Hammer Pair Help

[dogcaller]

I just personally have a rule for myself where I will see a sight picture for every shot, I have to justify every shot and have to be able to stop shooting when suspect is down. I have never personally worried about splits.

I don't think my mindset is by any means the best way or the only way, it's just my personal philosophy because I don't want to shoot where suspect was when he's now dropped and now I have rounds go into never never land.

I completely understand that, and I don’t really disagree…really just thinking out loud a bit. I’m not a particularly skilled shooter compared to many on here. I think of the splits in relation to my mechanics and how well I’m managing recoil and rhythm.

[PNWTO]

I just personally have a rule for myself where I will see a sight picture for every shot, I have to justify every shot and have to be able to stop shooting when suspect is down. I have never personally worried about splits.

I don't think my mindset is by any means the best way or the only way, it's just my personal philosophy because I don't want to shoot where suspect was when he's now dropped and now I have rounds go into never never land.

This kind of goes along with your approach, and the scenario that started the thread this quote is from is a similar concern. Although that discussion was in the Mindset forum, so this may be off the fairway for a marksmanship discussion. I will say that I have found the predictive, OO of OODA, to be much easier (perhaps faster) with a target focus but it took some effort to re-program.

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I just want to try to clarify some things, so what we teach doesn't get to twisted up. Wayne and I teach to a goal of 100% guaranteed hits-period. We also preach "Being right". What this translates to is that you will likely have to slow down a little and do an exceptional job of being right before you start shooting. This means that you will have to stay in the "evaluation" phase as long as possible, AND once you start shooting you have to be continually assessing what is is going on so you know when to stop. If you are moving too fast (outrunning your headlights) through both evaluation and assessment, then you are opening yourself up to some huge issues FOR THOSE WORKING UNDER THE CONSTRAINTS OF THE U.S. LAWS ON U.S. SOIL (just so we are clear....killing on a battlefield has different standards). This falls under the premise we teach that all the legs of the Combat Triad must be dealt with equally for success. The "marksmanship" leg is usually the easiest part taken on its own. What is hard for most people is working the marksmanship in with everything else as all that evaluation, assessment, maintenance of situational awareness, and other factors stacked on top of that marksmanship problem in a chaotic situation is the hard part and where the wheels tend to fall off the bus when it gets driven too fast. You can only do so many tasks at once as you are stacking them.

"Sight Liftoff" "Trigger reset", and other things we do on the range, are part of the "learning to shoot" and the confirmation of what we are doing in training to ensure we are working correctly. You should not see sight lift off or feel your reset in an actual shooting. You have FAR bigger priorities at that point for your eyes and fingers to be imparting information to your brain on. What sight lift off and trigger reset does is train your brain to do it right without input on the day. This brain training is why Wayne and I don't do a ton of work at the ragged edge of performance. We want to spend a majority of our time with our students held to a 100% standard of hits in a fist size group. That is the standard that "Chaos" will hold you to as well as the public, the courts, and Monday Morning quarterbacks in every corner of the media and the internet. It's not really realistic for most people, but we are not trying to meet a most people standard. We would prefer to see our students never take second place in a gunfight, and we don't want to see them in any court either. We strive to give them the tools to work at that 100% standard and then hope that they can either never have to use it and if they do, be both right and highly successful. Basically, when your brain is working on the situation we want it to already be preprogramed to handle the shooting problem at a realistic pace FOR 100% hits. We want our people to absolutely dominate both the shooting part and the decision making portion. Not "survive", not "do okay under the circumstances", or have it come down to a battle of "experts" in court as to if you are going to prison or not. Nope, we strive for total domination and a complete (as in-the whole thing) victory.

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[David S.]

I don’t remember how the PSTG guys define their confirmation levels.

For me, as a highish C class shooter, in both Predictive and Reactive shooting (as demonstrated in the the first couple drills of Ben Stoeger‘s class video in the other thread), the shoot/no-shoot assessment and decision is already made. That allows me to reliably shoot sub 0.2s splits Predictively and 0.25-0.3s Reactively out to something like 7 yards.

Best I can tell now, making an individual decision (as described by DB’s assessment speed) for each shot is going to take at least 0.4s on the square range. Because any real encounter is going to be a novel experience for me, evaluate/decide phase of SEE/OODA loop will take longer, so no doubt that shot split will be closer to 1.0s or more. That seems pretty common in the more assessment drills that DB runs in his classes.

[TGS]

The USMC defines a hammered pair as you described, @Danko...a single sight picture resulting in two shots. By USMC definition, a sight picture for each shot is a controlled pair.

