Tactical Turtle

[UNM1136]

Is this more of a natural threat reaction?

If so, is it something to try and overcome or work with it?

I was told about the benefits of this position about 20+ years ago by my martial arts instructor. She knew body mechanics, and was a shooter, but she didn't change me. She had multiple trips to Gunsite with Pat Rogers and Chirs Dwiggins teaching, and I bet she didn't do that there....I had just graduated an academy and was shooting Weaver by mandate and was coming back around to modified Iso. At the time FoF training was still not really new, but not really available, if only due to budgetary priorities. I worked with SWAT and Canine for years and even their basic schools with scenario training did not use Sims, or FoF, or do any real stress inoculation.

Fast forward to a couple of years ago, where FoF has become much more accessible and commonplace. I teach or take FoF/Sim classes at least once a year, and normally multiple classes. I took a Tac Med class with a retired SGM from SGM McPhee's former organization, and during a debrief, he told me that I turtled. He also told me that it wasn't a big deal, because when rounds start coming at you a natural instinct is "to get small, quick". He determined by watching me that my head was still mobile enough to scan and assess (most scenarios for the course had a couple of bad guys and several innocents), and address multiple targets (meaning my upper body mobility was good), and my hard break was in deed a hard break, so I had a view of my environment and was making decisions rather than locking in on one thing out of stress as I cycled through the potential threats in the evo. So I started paying attention, and when doing Sim runs, the higher the pucker factor of the scenario, the more I turtle, but I stay mobile, stay aware, and get my hits.

I do not train people to turtle. I don't like that I turtle, and when on a square range I do everything I can not to. But it is part of my body's stress response, and I am not sure that fighting it is the right thing to do. Maybe HCM's post attributing Jerry M on keeping your face flat is the key. Doing some dry draws here in the office have my gun coming up to eye level, but my shoulders are hunched (turtled) as my body develops a slight forward cant to get my weight forward on my feet and my shoulders slightly in front of my hips. (doing decreasing par time drills). My chin is not in, and I would describe it more as a goose neck than a turtle neck. I am thinking my targeting pod is flat...Maybe I will try to induce more stress on a square range and see where a timer puts me. It could well be that this response is slowing me down enough that competing in guns sports may take a bunch of deprogramming, or it may be slowing me down enough to accurately assess my shoots from no shoots before taking a decision to press the trigger, or it could be both.

I am pretty sure that I am far from Ideal, but things seem to be working for me now.

pat

[fixer]

Jerry M convinced me the turtle response is a net disadvantage in shooting accurately and quickly. I consciously try not to do this.

Moving your head at same time moving the pistol and sights around adds a complexity into process of getting sights and eyes aligned on target.

[txdpd]

Do they shoot better in this stance than another?

From a "tactical" standpoint that's a good demonstration of how the turtle greatly limits field of view. He can only turn his head about 30 degrees before he has to break his head from the firing position to look the side. That’s a loss of 120 degrees of the field of vision in the firing position. Identifying targets outside the field vision will require lifting the head. If aiming is essentially three points of alignment: head, firearm, and target, broad transitions between targets will introduce the head as another point that has to move to get into alignment.

I think a lot of people are going to gravitate towards the turtle, due to poor posture and over active upper traps. Most people's lower traps don't have the strength to hold the traps in a depressed position and the upper traps will pull the scapula into a elevated position. It's another manifestation of too much sitting and screen time.



Here's a hollow body plank that the turtle looks suspiciously like. That style of plank is popular in gymnastics to the develop the core strength to get the pelvis into a posterior tilt and the spine out of natural alignment and stacked to do handstands with less effort. That shoulder and scapular positioning takes the body out of stable position, by taking the posterior chain in the upper body and anterior chains in the lower body out of commission, and forces the abs and glutes to do all the work. I don't particularly care what people do, but mimicking the body position of a movement that's deliberately unstable is not good for stability.

[Yung]

For those who haven't seen it, here is the first in a brief series of highlights from attending Mr. White's class in January 2019, recorded by Mr. Correia and crew. He addresses some portions of stance relevant to this thread. About 5:00 to 6:42.



Here is a previous thread on turtling with Mr. Giddings.

https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....actical-Turtle

[Trooper224]

Here is a previous thread on turtling with Mr. Giddings.

https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....actical-Turtle

One important distinction Caleb makes in that thread is the difference between games and gunfights. When your opponent is stationary Captain Cardboard and your priority is landing A's as quickly as possible turtling may be fine. On the other hand, when the object of your focus is moving, hostile and often not alone, then situational awareness becomes a priority. (not so much when the cardboard badies are laid out in a prescribed stationary fashion and you're able to walk through the course prior to shooting) I'm not bagging on competition or competitors, please don't get that impression, but gun fighting is a far different discipline than gun gaming.

