Overview
It’s the eternal struggle of all drill teams. It’s the major differentiator in most competitions. It’s the one thing many groups will compromise the standards outlined in their service manual to obtain. And it’s the one thing that can be the bane of any drill team if they don’t properly understand it.
Sharpness.
The quality of moving in a precise manner. Sudden. Abrupt.
Sharpness is the goal of every drill team but how to obtain this ethereal quality is not quite as straightforward as you might think.
What Is “Sharpness?”
First, let’s start by defining what specific qualities cause someone to quantity a drill movement (or team) as being “sharp.” The real challenge here is that defining a team (or a motion) as “sharp” is really far too broad a term.
Think about it this way…
In drill, we use “sharp” to define any number of positive traits relating to the conduct of drill. For example:
- Those uniforms look sharp!
- Wow! That rifle manual was sharp!
- The way they marched in unison together was sharp!
- How they sounded off was sharp!
The list goes on and on and “sharp” is starting to do that thing where if you repeat a word too many times, it becomes a meaningless collection of letters and sounds!
So what, then, is sharpness in more specific terms?
When it comes to the execution of drill, sharpness involves two core components:
- Technique & Approach
- Timing & Approach
BOTH of these components must be practiced and understood individually for a movement to be performed with sharpness.
However, when it comes to traditional modes of teaching military drill (i.e. talk-through, walk-through, by-the-numbers, etc.), we don’t often get a chance to really take a deep-dive into how these components interact. After all, the primary goal of conducting military drill and ceremonies in a basic training environment looks nothing like the goal of competitive drill team as we know it today. Technique and approach are taught to all and timing is honed through endless repetition of movements. However, when dealing with an extracurricular activity at the high school or middle school level, these techniques often fail to produce adequate “sharpness” in cadets and everyone leaves frustrated.
So let’s break it down further…
Technique & Approach
Technique refers to the mechanics by which a movement is conducted. Which specific muscle groups engage, while parts of the body perform which actions, and how those parts are related are all items that technique is concerned with.
Approach refers to how each individual performer is conceptualizing (thinking about) those movements and how they are applying those thoughts to the action of performing the movements.
In order to obtain sharpness, both of these items must be uniform from performer to performer.
Because military drill is ultimately about efficiency (i.e. can the driller reach the desired end state) first and proficiency (i.e. can the drill reach the desired end state in a manner that qualifies as “sharp”) second, technique is often not broken down thoroughly enough for maximum sharpness to be obtained.
Drillpedia is loaded with videos and breakdowns emphasizing how to obtain proper technique for a wide variety of movements so when you watch a video here taking a big-picture concept like pivoting and breaking it down to its most fine components, you’re experiencing what it means to do a deep-dive on technique.
Approach is too-often boiled down to something like “think sharp, be sharp” or neglected all together. To obtain sharpness, each individual perform must be thinking about each individual count of each individual movement with the same level of scrutiny. When each performer is thinking about the same items as they perform the same movements with the same technique, the ultimate outcome is one in which the entire team will be more unified in their execution.
To obtain outstanding technique and approach from your drill team, more emphasis must be placed on the INDIVIDUAL driller rather than on the team. We like to say that drill is a TEAMWORK activity, not a TEAM activity. This is because ultimately, it is the responsibility of each individual to understand, apply, and perform each movement to the best of their ability. Then, the next piece comes into play…
Timing & Approach
Timing refers to motion through space over time. You can have any number of cadets executing individually with the same approach and technique but without a firm understanding of when those motions occur, you may still not see the “sharpness” you desire from your team.
Mastering timing starts with an understanding of the desired timing for a given movement. In military drill, counting cadence is the most basic way of understanding time but simply counting the numbers themselves will not yield the “sharpness” you’re probably looking for.
How you approach timing will vary by the skill you’re working on but there are two general categories:
- Smooth & Connected Timing (i.e. March Step, Arm Swing, etc.)
- Separated Timing (i.e. Facing Movements, Rifle Manual, etc.)
Once again, Drillpedia is loaded with examples of how to approach timing such as this one about rifle manual. That same “1-2-3, 1” timing approach applies to all types of separated timing.
Spending a great deal of time (no pun intended) vocalizing timing specifically will help your team obtain a uniform approach to WHEN the movements you’re performing should be executed.
Conclusion
While “sharpness” can be obtained through ceaseless repetition, that repetition is effectively a tool for cadets to experience in isolation with how to reach the desired goal. With practice time limited by school hours, work schedules, and other obligations, repetition is the least effective way to obtain “sharpness.”
By spending time in isolation on each of the factors that contribute to “sharpness” at an individual level, you set your team up for a more successful “first rep” as a group!