Originally Posted by
Rob Pincus
Seriously, I am headed back to work... but, quickly, over the years, I have found that very few things actually benefit greatly from demos. Training time is always limited. Demo'ing my ability to perform a drill, I find totally useless (unless I want to impress students for some silly reason)... I find it important to EXPLAIN a drill and make sure students understand it. At the end of the day, if you have to choose between watching someone do a drill OR shooting a drill yourself, which will benefit you more? Ultimately, that is the choice, because training time is limited. I'd rather teach more and let my students shoot more and skip demos with a low value. Other things are very important to demo, but, as stated, demonstrating them slowly is most important. Our reload technique is one of this those things. Today I did about 15 demos of various presentation techniques (in slow motion, without actually firing a single shot) during an advanced pistol handling class that deals with unorthodox positions. Students generally don't have any clear idea what they are supposed to do without demos of the actual motions that are most efficient in these areas, so the time for the demo is well worth it. But, if I bothered to take a shot at the end of the presentations, that would require me to only demo at angles that I could point into a berm AND for students to wear eyes/ears through the demo... both of which detract from my ability to teach efficiently and the student's ability to learn as efficiently as possible. So, we may have some semantic issues here... there are plenty of "demos" in our program, but NO Demonstrations of our shooting ability... in fact, when I do shoot in a class (unless checking a firearms sights for a student, etc), I rarely shoot at a target.... for example, when shooting to get to slide lock and slo-mo demo a reload.
The reload technique that we teach (in the high compressed ready position, done without looking, utilizing an overhand rack to get the gun back into battery) is taught because we have found it to be the most reliable method over the widest set of plausible circumstances.
-Rob
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