Shooting competition for Defensive Training

[returningliberty]

I would say anyone who thinks competition is Bad Training is just as ridiculous as anyone who says they'll be prepared for a gunfight just because they compete. The operative word here is Fight.

When's the last time you saw two calm, collected dudes duke it out on the street using unarmed combat techniques? I've watched a lot of guys go at it, and swapped a little skin myself, and I have only once Seen it happen the way it should; and only once actually participate in it the way I should.
99 times out of a hundred it looks like two retards just flailing at each other.

Both times were post army. My best friend was prior service, and I saw him stay calmish (tracking) while he proceeded to pound two fine young urban democrats into the ground. Similarly, the time I had to defend myself from an irate person I stayed thinking throughout the fight, employing ground fighting techniques I learned in the right situations.

 

[sraacke]

And without a private range you will be standing in one spot, shooting at a singe target with no stress (even if it is just onlookers and a timer). City folks don't have a chance to shoot while moving any other place that I know of, with more frequency, for under $20. I shoot at two different ranges. Running from stall to stall at either would draw some serious, negative attention.

I agree with all of your points 1-8 and will add most are not drawing from concealment, but the rare chance to shoot while moving makes the list moot for me.

The beauty of gun games and formal training is most neophytes will realize just how much they suck at gun handling. The smart ones then seek out the answers for themselves. The guy who thought he would never spend $400 and up + gear + ammo + time for a formal class might change his mind after shooting a match for $20.

This Xs 100.
I shoot matches to get SOME trigger time which is more than standing in one spot shooting at a bullseye on a wire.
The matches showed me how much skill I lacked and I have started looking for more comprehensive training. I took the Tom Givens class in April. That was enough to show me how much work I have to do. I am currently saving my pennies for a 2 day Combat Focus Shooting class with Bearco in September. I'm going to increase my practice of dry fireing and other weapons handeling at home. I have found that if you make an effort to better yourself there are some out there who will step up and help you any way they can.
I have carried/used guns most of my life. I was hunting before I could drive. My dad was a cop and I used to go shooting with him and his friends. I carried 1911s and M16A2s in the Army and qualified on them as well as several other weapons in my job as a tank crewmember. I POST certified as an auxillary LEO. I had a CHP from the Sheriff then the State after gov Foster signed them into existence. I'm 44 years old and have been shooting most of that time. Yet I have never had any formal training until recently. It was the matches which helped open my eyes to how much I had to learn.

 

[goteron]

I would say anyone who thinks competition is Bad Training is just as ridiculous as anyone who says they'll be prepared for a gunfight just because they compete. The operative word here is Fight.

I think competition "can" be bad training, just as some "tactical" courses "can" be bad training.

I just wanted to make this post as a reminder to myself to be aware of how I am training, evolve my training as required, and keep myself honest.

 

[scooterj]

We keep score at the matches. They are games. As long as you realize that and do not rely on them to save your life, you are already one step ahead of the curve. Use the matches to ID any thing you may need to work on.
I don't think that you will find a nicer bunch of guys to hang out with. Think about it, we are all walking around with guns. Who would be dumb enough to start something. I think it breeds a better culture.

 

[goteron]

We keep score at the matches. They are games. As long as you realize that and do not rely on them to save your life, you are already one step ahead of the curve. Use the matches to ID any thing you may need to work on.
I don't think that you will find a nicer bunch of guys to hang out with. Think about it, we are all walking around with guns. Who would be dumb enough to start something. I think it breeds a better culture.

Agreed. Everyone there is a good dude except there was one guy shooting production M&P... played cards or something...

 

[Jesse Tischauser]

I couldn't disagree with this more. No Human Being I ever met was an instinctual gunfighter. We haven't been doing it look enough or often enough to evolve to do it without thinking. The first time I was in a fire fight I froze in the middle of a danger area and it it was only by Grace and the actions of a switched on Squad Leader that I found my way to cover and began to return fire. Nobody in any gunfight I have ever been in rose to the occassion and excelled. 100% of the time they defaulted to their training. Good habits or scars its what they went to. I could cite historical examples ad nasueam. IF you skip the scan and assess in training you will assuredly skip it in the fight. Ecspecially considering one of the autonomic reactions to stress is hyper focus aka tunnel vision.

