(Don't) Slow Down and Get Your Hits

[feudist]

There is one undeniably truth. You can't miss fast enough to win a gunfight!

Respectfully disagree.
But you can hit slow enough to lose.
While missing is unprofessional and suboptimal, and may well carry legal consequences, a gunfight occurs both in physical and psychological space. Simply being shot at transforms it into a significant emotional event. As has been noted time and again the actual shooting problem is trivial in the overwhelming majority of gunfights, it's everything else that exponentiates the difficulty. The reason is the instant realization that there is a non-zero, no do-over chance of death or crippling injury in the next tick of time. The simple act of returning fire wins an inordinate number of fights if you define winning as driving off your opponent and surviving the attack.

Clearly, the optimal solution is to hit first, fast, hard and as many times as it takes...but no more. A nice, tricky balance indeed.
Hence the brilliance and utility of DVC and Comstock scoring for training, and competition for the DVC "no do-over" mindset.

[Hambo]

Respectfully disagree.
But you can hit slow enough to lose.
While missing is unprofessional and suboptimal, and may well carry legal consequences, a gunfight occurs both in physical and psychological space. Simply being shot at transforms it into a significant emotional event. As has been noted time and again the actual shooting problem is trivial in the overwhelming majority of gunfights, it's everything else that exponentiates the difficulty. The reason is the instant realization that there is a non-zero, no do-over chance of death or crippling injury in the next tick of time. The simple act of returning fire wins an inordinate number of fights if you define winning as driving off your opponent and surviving the attack.

Clearly, the optimal solution is to hit first, fast, hard and as many times as it takes...but no more. A nice, tricky balance indeed.
Hence the brilliance and utility of DVC and Comstock scoring for training, and competition for the DVC "no do-over" mindset.

In the context of a gunfight, I'm not sure that shooting too slowly matters, but you can shoot fast enough to get indicted even if you win.

On another note, shooting drills and/or competition without FoF or some stages that makes you do more than burn it down doesn't tell you much about your real world capability. I've seen competent shooters do all kinds of fucked up stuff in FoF. Kyle Lamb always had a complex stage or two in his matches that required thought as much as speed, and some very well known people screwed the pooch to the point of DQ or tanking the match. You need the whole training/practice enchilada.

[LukeNCMX]

Remember that guy Notactravis who was a dryfire ninja and thought he had visual confirmation on targets in dry.

When he eventually went live... he missed everything because he didn't account for his trigger and muzzle wobble. The vision was there-ish... but the mechanics made the vision unfaithful because of added wobble.

I wanted to touch on this also because this is a big one. Lots of folks talk about being "honest" in dry fire which never resonated with me. I think it makes more sense to be realistic with dry fire mechanics. I feel like once you establish your grip with live fire doing something like Doubles then you have to make a continuous effort in dry practice to recreate that grip. For me that is keeping the 100% support hand crush and minimal tension in the firing hand with both wrists still locked. Another Ben Stoeger thing is pulling the trigger dry twice as hard as needed to touch off live rounds. I find this closes the gap as much as possible between dry practice mechanics and live practice mechanics.

Another thing is I feel like the visual confirmation levels are much more of a live practice thing than a dry practice thing. The experience and experimentation that guides your selection of visual confirmation comes completely from live practice. Once you get the experience you can apply it to dry practice but you have to verify it often to make sure you are not taking short cuts to hit a par time.

I think all of this ties in with some of what you said above, particularly when you talk about the concept of “rushing a shot” versus a shot being “too fast.”

Different shots / targets required different levels of attention. The application of Predictive, reactive, or deliberate shooting to a particular target is a balance between target difficulty and the shooters skill level.

Riley Bowman uses a great stop light / driving analogy i.e. predictive = green; reactive = yellow; red = deliberate. You assess the target on the fly like you assess traffic lights as you drive.

IMHO the overall concept in applying performance shooting to fighting is to develop a “surplus of skill” so you can run your 85% “no miss” speed when you need it and still be shooting “sooner” than the opposition.

Agreed. The stop light aiming schemes I believe are the same that Steve Anderson uses but I haven't taken Steve's class.

