Interesting read regarding training with timers.

[JAD]

http://pistol-training.com/archives/9715

I loved that post a lot. I think drilling reloads is irrelevant for defensive applications, and a huge time suck. What I took from Todd was that it's important to make the reloads that I have to do anyway as intentional and valuable as I can. That was enlightening.

[BehindBlueI's]

Shit, I thought I'd heard good things about Mr. Cunningham from some in-the-know folks. I guess he's a stupid piece of fuck because he thinks a tenth of a second difference or whatever in reload speed won't get you killed in the streets. The idea that there might be more important things to consider in a deadly force type situation than blazing fast splits? Absolutely ludicrous.

I don't know that that's an argument anyone here is making. I've said myself that the shooting is the easy part in most defensive shootings, that fast reloads is a low reward skill, etc. That doesn't diminish the value of a timer. The ability to see performance under time pressure on yourself, to improve recoil control, to track progress, to have measurable goals to work towards to keep yourself interested in a practice regime, etc. are in no way diminished because there's no real difference in a 1.6s reload and a 1.5s reload in da streetz.

[BN]

There's often a par time, though. Not making it gets you or someone else shot.

I regret that I can only like this once. So here it is again.

[Paul Sharp]

...The ability to see performance under time pressure on yourself, to improve recoil control, to track progress, to have measurable goals to work towards to keep yourself interested in a practice regime, etc. are in no way diminished because there's no real difference in a 1.6s reload and a 1.5s reload in da streetz.

This gets to the core of the issue. It's about pursuing excellence in everything we do. Why would any of us want to do SOME things well when with a little more effort we can do ALL things well? Most, if not all on this board are motivated shooters. Pursuing excellence in performance is the juice that makes all the squeezing worth it. Folks enjoy the process otherwise who in their right mind would spend all this time in seemingly mindless tasks? Dry firing? Movement drills? Hell, what's more mind numbing than a reload press?? Yet it's all part of the process involved in pursuing this internal standard we all hold ourselves to and hope to achieve.

Much of what we do was codified in non-Buddhist terms by https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mihaly_Csikszentmihalyi a long time ago. We do this stuff because we enjoy the process. We enjoy the pursuit. Excellence is an internal, unwavering standard we hunt so when we read or hear anything that essentially carries the torch for something that resembles mediocrity? We lose our shit. To put it plainly.

I had this conversation with a trainer that, in my opinion, espouses the good enough approach. He said, "we're speaking past each other. Like we're speaking different languages..." Because we are. I want to be great at everything I do, not good enough. As BBI mentioned, taking my reload from 1.6 to 1.5 won't really matter in da streetz or even in the food court but for folks like us? Making that improvement is what ALL of this stuff is really about.

To quote myself talking to the good enough trainer, if all I cared about is what works in the street I'd buy carry a clip-it knife and a Raven .22.


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[BigT]

I think it was Hilton Yam who said "training for speed without a timer is like training for accuracy without a target. " Though I may have the source of the quote way off.

Pretending its about being a tenth on a reload becomes a convenient red herring to enable one to best make fun of us silly gaymer fags. What it misses is that without a timer you don't have any means of knowing if your first shot times are 1.5seconds or 3.5 seconds. And seeing as most civilian shootings are of an "counter ambush" flavour ,to use that schools terminology ,that difference is massive.

[Totem Polar]

Weird thing is I'm pretty sure he was a renowned (or at least very well respected) revolver 'smith, but seems to have retired from that and hung his training shingle out on a fairy thin resumé.

That's about how I see it, FWEIW. Every time Grant says something about revolver internals, I feel like I learned something. Half the time he's talking about running them, I feel like packing my ears with white phosphorus. Somewhere, on the wide Internet, is a video of him teaching revolver reloads where he fumbles the reload on film when it's actually time to demo. I dunno. It's not like I'm king wheelie guy myself, but I waited until Saturday morning to open this thread because I figured the discussion would on awesome ways to use a timer, and I wanted to be able to read it deliberately—and give my full attention to the information.

I've been punked.

[John Hearne]

I don't know who said it (Ayoob or Cirillo, maybe? One of the old school guys) but
"A competition isn't a gunfight, but a gunfight is damn sure a competition" seems to sum it up nicely.

Ayoob. I have this on my wall at work: "A shooting match isn't a gunfight but every gunfight is a shooting match."

[Wheeler]

Grant is the one of roughly three gunsmiths in the country that can still properly tune a Colt. Beyond that he's a vocal advocate for PDN and ICE and regurgitates everything Rob says without any question as to the validity. I've talked to him a couple times in regards to revolver and lever action rifle specifics and got the impression that he felt as if my questions were bothersome and a waste of his time.

I found his first book an excellent primer for setting up a revolver for the uninitiated. I found his second book a jumbled mess of ICE rhetoric poorly meshed with his own theories on how to run a revolver.

I recently attempted to get Rob to explain how one can evaluate performance without standards. He proved to be a master of avoidance and deflection and referred me to his site. I'll repeat that Grant is essentially a mouthpiece for ICE and while he isn't as smooth as Rob in deflecting specific questions, he rarely answers them either.

[Totem Polar]

^^^Was. Was once one of the roughly three gunsmiths in the country who could properly tune just about anything. I know, because I was on his list for about 5 years before he changed tack due to health reasons and gave it up completely.

[RJ]

I've heard Tom Givens, Claude Werner, and Dave Harrington say something along the lines of; how much time do you have in a fight? The rest of your life.

I like this.

The other quote that sticks in my mind from Mr. Givens is that "You need your gun out right fucking now."

Disclaimer: I don't own a "real" timer.

But I do a lot of draws from concealment in my Dry Practice using an iPhone timer app. My current par I've set is 2.0s. I hope this won't get me kilt in the streetz.