The Annoying Rightness of Bolke and Dobbs

[Mr_White]

All good stuff. One of the things to remember is although we bicker on here, it is more that we are talking to different audiences than either side is wrong. Keep on mind that guys like GJM have practice schedules like pro shooters and are very much capable of very accurate shooting....and can do it fast. They aren't "normal" in this regard and their focus is on maximum performance as anyone would be whether it is skiing, crossfit, cycling, etc. and they are not wrong and there is a ton to learn. Our focus is on use of force where the pistol is a tool in the process. Just a different tweak. This forum has a lot for everyone and you get some culture clashes. I judged my successes in my area of focus on a weird mix of times force was used, tools used, wins versus loses combined with lawsuits and complaints. By this standard, I might have something to add to the conversation on how to not only apply force, but how to train for it. Compare that to the number of folks here who have top ratings at Rogers, and tons of successes at other schools and programs. Top level competitors, and some outright training gurus. They also have a wealth of knowledge. The key is to find what is applicable to your focus from our focus and make it work.

Very much appreciate this balanced statement. Thank you, Darryl.

Regarding the topic at hand, I think that I understand Darryl's point and will take a shot at explaining it. To me, it is all about calibration. Practice is where you calibrate your mind and body to deliver a particular level of speed and accuracy. To me, Darryl's point is that the world is way more complex and a real fight way more chaotic than the flat range. For this reason, you don't want to be running at 100% speed in the real world. 100% does not give you any margin of error. You need to be calibrating yourself to shoot at a speed that has some margin of error to account for the complexities and chaos of a real world event.

John, I don't believe anyone in this thread is advocating going at 100 percent of their ability in a real shooting or a competition. JHC's comments about his recent GSSF experience underscore how the wheels often fall off if you do try to shoot 100 percent speed. Virtually every high level competition shooter (folks like Enos, Stoeger, Bragg and Vogel) who I have personally spoken with, or read their comments on this subject, agrees that you want to be shooting at a speed well below your 100 percent speed.

The only question is what is the best use of your practice time, to borrow your analogy, "over-learn" your technical shooting skills. One school of thought is to to creep along never driving a mile an hour faster than your comfort zone, hoping you eventually get there. The other approach is to mix up your training, sometimes focusing on the most demanding accuracy, other times shooting at your on-demand near 100 percent speed, other times pushing yourself until the wheels come off.

GJM beat me to it.

John, your paragraph is essentially right and could also have just a few words changed to apply to proper match speed. I wouldn’t at all dispute that the dynamics involved in the real world may end up being different from the dynamics represented in a match (either more complex and difficult or much simpler and easier – a point tangentially raised by your last paragraph regarding the typical character of .mil vs. LE vs. private citizen shootings.) But, the overarching manner of successful competitive shooting is not different than what you are describing.

And I would add that one of the most essential mental/mechanical tasks in competitive shooting is to address a variety of difficulties of shooting problem in rapid succession, with correctness (accuracy) and efficiency (speed) appropriate to the problem being dealt with right now, as well as all the on-the-fly adjustment and correction that emerges even in something that may be complicated but static like an action pistol stage. It isn’t about the calibration of one correct speed or accuracy level to shoot at. It is calibration of shooting a correct way – do what’s needed to hit the target – that correct way varying according to the exact problem at hand.

It took me not winning a gun at I think two GSSF matches a few years ago to ‘get it.’ It was a real moment of epiphany in practicing for GSSF after those two matches, when I realized that the only profitable thing to do is shoot the center of every target with every shot. Nothing else is worthwhile. There’s a lot more noise involved in USPSA, but I still think that relationship mostly holds true there as well.

Here are some quotes from Brian Enos that I saved a couple of years ago. I found them very profound at the time, and I think they illustrate how little difference there is between shooting done correctly in one context vs. another:

... but could not get myself to slow down when I was shooting the closer targets, they were just to easy.

--

The "easy target" judgement is the problem. There are no easy targets. Never "blast at brown." For every target, find the middle of the target; shoot the middle of the target.

--

The day (moment) I realized that I could shoot an A, and know I shot it, as fast as I could hit the target, changed my entire perspective.

But until you reach this realization on your own, you will try to slow down, try to go fast, try to call your shots, or try to calculate how fast you should shoot. And all this trying is not bad, because the struggle will eventually lead you to the ultimate realization of what it’s all about.

When you understand, the concept of speed will be one you will have nothing to do with.

--

… trigger freeze is the result of trying to go fast. Just relax, and allow what you see to dictate when you shoot, and concepts of slow or fast will no longer apply.