I have, because of the nature of the GWOT shot it out with a great deal of motivated but poorly trained individuals. They all behaved roughly the same way and none of it looked like instinctual gunfighting. Instead most looked like startled prey. It's just a cold hard truth I'm afraid. I think competition can be valuable. I incorporate competion elements into my training, but, don't kid yourself it isn't the same as training and in fact if your not careful you can develop some fatal training scars. For instance; not reloading before you leave cover, not transitioninge on an empty long gun, score your targets in-gunfight, and listening for the ping of hits on steel. Competiton Shooting can help develop and enhance Combat Shooting in the same way I believe all Warriors should participate in Combat Sports like Lacrosse and Martial Arts but it wont ,make you a better warrior anymore than a olored JuJitsu Belt will.

First let me thank you for your service! I can't imagine what it must be like in combat. Thankfully I never had to leave the country during my 9 years in the military.

So back on point. If you don't react instinctively to a gun fight and revert to your training I guess being a competitive shooter that is faster with a firearm than 99% of the population is mute? I haven't trained to take cover I just train to shoot fast.

If everyone gets tunnel vision and freezes up at that instant. Do I train to run away? I know i can shoot, reload and move with a gun faster than the vast majority of legal and illegal gun owners. But It would seem that the only real way for an me to train for a defensive situation where I won't have the benefit of having a service member or LEo that has experience gun fighting nearby to help me react properly would to get into a gun fight.

I'm being sarcastic here if it's not obvious. I would love to see a study on how LEO/MIL that shoot competitively in IDPA, 3 gun or USPSA style competitions do in a gun fight vs those that don't train for speed in these competitive situations.

Personally I don't have the time nor desire to train specifically for a defensive situation that in all likelihood will never occur. Much like I don't by flood insurance because I'm not in a flood plain. But what I do have time for and enjoy the heck out of is shooting fast in a Competitve environment so I'm gonna go with the fact that having a better offense in a gun fight is gonna be my defense.

That may not work for everyone but it's all I got. It sure beats the hell outta being the guy with a safe full of Guns and his CCL that shows up at his first match and can't find his safety or mag release button the second he hears a buzzer and needs to do all the things he needs to do to shoot.

 

[Vanilla Gorilla]

At least your honest with yourself and have priorities. Shooting fast and reloading fast are both excellent. Doing so while getting to cover is more excellent.

 

[Jesse Tischauser]

At least your honest with yourself and have priorities. Shooting fast and reloading fast are both excellent. Doing so while getting to cover is more excellent.

The majority of the time we do reloads in competition is during movement. Great training. When I started shooting I shot Production Division which limits magazine capacity to 10 rounds. You reload everytime you move relatively speaking which amounts to 2-5 reloads per scenario. When I switched to Limited which allows you 20 rounds or so you only have to reload once per scenario typically. It took me a month or so to untrain my auto reloads everytime I moved.
Hey! I just made myself think competitive shooting is even better training because it programs reloading when moving into my subconscious thought. Come to think of it when I have a gun malfunction I often times go through my gun clearance routine and don't remember doing it. Damn! There is another skill I have trained into my subconsicous thought process through my competitve training that is also applicable to self defense. Hmmmm. I wonder if there are more???

Sorry now I'm just being a shiester.

 

[Vanilla Gorilla]

Well we will have to agree to disagree. You have never been in a gunfight and I have never Gamed.

 

[scooterj]

Well we will have to agree to disagree. You have never been in a gunfight and I have never Gamed.

Maybe you should give it a try before you discredit it?

 

[goteron]

That same positive programming is what may be problematic. Shooting steel to reaction, shooting targets only twice, reloading on the move when you may not have a spare magazine.

Not to mention the walk-throughs. There is little thinking on the move, everything is a planned sequence (Which is needed for gaming).

