Are Classes the Only Way to Become Proficient?

[jlw]

Classes: no.

Coaching: yes.

Classes are typically the most cost efficient way to get coaching.

[Cory]

I think alot of this depends on the definition of proficient, too.

[vcdgrips]

JLW

"Classes: no.

Coaching: yes.

Classes are typically the most cost efficient way to get coaching."


I am so using that phrase going forward.


Pedagogical platinum presented right there!

[Duelist]

This is sort of my wheelhouse, since I’m well over 20k direct contact hours teaching applied psychomotor skills to students. My take: to progress you *need* to be a dedicated autodidact. And, at first, you need guidance as to what progress actually looks like. The ideal mix is solid, intensely focussed bursts of *expert* instruction frontloaded at the beginning, followed by long periods of self-directed work on the concepts, once one knows what the concepts are.


As a P-F relevant hypothetical, I’m trying to imagine any self-directed course of defensive shooting study that can provide, say, the same “paradigm shifting without a clutch” learning experience as one’s first ECQC. Sure, AFTER the first ECQC, if a student wants to grab some training partners and bang it out in a garage a few nights a week from then on out, great, but you have to go through the intellectual, emotional, and synaptic experience gathering phase first.

You have to have a good framework to know how to determine what you don’t know before you can self-teach efficiently. After that, have at it.

JMO.

I was thinking that Totem would have some things to say here.

As a child, I took weekly private music lessons in violin, piano, voice, and French Horn (not all at the same time, but usually two) as well as drove my sister to and sat and watched her very high level piano instruction. This went on from the age of 5 till sometime during my first years of college. I also took occasional lessons in guitar, which today is my primary instrument. I teach guitar and voice as a side, hobby thing, and occasionally play gigs. Very different from Totem, whose whole professional life revolves around recording, performance, and instruction of guitar.

I also spent what seems now an excruciatingly long time - 11 years - instructing in TRADOC. I had a high level of skill going into that job, at doing the job. I developed a high level of skill instructing, not just that job, but in general, including getting my first masters degree in classroom instruction and curriculum development and delivery.

I am usually somewhat impatient when subjected to a class, whether private or part of work, individual or group, that is not run well.

It is important to have quality, effective instruction if you want to develop proficiency efficiently. It is not important to have much instruction if you want to bust dirt clods and cow pies.

Something I took away from one of my few professional lessons in guitar was this: the teacher said, I can tell you and show you a thousand times, but you won’t get any better until you take your guitar in your room, shut the door, and practice it. Play the guitar until your housemates hate it, until you no longer get blisters, and you can play that lick properly without thinking about it, until you can improv a change to it and connect it to the rest of your lick at the front and back end. At some point, every student has to become their own teacher and that is when they will actually develop proficiency - when they practice and critique their own performance, figure out how to do it better, and then do it over and over.

The same thing is true for shooting.

I took a class from Gabe because I wanted to learn to shoot faster - I was and still do think too much about it and slow myself down from my peak possible speed. I learned a lot about shooting faster. I took a class from Cecil because I wanted to know how to fight with a pistol in tight environments better. I learned about shooting from positions and in ways I’d never thought of before.

I didn’t learn marksmanship from either of them. I learned that from an old cop when I was a child, and then applying the lessons in a gravel pit with a Ruger and a pile of bricks of .22.

All learning is a journey, a continuum. A class or private instruction may be a useful positive for someone today. Or not, depending on where they are now and where they want to go.

[Eric_L]

Classes: no.

Coaching: yes.

Classes are typically the most cost efficient way to get coaching.

This is brilliant insight.

I needed some coaching a few years ago. There is a local three gun shooter who is a Master USPSA, international shotgun competitor and very good rifle shooter. I paid him for a few hours. He will give me a few hours whenever I want it. I am fortunate because he is local and he can instruct/coach.

If you have someone close who you can do this with it is great. AND you avoid “that guy”, unless....YOU are “that guy”, in which case you won’t know it anyway. 😀

[RJ]

This thread cheeses me off. Every time I think about adding something, someone posts another good point about training .

