This has been a great conversation, BTW. Usually difficult to get a conversation on something so fundamental where everyone sheds more light than heat. There's a system locally I haven't trained in that I've been wanting to, that does flow drills, so I'll be getting to re-evaluate all this with all of your comments in mind.
Here's my take on flow drills, for what its worth. Flow drills are very valuable. They teach rhthym, reaction, timing, and technique.
Well, as you know by now, I would say it teaches a rhythm, timing, and type of reaction that is not applicable to sparring and self defense. And that therefore, whatever it does teach, would be learned in a more applicable way in an alive drill designed to teach those things.
But the drills instill given responses to angles of attack with follow up counters. You can't develop some of this in sparring alone, because when sparring your partner isn't going to let you work on a specific response over and over until it becomes automatic
I think this is the crux of my disagreement. First, the flow drill may instill a given response to an angle of attack, but it does so impossibly inefficiently compared to a combative-style drill whose rules are set up to do the same, which you would expect due to the non-alive timing and distancing in a flow drill. Which leads me to the next sentence, "You can't develop some of this in sparring alone" -- you are absolutely correct, that's a given. I am not speaking out against drilling in general, I am speaking out against flow drilling. What I'm claiming is, given any technique or concept you want to teach, you can teach it better designing an
alive drill whose rules are set up to emphasize the technique or concept, than with a flow drill. The biggest problem I see is that many FMAers seem to be unaware that such drills can be created!
. In fact, you may discover a problem you have in sparring getting in at a certain point or defending a certain area. You know what the response should be, but can't seem to pull it off. So develop your own flow drill that works on it. This gives you multiple repetitions in a responsive manner that you can later take back to your sparring.
Or, you could have designed an alive drill where the rules were particularly conducive to addressing that particular problem area. Then, in the drill, you're facing an opponent who is actually trying to outsmart, outmaneuver, and "kill" you, you are applying and learning you technique under stress, having to truly react to alive-style timing and initiative. If your partner is still too much better than you, you change the rules until you get what you want. In this way, you will learn your technique
and actually be able to apply it under the stress of sparring or worse much much quicker than if you'd trained it under the non-alive artificial conditions of a flow drill. I realize that in print this all might make little sense, but shown live you'd see what I mean. In fact, if any of you are in the bay area, I'll show you and you can decide for yourself.
As far as whether boxing has flow drills...of course it does! Have you ever watched a boxer work the speed bag? He is developing timing and rhythm and "flowing" movement. How about working the focus pads with a trainer? The trainer gives him the targets in a specific way that tells him to throw a given combination. He must react to the trainer and flow through his combination. How about working combinations on the heavy bag?
See, having done both, I see almost no resemblence between these training techniques and flow drills. Perhaps the biggest difference is the status of the drills within the training. In a boxing gym, you'll typically do your technique and sparring work before hitting the heavy bag, the heavy bag is an adjunct to skill training. And the point of the heavy bag is not to "flow". Yes, it is to some extent about throwing combinations fast and smoothly, but the combos are thrown with real power and that's a big difference, in addition the big goals for the heavybag is cardio, conditioning the muscles and CNS to develop explosive power, muscular endurance, etc. No one in boxing is going to pretend that you learn timing, reaction, distancing with a heavy bag! That's not what it's for. But that is what you're claiming for flow drills. Speed bag is a relatively minor training tool, and as much for further muscular endurance (seeing how it's usually done after ringwork, technique work, and conditioning). And yes, some minor timing work. But again, a low-priority training technique versus flow drills which often seem to take up 50% or more of a typical FMA class! Focus mitts are in another league entirely from flow drills, IMO. It does teach smooth combinations, but under your own rhythm (not one by consensus with a partner), has the cardio/endurance/power implications, and generally works on more alive-style timing. Yes, there are patterns, but this loose resemblance does make the training techniques exactly alike. There is absolutely nothing in boxing where two people stand in front of each other and do something like a flow drill.
In short, flow drills are not alive, and even if they have some superficial resemblance to some boxing drills, you quickly find that the boxing drills have fundamental differences and are often targeted at developing different attributes than flow drills.