"The Modern Technique" and "Competition Driven Shooting"

[YVK]

Even though there are some great and educational posts here, this is getting painful to read. It is rather obvious that each party remains unconvinced about opponent's position. For a neutral reader, the points of view have been made and supporting info presented. Anybody is confused - it ain't that difficult to sort out. Set up drills that resemble "the defensive use" as close as possible, get a timer, run both multiple times and see what happens. Or take classes from people who teach both techniques in "non-competition" sense and see who imposes higher standards of speed and accuracy, call it done.

May I suggest that this thread doesn't live to see page 11?

Typed under 2 minutes.

P.S. Damn, while I was typing, it has already made page 11. I fail....

[GJM]

Nope, Y, can't do that because Marty dropped the "S" word, square range. The implication is, results doing mere square range training and drills can't be compared with real fighting with a gun.

[YVK]

Nope, Y, can't do that because Marty dropped the "S" word, square range. The implication is, results doing mere square range training and drills can't be compared with real fighting with a gun.

G, so what, you don't believe it, I don't believe it, everybody else here doesn't, but Marty does and I am sure he has a number of supporters who do. There are still trainers out there, at least one that I know of, that teach Weaver because "it is a fighting position". Todd, SLG, SeanM have made great arguments here, what else needs to be said? On individual user level, finding the answer is easy enough. I think that, by page 11, not only the horse is dead, horse's offspring is dead too. Perhaps I had a long 30 hours, but further back and forth feels like a waste of time.

[Jay Cunningham]

We all know how this one can go, so proceed with caution here.

Sometimes l like to quote myself.

Everyone did good so far. Give yourselves a golf clap.

[SLG]

YVK,

That would be the smart thing to do, but this is the internet...:-)

Now back to our regular programming.


I have never told a weaver shooter that they need to change to something else...unless they want to be better than they are. Most are happy being pretty good, but not as good as they can be. That's fine. I just get really sick of hearing people tell me that they teach fighting, not shooting.

If it's taught on a live fire range, it's shooting, not fighting. That doesn't mean that some techniques are not better than others for fighting, just that you have to figure out what those are, and then do them as well as you can.

The thing that kills me though, is that Cooper codified the MT on a live fire range, IN COMPETITION. Not in combat, not on the internet, but in competition. At the time, the MT did the best IN COMPETITION. Today, other techniques do better in competition, but to a MT guy, they somehow don't count. Go figure.

As for successful iso shootings? My agency is full of them, as are other agencies I've worked for or with, both in military special operations and in law enforcement. I'm certainly not going to start naming names, since most of those people do not teach, haven't written a book about themselves, and are still operational. As a random example, a guy I worked with overseas was in several pistol engagements, just in the couple of months that I was working with him. He wasn't the best square range shooter out there, but he was perfectly respectable. He's still out there, and I'm sure he's still doing well. With iso.

BTW, that's an anecdote, not proof. Take it as you like.

[agent-smith]

I was (and still am) a HUGE fan of Col. Cooper and literally grew-up reading about the superiority of the famed Weaver stance.

In 1999, I took a class from Steve Moses where they trained iso and I could barely contain myself from telling everyone how idiotic the thought was that someone would teach something other than what Col. Cooper advocated. But, having been extremely impressed with Steve's carbine class (Without a doubt, still the best carbine class I've ever taken), I thought I'd humor him for the class. It took all of about 3 shots for me to become a convert to iso and to stop caring about the Weaver stance.

I don't have any desire to argue; if I ever have the misfortune of being shot-at by a trained pistol shooter, I hope it is by someone that only trains/believes in Weaver.

The funny part is that if you read Kyle Lamb's book, you'll see pictures of OSS shooters shooting with a "modern" iso stance and I'd say those guys have a bit of experience shooting at things outside of a "square range." The Weaver stance was used because it was faster when shooting at BALLOONS. More significantly, if you look at the pictures of Kyle Lamb and Jack Weaver their stances really don't look all that much different - meaning that Weaver's stance very closely resembled a "Modern Isoceles" (wasn't very bladed and didn't have much of a elbow bend).

