Drills or Sparring?

When learning to fight, what is the best method? Sparring of course. Now when you are just learning, you will want to do repetitive drills to get a basic understanding. Once you got an understanding, you have to go through the learning curve of doing against a non-compliant partner. Let's say you want to perfect a technique. Your sparring partners know what you are doing, so, how do you do it? You have to find ways to set it up and trick them. The best way to do this is to understand movement. You have to know how the body responds to certain movements. If you throw a hard hook at someone, you will see how the body prepares to absorb the blow. You learn to read his body language, so you can follow up with another technique. When fighters get together and drill set combinations they have to realize that in a fight patterns reoccur. I look for reoccuring patterns. If you fight in set patterns, I will figure you out. I always try to do something different. I never do the same thing over and over. I always try to change, to adapt. So, be creative and do something different. Never focus on set anything.