Zombie Drilling….It’s a disease that is infecting jiu jitsu classes around the world. Before we look at some ways to avoid Zombie Drilling I wanted to talk about what Zombie Drilling is. Zombie Drilling is simply just going through the steps. Your brain goes on auto pilot and you really don’t think about what you’re doing. In essence you become lazy with your drilling.

So why is Zombie Drilling bad? Well one of my main grips with it is that it’s not realistic. For arguments sake let’s talk about the double leg takedown. If you have ever watched a high level wrestler hit a double leg live you know that they are quick. Once they commit to their level change and shot, they move as fast as they can. For many of us non wrestlers when we go through a double leg we take a long time to set it up. We level change….and then pause…We then take the shot….and pause…We then grab the legs…and pause….Then we finish it. If I were to try that in a real life setting we would get destroyed. The instant that we paused our opponent would sprawl, grab a guillotine, or just simply back up….No more double leg.

Now that we know what Zombie Drilling is and why its bad we can focus on some ways to avoid it. Tomorrow I’m going to break down one of the ways I overcame Zombie Drilling and how having good training partners made me a better Jiu Jitsu player.