Times change, do you?

[chubs]

I never really got into shooting until a few years ago. Had never really shot any pistol. Started doing a lot more shooting, and at that point I never put much focus on what I was shooting or carrying. Some days I'd run my Glock and some days it would be a 1911.

I then started training with some SOF buddies of mine. Guys with a lot of combat experience that were still actively deploying. A lot of things changed during that time (grip, stance, movement, etc) but one of the biggest things was the equipment I used. About the time I started shooting with them, I started getting into the application processes of different agencies. I then put myself through BLET before eventually ending up with the agency that I wanted. Now that I do this for a living, my outlook on what I carry and train with has changed. One of my buddies pointed out the whole "fear the man with one gun" thing and it stuck. Now that my training has real consequences, I've narrowed my equipment list down. I CCW a compact version of my duty weapon and am going to be shooting a "game" gun that is setup exactly like my duty weapon (minus caliber choice). I haven't run probably 100rds through my other pistols in a year.

[rojocorsa]

Hell, as an inherent noob to this part of the shooting world (people serious about their defense and training), I just learned that a pistol course is probably always going to be more important than a carbine course.

And in thinking about that, I agree 100%. In fact, I couldn't help to think about one gentleman's account of economic meltdown in Argentina years ago. Perhaps you may know what I am talking about, or perhaps not. In a nutshell, his handgun and not his rifle was his most important weapon due to the handgun's discreet size. He still needed to go around town doing everyday things, and carrying a rifle would have clearly been detrimental because of the way it stands out.

All that being said, it's a real pity that there are arbitrary restrictions on "adults" under 21. Otherwise, I would have already bought myself a GLOCK 17. Or a 19. I'm not sure which one is the best for me overall, but I think I'd go with the 17.

I do not shoot pistols much because of what I just said, (unfortunately, I've not fired a handgun since Dec 2009). But one thing I have "learned" was adapting my grip. I used to like this Weaver-ish stance grip, but I've since turned back to the isosceles using that two handed thumbs forward grip. Granted, I do not have a pistol, but for a while, I was using a borrowed SIG P226 airsoft replica on which I was able to try this different grip. At first, it felt weird but now it feels like I've been doing it all my life. While I've not shot in over a year, I do handle my buddy's 1911 SA Mil-Spec often, because I can. I always "practice" using the thumbs forward grip and pulling the trigger with the pad of my finger (while dryfiring). It would be nice to be able to shoot a pistol soon, as I've not tried the thumbs forward grip while actually shooting. I'm feeling optimistic about trying it having seen that I'm under the impression that most "big name" shooters and such use this grip method. I believe I've seen it on the trailer of Art of the Dynamic Handgun even.

[UCoperator]

Where I am now, is not where I started. My mindset has always been one to fight, but if you look at how I go about that: it has evolved. Training and experiences have affected how I go about fighting. When I first learned how to fight with a gun to what I do now, things have changed. I suspect after five years I'll have evolved again. Ten years from now I will most likely look back at my gear and tactics and maybe scratch my head.

But, I have learned the more I learn the more I find out I need to learn and that I like to learn from lots of different sources. I can take what I like and what applies to my situation and use it. For example, I haven't the training for open field combat. However, the urban environment: vehicles and buildings, are home to me.

I have noticed a natural gravitation towards keeping it simple, however. My work gun today does not look like my work gun from even three years ago. It seems I run something until I get into a situation where I don't like how it works or the great test kitchen of the real world shows me it wasn't the best (most efficient/effective) thing to do.

[rob_s]

To paraphrase Vincent 'Vinnie' Antonelli:
Everyone thinks they're open-minded, even people who aren't

and, to quote my good friend from college:
it's good to be open-minded, just not so open-minded your brains fall out

Many people fall into the trap of their last "best" instructor being the one they follow. While I don't believe in never branching out and getting varied training (how do you know it's the "best" if you never compare it to anything else?) the danger of jumping around without a plan and without paying attention to what's going on around you is that you always jump on the last bandwagon that passed you by. This applies to gear as well, FWIW.

