Competition gets you killed on the streets.

[Peally]

If you can't find how you'd potentially gain great skill competing and/or learning from (competent) tactical instructors to become a well rounded tactical shooter, you're fucking deluded.

Call it like I see it.

[voodoo_man]

There may be some semantics issues in here - what exactly is meant by 'mindset' - depending on the definition each person has, it could be a pretty expansive thing.

This is an easy one to answer. First, it's because those things are in fact very important and are not nonsense. Second, it's also because it is really easy to buy a book and read it for ten minutes each day while going to the bathroom, or sit and listen to a lecture. Not a lot of effort or personal sacrifice is required to 'train mindset' in those ways.

I think that's wrong, but I suppose that might go back to the semantics thing. To me, engaging in the ongoing personal effort, sacrifice, and hard work that are necessary if you are going to try to win the competition, whether shooting, BJJ, MMA, etc., is itself an aspect of mindset - it is carrying out the quality of determination as a daily personal habit. To my thinking, that habit of determination is one of the essential underlying aspects of overall mindset.

Suppose we conceptualized things roughly as Mindset, Tactics, and Skills - I feel like I've heard that somewhere in defensive training before...

Who is to say which of those, in what proportions, will be required to survive, or better yet, overwhelmingly prevail in a given, unique incident? Some will require more of one of those qualities than another. Some could be solved in different ways with any of them. Of course, since the fact is that we can't truly know in advance, we want to have all of them to the greatest extent our motivation and resources will allow.

Mindset, in and of itself, is definitely an "expansive" topic. But when we talk about violent confrontations, or rather, mitigating violence whenever possible and then using violence of action when required to (shoot threshold), it becomes a very small and very specific type of conversation.

Specifically, how much time am I going to devote to doing something in order for it to become a skill set I do not want to think about during a deadly force confrontation. On top of all that, what skill sets do I need to develop and what protocols/processes do I need to sharpen in order to properly apply the above developed skill sets before, during and after a deadly force confrontation. Then, on top of all of that, what thought process am I going to need to develop in order to apply all the aforementioned skill sets so that I can mitigate any/all confrontation (as much as possible) while being ready to instantly deploy those skill sets and accepting all the possible results (orders of magnitude).

A little bit more involved and specific, not as rhetorical, would you agree?

Each one of the above steps have micro steps (like dry firing a front sight press out while engaging the trigger, an isolation of a particular skill set), and each one of the micro steps needs to be perfectly practiced within the overall goal and objective. If any one micro step is not practiced properly within the entirety of the protocol/process which feed overall mindset, then you either do not have the proper mindset developed or you have put emphasis on a micro step which does not fit the paradigm of the overall mindset. An example of this is using a gamer rig, OWB, zero or low retention holster with half a dozen mags in a gamer setup. No one walks around like that, so developing the skill set to run one of them is not only counter to all the above, it develops a counter-positive mindset, one specifically designed by the person developing it to lose in a real life confrontation.

Lets take it one step forward, closer to reality though, since we are talking about real life, no rhetoric stuff.

You are average Joe CCW citizen. You carry a gun concealed, legally, and you decide that you want up your skill set with it. So you dry fire and you show up to matches at your local club to shoot action pistol, IDPA and/or USPSA. Your club does not allow you to go muzzle up, so you have to reload without breaking the plain of berm. You also have to shoot while standing still inside of a box, because your club doesn't allow movement either. By the way, you can't have more than 10 rounds in your magazine, because that's the rules of the game. Great, you can live with that right? So you start shooting and find that if you emulate the top gamer guys getting the top scores you will get better scores. Soon you don't even think about scanning or assessing after each round of shooting, like you did when you started. Then you always reload looking down at your gun and not at your target. You also shoot all the targets on each stage, especially when you see the stage before you shoot. Eventually you stop shooting your carry gun because its not gamer enough and get yourself a nice STI 9mm. Ohh, did I mention you are required to show clear and reholster an unloaded weapon each and every time?

Now you are six months into shooting the game, and you are confident at your status as a shooter, you have installed a good amount of repetitions of the game and don't need an RSO to tell you to "show clear and reholster." You have never, not once, practiced anything else. Congratulations, you are going to do everything you do in gaming during a deadly force confrontation. This has been proven again and again (see the other threads where a member posts a paragraph from a book from the 70's? where the author talks about LEO's being killed with brass in their hands from their revolvers).

Of course, this is the internet and no one is going to believe anyone unless there is hard data facts, backed up by a dozen videos, right?

Of all the guys on here that have been involved in deadly force confrontations, most will probably tell you that their heart rate spiked and they were on autopilot for a lot of the confrontation. That "autopilot" is exactly what we are fighting here. Mindset drives the proper types of protocols and processes during this. I do not want to be thinking about doing the wrong thing with my gun when I am in a shit situation, I want to be thinking about moving to cover from cover while deploying hate downrange.

We've been doing this dance of an ongoing conversation for a while now and once we remove all the internet bullshit, all the personal slandering/attacks (not saying its happening here but we both know it did), we get reality which has proven itself to be very unforgiving. I would rather someone not be forced to make bad repetitions because of "rules" of a "game" but rather make good repetitions which are supported by a positively vetted mindset.

