JUST because they are traditional. Tradition, alone, is not a valid reason to do something–it MUST add value to your training beyond simply having been passed down from someone important.
