Appropriate programming

[Mr_White]

Not a fan of telling people they're gonna' fall apart.

Me too, big time. I really hate that. There can be a fine line between being honest about how difficult a problem may factually be, and telling a person they should expect to be unable to contend with that difficult problem. The first is being honest and responsible to your students, the second is just setting them up to fail.

I generally agree with Tom and nyeti on this subject. I've not been terribly vocal about it because I don't have experience teaching a truncated set of skills nor have I seen firsthand the results of that kind of training. My gut feeling is that there are a lot of things in life that you can do well or do poorly. It doesn't necessarily have to take longer to do something well instead of badly. It often just needs to be done better. I see sighted fire as the better way, and truncated marksmanship methods simply as less good. It doesn't have to take a long time to get someone some basic instruction and practice in using the sights to aim and trying to press the trigger pretty much straight back. I don't think it's unreasonable in the context of a low-motivation student to characterize it as 'get the gun to eye level and pay attention to the sights' and allow target focused shooting while noticing the sights and using them to aim, vs. insisting on an actual hard front sight focus.

[JAD]

I have had the chance to pepsi challenge this a couple of times.

I"ve gotten to take bunches of foreign people -- customers and sales channel people -- to the range when they visit the US. I give them the four rules in the car ride to the range, repeat it when we get to the range, and spend about 10 minutes introducing them to how to hold the pistol, how to stand (not leaning back, mostly), and how to press the trigger (I teach pinning at this level). Somewhere in there I draw a picture of the sight picture on a target and circle the front sight, and then point to the actual front sight on the pistol, and I say, "lift the gun to eye level and focus on this bump here both before and after the shot breaks." We have a good time shooting and they go on their merry way back to England or Japan or what have you.

Three of them have come back to the range, with a couple (or in one case eight) years in between that last shot in KC and their return being devoid, naturally, of even thinking about firearms.

I have, in each of those cases, reminded them of the four rules again in the car (and interestingly, all three remembered them /verbatim/ without prompting, broken English notwithstanding).

In one of the cases we were in a group, so the veteran got to re-listen to the mini camp -- and Yuuichi said, "Hai, hai, that's important-u" when I mentioned the front sight.

In the other two cases I just got them on the range and let them rip. All three were able to get good hits, right away, and all three used the front sight.

What they tend to forget, irritatingly, is my strenuous prohibitions against dangling.

[Chuck Haggard]

I've never had to pressure test anything at the level we are talking about, but I can tell you that getting people to the range for two days a years, eight-ish hours each day (which includes stuff like picking up brass, water breaks, cleaning guns, etc.), with the right instruction, can lead to said folks (even the ones who hate getting paid to shoot free ammo) getting 100% hits, and really solid fight stopping hits at that.

Nine shootings like that in 18 months ain't a fluke IMHO, it's a trend.

I only taught sighted fire, except for launching rounds from the high 2/retention position, and a surprising number of our folks post shooting report seeing their sights.

My philosophy of pistol training heavily mimics what Wayne, Darryl and Tom teach in their programs.

[Cecil Burch]

I am going to tread carefully here because this is a thread that is focusing on teaching shooting and that is out of my lane. But Todd did bring up the teaching of H2H self-defense stuff as a comparison, and I can comment a bit on that aspect.

I generally agree with Tom and nyeti on this subject. I've not been terribly vocal about it because I don't have experience teaching a truncated set of skills nor have I seen firsthand the results of that kind of training. My gut feeling is that there are a lot of things in life that you can do well or do poorly. It doesn't necessarily have to take longer to do something well instead of badly. It often just needs to be done better. I see sighted fire as the better way, and truncated marksmanship methods simply as less good. It doesn't have to take a long time to get someone some basic instruction and practice in using the sights to aim and trying to press the trigger pretty much straight back. I don't think it's unreasonable in the context of a low-motivation student to characterize it as 'get the gun to eye level and pay attention to the sights' and allow target focused shooting while noticing the sights and using them to aim, vs. insisting on an actual hard front sight focus.