[Peally]

[jetfire]

Congratulations, you are going to do everything you do in gaming during a deadly force confrontation. This has been proven again and again (see the other threads where a member posts a paragraph from a book from the 70's? where the author talks about LEO's being killed with brass in their hands from their revolvers).

I'm only going to address this one particular part of the post, because I've fought this battle 100,000 times before and I'm completely uninterested in getting on this fuck-train merry-go-round again.

However, the "LEOs getting killed with brass in their hands/pockets" is a myth. It's an urban legend that was based on the extremely well known CHP shooting referred to as the Newhall Incident. As it turns out, actual photos from the scene show the officer's brass on the ground, not in their pockets. But because it was frequently repeated, and picked up by notorious Derp-king Dave Grossman, people just seem to believe it without actually questioning it.

http://www.gunnuts.net/2013/07/22/ta...in-the-pocket/

[Mr_White]

Now you are six months into shooting the game, and you are confident at your status as a shooter, you have installed a good amount of repetitions of the game and don't need an RSO to tell you to "show clear and reholster." You have never, not once, practiced anything else. Congratulations, you are going to do everything you do in gaming during a deadly force confrontation.

Bold added by me to point out the blatant strawman and mischaracterization of what I and others have argued. I say again:

Competition isn't suitable as the SOLE method of preparation for self-defense, and neither is any other type of training or activity. You have to use multiple methods of preparation to shore up the different weaknesses that ALL of them have, including well-conducted tactical training. And competition can provide some very powerful benefits that are hard to get elsewhere.

I would rather someone not be forced to make bad repetitions because of "rules" of a "game" but rather make good repetitions which are supported by a positively vetted mindset.

So how do you participate in BJJ then? Do you refuse to tap, because it would be a bad repetition and practicing to give up?

[voodoo_man]

I'm only going to address this one particular part of the post, because I've fought this battle 100,000 times before and I'm completely uninterested in getting on this fuck-train merry-go-round again.

However, the "LEOs getting killed with brass in their hands/pockets" is a myth. It's an urban legend that was based on the extremely well known CHP shooting referred to as the Newhall Incident. As it turns out, actual photos from the scene show the officer's brass on the ground, not in their pockets. But because it was frequently repeated, and picked up by notorious Derp-king Dave Grossman, people just seem to believe it without actually questioning it.

http://www.gunnuts.net/2013/07/22/ta...in-the-pocket/

I've read that, and I have to disagree.

When I first got on the PD I currently work for we had guys who were involved in OIS and distinctly telling the OIS investigators that they had shells in their hands at the end of the ordeal. I didn't believe it either until they showed me a few of the dozens of OIS interviews (from the 80's) they did after getting involved. All of them were issued revolvers, all of them were taught to do that up until a certain point, and some of them told me that we had a guy killed during a shoot out and he had a bunch of bullets in his hand. These aren't guys who do internet anything, they don't read anything relating to tactical anything and there is likely no way the above CHP info would have gotten to them as the instructors at the range were still, mostly, using the same training models (minus the retaining of shells).

Furthermore, we only recently were made to "drop the mags" from our Glocks in order to reload, because we had a guy in a busy area get into a shootout and they used to teach retaining the magazine and "stow it wherever" - well he did, during the shootout which he happened to have won and walked around with it until the investigators asked him why an empty mag was in his waist band between his rig and his pants - he didn't even know he did it.

Not a myth, its just not something people know to record or care to in the LE field. The way you train and the repetitions you make are what you do. There is simply no getting around that.

[Cory]

Dear Lord,

What have I done?

-Cory

[taadski]

...

Your dogma is creating hiccups in you "mindset", bro.

[voodoo_man]

Bold added by me to point out the blatant strawman and mischaracterization of what I and others have argued. I say again:

So how do you participate in BJJ then? Do you refuse to tap, because it would be a bad repetition and practicing to give up?

So lets do this bit without the personal attacks, shall we?

You needed to point out "blatant strawman and mischaracterization" where I posted that, which you enboldend on purpose, because it is very much true for a lot of the people showing up to these games. Maybe not for you. But for average Joe CCW citizen, it most definitely is. So again, lets not go down that route because we end up with emotionally tied diatribes on how one side is stupid, rather than fact/experience based conversations on a good topic.

As for BJJ, I have to quit every few months and practice/train the proper way of doing things for several months. I am on and off with it because it of that. I also do a good bit of training beyond that (striking, weapons retention/application) while attending classes before or after with other LEO's. For me BJJ is an awesome workout, that just happens to give you a very small set of skill set which may or may not be applicable for the average person. I often have to stop myself from striking and stopping at the buzzer. I also don't follow all the rules, which was accepted by the instructors after a conversation on this very topic.

[voodoo_man]

Just let me add...

If you have nothing to add to the conversation and just want to post to ridicule me for going against the grain, maybe you need to take a step back and evaluate your person mindset, your personal protocols and processes.

It is very easy to point a finger and have fun saying what someone else isn't doing right in your opinion, it is very difficult to take a good look at yourself with the same intensity.