Things more important than a sub-second draw....

[Clusterfrack]

I've come back to this thread a few times mentally, trying to figure out what I think about the questions raised. Here's what I have:

Podcasters and bloggers who post clickbait titles like "Aiming is useless", "You're doing it wrong", or even "Things more important than a sub second draw" shouldn't be surprised or get butthurt when people challenge the conclusion or the premise. After all, don't we want to think critically about the really important things in our lives? Even if it's wisdom from a world class SME, I would hope that critical thinking is encouraged. That's how we arrive at a better understanding of a nuanced question.

Sub-second draws: I agree with @jlw and Bryan Eastridge. There are so many more important things than a sub-second draw. And, trying to achieve a super fast draw before the rest of one's skill has developed sufficiently is counterproductive. Spastic, tense draws (even if they are fast) are not helpful to fast, accurate practical shooting.

However I also agree with @JCN that reliable, relaxed sub-second draws are often correlated with other high level skills. I think this part has been a valuable discussion.

But what should someone with a 1.5s draw do if they want to improve? I think that practicing a broad set of handgun skills is the best approach. Focussing on speeding up the draw might occupy 10% of training time at most.

[olstyn]

It’s usually the B class tactical guys that hose past their ability and vision.

Hard agree, and it applies to C and D class as well. There's some dude (unsure of his classification, but it can't be high) who's been showing up at the same matches as me lately who is very clearly shooting to cadence rather than vision, because his splits on any given target sound super fast, and his total times on stages are usually quite a bit lower than mine, but when we go forward to score, man are his hits unpredictable. I've never seen so many deltas and mikes. He's apparently happy and having fun, so I guess that's fine for him in that context, but I really hope he wouldn't shoot that way if it was "for real." (Well aware of the "rise to the situation/fall to the level of training" saying, and it very probably applies to him, so mostly I hope I'm nowhere near when/if he ever gets into a real life gunfight.)

[JCN]

But what should someone with a 1.5s draw do if they want to improve? I think that practicing a broad set of handgun skills is the best approach. Focussing on speeding up the draw might occupy 10% of training time at most.

The question is: improve on what and in what context, though.

I’d say if someone has a 1.5s draw the first step is to break down that draw and figure out where the deficiency is.

Someone with fast hands but poor index might need a dual purpose draw and transition drill.

Someone with slow hands but good index might need speed drills. That’s what we did with @Moylan and within two weeks he was down to a 1 second draw with just 20 min a day.

These are two screen caps from the book. Historically they describe me.





Some of the most important defensive skills aren’t necessarily class taught and aren’t necessarily defensive specific.

Notice how some of this mindset is achieved by competition and pursuit of skills.

As an aside, I did volunteer (but haven’t done it yet because COVID restrictions) to help be the “bad guy” in LEO shoot house training. I figured it’d be a good way for myself and them to get some training we couldn’t get otherwise.



In the book they talk about how important automaticity is, so I thought the goal would be to develop those skills. I guess I’m biased because I don’t feel like it took much training at all to develop to that level but I get that it’s an opportunity cost for some. I gave up watching television to dry fire and that was a welcome trade off.

Knowing from my own life, being well trained breeds confidence and improves performance under stress so I like to be over rather than under trained in general.

[mmc45414]

3-gunners are almost all hosers who spray bullets everywhere and rack up a bunch of penalties.

There are so many more important things than a sub-second draw. And, trying to achieve a super fast draw before the rest of one's skill has developed sufficiently is counterproductive.

Since ammo is in short supply the club I have been dabbling with 3gun at has moved to more challenging arrays instead of high round count hosing. Some of those targets are pretty small. And since resetting is probably faster than scoring and taping, more emphasis on KDs than paper. So at least when ya score a Mike ya know you got a Mike...

And many of the KD targets are smaller than, or equivalent to, an Alpha (like those little rectangles).

But many/most of these stages are long, and I do not see the point of running rigs you need to worry about sweeping your pistol out of for a DQ in order to save a few tenths.

[Ed L]

Hey BBI, what about that sticky we were discussing on the Staff subforum on wins and losses? Not asking you to summarize your book chapter—just a few tips for forum members.

Shit, I totally forgot. Yeah, I can do that. Probably next week.

I know of several forum members who would kick forward some cash or spare ammo if it helped to get it done.