[SteyrAUG]

In nearly every environment with knowledgeable shooters I usually manage to pick up something new, even if I don't necessarily use it much. There is a lot of information out there and if you get in with a good group you can pick up a ton of stuff. Especially if you happen to be around shooters who have done advanced shooting (the kind with rounds coming back at you).

That said I try not to get caught up on conventions and making sure I have the newest, latest whiz bang method for holding a gun.

Once you devote thirty years to acquired muscle memory doing it "completely different" can actually be counter productive in terms of results. So long as the methods you are using "work", I'd rather spend the time drilling them then unlearning them so I can attempt to one day be effective with a new method.

As a "for example" I had one instructor gig me because my supporting hand trigger finger actually touched the front of the trigger guard. Didn't matter that I shot as accurately and effectively as everyone else, I was doing it wrong. I adopted his method to satisfy his sensibilities, and as a result of altering my natural shooting position my accuracy degraded accordingly. But at least I was now holding the gun "properly" so I didn't get in trouble.

And of course this is found in most things, in my study of martial arts and knowledge of it's history I have seen the same thing. In the 1950s Judo was where it was at because that is the style practiced by SAC. Then in the 1960s it was all about Japanese Karate. In the 1970s if you weren't doing Jeet Kune Do or some form of Chinese boxing you were just wasting time. In the 1980s super secret Ninja methods were where it was at. In the 1990s it was all about Krav Maga and then it was all Brazilian Jujitsu and MMA.

And each generation was absolutely convinced that they were the first ones to discover real fighting methods and that everything that came before was irrelevant. The funny thing is a lot of those 1950s Judo guys, like Gene Lebell in their prime would have kicked the shit out of a lot of the other stylists regardless of their chosen method. The bottom line is, if it works...it works.

But I take comfort in the fact that one day all those guys who make sure they push out their handgun from the chest (because arcing up from the draw is old, stupid and useless) will also be over 40 one day and some kid with 5 years of shooting experience will correct their technique because they are "doing it wrong."

I think Bruce Lee said it best.

"Absorb what is useful, Discard what is not, Add what is uniquely your own"

"In memory of a once fluid man, crammed and distorted by the classical mess."

I try and keep both of them in mind when adopting new methods and incorporating them (or elements of them) into my own personal body dynamic and I try not to get confined by specific techniques or methods that are counter productive to what I am trying to accomplish.

[SteyrAUG]

To paraphrase Vincent 'Vinnie' Antonelli:
Everyone thinks they're open-minded, even people who aren't

and, to quote my good friend from college:
it's good to be open-minded, just not so open-minded your brains fall out

Many people fall into the trap of their last "best" instructor being the one they follow. While I don't believe in never branching out and getting varied training (how do you know it's the "best" if you never compare it to anything else?) the danger of jumping around without a plan and without paying attention to what's going on around you is that you always jump on the last bandwagon that passed you by. This applies to gear as well, FWIW.

Good point. This is why I tend to run "old setups" a lot. It is also why I will often run irons when RDS rule the day.

I have the most experience with the setups I drilled with for 20 years. That is what I am comfortable with and that is what is natural to me. So I usually am not running the latest RDS and I don't change my mounts and slings like they are clothes subject to fashion and fads. I try and choose gear based on the criteria of what works best for me.

Now I do have RDS setups on some of my rifles, but when I train with them there is a period of adaption I have to go through each time. I simply don't have the same familiarity with that setup as a person who only knows that setup.

Now the difference in ability with one vs. the other isn't huge, but it does exist. So as often as not, especially in certain environments like low light, I tend to prefer irons.

[rob_s]

I think you're taking my post and using it to justify sub-optimal methods.

Of course, using something new means taking one step back to take two (or ten) steps forward. That's a given. Very few people are just going to pick up Y and immediately do better than they do with their X.

But being intentionally anachronistic just to justify outdated TTPs and gear in the face of modern improvements is less than ideal. and finding venues that reinforce one's sub-par TTPs and using them to justify sticking with the "tried and true" while poopooing any venue that really tests (or even exposes weaknesses in) the "tried and true" is similarly self-cheating.