Seriously, there are some smart people on this web site. Great discussion so far, and I can't add a lot from my perspective of 31 years developing solutions in the Aerospace training industry.

I think the comments made by @Totem Polar and @Duelist resonate with me the most. Interesting they are both related to music, a field of study that has both cognitive (thinking) and psycomotor (physical/kinesthetic) aspects of learning; not unlike shooting.

So far, I found classes to be a mixed return on investment, measured strictly by the individual attention I got vs. the price paid. Out of the 140 hours or so of logged training I've had over the last seven years, two examples stand out: I took a two day shooting course once from a national instructor with a SF/operator background. What I got was two days of shooting drills monkey see, monkey do, with absolutely no individual feedback on my performance.

In contrast, I spent less than $100 for a couple hours with this dude named Gabe White in Clackamas OR a few years back. Gabe walked me through drills he had on his note cards, providing feedback, filmed me for the session, and then posted the edited video online for my later reference. It's still up on private YT, and I watch it occasionally to remind me how much I suck.

The best value, by far, of any training experience, including both knowledge gained and skills taught, were Rangemaster Combative Pistol I and Gabe's Performance Pistol. I liked Tom's class so much I took it again for the second time last year. The two days I spent with Gabe in class, on the same line as shooters like @Mas and @Kanye Wyoming, had an incredibly high signal to noise ratio.


Last comment: I ran across a related concept recently called Deliberate Practice. This has nothing to do with shooting, but how to practice better, and it seems on topic.

tl;dr: Deliberate Practice is a highly structured form of learning by doing. It includes:

- Define Success and Drill Deliberately.
- Plan, reflect and take notes
- Go slow and practice effectively
- Limit your sessions for focus
- Maximise the efficiency of Practice Time
- Track small intervals of improvement
- Emulate practice, not performance
- Repetition makes perfect
- Routine is everything
- Get a coach

Video:

[GJM]

Of course, there is one thing you can only get in a class, and not thru self study, no matter how disciplined and motivated you are.

[Duelist]

@RJ’s post reminded me of one more thing I was going to say: I coach girls tennis at my school, not because I am awesome at tennis, but because they needed a coach, I felt like getting more involved was a good idea, and I’m experienced enough at teaching stuff and running PT programs when I was in the Army that I figured I couldn’t screw them up more than not having a coach would, and that at the least, we would have some fun.

I took lessons, read books, watched videos, and played as often as I could, and I’ve kept that up, and promoted and encouraged girls tennis at my school. We had 25 girls show up for tryouts last year. I don’t know yet how many we’re going to get this year - COVID has screwed the whole year up - but learning this way, as fast as I can, with focused and deliberate practice and play, has turned me from the equivalent of a dirt clod shooter as a tennis player to a passable developing middle aged player and reasonable new coach.

Online and in-person coaching has sped that process. But it still has taken significant time and effort over the past year and a half to get here, and I’m certainly not done yet.

[JCN]

Last comment: I ran across a related concept recently called Deliberate Practice. This has nothing to do with shooting, but how to practice better, and it seems on topic.

tl;dr: Deliberate Practice is a highly structured form of learning by doing. It includes:

- Define Success and Drill Deliberately.
- Plan, reflect and take notes
- Go slow and practice effectively
- Limit your sessions for focus
- Maximise the efficiency of Practice Time
- Track small intervals of improvement
- Emulate practice, not performance
- Repetition makes perfect
- Routine is everything
- Get a coach

You got it wrong. If you want to learn about how the concept came about, read the book called PEAK.

That’s why someone can hear something and still not improve. Because they don’t understand what they heard. Notice what you heard is about the routine and the slowness, not about pushing the boundaries.

Key points of deliberate practice are:
PUSH your boundaries. Be just outside of your comfort zone.
You are not going for perfect. When you improve, then push the goalposts.
Having a defined goal for the short term is important, but you might have to change the routine to get there.
A coach can get you to a certain point in a defined field, but when you’re pushing the boundaries of the field you have to be your own coach.
Whatever the field, it takes a crap ton of hard work.

[JCN]

Of course, there is one thing you can only get in a class, and not thru self study, no matter how disciplined and motivated you are.

Coronavirus?