Well, I appreciate the spirit of your question, but I don't think it can be defined objectively like that - at least not easily. People are different enough, circumstances are different enough, people improve enough, that I don't think there is really an objective answer. I mean just using myself as an example - I used to shoot quite a bit more than I have the last couple of years. I think I can maintain, and maybe eke out a little improvement, shooting the amount that I do now, but I feel like I might have had a harder time getting where I am now without the period of time where I shot a lot more. And sorry, I have not kept track of rounds fired either, so I don't have a number to give you there. Some people shoot a hell of a lot and don't get any better. Other people make us all jealous by doing tons of really intelligent dry practice, shooting maybe 6000 rounds live in their whole life, and making M off that.
Maybe it could be boiled down to kind of a heuristic process? Numbers are not really how I think about this, personally.
If you are failing at the test, whatever form that takes, have you not established foundational skills? If not, do that first.
If you have foundational skills but are failing to employ them correctly on the test, maybe more resources need to be spent on developing the habit of on-demand performance.
If you are successfully employing your foundational skills on-demand, but not getting better, maybe more resources should be devoted to pushing. Unless your level of resource is such that devoting more to pushing undermines your on-demand performance too severely, then maybe don't do that, and stick to working on-demand performance type stuff.
You have to find your way through this with self-awareness, introspection, and paying attention to the results on the target and timer.
Technical excellence supports tactical preparedness
Lord of the Food Court
http://www.gabewhitetraining.com
The answers will be found in Doing The Work. I hope that never becomes cliche, because it really is the only way, when it comes down to it. Read the Foreward by Rob Leatham in Brian Enos' Practical Shooting: Beyond Fundamentals. It was shocking the first time I read it. In a nutshell, he said the way they shot at the time of that writing was different than the way they shot the year before, and he expected it to continue to change. WTF, they had already refined practical shooting skills enormously by that point - Leatham-Enos grip, anyone? They were already champions. Had they not already figured out the best way?
No, they had not. Because 'the best way' is not about technique. It is about the study, the stuggle, the passion, eating and drinking and dreaming about shooting, the practice of every kind at every opportunity. It's about love. That's what makes one alive, flowing, moving, shaking, making themselves better and better and being here now, focused on the task at hand.
The questions you guys are asking, are the kinds of questions one hires a professional coach or mentor to answer. Or joins a vibrant training community, like this one. Or both. And more. Your questions are good, and I can tell you what I can, DB can tell you what he can tell you, etc., but ultimately, to know, you need to do the work. All your questioning and thinking is great, because that is part of doing the work. I know you guys simply want to do the work as efficiently as possible. We all do, but we also all take steps forward, steps back, steps to the side, and ultimately forward again, as we each go through this journey. But that doesn't matter because if you keep trying and keep going, you will find your way. And you do have to find your way.
Technical excellence supports tactical preparedness
Lord of the Food Court
http://www.gabewhitetraining.com
Saved me from having to type too much.
I was afraid I might be unwelcomely misdirecting or hijacking GreggW's thread, but I'm glad to see that's not the case yet. (But please, GreggW, stop me when I do.)
I'm intentionally and knowingly being a pain in the ass here because when I read the OP I saw something I might have posted last year. This is something I'd do much better talking about in person, and I'm not going to do justice to trying to type out here, particularly with the limited resources I have for that. The questions in the OP are good ones, but it's easy to be motivated to ask them by a fundamentally different sincere desire which itself is not best served by getting wrapped up in those questions.
Undoubtedly the issue of how to practice and how to proceed along the journey of improvement is wildly hard to pin down, subjective, context dependent, and so on. Having said that, the issue of "shooting standards that matter" is also extremely subjective, subtle, context dependent, etc., and yet we've spent over 10 pages talking about it and generating a ton of good information that people have found interesting and useful.
Certainly the more nebulous issues I've raised are even harder to define than the ones posed in the OP, but my point was that I think it'd still be a productive direction to focus PF energy. Moreover, I think it might even be a more useful direction for a lot of the people that find themselves intensely interested in the issue of "shooting standards that matter".
I've read the intro to Practical Shooting, and in combination with Enos's own intro material, I too found it gobsmacking. It's what motivated me to stick the thorn here. After reading it I felt as if I had wasted so much time and energy trying to grok objective standards from PF, or trying to find a consistent and objectively valid truth underpinning everything said by all the people I admire as "good" on here. Instead, I could have spent that time "Doing the Work". Of course......that was doing the work, and doing that stuff is still a useful part of doing the work. But you get my point.