I recently posted this on my TYV FB fanpage, but now it seems very applicable to this thread.

This weekend I was eavesdropping on the boy who was playing Xbox online with a friend from school. For those that don’t understand what this is, you can play a video game, via the internet, against (or with) a friend who is at home and also has an Xbox and the same game. This particular game allows you to create your own levels, with all of your own parameters, weapons, vehicles, etc. Again, for those that don’t understand, imagine playing Monopoly against the guy that designed it. Or Trivial Pursuit against the guy that wrote all the questions. By creating the level and the parameters and rules, the boy was in the same position.



One of the other features of playing online is that you can put on a McDonalds-drive-through-style headset (presumably to familiarize excessive players with their future career options) and talk with your friend(s) on the other end. Those in the room with you, in this case me, can see the screen as you see it and hear your side of the conversation, but not the voice of the other player(s). As such, I could only hear what the boy was saying, and see for myself how often he was “killing” the other kid and the score on the screen. The boy’s end of the conversation went largely like this:

“No, c’mon, just ten more minutes. Please!”

“You said you’d play for ten more minutes. OK, how about ten more points?”

“Awe, man, please stay!”

“Hey, where’d you go? You quit? Why?”



There are multiple lessons in child (and frankly adult) psychology here, but what I want to focus on is how this pertains to shooting, training, instructing, and related pursuits. What the boy did here was stack the deck in his favor. That cliche has an actual meaning, which is to take a deck of cards, count the number of players, and insert cards in the deck such that the most favorable hand will be dealt to the cheat. By creating his own level, that he played repeatedly on his own to memorize, and stocking it with weapons he was most familiar with, the boy did the 21st century equivalent of stacking the deck in his favor.



Many people do similar things on the range, and in their training, but in this case they are only really cheating themselves or, if they have others who’s safety depends on them (like partners in LE, teammates in .mil, or family members for those so burdened) they are cheating these people as well. The most common, and often discussed, method of doing this is to only shoot drills that we are good at. We don’t practice weak-hand because we’re less likely to get the group size we’re used to. We don’t practice malfunction clearance because it’s boring. The list goes on. But what I see happening more and more now is even more insipid, and that is instructors designing drills that reinforce their methodology, or constructing a methodology around drills that they want to excel at.



This goes hand-in-hand with the “range as laboratory” I’ve been commenting on for quite some time. People getting obsessed with minutia, either in TTPs or in guns & gear. Adding .07 oz. to their buffer, tuning their hand-loads to just barely cycle the slide, etc. are all examples of the guns & gear side. One example of the TTP side is the drills master. Teaching to, and perfecting, a series of short drills that one can demonstrate how well their methodology works with and then spend 2-3 days teaching that methodology to those drills and then counting the improvement the students make over the course of the class as examples of success. Yes, you just proved that your method works on your drills. Congratulations. Now many of these shooters will go home, continue to train to these drills, and continue to espouse the benefits of that methodology based on same. But if they never attend a class with another instructor, never shoot a different set of drills designed to reinforce a different methodology, or they never take those TTPs to a match, a shoot house, or a force-on-force class, how are they really going to test them?



Competition shooters suffer similar problems. They find a discipline that they like best (typically the one that plays to their initial strengths, without even realizing what they are doing) and get immersed. They do not cross disciplines, and often snipe at those from the other game, or make fun of the guys that cross the lines and maybe don’t do as well. God forbid they try the other man’s game. I have seen this go both ways, where shooters from one simply can’t grasp the basics of the other. I’m not even talking about the scoring here (it seems you need a phd these days to understand handgun competition scoring) but just the basics of how the stages are run such as fault lines vs. use of cover, tactical sequence, etc. So they go back to where they are comfortable, tell all their buddies “those other guys are assholes and their game is gay”, and I suppose generally feel better about themselves.



