Speed loss between square range and real life?

[Mike R]

I was reading earlier today and encountered an assertion that caused me to reflect. I didn't post in the original thread because I don't want to discuss the personalities involved as much as the concept. The quote was as follows:

The speed is unimpressive as it is square range nonsense. .7 on a square range translate to what in real life and with what setup? I doubt he walks around with that gaming rig, in perfect position to draw and fire at all times. The whole thing is an exercise in derp.

Yep, I don't like him or what he is selling (especially not his skin notion).

I have heard people say things like a scoop draw that saves you a tenth of a second isn't worth it if you drop the gun one out of ten times. After hearing that I altered my draw technique so that I get a full grip as close to the firing grip as possible. I want to make sure if I have to draw with my left foot forward and right foot back, or while holding a small child with my weak arm, or whatever the case may be I have a full grip and maintain control of my firearm.

Another line of thought I have heard presented is that by doing focused and fundamentally correct repetitions of a skill you can make execution of that skill subconscious. An example of this would be practicing fundamentally correct trigger presses at different distances until you don't have to consciously think about the trigger press after you have made the decision to fire. Ideally this is something you would practice under some type of simulated stress. This frees up the conscious mind to problem solve and focus on shoot/no shoot decisions, seeking cover or scanning for additional threats.

I am trying to understand what a reasonable conversion would be between performing a weapons manipulation or handling skill on a square range vs in a 360 degree dynamic environment. I would like to know what kind of degradation I might expect should I ever be required to perform a draw to a low percentage threat or reload in real life. If this conversion is significant, what can I do to minimize the delta between my fastest time and my real world time? Is that achieved by training at a high rate of speed to bring my average time performing the skill down, or adopting a more fool proof, but slower technique that would allow me to narrow that gap by increasing my "fastest" time?

Those questions might be a little broad, so I am going to try to narrow it down here:
If my draw or reload on a square range is x seconds, my 360 degree environment draw or reload should be x seconds*y, where y would be the real life conversion factor. What should y be, how do I get that as close to 1 as possible, and is getting that as close to 1 as possible a worthwhile pursuit?

[Luke]

I would guess the biggest time sucker is reacting to a stimulus that you don't know is coming. I know the beep is coming and I'm ready on the skware range. I don't think there is really a way to find a formula that will tell you the time.

But I've never been a Leo or military or anything. Just a Timmy turned gamer guessing.

[GJM]

Is your question, "what is the difference between my warmed up performance, and my on demand performance, and how do I shrink the difference between the two?" And, not sure you asked it, but I believe implicit in your question, is how do you improve the speed of both your warmed up and on demand performance.

If these are your questions, there are many shooters keenly interested in this subject. They use a variety of well proven methods to both increase their warmed up/unstressed speed, and to maximize their on demand speed.

[JCS]

I'm the farthest thing from an expert. But when people talk about real life vs square range they point to the time.

People post videos on social media and YouTube of a .7 draw and headshot and act like that's how quickly they can disable a threat. The reality is there's a reaction time in there, you're gonna be drawing cold and there's a pressure that can't be simulated shooting paper in a stall.

For example I saw a video of an Instagram guy who "disabled a terrorist" in like 1.3 seconds. He said this is how quickly guns can stop a mass shooting. All he did was draw and shoot a manikin wearing an ak. We all know it's complete garbage. Training to draw on a buzzer doesn't take into account reaction time to realize "oh crap he's got a gun what do I do".


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[Mr_White]

I was reading earlier today and encountered an assertion that caused me to reflect. I didn't post in the original thread because I don't want to discuss the personalities involved as much as the concept. The quote was as follows:



I have heard people say things like a scoop draw that saves you a tenth of a second isn't worth it if you drop the gun one out of ten times. After hearing that I altered my draw technique so that I get a full grip as close to the firing grip as possible. I want to make sure if I have to draw with my left foot forward and right foot back, or while holding a small child with my weak arm, or whatever the case may be I have a full grip and maintain control of my firearm.

Another line of thought I have heard presented is that by doing focused and fundamentally correct repetitions of a skill you can make execution of that skill subconscious. An example of this would be practicing fundamentally correct trigger presses at different distances until you don't have to consciously think about the trigger press after you have made the decision to fire. Ideally this is something you would practice under some type of simulated stress. This frees up the conscious mind to problem solve and focus on shoot/no shoot decisions, seeking cover or scanning for additional threats.