I wildly guess that there are other people like me who are on here trying to succeed by a very outcome-focused approach of trying to define and understand standards, truths, and so on. I think PF culture even lends itself to this for newcomers. I think those people, myself included, would benefit from being helped to take a more process-focused approach to seeking success. Usefully and concretely discussing that sort of approach is in fact possible, and Enos's book is proof of that.
You're right. What people like me are looking for is a professional coach or mentor. But we don't have access to those wherever we are, and we try to use PF to fill that void. And it's exactly that motivation that I think leads to a lot of these threads. They're extremely interesting and useful as is, but when the real motivation is something like "what should I be doing right now? what should I change?", they don't cut through to that and instead encourage spinning off further into la-la land instead of doing the work. There's isn't the sort of grounding smack on the back of the head that a real coach provides.
It's true that the whole thing is a personal journey that needs to be figured out personally, but that's not what Mr. Miyagi told Ralph Macchio when he showed up looking to learn karate. "Go home Daniel-san, you need to figure out which blocks and strikes to practice on your own. Karate is a personal journey." That'd have been a pretty boring movie
It'd also have been pretty boring if Macchio asked Mr. Miyagi what the most useful or effective karate techniques are, followed by a 3-day soliloquy where Mr. Miyagi opines on this and does his best to come to some objective conclusions for such a subjective question, and then it cut to Macchio spending the rest of the movie practicing those things over and over again, desperately trying to succeed at them, under no supervision. But that's sort of what I think happens with a lot of newcomers in trying to use PF as a resource. It certainly did for me. Really, they just have that amorphous hard-to-define desire to become better at karate, and so they come sit on the stoop of the experts and ask questions like "what's the best way to tell someone is good at karate?". Then they try to scrape a definition out of the responses that generates, and then go home and try to meet that definition, when what they really need to hear is "Later. For now, come paint this fence.".
I can get a good idea where a shooter is as soon as they draw their pistol. Any number of drills can be used to get a quick assessment of where they are with fundamentals. I kind of look at assessment or training in layers or blocks as each layer will isolate different pieces of the puzzle and allows to more accurately assess deficiencies and where to focus training.
Outside of the basic safety and handling of a firearm as in this is the dangerous end of the firearm, the first layer for assessment would be drills like a one hole drill, dot drill etc, that focus on pure non timed accuracy. This will show a persons level of understanding of the base fundamentals and it will also allow for assessment of where they might be lacking. Understanding of fundamentals and mastery is the base of everything. Sounds like a no brainer, but deserves repeating, often.
The next layer would incorporate drills that might include a draw, multiple rounds at a certain pace and reloads. So drills like maybe a 5x5, 666, bill drill or a one hole cadence, etc. Quick assessment of the draw, reloads and ability to manage recoil and sight tracking.
From there I like to see basic footwork, how they transition targets and weapons handling under movement. Something like a Vice-Presidente with two firing points side by side maybe 6-10 feet apart. Reload happening during movement from point to point.
The above may sound like a lot, but we need to work a shooter to where their weapons handling needs to be ingrained at a subconscious level and performance during training needs to be successfully accomplished under stress conditions. Now I am not talking about extraordinary results like many shooters here are capable of doing, but a realistic level on par with your average Officer. Then we of course strive to develop and continue education.
But the real piece of the puzzle for "defensive shooting" comes not from the weapons handling but from the everything else that occurs during a critical incident. We would like the defensive shooter to have enough competence to perform integral functions related to weapons handling at the subconscious level so that we can train the cognitive mind and allow for conscious thought to do its thing.
My personal opinion:
Real world scenarios are simply too random to be able to say drill "x" is the definitive gauge of readiness.
That said, I think a simple few could give you an indication of real world proficiency.
1) El Pres. To me the top drill. As it encompasses draw, recoil control, transitions, reloads and movement.
2) 4 aces. Narrows things down to draw, recoil control, and reloads. Probably the most real world drill based on historical data. The instances where you need to burn through 3 full mags are exceedingly rare.
3) Both of the above, starting seated, for obvious reasons.
I don't prefer the ultra accurate drills, but there is definitely a benefit to them. Head shots at 20 yards shouldn't be intimidating.
I haven't assigned any times to these, as I am of the opinion that if you actually do these drills, practice them, and track any progress, you are probably better trained than 99.9% of criminals you may need to defend yourself from.
Other than that, HONESTLY, shooting USPSA and/or IDPA matches will get you to shoot different scenarios. When you really bomb one of those, you'll know what to practice.
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