So, your definition is correct regardless of whatever our thoughts are about the efficacy/soundness of the concept.

It is a concept that is rooted in some particularly outdated theory...that being you only need to shoot someone twice instead of the modern standard of shooting until the threat is eliminated. In addition, it is part of a program that is aimed at training up large groups of people in an efficient manner...most of whom are carrying the pistol as a secondary weapon.

For someone who is going to dedicate extra effort on their own time/dime, you can pretty much move past those simple definitions which, as concepts, are fairly limiting towards progression. As a basic training goal, you should strive to establish a sight picture for each shot, and work on increasing your ability to track your sights thoughout the recoil stroke. As you progress in learning your capabilities and limitations, you will pick up on a sliding scale where you, as an individual, will be able to execute a given shot using less refined sight pictures as appropriate.

[Danko]

TGS, thank you for your input. I recall hearing LEOs in the 80-90s were trained to fire hammers on perps because their 9mms weren't very effective at stopping people. I didn't begin shooting pistols until 2021, so I didn't know anything about shooting until recently. I like your shooting philosophy, it seems sound and practical to me.

[Danko]

Thank you to all who responded to my how to shoot hammer pairs thread. I now have enough knowledge to begin experimenting with speeding up my shooting.

For those who asked or wonder, I do the bulk of my shooting with a hard front sight focus, one round at a time, shooting for maximum accuracy. I haven't yet tried to advance my rate of fire as I don't yet own a shot timer, but intend to buy one soon. I live in Michigan where the weather won't break for the better until April. I just bought a case of 124gr fmj for my 9mm so I'm ready to get to an outdoor range and employ my newly acquired knowledge. There are several shooting techniques I need to work on.

[MVS]

Thank you to all who responded to my how to shoot hammer pairs thread. I now have enough knowledge to begin experimenting with speeding up my shooting.

For those who asked or wonder, I do the bulk of my shooting with a hard front sight focus, one round at a time, shooting for maximum accuracy. I haven't yet tried to advance my rate of fire as I don't yet own a shot timer, but intend to buy one soon. I live in Michigan where the weather won't break for the better until April. I just bought a case of 124gr fmj for my 9mm so I'm ready to get to an outdoor range and employ my newly acquired knowledge. There are several shooting techniques I need to work on.

Weather is no excuse, I have been shooting all winter. Of course that may be because I have to or I would be really bad. What part of the state are you in? Do you shoot competition?

[Danko]

Hey MVS, I live very near Saginaw. It's 28-30 degrees right now. The outdoor range I shoot at isn't plowed during winter, so I can't even get in. No, I haven't done any competing, but I know it's fun as hell. There's an IDPA group about 25 miles from me and I shot indoor practice with them 5-6 times. I take it you shoot outdoors because you're a competitive shoot?

[MVS]

Hey MVS, I live very near Saginaw. It's 28-30 degrees right now. The outdoor range I shoot at isn't plowed during winter, so I can't even get in. No, I haven't done any competing, but I know it's fun as hell. There's an IDPA group about 25 miles from me and I shot indoor practice with them 5-6 times. I take it you shoot outdoors because you're a competitive shoot?

You are on the other side of the state from me. I was hoping if you were close we could meet up and practice. I do compete though it isn't my main focus, I just find it has helped me to become a better shooter. Lucky for me I live about 4 minutes away from the range and I just bundle up and go. I do miss if it is in the teens and windy, but I tend to make it once a week during the winter. A lot of dry practice of course. No indoor ranges near me or I would do that.

[41magfan]

Back in the day when I had interest in this sort of thing, I found the Hammer (one sight picture - two shots - one target) to be a rapidly diminishing skill if I didn't spend a fair amount of time working on it. It's also worth noting that I personally could not get the skill (once mastered) to reliably translate from gun to gun. The variables inherent to the various trigger actions (DA/SA, Striker Fired, SA, DAO) made the practice a hit-or-miss preposition more times than not.

Back when I spent some time shooting the 1911 (.45 Auto) exclusively, I could hammer back to 7 yards or so and even did fairly well doing "Split Hammers", i.e. one sight picture - two shots - on two different targets. My skill with Split Hammers was limited to just a yard or so of target separation, but I did use it to good effect to win the Saturday morning Shoot-Off in my Gunsite 250 Class.

I'm rather ambivalent about such skills having any value in a real world application and feel the time training and shooting should be spent doing more important things.

That's just one man's opinion, obviously.

ETA: FWIW, I considered an acceptable Hammer/Split Hammer to be A-Zone hits .... not just scorable hits on target.