I very much agree here. If you teach someone essential, fundamental things, and teach it in a way that is not condescending or dismissive, I strongly feel you can get a lot of good done even in a short course with little to no sustainment on the student’s part.

As a contrary tack, there are a lot of self-defense courses that take a dumbed down approach to teaching fighting skills, with simplistic techniques that are easily taught, and look really nice when they are executed on a compliant partner, but completely fall apart under pressure, and where there is almost no chance the student ever remembers any of the cool moves. This type of approach can be recognized generally by the instructor following the format of “if the attacker does this, then you do this”. The student is given a handful of techniques and sent on their way. The argument for this is that it has to be simple for this type of student to “get” since they won’t be doing much in the way of practicing. I have found this to actually be a waste.

Rather than teach some techniques, you teach fundamental concepts that are not any harder to execute, and only require a tiny bit more thought on the part of the student. I have done this in my coursework, and have had really good success at getting solid usable skills across to people without them having to then go and do BJJ or MMA or boxing three times a week.

It seems to me that the things that Tom or Chuck or some others advocate follow the model of focusing on the essentials, and doing their best to get that across, rather than dumbing it down. I strongly believe this a much better tack.

[Chuck Haggard]

And our DT system at work also followed the track Cecil talks about, and has worked rather well for a bunch of years.

I strongly believe teaching people how to think, and recognizing the principles of what makes things work, are an important part of teaching thinking fighters vs people who are range/mat room robots.

[Tom Givens]

I have had the chance to pepsi challenge this a couple of times.

I"ve gotten to take bunches of foreign people -- customers and sales channel people -- to the range when they visit the US. I give them the four rules in the car ride to the range, repeat it when we get to the range, and spend about 10 minutes introducing them to how to hold the pistol, how to stand (not leaning back, mostly), and how to press the trigger (I teach pinning at this level). Somewhere in there I draw a picture of the sight picture on a target and circle the front sight, and then point to the actual front sight on the pistol, and I say, "lift the gun to eye level and focus on this bump here both before and after the shot breaks." We have a good time shooting and they go on their merry way back to England or Japan or what have you.

Three of them have come back to the range, with a couple (or in one case eight) years in between that last shot in KC and their return being devoid, naturally, of even thinking about firearms.

I have, in each of those cases, reminded them of the four rules again in the car (and interestingly, all three remembered them /verbatim/ without prompting, broken English notwithstanding).

In one of the cases we were in a group, so the veteran got to re-listen to the mini camp -- and Yuuichi said, "Hai, hai, that's important-u" when I mentioned the front sight.

In the other two cases I just got them on the range and let them rip. All three were able to get good hits, right away, and all three used the front sight.

What they tend to forget, irritatingly, is my strenuous prohibitions against dangling.

This dove-tails precisely with what I have been saying. In our basic permit class, ALL shooting is done in two hands, at eye level, using the sights. The students are told this is what will save their lives. In many cases, even several years after their class and with no sustainment or practice, they fire 2-5 shots in a real life shooting and get 100% hits. This has happened too many times to be chance. In some cases, they still had the ammo in the gun they loaded with after their class. People tend to do what they have been trained to do, if it is simple, explained and practiced properly, and it is explained why it is important.

[orionz06]

These must be for decoration only:

http://icestore.us/Pistol-Sights/I-C...ont-Sight.html

[Dagga Boy]

I find it amusing that the most significant thing we have done for shooting efficiency in the last 50 years is how far we have come with sights to enhance our ability to use our eyes to greatly enhance our ability to hit things, yet people want to cling to the ideas of the prior 100 years. I honestly believe the myth's of not being able to use or see a verified sight comes from a time of horribly small and inefficient sights. This is no longer true and I have found if folks are trained with the idea that "you can easily see and focus on a front sight in a fight", and it will make the scary things go away faster if you do, people will do it.

[orionz06]

Who isn't using sights?

[LSP552]

Who isn't using sights?

People who miss.