When it goes bad....

[psalms144.1]

Not to continue to beat a dead horse, but there seems to be a lot of movement in the firearms training community towards comments like "your groups are too small." I'm not sure where this drivel is coming from, but I had SEVERAL recent FLETC graduates tell me I was spending too much of "their" range time on accuracy fundamentals, and not enough on "tactical" shooting. I was told repeatedly that "any hit on the paper is good enough - we need to shoot FASTER."

Again, my experience and the experience of dozens of others with TONS more real world experience doesn't bear this out, but it is distressingly wide spread nowadays.

[Tom Givens]

Not to continue to beat a dead horse, but there seems to be a lot of movement in the firearms training community towards comments like "your groups are too small." I'm not sure where this drivel is coming from, but I had SEVERAL recent FLETC graduates tell me I was spending too much of "their" range time on accuracy fundamentals, and not enough on "tactical" shooting. I was told repeatedly that "any hit on the paper is good enough - we need to shoot FASTER."

Again, my experience and the experience of dozens of others with TONS more real world experience doesn't bear this out, but it is distressingly wide spread nowadays.

This is a cycle that comes around every few years. I have had several "instructors" explain to me that we need to spread the bullet impacts over a wider area to do more tissue damage to more/different organs. It has been my experience that dispersion will occur naturally. LOL

[Super77]

This is a cycle that comes around every few years. I have had several "instructors" explain to me that we need to spread the bullet impacts over a wider area to do more tissue damage to more/different organs. It has been my experience that dispersion will occur naturally. LOL

Meanwhile Chuck Pressburg, arguably one of the more experienced trainers out there, is teaching exactly the opposite.

[Ed L]

Meanwhile Chuck Pressburg, arguably one of the more experienced trainers out there, is teaching exactly the opposite.

I am not sure that I follow.

Is Chuck Pressburg teaching to disperse the impact or to to try to keep it centered in the lethal zone, or even a smaller zone for training?

I would think he would doing the latter.

[Lester Polfus]

This is a cycle that comes around every few years. I have had several "instructors" explain to me that we need to spread the bullet impacts over a wider area to do more tissue damage to more/different organs. It has been my experience that dispersion will occur naturally. LOL

I use this exact thing as a Sorting Hat to decide whether I want to train with someone or not.

[Super77]

I am not sure that I follow.

Is Chuck Pressburg teaching to disperse the impact or to to try to keep it centered in the lethal zone, or even a smaller zone for training?

I would think he would doing the latter.

He is teaching the latter. He doesn’t even compromise with a “lethal zone.” He wants you hitting individual organs e.g. heart, aorta, brain. My take-away was “spend the time necessary (a few extra tenths) to accurately place shots where they will have immediate effect and do not accept stray shots.” My point was that this dude has more training and experience doing this stuff for real than just about anyone and he believes is shot placement so strongly that he bases his course around it.

[ST911]

I see the "spread out your shots" stuff coming from...

Certain legacy instructors and curriculums that won't purge it.
The "first hit wins the fight" idea running amok without context.
Poor shooters, esp LE instructors, that can't deliver any more precision than that. They usually say "combat" a lot.
Much less commonly, to reasonably speed up or challenge capable shooters that insist on ragged holes at unreasonably slow speeds.

Thus, the genius of the B8 and fist-sized visual used by so many. And Tom's "quickly-carefully-precisely" explanation.

[Trooper224]

Diligentia, Vis, Celeritas : accuracy, power, speed.

Training and opinions always run in cycles, wherein one arm of the trifecta seems to get more emphasis than the others. Anyone who's the real deal will tell you a balance of the three is essential. If anything else comes out of their pie hole, walk away.

[Tom Givens]

Diligentia, Vis, Celeritas : accuracy, power, speed.

Training and opinions always run in cycles, wherein one arm of the trifecta seems to get more emphasis than the others. Anyone who's the real deal will tell you a balance of the three is essential. If anything else comes out of their pie hole, walk away.

Bingo.

[Moylan]

I'm a brand new member, so I'm a little worried that people will jump to the conclusion that I'm a friend or associate of Rob Pincus who came on here to defend my buddy. I'm not. I've never met or spoken with Pincus, in person or in any other way, and I have no association with any of his businesses or training products. However, I have read a book by Grant Cunningham, who I believe is associated with Combat Focus Shooting. The book is this one here. (Taking the 'no association' thing to its limit: I didn't even buy this book. I borrowed it from the library. )

All that set up is to say this: Cunningham describes a drill called "balance of speed and precision," the point of which is to teach you to shoot faster and make a bigger group--or else to shoot slower and make a smaller group--depending upon the (wait for it) balance of speed and precision you're showing. So, suppose you're shooting at an area target of 4x6 inches. You're at 5 yards, and you put a group on that index card that measures less than 2". This would be a sign that you need to speed up. The target is 4x6, not 2x2, and if you're shooting an unnecessarily small group, that means you're shooting much slower than you need to. So speed up and make good hits, but make those hits within your 4x6 zone, not within a tiny sub-zone. Flip side, if you're shooting 8x8, then this drill will tell you to slow down and make more precise shots.

In other words, the whole point of the drill is to try to teach you to pursue the proper balance of speed and precision, based on the situation you find yourself in.

Needless to say, I have no idea what Rob Pincus was trying to convey when he told the OP to speed up and shoot bigger groups. But to me, it sounded like maybe what he was getting at was something like what I described above. And that doesn't sound like it necessarily conflicts at all with what some of the recent posters in this thread have been advocating.