[Jared]

Let’s face it, if you asked each person privately, they would all prefer to have better technical skills AND better tactical skills. Human nature being what it is, people tend to prioritize what they have, and the technical guys typically think technical skills are more important and the tactical guys think knowledge and mindset trumps technical skills. Of course we all know that winning a confrontation takes some amount of technical skills, some amount of tactical knowledge, and some amount of luck.

Jeff Cooper talked a lot about mindset, and a big part of mindset is being confident in your skills. Thinking that you have deficient technical or tactical skills isn’t going to help your mindset, so as humans we want to believe that what we have will prevail.

This argument is not winnable, and no amount of videos, appeals to authority or statistics is going to change anyone’s mind.

I regret that I have but one like to give for this. Especially considering how many times this debate has been had on this forum.

I don’t have a day one plank as one of the 2011 members, but I’ve been here around 9.5 years and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen this thread happen. The people debating the points may change, but it’s almost the exact same set of points repeated each time.

I know where I stand on the whole thing. I’ve also pretty much decided to keep my nose out of this one as:

1, I am not a high level competitor and never was. There was a time when I loved USPSA and it was one of the most important things to me. I burned out on it, went back to a more casual shooting experience, and am happy with that choice.

2: I’ve never been in LE or .mil service. I’ve no real frame of reference to comment on those things, other than to try to listen and apply what I hear/read/see spoken of by those that do live that life. I find their experiences and thoughts valuable for someone like me who merely wants to do all I can to keep myself and my family safe (and there’s a shit load of things that go into keeping the family and myself safe that doesn’t involve any of the “CCW lifestyle” stuff that makes for a great PF thread).

[Erick Gelhaus]

In the book they talk about how important automaticity is, so I thought the goal would be to develop those skills. I guess I’m biased because I don’t feel like it took much training at all to develop to that level but I get that it’s an opportunity cost for some. I gave up watching television to dry fire and that was a welcome trade off.

I wonder what the draw speed is of the guy who put together that chart?

[Hot Sauce]

Let’s face it, if you asked each person privately, they would all prefer to have better technical skills AND better tactical skills. Human nature being what it is, people tend to prioritize what they have, and the technical guys typically think technical skills are more important and the tactical guys think knowledge and mindset trumps technical skills. Of course we all know that winning a confrontation takes some amount of technical skills, some amount of tactical knowledge, and some amount of luck.

Jeff Cooper talked a lot about mindset, and a big part of mindset is being confident in your skills. Thinking that you have deficient technical or tactical skills isn’t going to help your mindset, so as humans we want to believe that what we have will prevail.

This argument is not winnable, and no amount of videos, appeals to authority or statistics is going to change anyone’s mind.

All of the above are astute observations.

One distinction that I see, however, is that while technical skills do not necessarily have a linear correlation with how someone would perform in an armed confrontation, at least technical skills are relatively easy to measure. You can test, add pressure, use a timer, etc. We aren't measuring the exact type of performance that would happen in a real armed confrontation, but we are measuring something related to it and using it as a proxy to derive a benchmark.

While areas such as mindset are undoubtedly important, testing the ideas is a lot harder. There's a certain subset of people that irrespective of their study of mindset, their wheels will still fall off in a real situation. And the inability for most civvies to pressure test their mindset is what draws a lot more unfalsifiable woo-woo bullshit to this arena (not on PF, in the gun community in general). I say that as someone who is more timmie than gamer.

[Mr_White]

I wonder what the draw speed is of the guy who put together that chart?

"The Chart", in that form, started with something from a training outfit called Midwest Marksman, and was debated/discussed/a lot added to it here on PF, and John Hearne's automaticity part got on it too. There are a lot of people involved in its creation, including some I don't even know.

[BehindBlueI's]

I don’t have a day one plank as one of the 2011 members, but I’ve been here around 9.5 years and I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen this thread happen. The people debating the points may change, but it’s almost the exact same set of points repeated each time.

I had a similar discussion with @Mas once about magazine articles and I took your side of the argument. He pointed out that while it's old hat to *us* there's a steady supply of neophytes who it's all new for. I had not considered it from that viewpoint (and I would add he had real numbers for how many people buy their first gun each month, etc.) It's relatively seldom something actually "new" comes out, and we're going to revisit the same topics with new members. Else we might as well just archive the technical forums.