[JCN]

Another thing is I feel like the visual confirmation levels are much more of a live practice thing than a dry practice thing. The experience and experimentation that guides your selection of visual confirmation comes completely from live practice. Once you get the experience you can apply it to dry practice but you have to verify it often to make sure you are not taking short cuts to hit a par time.

I’m going to disagree with this one as well.

It’s going to again highlight the difference in philosophy between us.

Me: mechanic based and visual confirmed, I get a ton out of dry and don’t need live to confirm what I know is going on with my mechanics. If you take doubles out of it… all first shots off transitions or draws are actually dry fire skills.


Your approach seems more vision based and empiric mechanic tested which has inherent indirectness to it.

I can elaborate further if people care.

But absolutely you can cut wobble off live by good work in dry.

The smaller the wobble, the more vision corresponds to live.

Basically I don’t need to experiment in live to define my wobble because I can see it in dry. It’s subtle but I can see it and correct my mechanics.

[LukeNCMX]

I'm not sure that shooting too slowly matters

I feel like you can never be too fast when the decision to shoot has been made. There is a big difference between executing at the limit of human function and rushing which kills consistency, induces tension and all kinds of other problems.

I like this video as a good example of how good hard skills executed at max speed saved this cops ass



@Clusterfrack mentioned this earlier and I touched on it at the end of the OP but I am not talking at all about the rate of fire. To me good training pushes the limit of physical and mental skills so that like what @HCM says you have the greatest skill buffer to maintain complete control of starting, rate of fire and stopping.

On another note, shooting drills and/or competition without FoF or some stages that makes you do more than burn it down doesn't tell you much about your real world capability.

I'm kinda in the opposite group. I like the challenge of single attempt hit factor stages as the best test of subconscious shooting skills. Drills definitely don't count but that is just skill training in isolation hopefully or a lesser test. I find that FoF rarely has the measurable, repeatable elements that allow you to determine if something works or not. I also find that FoF with sims can't replicate closely enough what it hopes to replicate. Sims can't pass through sheetrock or windows like bullets can and the cost of errors in sims pales in comparison to reality. I'm not against FoF but I think that if your range training skills falls apart in FoF, Then you aren't training your range skills properly or you probably just are not good enough yet.

[HCM]

I wanted to touch on this also because this is a big one. Lots of folks talk about being "honest" in dry fire which never resonated with me. I think it makes more sense to be realistic with dry fire mechanics. I feel like once you establish your grip with live fire doing something like Doubles then you have to make a continuous effort in dry practice to recreate that grip. For me that is keeping the 100% support hand crush and minimal tension in the firing hand with both wrists still locked. Another Ben Stoeger thing is pulling the trigger dry twice as hard as needed to touch off live rounds. I find this closes the gap as much as possible between dry practice mechanics and live practice mechanics.

Another thing is I feel like the visual confirmation levels are much more of a live practice thing than a dry practice thing. The experience and experimentation that guides your selection of visual confirmation comes completely from live practice. Once you get the experience you can apply it to dry practice but you have to verify it often to make sure you are not taking short cuts to hit a par time.



Agreed. The stop light aiming schemes I believe are the same that Steve Anderson uses but I haven't taken Steve's class.

I’m with JCN on the vision thing. You develop vision in dry practice, or even in “just vision” practice picking out spots, focusing, working the visual part of transitions etc. Its definitely not just a live fire thing.

The more I progress the more shooting is reduced to vision and grip.

As far as presenting the gun and acquiring the dot and target, there is a school of thought that everything before and after the trigger press and shot breaking is technically gun handling, not shooting and you definitely build gun handling skills in dry practice.

[LukeNCMX]

mechanic based and visual confirmed, I get a ton out of dry and don’t need live to confirm what I know is going on with my mechanics. If you take doubles out of it… all first shots off transitions or draws are actually dry fire skills.

Mechanic based and visual confirmed, I think I am with you here. I also like the idea that the first shot is a dry skill. When you are not trained up and are out of practice a little do you find the separation between dry and live to grow or stay the same if that makes sense.

But absolutely you can cut wobble off live by good work in dry.

The smaller the wobble, the more vision corresponds to live.

Basically I don’t need to experiment in live to define my wobble because I can see it in dry. It’s subtle but I can see it and correct my mechanics.