I am trying to understand what a reasonable conversion would be between performing a weapons manipulation or handling skill on a square range vs in a 360 degree dynamic environment. I would like to know what kind of degradation I might expect should I ever be required to perform a draw to a low percentage threat or reload in real life. If this conversion is significant, what can I do to minimize the delta between my fastest time and my real world time? Is that achieved by training at a high rate of speed to bring my average time performing the skill down, or adopting a more fool proof, but slower technique that would allow me to narrow that gap by increasing my "fastest" time?

Those questions might be a little broad, so I am going to try to narrow it down here:
If my draw or reload on a square range is x seconds, my 360 degree environment draw or reload should be x seconds*y, where y would be the real life conversion factor. What should y be, how do I get that as close to 1 as possible, and is getting that as close to 1 as possible a worthwhile pursuit?

Good question Mike R! There are definitely a lot of moving parts there, but I'll tell you what I can.

It is totally normal for draw-to-first-shot time to increase as the complexity of the shooting problem increases, as the number of serial simple problems increases, as you add movement and other tasks, as you become mentally burdened with stress and task-loading. So as you move from dry to live fire, from single to multiple targets, from standing still to incorporating movement to doing a lot of movement, as there are more peers/buddies/instructors/competitors/observers, as you increase the stress, it is common but not absolutely universal that draw time will increase.

What you can do to counteract that starts with awareness and tactics, so you can start dealing with the problem as early as possible from the strongest possible position, and thus give yourself the most time in which to draw or take the opportunity to leave if that's an available option.

And it's good to work on your hard technical skills too, because awareness and tactics don't solve everything. Drill as hard as you can on your simple, raw, draw. Find the fastest speed at which you can move. Work to draw precisely at that full speed, with proper care in the sights and trigger for the target at hand. Add complications. Change start positions. Use multiple targets. Add a series of tasks after the draw, before it, or both. Do it while exerted. Do it dry fire, do it in live fire, do it with peers around, do it in competition or a stressful training environment.

As you do all that work, the gap between your simple drill work and your on-demand performance with a more free-form shooting problem will probably narrow. It might never really be the same though, and on some occasions performance under stress can actually be better than in practice (probably not something to bank on though!)

It's hard to give you a quantification that will be meaningful for you - you will probably have to measure that for yourself. But using myself as an example, I think I lose approximately two tenths of a second from my best draw due to stress and complexity of circumstance. That's hard technical skill, and sometimes that's the only answer. But in a lot of circumstances, awareness and tactics can account for larger portions of time savings.

[Mike R]

I would guess the biggest time sucker is reacting to a stimulus that you don't know is coming. I know the beep is coming and I'm ready on the skware range. I don't think there is really a way to find a formula that will tell you the time.

But I've never been a Leo or military or anything. Just a Timmy turned gamer guessing.

I understand a large part of that is reaction. If you take the reaction out of the draw (it seems like reaction to something you know is coming tends to be around 2 tenths of a second) you are left with the execution of a skill. I am interested in how much that skill degrades under real life stress (and more importantly, how to minimize that degradation). If you are an undercover LEO in a drug bust, for example, you might anticipate the need to draw your weapon, but have to wait for certain cues to do so. In that case, you know or think you will be receiving the equivalent of a buzzer, and then need to perform.

Is your question, "what is the difference between my warmed up performance, and my on demand performance, and how do I shrink the difference between the two?" And, not sure you asked it, but I believe implicit in your question, is how do you improve the speed of both your warmed up and on demand performance.

If these are your questions, there are many shooters keenly interested in this subject. They use a variety of well proven methods to both increase their warmed up/unstressed speed, and to maximize their on demand speed.

I am interested in improving both my warmed up and cold performance, but what I am trying to understand has a slight twist to it. When training on the range you typically get multiple opportunities to solve a given scenario. In a competition, you likely only have one opportunity at a given scenario, but you know it is coming. For example, I might be able to do a 6 second El Presidente at the end of a practice session, but when it is stage 2 of a match my time might be closer to 6.5. What you are discussing is narrowing that .5 second gap. I am interested in that.

