Split times

[breakingtime91]

I have recently been thinking about split times. Often you either hear they matter or they don't matter. Often this is an argument of "on the streets" vs something else. I was curious to see what others think on the subject and maybe develop some civil and productive conversations on the subject. My personal feelings on it is you should only shoot as fast as you can get hits that will put down an adversary. That speed can be dictated by quite a few different things, at least I think. The biggest is the ability for the shooter (lets take me) and his ability to process what is happening in the fight while I am shooting the subject. If my processing speed and ability to adjust based off of that is slower than my split time, does shooting fast matter? If not, why do we train to shoot faster and faster if we should instead be focusing on accuracy and decision making skills? Obviously being able to shoot fast and accurate would be the cats pajamas but eventually you sacrifice a little in each direction (for most shooters, some of you need a different hobby )

Look forward to thoughts on this.

[Mr_White]

why do we train to shoot faster and faster if we should instead be focusing on accuracy and decision making skills?

This is a great topic and I'll get back to it soon, but just one thought for now: the irony is that one of the best routes to being able to shoot the vaunted fist-size group at a very relevant speed is to be able to shoot bigger A- zones at .2-ish splits. And be able to shoot much more accurately, given more time. Time also has to be spent developing the discipline to correctly apply available skills to the problem at hand. Then shooting a fist-size group at the speed you comfortably read the sights is at neither the margins of your accuracy nor your speed capabilities.

And backing off a little like that produces more certainty/ accountability, and is less mentally intensive and leaves just that little bit more attention available to the environment. So I think the person who pushes way past .3-.4 splits in practice, and learns to run the gun well at .2, ends up with a more powerful overall capability when fixing his accuracy pretty tightly than a person who reaches .3-.4 splits and then quits working on them because that's where he wanted to be in the first place.

[GuanoLoco]

Learning to 'see fast' and use core skills subconsciously at stupid fast - fast speeds (broadly stating .15-25 splits) is inherently valuable.

Having the breathing room to make corrections / increase accuracy by running a hair slower is also rather nice.

You cannot get to the upper levels of human performance, for example the Gabe White Standards, USPSA Classifiers, etc. without taking time to develop these skills.

Do you need this for competency - no. But it's a fine skill to have if you ever need it.

[breakingtime91]

This is a great topic and I'll get back to it soon, but just one thought for now: the irony is that one of the best routes to being able to shoot the vaunted fist-size group at a very relevant speed is to be able to shoot bigger A- zones at .2-ish splits. And be able to shoot much more accurately, given more time. Time also has to be spent developing the discipline to correctly apply available skills to the problem at hand. Then shooting a fist-size group at the speed you comfortably read the sights is at neither the margins of your accuracy nor your speed capabilities.

And backing off a little like that produces more certainty/ accountability, and is less mentally intensive and leaves just that little bit more attention available to the environment. So I think the person who pushes way past .3-.4 splits in practice, and learns to run the gun well at .2, ends up with a more powerful overall capability when fixing his accuracy pretty tightly than a person who reaches .3-.4 splits and then quits working on them because that's where he wanted to be in the first place.

Was hoping you would respond. Look forward to more of your thoughts. Do you think this is something people will just naturally tailor down given the situation they find them self in?

[Mr_White]

Was hoping you would respond. Look forward to more of your thoughts. Do you think this is something people will just naturally tailor down given the situation they find them self in?

I think discipline needs practice to be well-developed, just like speed and like accuracy.

And I think this is one of the underlying things in many discussions on PF over a long time.

You have to have resources (time, ammo, motivation, etc.) to push your skills to a higher level.

You have to have resources to develop the discipline to apply skills correctly - that's one of the things I think USPSA and competitive shooting in general really push because of the variety of shooting problems and movement/barrier integration demanded of the shooter, and in an open and honest competitive environment, which creates pressure. Competitive shooting makes it pretty hard to BS yourself and others about how you did.

If a person has a low level of resource for whatever reason, the classically successful pattern is to develop a baseline skill (basic marksmanship is the core), then work almost solely on discipline, so that the skills they do have, which are probably not great but will also probably get the job done if other elements of the overall package are there, can be applied correctly to the shooting problem. Improvement in skill is either absent or very slow and incremental to avoid upsetting the discipline that has been established. So if you have a guy who shoots 2x per year, I wouldn't tell him to go shoot a bunch of Bill Drills and drive them really hard - because he's going to make mistakes, but lack the wherewithal of attention and resource to learn from those mistakes, correct them, and come out better off. He's probably wise to just practice what he can already do reasonably correctly with those two sessions per year.

If a person is an enthusiast, regardless of professional or nonprofessional background, and they have the resources to both push hard, driving their skills to a higher level, and ALSO have the resources to devote to on-demand practice (discipline), they are in a good position to end up with higher-level on-demand skills. That person might improve much more slowly than they have to, or not at all, if they only ever practice what they can already do. That's not completely bad, because they'll probably end up with a surplus of discipline too. But if they have the time, ammo, and motivation to both drive hard to get better and practice the discipline to apply their skills correctly, then I think they are going to end up with a stronger overall disciplined capability.

[JHC]

The "blooded" experience that reports that .35 splits are fast in life and death fights to deliver the hits necessary to achieve the desired outcome (BGs down NOW and no innocents hurt) is pretty vast and comes from LE and the Mil.

The taskings that contribute to that split example, are not just marksmanship skills but the constant decision making that is involved.

Exactly how one best develops the skills to put the shots on the smaller than A zone sweet spot, probably while one or both parties are moving, I cannot really say.

[Clusterfrack]

JHC--this is a good point. The question is whether .35s appears "fast" from the shooters perspective. Training at speed increases your visual "frame rate". To a M/GM level shooter 0.35s appears very slow, and that's due to lots of practice tracking sights and targets while shooting faster than that.

[JHC]

JHC--this is a good point. The question is whether .35s appears "fast" from the shooters perspective. Training at speed increases your visual "frame rate". To a M/GM level shooter 0.35s appears very slow, and that's due to lots of practice tracking sights and targets while shooting faster than that.

Thanks! I'm sure that's true but I'm not referring to the shooter's perception of his speed or the acquisition of his sights. Rather the time frame for the execution of his delivery of precise hits into a target much smaller than an A zone and continuous evaluation during the chaos of all sorts of non-marksmanship input like movement, innocents moving in or out of the line of fire etc. That is the time sink, me thinks.

[Clusterfrack]

I think training to see more, faster, makes all of that appear slower--at least that's what my training in competitive and defensive scenarios has shown.

[cheby]

I really liked how Robert Vogel addressed this in his recent interview. He said (very close) "Look what really happens. There are a lot of dash cam videos out there these days. What do you usually see? You usually see the officer who just got shot at pulls the gun and shoots as fast as he can. Ideally we should shoot as fast as we can hit the target but when it goes south like that most people shoot as fast as they can. So the question is do you train to shoot as fast you can?"
That is why split times matter