Im going to shoot to enjoy it, but be aware about forming what "I" consider bad habits.

 

[Jesse Tischauser]

Maybe you should give it a try before you discredit it?

That is a very good point! I shoot with a dozen or so combat veterans and LEO's that have used lethal force and they all seem to think it helps their readiness.

 

[Vanilla Gorilla]

Maybe you should give it a try before you discredit it?

I'm not discrediting it at all I'm just sayin it ain't training. Does it help? Sure but it ain't training.

 

[Hunh Bruh]

In real life you don't have a timer, but you can still keep your lucky 7 sided die in your pocket and hope you get first roll for hit points

 

[returningliberty]

In real life you don't have a timer, but you can still keep your lucky 7 sided die in your pocket and hope you get first roll for hit points

Trollololol

 

[Hunh Bruh]

I would like to try to shoot with an off the shelf gun though

 

[Sin-ster]

Also, I don't think its the competition that helps as much as the practice. I know a lot of guys do thousands of presentations, dry firing, reloads, etc to get ready for match day. So the training / competing ratio is probably 100:1.

I think that's a key aspect of competition (at least for those who are serious about it) that's grossly overlooked. And it's a double-edged sword.

For folks such as yourself, it means that shooting matches is a great way to add a new (albeit infrequent) element into your training. Good thing.
For folks like me, it means those potential training scars; that's the bulk of my training, and what I'll revert to.

As in all things, I believe it's going to come down to the specific situation; there are no sweeping generalities here. If I'm confronted by a lone individual in a situation where lethal force is the only answer, 10-1 I'm going to Bill Drill him from a flatfooted position. Now is that good or bad? 6 shots COM in 2 seconds (call it 2.3 from concealment) isn't bad for a programmed response; if I don't crap the bed on situational awareness, you can shave as much as half a second off of that time thanks to eliminating a lot of the elements of the drawstroke itself.

But that's the downside as well-- I'm probably going to stand and shoot, although I don't pretend to know what I'll do in a situation like that. I'd be willing to bet that if the shooting hasn't started, I'm going to be flat-footed; if there's high velocity crap coming my way, I'm going to be running and ducking. The class I took with BearCO on Saturday REALLY put a lot of this stuff into perspective and got me thinking about a lot of things. The only thing that I know for sure is that the actual shooting and weapon manipulations have been massively improved through my work at competition. It's hard to know whether the negative aspects outweigh those positives-- and I hope to never find out!

In the end, is it better to put your first shot on target in 2 seconds 80% of the time while moving off of the X, or put 3-6 on target 99% of the time in 2 seconds while standing relatively still? Which will I revert to when staring down the muzzle of a rival handgun (if capitulation isn't an option), or while being charged by a knife wielding cracky?

Like I told Bear when he (rhetorically) asked the entire class, "How many shots does it take to stop a threat?" If you can tell me the definitive answer, I'll pay you a lot of money! And then take steps to modify my training.

Shooting steel to reaction, shooting targets only twice...

There is little thinking on the move, everything is a planned sequence (Which is needed for gaming).

These are about the only things I have to contend with in your thinking.

Realistically speaking, you're not supposed to be getting feedback from the steel at all; the shots are supposed to be called from the sights. I observe myself doing that most of the time, even when my shot call is faulty-- snap off of a popper that I think has been struck, only to jerk back to it because I can see in my periphery that it's still standing. And if that's not "thinking on the move", I don't know what is.

It's also representative of shooting until the threat stops. "It's still up-- put it down." 1 shot, 3 shots... 5 shots I'm ashamed to admit. In the process, those carefully developed plans often fall apart REALLY QUICKLY, especially in Production with only 10 rounds in the magazine. There are countless times where I have reloaded from slide lock just to take one shot on an array before moving on. Common wisdom is to drop that mag and get "back on the plan"; I never have, and just proceed to the next array, despite the programmed responses. I distinctly recall active thinking in those situations, and while it certainly feels slow, the final time and video evidence suggest otherwise. "Time slows under stress"-- boy, howdy!

