Abstract: The “101 Plan” is a foundational engineering for cultivating top-notch innovative talents. Experimental mechanics is one of the key core courses in the Mechanics “101 Plan”. Aiming to construct an advanced, innovative, and challenging course of experimental mechanics, the paper, based on systematic surveys, elaborated on the kernel difficulties in the aspects of course, experiment, and practice, as well as the main contradictions at the levels of scale, content, and paradigm. Furthermore, from the perspectives of bottom-line thinking, goal orientation, implementation path, and collaborative tackling, the reform ideas and working strategies for this course were proposed, in the aspiration of recognizing the shackles of confinement and then finding the key to reprieve the predicaments.