[Dagga Boy]

We have come full circle. Look at the "newbie" competitors vs. the salty dogs and top of their game guys-newbies shoot too fast and can't control themselves and shoot to their "practice speed". The salty Pro's shoot to their "winning speed" that is like 80% of their capability. Defensive shooting is the same thing. The highly successful experienced folks who have a good deal of crisis management under their belt, especially combined with multiple shootings, can control themselves and run at an appropriate speed and they usually have a very good grasp of the evaluation and assessment stuff that is critical. The "newbie's", uninterested, untested, etc... do not have any of this down, and tend to go cyclic. They not only miss, but also tend to make less than optimal decisions due to task stacking issues. Like the competitive world, there are some fairly well defined "times" for many drills. Most of your top folks are within hundredths, and tenths at most to each other. It is essentially, a fairly defined "pace" for those drills. This is no different than my world. Do you think many of the times and standards we are using for a "pace" are an accident? They have been pretty much defined by those highly experienced folks for what can get done the most efficiently in a field/street shooting with all of the extra evaluation, assessment, decision making, and utter chaos. I am sure there are folks who can look at a top level competitor and go out to the range and "beat" the time on a drill that the Pro did in a match......can't get the accuracy, can't do it under the same match conditions, but can in practice. If that guy was bragging about "being faster" than one of the top guys, we would roll our eyes because he really isn't. Same thing that frustrates me. I "can", and have shot a ton faster (especially in my pre injury and pre arthritis youth days) than I do now. I "learned" through pure "doing it live" what my "real" capabilities are and have tried to optimize my training for that, and how we train. I think many of you here have admitted in the thread that you had to learn how to slow down through experience in a match. I bet you would pass that along as a "nugget" to those who you are coaching. Same type of thing with us. The biggest difference is the "types" of things that can go wrong in the technical shooting world vs. the use of force world are vastly different, which will affect some aspects of how to train.

[BJJ]

I thought of this thread and Nyeti's point of view when I read about this tragedy:

"Frank Mendoza, 54, was shot when a deputy mistook him for an armed suspect who had broken into the Mendoza home late Friday afternoon, authorities said. The gunman, 24-year-old Cedric Ramirez, took Mendoza's wife captive and held her until a tactical team entered the house and fatally shot him eight hours later, authorities said. The wife was unharmed."

http://www.policeone.com/officer-sho...tage-standoff/

[Dagga Boy]

Being "right" gets to be very hard as the problem gets more complex. Street problems can go from painfully easy to trying to figure out which way of being wrong is the least bad. Had a very street smart FTO once tell me that he was actually willing to give the crook a first shot so he would always be justified in a shooting. Not my philosophy, but based on this guys street rep and his abilities in putting animals behind bars, it was worth considering how important being "right" was....that part sunk into my philosophy.

[NH Shooter]

For those like me who as civilians CC for self defense, this thread has been a most excellent read.

I've been in the competitive shooting scene long enough to have a good feel where my speed/accuracy boundaries are. Though not as active as I once was, when I do shoot IDPA nowadays it is always with my EDC piece. I no longer shoot for rank, but to maintain my practical shooting/gun-handling skills. What this thread has reminded me is to never sacrifice accuracy for speed when a miss carries far greater consequences than dropped points.

More importantly, it has also exposed me to the concept that SA does not end when the trigger pullin' commences. It seems to me that ingraining proper mindset and learning the relevant skills to do so is the next step in my learning process. The closet thing I can think of from my competitive shooting experience are bowling pin shoots - just because you hit the pin does not mean it's "going down" (as in off the table). Shooting a pin off the table that is rolling around on its side is much more difficult then when it's standing upright motionless, yet it's not over until they're all "down." Nothing worse than hitting them all fast but ending up with five pins rolling around on top of the table - hitting them right the first time is always preferable. At least for me and my strictly competitive/recreational shooting experiences, the bowling pin analogy is a way for me to begin digesting and placing into the life-or-death context the topics being discussed.

Thanks to all for contributing to this informative thread.

[John Hearne]

I just caught the Civilian Carry Radio interview with Jared Reston. This was a great interview with lots of gold nuggets. He particularly discussed shooting cadence and how he doesn't try to shoot below the speed of assessment which is right around 0.30. This is a standard developed from shooting meat, not cardboard, and it sounds like he's channeling Bolke/Dobbs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyamW_G9Uqw&t=4028s

[okie john]

I just caught the Civilian Carry Radio interview with Jared Reston. This was a great interview with lots of gold nuggets. He particularly discussed shooting cadence and how he doesn't try to shoot below the speed of assessment which is right around 0.30. This is a standard developed from shooting meat, not cardboard, and it sounds like he's channeling Bolke/Dobbs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyamW_G9Uqw&t=4028s

Thanks for bringing this thread back. Not sure how I missed it the first time.


Okie John

[Sherman A. House DDS]

Excellent!

In the spirit of Halloween, my training partner and I both hate clowns, and have been purposefully working on the, “shooting only as fast as you can assess speed.”

https://youtu.be/_EK7ddHM_jo


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[David S.]

John,

Thanks for dragging this back to to the top. I really needed a refresher.

[GuanoLoco]

I’m not buying the direct and indirect references to: If you train to shoot fast then you will only be able to shoot fast, and, by inference, in an uncontrolled or less controlled manner in a stressful situation.

I would argue the people who train to shoot fast and accurately simply have a higher level of technical skill and proficiency. The can ‘see’ and process faster and are better prepared to adapt to changing situations.

For example, they can dynamically adapt their rate of fire and accuracy requirements more easily than a person who only trains to a slower but equivalently standard level of accuracy, or that never trains to maintain speeds at increasing levels of target difficulty (e.g. El Prez vs. Diamond Cutter).



FYI that's a 4.02s run with 6 Alphas and 2 close Charlies - at a match.

And yes, I’ve shot sub 5s El Prez runs with competition gear and pretty good hits, and mid 6s pretty clean runs with concealed carry gear - but does “blazing” like this mean that I can “only” blaze like this when stressed? I think not.