As others stated, I really think the only reason the Weaver stance was thought-of as being so vastly superior was because they were comparing the results of shooting Weaver and using their sights to shooting one-handed and not really using the sights at all. Meh; I'm just glad I didn't waste as much time shooting Weaver as I wasted shooting that stupid .40 S&W and advocating that the M1A/M-14 was superior to "poodle shooters" (Steve tried his best to educate me at the time but I only listened to him on the Weaver). Man, I was really an idiot so I understand how reluctant people can be to change their opinion regardless of how many facts you present them.

[GJM]

YVK,

That would be the smart thing to do, but this is the internet...:-)

Now back to our regular programming.


I have never told a weaver shooter that they need to change to something else...unless they want to be better than they are. Most are happy being pretty good, but not as good as they can be. That's fine. I just get really sick of hearing people tell me that they teach fighting, not shooting.

If it's taught on a live fire range, it's shooting, not fighting. That doesn't mean that some techniques are not better than others for fighting, just that you have to figure out what those are, and then do them as well as you can.

The thing that kills me though, is that Cooper codified the MT on a live fire range, IN COMPETITION. Not in combat, not on the internet, but in competition. At the time, the MT did the best IN COMPETITION. Today, other techniques do better in competition, but to a MT guy, they somehow don't count. Go figure.

As for successful iso shootings? My agency is full of them, as are other agencies I've worked for or with, both in military special operations and in law enforcement. I'm certainly not going to start naming names, since most of those people do not teach, haven't written a book about themselves, and are still operational. As a random example, a guy I worked with overseas was in several pistol engagements, just in the couple of months that I was working with him. He wasn't the best square range shooter out there, but he was perfectly respectable. He's still out there, and I'm sure he's still doing well. With iso.

BTW, that's an anecdote, not proof. Take it as you like.

1) I respect Col.Cooper for influencing my life and thinking in so many ways beyond just shooting. Taking API 270 from him caused me to think about bolt rifles, African hunting, writing and was one of my training high points. Jeff loved competition -- especially if his techniques were successful. Gunsite was very much tactical IPSC, with courses essentially a series of competitions. Ross S winning the world shoot was the high water mark for the the Weaver and Jeff's love of competition. Jeff was very distressed about the Modern Iso, and when it proved superior to the Weaver in completion, decried competition as irrelevant. Gunsite still teaches the Weaver as the default stance in basic and intermediate classes.

2) By contrast, when you show up at Rogers Shooting School, Bill explains the evolution of stances, and why the Modern Iso has become the most effective stance for achieving the highest score on the school test, with quantitative results going back decades. No pressure to change, unless YOU want to. Of course, getting your score on the test read out loud each day, and the shooting order rearranged daily by cumulative scores, provides a strong incentive to use the techniques conducive to best performance. I believe if someone showed up shooting a whole new method, that Bill could test on his range and verify, RSS would be teaching it as the default within a month. To reinforce that, I ended up disagreeing with RSS doctrine on a reloading technique in the shotgun module, and Bill's reaction was to test against me, man on man. When my method showed some promise, I was amazed when I arrived the next morning for pistol, Bill told me to grab my shotgun and head down to his target area near his workshop, to test it further. This seems the ideal of using data to drive teaching method.

[Packy]

Different applications of the basic but it is still the same fundamentals.
It is just our interpretations and faith on our platform.. Just like Religion.

[Tamara]

I'm just glad I didn't waste as much time shooting Weaver as I wasted shooting that stupid .40 S&W and advocating that the M1A/M-14 was superior to "poodle shooters.". Man, I was really an idiot so I understand how reluctant people can be to change their opinion regardless of how many facts you present them.

It's like you're inside my head.

[cutter]

As far as I know all of the Military SMUs are teaching the isoc as the basic stance. These guys are going on 10+ of regular real-world pistol shooting experience. That they use it seems to me a big endorsement of the isoc. Now the guys that develop the training do go to civilian schools where some may consider they get contaminated by "competition" techniques not suitable for combat. But they have to go back and sell it to their commanders and most importantly, their team mates, who will be the first to throw down the B.S. flag if a technique doesn't work. Most of the guys on a team don't know or care about the history behind the Weaver and Isoc, they just care about what does or doesn't work.