drilling

Drilling is repeated practice of a movement until it becomes automatic. The same thing, over and over, until you stop having to think.

Armies, orchestras and language classes all use it, and drilling vocabulary means running through it until recall is instant. It has a poor reputation in education, since drilling without understanding produces people who can recite and not apply, but for anything that must be fast under pressure it remains unbeatable. There is a completely separate sense from boring holes, so oil drilling and drilling into a wall are the same word doing a different job.