When is “missing,” not “missing” a target?

[JCN]

This has come up before regarding the difference between training, drilling and self defense use.

It’s also one of the criticisms (both ways) between USPSA (hosers) and self defense practitioners.

When I work with military / LEO to help training, it’s a mental block that has caused some plateau and stagnation in skill progression.


This is my training philosophy, YMMV. It has worked pretty well for me and is based on best practice learning paradigms in other sports and technical fields.

It has some tenets you have to accept:

1. Your skill is your skill at that time.
2. Your performance degrades with cognitive overload.
3. Long term improvement in skill is the goal so when you’re “tested” you have the best chance you can have.


Draws, trigger press, index work and most transition work are best done dry.


The main goal of live fire is training and coordinating vision to trigger press under recoil.

“Seeing what you need to see… faster.”



In practice, hitting a target doesn’t matter. That’s not the point of it.

If at 7 yards I have an 8” spread at 0.18 splits, that’s good. But if I only train to make all my hits in the -0…

I never improve. It doesn’t give me extra feedback needed to make that 8” into a 7” or 6” group.

So having a secondary feedback device like an X ring that is a “no penalty miss” but aids in training as a trackable and visual metric of improvement. I’ll usually use a 2” paster or something ridiculously impossible to do consistently at that speed.

IMO, you need the “no penalty miss” in order to keep from slowing down and turning it into a completely different drill.

The way to improve your visual tracking at speed is to keep the speed and get good feedback.

IMO that’s why the Bakersfield semi hit factor scored drill was so effective at training man killers. It was a low penalty near miss. Same with USPSA.

Which is why IDPA shooters often stagnate. Because a “miss” is so penal, they cone down to a 3” target radius AND sloooooow down in order to hit it.

And consequently they don’t know how their vision and speed scales at distances and different pace.

Once you know your vision scaling performance you can “choose” the pace for the situation and if you need more margin to “not miss” you can do that.

“How I know what I know.”









These are tests where I go at “won’t miss” pace.

But that’s not how I train to get to that point.

That’s a very important distinction to make.

In practice, are you training or are you testing?

I know people, especially LEO and Mil hate to miss, even in practice.

But then mentally put an X ring equivalent for training and keep the speed.

[Totem Polar]

“Aim small, miss small?”

[JCN]

“Aim small, miss small?”

The key here is not to slow down for it, though.

The time parameter with vision is what people often totally dismiss.

Because most people aim small but then slow down and never improve their vision to trigger coordination.

Working Garcia dots is way more useful for improvement than untimed dot torture.

[vcdgrips]

“When I work with military / LEO to help training”

JCN-Since you mentioned this, tell us more please.

[JCN]

I guess an analogy is the flagstick and green in golf.

You don’t rate yourself on how many times you failed to make a hole in one, despite aiming for the flagstick.

You judge the shot based on margin from the aim point.

At farther distances, you’ll accept more “deviation” as still a good shot (analogous to faster split).

Mechanical context matters.

Hitting a green with a wedge isn’t the same level of difficulty as hitting it with a 4 iron.

Same thing with hitting a 2” target at 7 yards at a 0.50 split cadence compared to a 0.22 second cadence.

[JCN]

“When I work with military / LEO to help training”

JCN-Since you mentioned this, tell us more please.

I’ve mentioned it before. I’ll do anything to help anyone LEO or MIL get better if they want my help. I have police memorial fund license plates and try and show support in real life whenever I can.

Here are just a couple of the threads that people have posted on results.

This commitment pre-dates my time on PF.

https://www.glocktalk.com/threads/jc...hread.1875458/

Trench Sweeper is LEO and works in a correctional facility.

This is a recent thread posted by Jenks.

He’s LEO. I would love it if you would read the thread with an open mind, it has some good proof of concept.

https://pistol-forum.com/showthread....lding-With-JCN

I have a former platoon leader and another active LEO that I’m working with currently, but I generally don’t identify things unless they do. I do it for my commitment to public safety and because I like them.

To a man, the inability to divorce “missing” in practice has defined and framed most of what we do.

[JCN]

Chuck Pressburg basically describes a similar thing in his description of “wobble zone.”

This is just “wobble zone at speed.”

[bofe954]

Seems to be what Steve Anderson teaches, you can work speed, or you can work accuracy, you can't really work both at the same time.

[JCN]

Seems to be what Steve Anderson teaches, you can work speed, or you can work accuracy, you can't really work both at the same time.

I think the qualification here is that you can work accuracy AT speed.

Some people take it to mean that you can’t work accuracy going fast.

You just can’t work improving accuracy and improving speed at the same time.

You absolutely can work on accuracy at a fast speed (which is kind of the point).

[jellydonut]

What is the "Bakersfield drill"? No google results.