Press-Out: Good or Bad?

[ToddG]

In the shower!

I'm just trying to figure out which one of you is Archer...

I'd beg to differ.

OK.

This is interesting coming from you.

AFHF definitely isn't a "close quarter combat" class. That doesn't mean I ignore such stuff when deciding what I do (or why I teach it). Since AFHF is about the technical aspect of shooting, I talk about why the press-out has advantages from a technical shooting standpoint... specifically in contrast to the index. The distinction that Donovan wants to make between his "J" and my "L" isn't even a drop in the bucket in comparison.

[TCinVA]

Hobbyist is a tough word.

People come at this shooting thing from very different places. There's a lot of overlap between the combat and competition sides of the house because a lot of it is focused on the same thing: Intelligently directing bullets into a selected target as quickly as possible. That tends to win trophies and gunfights.

That being said, there are places where a particular technique that works great in one arena might not be so good in the other one. That's just the reality of two very different endeavors.

To add to what TGS says...

While we are currently equating competition shooting as only being "Gun games", often times I find many of us here saying that competition is one of the very best ways to test yourself and techniques. I also find it funny that some of the very best military shooters in the world compete often in "Gun games" and often steal the latest techniques from the best competitors. This hypocrisy is very common when someone is holding on to a technique or idea that is quickly being proven as less than optimal compared to something else. I don't want the press out to go the way of TMA guys who say things like "we don't spar hard because our techniques will kill you" or "our style doesn't work in MMA because our techniques are meant for the street." No, my 3.58 second FAST may not make me a deadly shooter on the street, but if that is the case, than what does your 5.0 or 5.5 second FAST make you?

I didn't want to speak for SN, but as TGS pointed out, he isn't teaching the press out the same way Todd is.

I know what I said above made lead to an emotional response, but I'm trying to remove that and look at this logically. I feel saying this is necessary to avoid any arguments on the forum. I'd also like to add that a lot of much better shooters than me are arguing that the press out is excellent, so I could certainly be wrong.

Maybe I'm missing a post, but in looking back I don't recall anyone arguing that the pressout is more "tactical" and thus more awesomer on that basis. All I ever said was that those who are at the very elite level may be able to do things that we who aren't batting in their league cannot. If they take an aimed shot, they have to aim. Because of talent, superior ability to process relevant visual input at speed, and unbelievable amounts of practice someone like Rob Leatham may be able to present/pause/press on an aimed shot far faster than I can do a press out. This is not surprising because he's Rob bloody Leatham.

I, on the other hand, cannot go from gun in the holster to hit on the target faster by using that method. I know because I've tried. The fastest path from gun in the holster to bullet hole where I want one involves some form of press-out. On a 1" square it might be a textbook perfect pressout with a time from buzzer to fired shot of 1.8 seconds. On an 8" IDPA A zone it may be a much less careful/precise one with a time under 1.5. Not barn burning speed, but faster than I can manage when I try to whip the gun out to an index. If I could reliably put a bullet on target faster with an index type draw I'd use that...but I can't. I'm not alone in that. Since the technique gets me better results than other techniques and since I've seen it produce results in lots of shooters who try it ranging from Todd's students to people I've coached, it seems to have some merit.

[GOP]

I'm not the least bit opposed to competition. Plenty of what I teach -- hell, what everyone who knows what they're doing teaches -- comes from the competition world. But there's a very dangerous line between "it works best in competition" and "it works best." And this is a great example. The drawstroke that might work best under ideal circumstance isn't necessarily the one that will work best in less than ideal circumstances. When a competitive shooter needs to shoot from a seated position with a table or steering wheel in front of him, he gets to sit there and think about it first... sometimes for many minutes. If I have to shoot from the front seat of my car, I'm not going to have a warning and a chance to think about which of my draw techniques I want to use, or how I need to make little adjustments, etc.

Another great example is transitions. To be a good gamer you need to have excellent transitions... it's a huge part of what separates the top guys from the also-rans. One aspect of having good transitions is the whole "move your eyes then gun" thing. You need to practice that if you're going to be great at it in a game. But outside of the game arena, it becomes a completely wasted skill because "eyes move before the gun" is something everyone does automatically anyway. When you've shot the first BG you are necessarily going to have to find and assess the second one, even if it takes just a fraction of a second. And because your eyes move substantially faster than your gun can, "eyes then gun" happens all by itself.

I think you make some excellent points here as well, especially on transitions.

Really, I think competition of all types shines because it encouragers practitioners to train more, plain and simple. I'm a huge fan of competing. It enables you to put your skills to the test under more realistic amounts of stress, and you get to see where you stack up versus the other competitors. I've competed in everything from basketball, to shooting, to BJJ, and I have found that the individuals who compete are almost always better than those that don't because they continue training hard for the next competition. Nothing is a better motivator than putting it on the line in front of your peers. I have a 5k race coming up in the next few months, and I know that it is motivating me to push my runs even harder so that I can do well. I'm about to start Kali, and I plan to eventually make it to a Dog Brothers Gathering, which will be even more motivation for me to train hard. Do any of these competitions mimic exactly what would happen in a life or death struggle? Probably not, no. Do they make you extremely prepared for that while enabling you to have some fun in the process? Yes.

So whether or not Bob Vogel uses a legit press out or not, I don't want to find myself in a gun fight with him, because he would most likely burn me to the ground in the process. Press out or not. .6 seconds to a bad guy gives that person a lot of time to "adjust the sights and squeeze the trigger" if the bad guy's draw is 1.5 seconds.

