What do you think? One ultimate aim of drills is to be able to respond by (conditioned) reflex, rtaher than thought first. And yet, is that the only way to that? Nail biting, for example, just happens - no one drills nail biting, it just naturally forms. Could there be another way to tapping reflex we have not considered? One which does not sacrifice work ethic, in fact, still relies on it?
No I'm not really seeing it. You get better at things by practicing. One is generally not just good at things naturally.
Hmmm.... maybe this is one of those cases of the right thing being asked in the wrong way. Or, the right idea, looking for the right way of doing it. One of the things that I have found disgraceful and sad in martial arts over the years are those students who train like Trojans - but in poor methods. You need a combination of work ethic and good coaching to get really good benefits. In fact, the guy with the 'Trojan ethic' is also, unfortunately, often the guy who is most loyal to the style and teacher - so he trains monstrously hard in methods that actually ingrain bad habits and poor technique more and more. The worst example of that is schools where people are martial arts experts in theory but sparring is their worst, most fearful to face aspect of training. So, the answer to the OP is yes - there are, of course, ways of approaching training that in one sense circumvent if not hard training at least the 'cult' of extreme training in wrong method. Chinese martial arts are one of the worst, because high work ethic is one of the primary aspects of wu de - so it's easy to convince people that they should do an hour a day horse stance. They then think that will make them great - but after twenty years of that, they would have been much better off doing an hour of sparring a day. So the answer is yes and no - yes, engage intuitive exploration of your training; yes explore better methods; yes use thought - think about it, engage your mind, explore what you do and why, make each training method and minute of training justify itself. But, as someone who lives by that method, I can tell you, although thinking and considering training helped improve me enormously, it still always needs tons of training to make my body be able to do what my mind comes up with or learns from others.
I would say there is no substitute for hands on experience, testing and hard work. But in regards to drills or any sort of training, I think awareness is key. In other words if any exercise/drill/etc that you practice is done with awareness and not just mindless repetition, then the exercise gains more depth and there is greater scope for recognising problems and correcting them. Whereas mindless repetition will mostly remain mindless repetition. Of course there is some degree of awareness involved in everything we do, but if we have greater awareness, we reap greater rewards... or so I think..
