Ran a timed reload drill until my hands hurt

I started the drill thinking I'd knock out a few clean reps, get some good practice in and call it a day. A couple hundred reloads later, that plan was looking pretty optimistic.

When you're fresh, reloads are easy, everything lands where it's supposed to, your hands cooperate and you start thinking you've got the whole thing figured out. Then fatigue shows up and you're fumbling magazines, missing grabs and wondering why your fingers have apparently quit the team, that's the part I think a lot of people miss.

The reload you can do when you're rested isn't the one that matters most. The interesting stuff starts happening when your hands are tired and your technique begins to break down, that's when you find out which parts of your process are actually good and which parts were being held together by fresh muscles and good intentions.

I probably looked a little ridiculous by the end of the session. The reloads weren't as clean, the speed wasn't there and my hands were letting me know they'd had enough about fifty reps earlier but I learned more from those ugly reps than the perfect ones.

What you can do fresh is your ceiling and what you can do tired is your floor. If you want to know how reliable a skill really is, keep practicing after the easy reps are over.

That’s a good way to put it, fatigue exposes the real weak points in technique. And Clean reps build confidence but the sloppy reps are where you actually find what needs fixing. The floor matters more than people think.

Those tired reps are where your real baseline shows up. Fresh hands will trick you into thinking you’re better than you really are.