[BaiHu]

1. Great thread that has this noob thinking more about his practice.

2. FWIW, the press-out is best for me, b/c a) I like having a holistic method to draw a gun effectively in the 3D world for all the reasons SN and Todd have mentioned, it is my preferred method of practice and b) I'm not into the gaming side of pistolcraft where I can get away with a straight line. Will I eventually get into the gaming, maybe.

3. I do recognize that the gamer camp, S/D camp, 'J'/'L'/The-Artist-formerly-known-as-Prince camp will 'cross swords' over this. However, this is a good thing-without a hammer and anvil, the sword never gets formed.

4. At some point, I would imagine the press out becomes your index, no? Meaning, once your body knows how to get to where the eye is pointing at, I would imagine it becomes less tasking and more efficient/automatic. As Todd said, any 'cleaning up of the sights' will happen along the horizontal if you are hitting a more difficult shot.

5. Regarding the Bruce Lee quote, I believe this is a valid point to make in this discussion, but I believe Bruce Lee could have been clearer in his statement. Specifically looking at the last sentence, "Before I studied the art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick." The understood the art part is ENORMOUS and yet the sentence doesn't do it justice. The weight of the knowledge behind the intracacies of a punch/kick is so unlike the first part of this quote. You literally can't encapsulate the knowledge gained in that sentence unless you wrote it like this:

"...Before I studied the art, a punch to me was just like a punch, a kick just like a kick. After I learned the art, a punch was no longer a punch, a kick no longer a kick. Now that I've understood the art, a punch is just like a punch, a kick just like a kick."

The teacher takes you out of your comfort zone in order for you to learn something new. The student must make the information comfortable through massive numbers of repetition, only then does it become 'natural' and part of the student's movement lexicon so they consistently perform a technique correctly and unconsciously.

Disclaimer: I'm just a noob in the gun world, but I think I understand methods of teaching body mechanics well. That being said, feel free to ignore me or engage me. Either way:

[JHC]

Again I will stress that I am not a competition shooter and there are many great pistol guys here that would smoke me. Having said that, I may be a bit different in that I train and perform a variety of methods for many functions including the draw / presentation, while many might keep things narrowed down a bit more so they can focus more on less. For myself I use more than one draw and presentation which is dictated by the situation that I am facing. Factors may include but not be limited to time, distance, cover, static, moving, in coming fire, etc... In my shooting and video's I can clearly be seen using a press out as usually described on this forum or I can be seen using more of a 45* style as described by the competition comments. In all honesty I really don't think about it, it just happens. I will add that due to my body structure and having 3 shoulder surgeries, a high press out starting close to my head and eyes is a bit difficult.

Surf,
Some of the discussion contrasts the two basic methods as one way or the other. You however indicate you may apply one or the other situationally.
My sense is that some portion of conventional wisdom assumes you WILL do it one way - the way you've been habituated to do it.

When I'm going flat out for speed on the timer I end up index-ish like the 45 degree you describe . . . I think: http://www.flickr.com/photos/78036189@N07/7301475234/
This is a habit born of starting on the draw all the way back around 1970 as a kid reading No Second Place Winner. But in matches all amped up I've had to draw in tight quarters and I didn't ram my front sight into a barrier, I pulled up higher (nose picking style) to clear the cover.

Am I reading you correctly that you've concluded you can make these adjustments situationally in a critical incident?

[fuse]

But being able to do it sometimes on the range isn't the same as being able to do it consistently on demand.

I wish folks could get this. I mean really, really, understand it. its so simple. It would make the world such a nicer place.

[GJM]

Oh, so you mean there is a distinction between I have done it at least once, and I can do it most every time?

[EmanP]

So forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just the old 'my kung-fu is better than yours' argument? Same as the 45acp is better than 9mm and all the others? Ultimately, it's not the technique that matters, but the practitioner. To say that one technique is better than another without any true way of measuring it is fruitless and mearly a measure of pride in a given technique. We may as well be talking about reloading in front of your face or lower around your body. It'll result in the exact same discussion with several examples of people doing it super fast both ways with a pro and con list of why you should or shouldn't do it that way. If we just want the list, that's one thing, but can one definitely say that one is better than another? To be able to do something 100% 100% of the time is always going to be slower than being able to do it.

[Patrick Scott]

So forgive me if I'm wrong, but isn't this just the old 'my kung-fu is better than yours' argument? Same as the 45acp is better than 9mm and all the others? Ultimately, it's not the technique that matters, but the practitioner. To say that one technique is better than another without any true way of measuring it is fruitless and mearly a measure of pride in a given technique. We may as well be talking about reloading in front of your face or lower around your body. It'll result in the exact same discussion with several examples of people doing it super fast both ways with a pro and con list of why you should or shouldn't do it that way. If we just want the list, that's one thing, but can one definitely say that one is better than another? To be able to do something 100% 100% of the time is always going to be slower than being able to do it.

+1, How can we measure any of this stuff we do?

My take on all of this is that all of these techniques are constantly evolving, we should never stick with anything. What happens when something stops evolving??? It dies, plain and simple.

[Patrick Scott]

"You're trying to measure from point A (holster) to point B (extension). But what really matters is getting from point A to point C (the gun going off and scoring an accurate hit). You may get to "B" faster but if you're not breaking an accurate hit then it's meaningless. And as I said, that's what I see from people all the time who spend the majority of their time working it from index to tough targets: either they break the shot at extension and have a lower percentage of hits, or they stop, aim, and press which takes a lot more time"

Help me out with something here.. I have talked to and been schooled(in person and phone and net) by USPSA GM's and M's using irons and optics and when talking about the draw to first shot. The consensus is always stop-aim-press. What gives? Now when I hear that from an Open shooter is carries a lot of weight. There is no reason he/she couldnt pull the trigger any where in the draw once the dot is on target, but he/she still stop-aim-press.