Target Focused Shooting

[GJM]

JJ told me, that one year he practiced with Eric Grauffel before the world shoot. He couldn't shoot a split faster than .24. He finished second that year.

Great shooters don't talk about fast splits.

[JCN]

JJ and Grauffel routinely rip sub 13s on appropriate targets.

Splits are meaningless without the mechanical and target context.

In competition, fast splits rarely come up. But it is extremely clear that the underlying mechanics are there for the top people.

And relevant to this discussion, we are talking about the scaled mechanics…

To deny the underlying recoil control and visual tracking difference is to fail to understand the mechanics that underlie it.

That’s really the crux of the discussion. What’s the scaled baseline: a 0.25 split for regular LEO isn’t the same thing as a 0.25 split of someone already accurate at 0.13s.

[LukeNCMX]

For that particular aspect, the first question is not what's the best process but what's the adequate skill set. Yours truly didn't know much about competition, Stoeger, practical shooting style training while scoring 106 at the Rogers school, light pin at Gabe's class, and 5.6 at Ernest's FAST, shooting pistols that I EDC'd. Solely training with the "defensive" type instructors at that time. While hardly impressive in the web-posting department, I'd think that those metrics indicated a level adequate for a defensive gun use.

I probably should have said institutional instructors. Most of these guys are subscribers to practical shooting training methods. The marketing of defensive or competitive or CCW or EDC or whatever is separate from the process of going from unskilled to skilled. I'd say the big difference between the two camps is metrics, whatever they may be, should be peripheral to the goal of doing good training consistently: always attacking the lowest hanging skill fruit through awareness, then skill isolation, then repetition.

I think a lot of this discussion has gotten into the weeds and off track.

We have already had a P-F discussion on this topic awhile back.

Somebody please correct me if I am wrong, in the topic the OP was referencing the discussion was about vision and training. I am paraphrasing, but correctly training your vision and pushing yourself past pre conceived artificial limits opens one to a higher performance envelope. Pranka also said that an engagement does not resemble shooting a match. But there is a lot more control and the shooting part runs in the background since it has been developed to a high level.

This is very similar to the discussion awhile back about if you can shoot .15-.17 splits with high accountability then when you shoot .25-.30 everything is going to be a lot slower and controlled. That is kinda the gist of it.

Again someone please correct me if I am wrong but I don’t think some people have listened to the referenced discussion.

To the OP, I think you are thinking about this correctly about trying and practice all of those different aspects. The more exposure and self discovery of some of these concepts the better IMO.

Agreed, thanks.

JJ and Grauffel routinely rip sub 13s on appropriate targets.

Splits are meaningless without the mechanical and target context.

In competition, fast splits rarely come up. But it is extremely clear that the underlying mechanics are there for the top people.

And relevant to this discussion, we are talking about the scaled mechanics…

To deny the underlying recoil control and visual tracking difference is to fail to understand the mechanics that underlie it.

That’s really the crux of the discussion. What’s the scaled baseline: a 0.25 split for regular LEO isn’t the same thing as a 0.25 split of someone already accurate at 0.13s.

This this this. Most people might get more benefit from focusing on something other than splits but to dismiss the mechanics/vision that allow good splits is just wrong. Your competition/opponent will exploit whatever advantage you grant them and eventually if you practice consistently and correctly long enough this will be the spot where you should spend time getting better.

[El Cid]

Another interesting data point on reacting to a "stop" signal.

Stage 17 from production nationals in 2022 was a 8 second PAR time stage. A significant number of the production shooters in the match could not finish within the PAR time, so they left targets and shots unfired. Anything over .3 seconds past the PAR time resulted in a procedural penalty. If you scroll down the results (filter by production so we're only looking at pistol shooters) and compare the "NPM" (Non Penalty Mike) column with the "Proc" (Procedural Penalty) column, you'll see how many shooters did not finish the stage, therefore were scored non penalty misses and how many of those incurred a procedural penalty for firing more than .3 seconds after the timer beep.

https://practiscore.com/results/new/184732?q_result=17

90 out of 107 pistol shooters couldn't finish the stage and had to stop at the par time. 4 of those 90 didn't react fast enough to the beep and fired at least 1 extra shot past the .3 seconds. We can break it down even further by classification: not a single GM or M shooter, the shooters with the fastest average split times, fired a shot over the time limit. I would argue that setting an arbitrary, "don't shoot faster than .25 splits because you won't be able to stop shooting," shouldn't be equally applied across all skill levels, and that shooters who can shoot much faster than that, can also stop the shooting much faster.

Again though, we are debating a point that has no legal basis in a real world shooting. If you had the legal justification to engage someone with deadly force, an extra round on the back end that comes out at .25 seconds after they are dropping a weapon or falling to the ground isn't going to turn a legally justified shoot into an unjustified one.

That’s a very interesting data point. As most are aware LEO’s (like most shooters) come in a wide range of ability. As instructors we are too often forced to dumb things down to the lowest performers. If I was king of all the agencies the FI’s would schedule shooters for range days rather than let them sign up when they want. We would do that based on ability so the better shooters aren’t ignored or unable to do more advanced drills because Barney Fife is on the line. But since admin types are usually on the poor side of shooting ability that won’t fly. Can’t hurt people’s feelings and all that.

As for legal consequences, I fear that has changed since the “summer of love” and all that nonsense. Look at Officer McBride’s shooting. I view her performance as exceptional and find no flaws with it. Bad guy with the knife was trying to get back up, but LAPD threw her under the bus for the last pair of shots. I’m 100% convinced it was for political and racial crap, but they still did it. That tells me if there’s video of an OIS and the LEO doesn’t stop right away when the threat stops, there likely will be legal issues. Well unless the bad guy is white. We’ve all seen cops indicted for lawful uses of force the last couple years. It’s wrong - but it’s happening.