Both of those scenarios, however, take place on a square range. Like most people I only have an opportunity to train on a range. I want to understand how I can narrow the gap between my square range performance (say cold), and real life. Are the techniques that make one fast on the range a liability in real life?

I'm the farthest thing from an expert. But when people talk about real life vs square range they point to the time.

People post videos on social media and YouTube of a .7 draw and headshot and act like that's how quickly they can disable a threat. The reality is there's a reaction time in there, you're gonna be drawing cold and there's a pressure that can't be simulated shooting paper in a stall.

For example I saw a video of an Instagram guy who "disabled a terrorist" in like 1.3 seconds. He said this is how quickly guns can stop a mass shooting. All he did was draw and shoot a manikin wearing an ak. We all know it's complete garbage. Training to draw on a buzzer doesn't take into account reaction time to realize "oh crap he's got a gun what do I do".


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So the two trains of thought I see here are:
1. That a.7 doesn't mean nothing because there are only 2 tenths of reaction time to a buzzer, and in real life it might take 2 seconds to make a shoot decision and then 5 tenths to execute the draw and shot.
2. Understanding that every person will have some form of reaction time (and I am not sure what the best way of training to improve that real life reaction time is, if that is possible), and the technical execution of the shot (i.e. the .5 seconds from hand on gun to round on target). I don't know what I can do to lower that first piece apart from improving my situational awareness and mindset. The second piece, I think can be improved on the range, but several posters have suggested that skills learned on the range deteriorate rapidly in real life. Does the presence of a reaction time change how important the skill execution component is? I might be hyper sensitive and aware, but my technique takes me 1.5 seconds to execute instead of .5 it seems like I might be too late. I want to work on lowering that.

[Failure2Stop]

Practicing things on the clock with a target is the way that we can figure out if what we are doing is *better or *worse, *faster or *slower, * more accurate or *less accurate with a consistent measurement.
It practices a skill, it does not replicate a gunfight.
More evolved skill generally equates to more ability to think/plan through a problem.

Gunfights usually don't resemble any drill at a square range, no competition stage, and you don't usually get a dry-run or a "shooter ready?".
The only way to get that is to simulate it, or be involved in the real thing.
Simulation prior to event is recommended. There aren't a lot of places to do this, but ShivWorks/Craig Douglas seems to be the most vetted, most accessible option.

[okie john]

Those questions might be a little broad, so I am going to try to narrow it down here:
If my draw or reload on a square range is x seconds, my 360 degree environment draw or reload should be x seconds*y, where y would be the real life conversion factor. What should y be, how do I get that as close to 1 as possible, and is getting that as close to 1 as possible a worthwhile pursuit?

I think that we're only looking at half of the problem if we focus on speed, and that we should expand the focus of the thread to include the degradation of accuracy. Ken Hackathorn, Pat McNamara, and Larry Vickers have all brought this up in classes. In particular, Vickers (http://www.vickerstactical.com/accuracy.html) says "...I have found that under conditions of stress a shooter will only be able to shoot to within roughly 50 % of the accuracy potential of a given weapon. And that is only for the best shooters; the majority will not even be close to that."


Okie John

[JHC]

Is your question, "what is the difference between my warmed up performance, and my on demand performance, and how do I shrink the difference between the two?" And, not sure you asked it, but I believe implicit in your question, is how do you improve the speed of both your warmed up and on demand performance.

If these are your questions, there are many shooters keenly interested in this subject. They use a variety of well proven methods to both increase their warmed up/unstressed speed, and to maximize their on demand speed.

It is sometimes argued here that one's on demand rarely matches warmed up practice.

I've made some on demand very fast hunting shots, sometimes on multiple targets which I would have to work at to recreate on the range.

During those there was hyper focus and "no thought".

Never had to shoot in defense of life but got close several times. I felt that same hyper focus "no thought".

I often wonder if there is any significance to that.

[GJM]

Hopefully John Hearne will chime in. As part of his research, I put him in touch with two of the foremost helicopter emergency procedure trainers in the world. They are training pilots to survive emergencies like engine failures in single engine helicopters. My recollection is both said there was something more important than total flight hours, and that was recency of emergency training. That suggests to me that someone who dry and live fires daily is far more likely to pull a high percentage of their "square range" ability than another person who only shoots and handles their weapons at a quarterly qualification.