You can do drills all day and never get much better. You'll just do drills really well. If you have never done a particular shot, than yes, it's OK to drill it. But, if you really want to learn how to compete, you have to get into the box and execute shots you won't execute in drills. During execution, all your body parts are working really hard, and against it's natural range of motion. It falls apart with any kind of mental pressure. John smidt mentioned something in his recent post about stroke shots vs actual game strokes. It's a lengthy post that I found very useful because it made a lot of sense. A lot of learning the game is being able to finesse balls, because most other strokes are useless under pressure unless you are extremely solid in your mechanics. If I had to line up a few balls and make them, then set them up over and over for a few hours, I'll end up chewing something un-edible, like a napkin.
