I'm sure someone will post a much better response, but I'll toss my two yen in anyway
It's kind of simple, really. The three limbs of a wooden dummy represent a person's arms while the leg, is well, a leg. If you know a set of motions that are usually practiced on a wooden dummy (from a book/video/friend/hobo/etc.), then you can simply use a person in lieu of the dummy. Plus, the person can move and shift in ways a dummy can't, providing much more realistic application of the dummy techniques.
However, this is just my observation. Not having the fortune of owning my own dummy, I'll defer to Jaybacca's response on this.
I like dummy drills and prefer the hubid drills with a mix of other goodies in there like chi'sao (sticky hands).
I have written up a few of the basic ones we use on the CKF site as the 'Flow Hitting 101' series of articles. Check them out if you get a chance, they may help you with people dummies vs. wooden dummies.
Search Flow Hitting 101 ... feeling too lazy to post the individual links but this one will pull up the pertinent ones.
I used to keep links to them on the home page but after a while they get stale and the content rolls on. One of these days I'll even get to uploading those clips too
first of all iam answering the call of the wild hearing my name thrown around.as for dummy drills you need to get a dummy like mine(gou iam going to kick his *** if i don't see him soon ) but on that note if you don't have a wooden dummy you have your partner do a universal block we call in kenpo which is a inward block and a downward block put together. then seperate the blocks with about 8-10 inches apart holding the position then from there you have to be creative and play. i use this exercise as a way to teach my jkd students how to hold positions for trapping and entries ie split ,two hands insde, two hands outside etc... hope this helps
later
jay
cry of the wookie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!