Ok interesting. So something I do from time to time is dry Bill Drills to minimize the lack of wobble when moving the trigger cyclic. Is this kinda what you mean or even more subtle movement like arriving onto a target on a transition?

[LukeNCMX]

I’m with JCN on the vision thing. You develop vision in dry practice, or even in “just vision” practice picking out spots, focusing, working the visual part of transitions etc. Its definitely not just a live fire thing.

The more I progress the more shooting is reduced to vision and grip.

As far as presenting the gun and acquiring the dot and target, there is a school of thought that everything before and after the trigger press and shot breaking is technically gun handling, not shooting and you definitely build gun handling skills in dry practice.

Ok I'm getting into the weeds here but I'm with you on vision training but I think of vision training as different than visual confirmation. Visual confirmation is just the trigger press signal when the appropriate sight picture arrives. For me I don't trust my appropriate visual confirmation scheme on a given target until I try it live and see what happens.

[JCN]

Ok I'm getting into the weeds here but I'm with you on vision training but I think of vision training as different than visual confirmation. Visual confirmation is just the trigger press signal when the appropriate sight picture arrives. For me I don't trust my appropriate visual confirmation scheme on a given target until I try it live and see what happens.

Look at what you’re saying. You’re just processing the vision to pull the trigger.

You’re losing over half the benefit of dry training.

I care more about what happens DURING and AFTER the trigger press in dry to train mechanics.

That’s why I don’t have to wonder what my live looks like on single shots.

Paying attention to what the dot does THROUGH the press is how I know my follow through is good and that I would have hit what I was aiming at.

In dry, I’m looking to correct wobbles on the order of 2MOA deviation through the trigger press.

If my dot remains fully within the scoring edges before AND DURING the press I hit the target.

If I give it a 4 MOA border for wobble then I DEFINITELY will hit it.

If I give it a 6 MOA border, then even with a flinch, I’ll still have hit it.

[fastbolt]

Indeed, different folks may use and apply 'fast' and 'speed' differently. However, situational context can matter, too.

For example, does 'running and gunning' for sport and competition necessarily produce the hormonal fear response that may be experienced in a life threatening incident? Does it induce some of the same sensory deficits that may occur in life threatening situations? If someone experiences, the 'freeze' part of the lizard brain's freeze, flight or fight response, their technical skills may not even come into play. Or, not in time, at any rate.

How fast is 'fast enough', anyway? Faster than another competitor? Faster than the previous range outing where someone used a timer to measure themselves? How about faster than an attacker? (Which will vary depending on the 'speed' of the particular attacker?)

Lots of maybe's and a whole lotta "it depends" to be found.

Measuring speed needs context, and an appropriate 'yardstick' for the circumstances.

Going faster than you can do something properly may be more disadvantage than advantage.

What's the value of fast misses?

Accuracy at speed .. for the circumstances, conditions and the individual, using an appropriate yardstick for the situation. It's going to vary, and it's going to be relative.

Personally, after an initial interest in the shot timers we were required to use on our agency range, and at other ranges during classes, I came to put less attention on the timer. Instead, I was more interested looking for the ability to be successful at choosing and using the appropriate skills for the moment ... fast enough to matter for the moment.

If that meant there was a given threshold for measuring 'speed' for some given technique done in a training class, that was fine ... as the cover charge for participation. Like when one of the outside classes I attended tested students for being able to draw and fire from realistic concealment garments using actual plainclothes/UC holsters. They gave students a goal they recommended as an acceptable real-world time limit, and had students work on it during that week as part of all the shooting techniques and tactics. (FWIW, it was 2-handed, 1 accurate hit in smallest scoring zone, from 5yds, while moving offline ... with the goal to consistently do it in 1.5sec or less. Yes, 1-handed is faster, but it was imposed to make students work to achieve a good 2-handed grip, instead of just rushing and making a sloppy 1-handed hip shot while gauging their ability. ) A few of us in the class did it cold the first day, without any time to practice, and almost all of the rest of the cops were able to do it by the end of a week.

Is that 'fast enough'? Dunno. Going to depend on the situation. And that's presuming someone practices to maintain that 'speed', and isn't distracted at the moment when the need for it may actually happen.