Are Classes the Only Way to Become Proficient?

[RJ]

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.

Good post. Reminds me of one more thing I wanted to say: I was a member of our company's Systems Engineering Council for a bit in the 90s. We were in charge of advising (net annual sales at the time: in excess of $10B) across the enterprise on processes for effective training.

Anyway, one of the more effective strategies in creating effective training for a world-wide population of over 100K persons was tutored video. This involved a local class, with a monitor/proctor directing, using a video presentation that could be stopped periodically, and key points reinforced. We used a device called a "Vee See Arr".

Remember this was prior to the development of the internet as it is today. We could be sure of the course content was delivered uniformly, and after vetting the local teams could count on the training being effective. Kinda like Defect Prevention Process, it's a methodology that I think has gotten a bit lost in the transition to the "sit at a computer and take a class" approach that's prevalent these days. People just want their training to be over with and get the check in the box.

OK, rant over.

[Totem Polar]

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.

An ass-kicking and a concussion? I’m pretty certain from personal experience that’s the answer.

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.

Maybe we need to define what we are talking about here. If the discussion is about a philosophy dedicated to carving out a unique niche or role in a field of endeavor—in other words, emotional growth or innovation, then we are probably on the same page. If we are still talking about learning a skill, then pushing boundaries and being outside the comfort zone is how you ingrain mistakes, and suck under pressure.

If you are, say, challenging yourself by signing up for that very first open mic, then cool. If you are leaning a passage from Bach’s Chaconne in d minor, then I’m more with the list Rich posted. Slow and deliberate; allow no shitty input into your synapses. Each rep has to be clean.

Again, I’m not sure I have enough context from a single response to say for sure, but at the moment I strongly disagree with the above post.

JMO, but I’ve got some of the world’s best classical musicians in my corner on this topic.

[Glock26]

If we are still talking about learning a skill, then pushing boundaries and being outside the comfort zone is how you ingrain mistakes, and suck under pressure.

Slow and deliberate; allow no shitty input into your synapses. Each rep has to be clean.

I think this highly depends on how well an individual observes what's effective and what's not. Not every rep has to be clean if one can break down what made a particular rep bad. Slow and deliberate probably leads to proficiency more consistently in the general case, but I firmly believe that pushing boundaries help certain individuals attain proficiency much quicker. It's also quite possible that a bad rep for a very skilled person is better than a clean rep for an average person. The interesting part of practical shooting is the time element. A philosophical question is to ask whether or not a rep in our sport is clean if it wasn't done quick enough. How you answer this question will fundamentally determine how you approach practice towards proficiency.

[Totem Polar]

One can perform a given movement cleanly with incredible speed. The ideas are complimentary, not exclusionary.

[Maple Syrup Actual]

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.

This is a much more technical rendition of what I was about to say. Basically, classes are the only way to learn *some* things. But proficiency is then all about applying them over and over in your own setting.

Most of my shooting skillS were imparted to me by an instructor. Most of my skill LEVEL is derived from the time I spent afterwards, doing that stuff a bunch of times.



And I'd also say that some things you can learn entirely on your own, if you have the personality type. Some people are really good at applying written information to physical space, but I think that's rare. But you can teach yourself some kinds of things, for sure.

But if you want to learn anything that has either a performative or a competitive nature I think you're pretty SOL. There might be a handful of people who could teach themselves public speaking without ever leaving their bedroom, but generally, I'd say forget it. You need the immersion in the specific environment to get that down. Similarly I think you couldn't learn practically anything that's in ECQC, in a classroom by yourself with a book. It's just too dissimilar.

BUT: I think you could learn a lot about the technical shooting game by yourself at home, with massive dryfire routines and eyes-first target transitions and stuff. So you can't learn it all, but there are large subsets of skills you can learn. When I wanted to do a sub-5 FAST, I spent about a day with an app that would give me a par time and a target on the screen and I just focused on getting off those first two shots, dryfire style. Then I worked my reload. The next time out, I ran I think a 4.72, I forget now. But I already knew all the component skills, I just spent a day focusing on execution of each thing, at home, nobody around.


So yeah, I'd argue that you basically need the classes to get the introduction to what you need to be doing, and get the instruction on the technique so you're not practising completely wrong. But that's a small part of mastering the skill, which is mostly done on your own time.

[JCN]

Maybe we need to define what we are talking about here. If the discussion is about a philosophy dedicated to carving out a unique niche or role in a field of endeavor—in other words, emotional growth or innovation, then we are probably on the same page. If we are still talking about learning a skill, then pushing boundaries and being outside the comfort zone is how you ingrain mistakes, and suck under pressure.

If you are, say, challenging yourself by signing up for that very first open mic, then cool. If you are leaning a passage from Bach’s Chaconne in d minor, then I’m more with the list Rich posted. Slow and deliberate; allow no shitty input into your synapses. Each rep has to be clean.