I was big into the turtle thing when I was younger. When my training and experience moved from the static box range, to sim training and the reality of the gun fight I was forced to gradually take stock. The first thing that went was the classic weaver stance, which sucks schweaty ballz for engaging multiple targets and incorporating movement. Great for maximizing stability and printing small groups off hand, not so much for shooting multiple non stationary things fast. Then I adopted the turtle stance. I think we called it an aggressive isosceles back then. Seemed to work okay for getting behind the gun and maximizing recoil control and worked well enough in a shoot house. It was also what a lot of the cool kids were using too and the shooting public is just as susceptible to those as anyone else. Finally, when sim training started to take off and multiple moving aggressors who shot back were thrown into the mix, the turtle went bye bye. Keeping your head hunched down into your shoulders really limits your peripheral vision. I may hose baddie #1 down like John Wick, but I totally missed baddie #2 off to the side. I also found that all that shit went straight out the window during my first altercation, where I wound up down on one knee shooting back over my shoulder, single handed, at a moving target.

Turtling also has the long term side effect of stressing your elbows and shoulders. When you're a twenty five year old snake eater you don't think about those things. When you're fifty and dealing with arthritis and chronic tendonitis it hits home.

[spinmove_]

One important distinction Caleb makes in that thread is the difference between games and gunfights. When your opponent is stationary Captain Cardboard and your priority is landing A's as quickly as possible turtling may be fine. On the other hand, when the object of your focus is moving, hostile and often not alone, then situational awareness becomes a priority. (not so much when the cardboard badies are laid out in a prescribed stationary fashion and you're able to walk through the course prior to shooting) I'm not bagging on competition or competitors, please don't get that impression, but gun fighting is a far different discipline than gun gaming.

I was big into the turtle thing when I was younger. When my training and experience moved from the static box range, to sim training and the reality of the gun fight I was forced to gradually take stock. The first thing that went was the classic weaver stance, which sucks schweaty ballz for engaging multiple targets and incorporating movement. Great for maximizing stability and printing small groups off hand, not so much for shooting multiple non stationary things fast. Then I adopted the turtle stance. I think we called it an aggressive isosceles back then. Seemed to work okay for getting behind the gun and maximizing recoil control and worked well enough in a shoot house. It was also what a lot of the cool kids were using too and the shooting public is just as susceptible to those as anyone else. Finally, when sim training started to take off and multiple moving aggressors who shot back were thrown into the mix, the turtle went bye bye. Keeping your head hunched down into your shoulders really limits your peripheral vision. I may hose baddie #1 down like John Wick, but I totally missed baddie #2 off to the side. I also found that all that shit went straight out the window during my first altercation, where I wound up down on one knee shooting back over my shoulder, single handed, at a moving target.

Turtling also has the long term side effect of stressing your elbows and shoulders. When you're a twenty five year old snake eater you don't think about those things. When you're fifty and dealing with arthritis and chronic tendonitis it hits home.

And in the competition world the people on top don’t turtle either, because it kills your ability to see and transition quickly as well as it’s inefficient to get in and out of just to shoot when it’s far easier to simply bring the gun up to your eyes and just shoot.

[Trooper224]

And in the competition world the people on top don’t turtle either, because it kills your ability to see and transition quickly as well as it’s inefficient to get in and out of just to shoot when it’s far easier to simply bring the gun up to your eyes and just shoot.

Not being a hardcore, or even semi serious competitor anymore, I'll bow to the wisdom of my betters.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

This is just a pet theory of mine, but I generally think that enthusiasm for dogma correlates negatively with true expertise, just because real world situations always end up being a blurry mess which give you conflicting lessons about what to draw from them.

So when anyone advocates for a really specific grip, or stance, or trigger press...I usually become skeptical. I apply this to most forms of expertise, in fact. Anytime someone says "we know this is the way" I wonder how much to trust the lesson. Of course, many of my experiences in life have resulted in skepticism about expert opinion, and the more confidently expressed the opinion, the more I have learned to be wary. Dogma is seductive. Credentials are deceptive. There's a whole lot of people who, on paper, you should listen to, but are just repeating the opinions of their instructors.

Medium-easy to identify a bunch of things that definitely don't work. Much harder to find the one way that will work best. For this reason alone I would be skeptical of anyone saying "but you need to have stance X."

[Redhat]

From a "tactical" standpoint that's a good demonstration of how the turtle greatly limits field of view. He can only turn his head about 30 degrees before he has to break his head from the firing position to look the side. That’s a loss of 120 degrees of the field of vision in the firing position. Identifying targets outside the field vision will require lifting the head. If aiming is essentially three points of alignment: head, firearm, and target, broad transitions between targets will introduce the head as another point that has to move to get into alignment...

So is tunnel vision no longer a "thing" in tactical / defensive shooting?

[BehindBlueI's]

So is tunnel vision no longer a "thing" in tactical / defensive shooting?

I was going to bring up the same thing. Yes, I'll have to break "stance" to look around. I'm probably not actually seeing anything in my peripheral vision anyway during the shooting as my brain isn't processing what it considers extraneous to the threat. I'm sure there are some folks who's stress reaction is greatly reduced and may not have the same limitations I do. I'm 100% sure I "turtled" when it's been for real but I do keep my face up, or flat as it's being called here. I don't know that I could train out of it without a lot of real stress/pain feedback training that I'm pretty unlikely to have ongoing access to. I don't know that it's worth it either way, as I suspect the differences to my personal performance would be fairly negligible. I fully accept I'll never shoot anything approaching GM standards regardless.