But perhaps most pointedly, I'm curious as to how combat-style training addresses these problems.

You're told to "fire 2 to 4 shots on each target; mix it up"; the instructor calls out a number of shots, perhaps "2 left, 4 right". In both cases, it's still a scripted response in terms of the number of shots required to stop that threat-- whether you determine them arbitrarily on your own (most likely before the "Up" command is given), or have them dictated by an outside source (i.e. 2 scoring hits per target). Humbly speaking, I feel that combat training is actually LESS helpful in this regard as there's no real consequence for poor shot placement. You might deride yourself for throwing one out of the target box, or get some words from the instructor about "the next time", but the tangible result of fewer points on the stage and thereby a worse finish in the match are absent. We don't get do-overs unless something got screwed up; in training, you just run the drill again. At a match, we call our shots and make them up on the fly; "scoring the targets as they're shot" like VG describes is a really, really, really bad thing.

The same goes for thinking on the fly. The vast majority of drills are scripted and then demo'd by the instructor. Even those that include an element of randomness, such as numbered targets that are engaged per the commands given prior to the drawstroke, lose their "surprise" factor in just a couple of runs. Even actively trying to NOT game some of those things, I find that I still know where every target is within a couple of strings. Short of FoF or shoot houses, the vast majority of the combat-dedicated training is no better at simulating these situations than competition-- and in some cases, due to the lack of immediate or long term consequences of screwing up, they're actually worse.

TBH, the single best experience I've ever had in both of these regards was during a match. A "surprise shoot" where you're not permitted a walk through that began with an 870 in your hands, a move through a doorway, and a bunch of balloons taped to the targets to simulate/indicate good hits. I've seen some combat drills where they'll hang a cardboard box on a string, holding it in place with a balloon hidden somewhere COM; you shoot until the box drops/the threat stops. But those seem to be extremely rare; randomly reactive targets are either non-existant or a PITA to reset between drills.

Just as we know that a pistol sucks in a gunfight, we must admit that training of any kind is limited in regards to preparing us for a real confrontation. Obviously, this places an emphasis on training the right skills and responses-- and competition shooting definitely has shortcomings in that regard. At the same time, as I continue to preach, there's a lot that both disciplines can offer each other.

10 to 1, combat-orientated students would GREATLY benefit from having a USPSA stage designer (under the supervision of the instructor, who will keep it "combat oriented") come through and put up some Field Courses that they then must run blind, applying all of the skills they hone in training. Let them shoot it, pull them immediately off the line, grill them about what they felt they did wrong, and have them run it a couple more times before they get the lay out completely memorized. Move a few props and targets around, wash, rinse, repeat. Film the whole thing, then have some classroom time at the end of the day where every run is reviewed by the entire class-- let all learn from the mistakes of a few.

Cool. Effin'. Beans.

VG-- when you take this idea, I don't want the credit, just free tuition. Oh, and ammo.

 

[goteron]

VG and I were just talking about things along those lines yesterday. Good post and I agree with a lot of what you said. I don't know the answer to a lot of those questions.

 

[Sin-ster]

VG and I were just talking about things along those lines yesterday. Good post and I agree with a lot of what you said. I don't know the answer to a lot of those questions.

We just had a similar conversation 5 minutes ago.

I think the only answer is to train as best as you can with the tools you've got while we brainstorm some solutions to the shortcomings. And as always, cross your fingers and hope you never have to test any of those theories in the real world!

One thing I *really* learned this weekend was that the mindset of the student is just as important as the material and drills coming out of the class. It's *so* easy to "cheat" an exercise or just go through the motions; you get a ton more out of it if you visualize yourself in a real confrontation, and do your best to try to mimic and understand your natural reactions. I attribute my awareness of that issue to this exact thread and our conversations within it, as they really have had me thinking about the topic.

Good stuff!

 

[scooterj]

I'm not discrediting it at all I'm just sayin it ain't training. Does it help? Sure but it ain't training.

Why isn't it training? Wouldn't you consider shooting and reloading on the move, trying to hit center mass, and strong and weak hand manipulations training?