Again, I’m not sure I have enough context from a single response to say for sure, but at the moment I strongly disagree with the above post.

JMO, but I’ve got some of the world’s best classical musicians in my corner on this topic.

It’s actually interesting because the PEAK author actually based a significant amount of his scientific study on students in a world renown music conservatory.

I think we are actually thinking about the same thing. I’m not talking about flailing and flubbing.
For shooting, that’s why As and close Cs. Not hosing half the shots off the paper.

For music, that might be increasing the tempo of the piece until you find the section that you feel you’re having to work harder and lose your “flow” and musicianship and then just isolate that segment and woodshed the technical part until you have the bandwidth to add the flow and elegance.

[Totem Polar]

It’s actually interesting because the PEAK author actually based a significant amount of his scientific study on students in a world renown music conservatory.

I think we are actually thinking about the same thing. I’m not talking about flailing and flubbing.
For shooting, that’s why As and close Cs. Not hosing half the shots off the paper.

For music, that might be increasing the tempo of the piece until you find the section that you feel you’re having to work harder and lose your “flow” and musicianship and then just isolate that segment and woodshed the technical part until you have the bandwidth to add the flow and elegance.

Based on some of your posts on the other thread, I figured this one was worth disecting. We are most likely somewhat apart on semantics, and pretty close on application.

You ever read “the talent code” by Coyle?

https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-G.../dp/055380684X

I’ll grab a copy of “Peak” next time I feel like adding a tip to Bezo’s 14 mil hourly wage.

[NoTacTravis]

If you are, say, challenging yourself by signing up for that very first open mic, then cool. If you are leaning a passage from Bach’s Chaconne in d minor, then I’m more with the list Rich posted. Slow and deliberate; allow no shitty input into your synapses. Each rep has to be clean.

Again, I’m not sure I have enough context from a single response to say for sure, but at the moment I strongly disagree with the above post.

JMO, but I’ve got some of the world’s best classical musicians in my corner on this topic.

Although I appreciate that there are many parallels between improving with a musical instrument and getting better at shooting, and I can't speak to classical music at all... Respectfully I'd venture to say that although some of the best classical musicians may be in your corner on this topic, many of the best shooters in USPSA are in JCN's argument's corner here not yours. From my podcast listening at least.

Stoeger (multi national champion) constantly espouses pushing until the wheels fall off in training then dialing it back a smidge, then pushing until the wheels fall off again as almost the only way to get truly fast. Many podcasts of his talk about that being the preferred way to get you "seeing" fast enough and forcing your visual skills to "catch up".

On Shoot Fast Podcast with Cody Axon and Joel Park, I was recently re-listening to Cody (a top 16 guy) talking to Joel (a high level GM) about how Joel USED to have an attitude of "I'm just going to shoot my sights" and that he never made it out of B class to GM until he changed that attitude in practice and only got truly fast by pushing until the wheels fell off and then pulling back a bit, then pushing again.

I've read and listened to numerous GM's talking about learning to shoot at GM speed first not even hanging the hits on paper, just getting used to the speed and pace. Then hanging hits on paper and gradually pulling the hits from Deltas to Charlies, and finally A's and making the classification. To my understanding, this method is directly at odds with the classical music argument you are espousing but pretty much in line with what I think JCN is getting at.


Two notes here though:
1) I could very well be misinterpreting all the information I'm taking in.
2) Pushing out of a comfort zone (in this context) seems to be not in learning the initial skill but in making it to the next level of skill.

[Totem Polar]

Although I appreciate that there are many parallels between improving with a musical instrument and getting better at shooting, and I can't speak to classical music at all... Respectfully I'd venture to say that although some of the best classical musicians may be in your corner on this topic, many of the best shooters in USPSA are in JCN's argument's corner here not yours. From my podcast listening at least.

Fair point.

And, we might be veering into a discussion on the difference between “practice” and “performance,” and “learning” vs “pressure testing.”

Or, maybe they’re largely different tasks with different levels of cognitive load.

2) Pushing out of a comfort zone (in this context) seems to be not in learning the initial skill but in making it to the next level of skill.

^^^I can totally get behind this idea. This is in total alignment with the idea of practice and practicing for performance being two different processes.

[JCN]

Based on some of your posts on the other thread, I figured this one was worth disecting. We are most likely somewhat apart on semantics, and pretty close on application.

You ever read “the talent code” by Coyle?

https://www.amazon.com/Talent-Code-G.../dp/055380684X

I’ll grab a copy of “Peak” next time I feel like adding a tip to Bezo’s 14 mil hourly wage.

Coyle actually ripped off Anders Ericsson’s premise and kind of got it wrong (per Ericsson).

I like going to the source and Ericsson is the one who had the firsthand knowledge and designed the experiments.