Drill Sargeants never hit us back in basic... they did however play what they called the sandbag game... a sandbag weighing about 25 pounds that was duck taped tight. They would chest pass it extremely hard to us, if we dropped it, it meant we owed them 25 push ups. If it was caught, we had to walk it back and hand it nicely to them. Then we'd ask for another one etc... this was a favorite game until of of the guys in our unit wound up with a broken rib. The game stopped and no one saw that drill sergeant again.