Then there are those that won’t even *try* competitive shooting. They’ve heard from all their gurus that it’s bad for their “tactics”, they’ve watched youtube videos and armchair quarterbacked all the “bad habits” they see the shooters getting into. But most often you get the guy that might come out for one or two matches, run like a soup sandwich, focus on all the wrong things, and then proclaim the whole thing tactically unsound and bad for their training regimen. I have yet to see a guy attend a first competitive shooting event, place well, perform well, and then never show up again. Not all of these guys are “training junkies”, to be fair. Many are simply internut junkies who would not do well in a dynamic shooting environment no matter if it was competition, force-on-force, drills, or real life. But there is that group that fires thousands of rounds a year in short, often static, clinical drills who attends a match, falls apart, and declares the whole thing “stupid” and never shows up again.



Speaking of force-on-force... Among the competition side there are the guys that are good. Damn good. Maybe even good at multiple disciplines. I’m not talking about your sponsored, professional shooters here as they are an anomaly not even worth discussing. I’m talking about the local guy, well respected in his game(s), considered a “good shooter”, etc. Poopoos the “tactical training” guys as Walter Mitty types, wouldn’t be caught dead with a Simmunitions or Airsoft gun in his hand, but who believes that endless brown cardboard badguys have prepared him for a gunfight. When... if... these guys do show up to a force-on-force class they typically drill the good guy, or get drilled themselves, right out of the gate. Why? Because when all you have is a hammer, and all you ever do is pound nails, when you have a hammer in your hand anything that even remotely looks like a nail is getting pounded down. Except when that nail is behind you all the while and puts two in your back as you enter the house.



So we’ve all heard it. Get outside your comfort zone. We’ve all heard the stock examples mentioned above like weak-hand training, malfunction clearance training, etc. But what few seem to step outside themselves and evaluate is the bigger picture, and how it’s not just about te individual drill or scenario that is cheating them, it’s their whole approach that’s off-kilter.



If you’re the training junkie that thinks competition is stupid and drills are where it’s at, go shoot a match. Even if you hate it, go back. It’s probably GOOD that you hate it as it probably means if you put your thinking cap on you might even learn something. Even if you go, and ignore the competitive aspect of it, and follow your own basic TTPs within the required framework, go. Go again. Endeavor to find a way to test yourself. I’ve seen training junkies go to a match and say “well it rewards speed over accuracy and I believe in accuracy”, only to look at their scoresheet afterwards and wonder “then how on earth to you explain all these misses...”



If you’re the competition guy, go try the other discipline(s). If you shoot IPSC, go shoot an IDPA match. Go back again. Don’t go home and whine to your buddies, go show those IDPA guys how “easy” their game is and clean their clocks. If it’s so easy then it shouldn’t be a challenge at all right? Oh, “the rules are too confusing”. Really? So the game that’s so easy and so stupid and only “played” by idiots has rules that those same idiots can understand, but you can’t? What does that say about you? And IDPA guys, same thing. Go shoot an IPSC match. Oh, “but I’m just in it for the training/triggertime”. Then why are you so upset that you didn’t “win”? Why not just go, use cover, perform tac-reloads, engage in tactical sequence, run to slide-lock, etc.? Because the other shooters might make fun of you? C’mon.



If you’re the competition guy that DOES get to both disciplines, or if you’re the training junkie attending all those drills classes, and classes where everyone stands in a line and shoots their own one target, get to a force-on-force. Get to a shoot-house. Get to a weapons-retention. Go experience what the other side is doing and learn to apply it. If you’re only shooting to shoot matches and only shooting matches to win, that’s certainly your prerogative. But here’s a competition guy that went and got some training, albeit a brief taste here and there, but he did it and he came away with lessons he found valuable. You never know where your next game-winning technique may come from.

http://www.thetacticalwire.com/features/224256



You owe it to yourself, at the very least, to get as much exposure as you can to as many shooting disciplines as you can. All of the above is specifically related to handguns, but can be expanded to carbines and rifles as well. Go take a “sniper” or “precision” or “practical rifle” class and see how well it reinforces the fundamentals with your M4. Pistol, rifle, shotgun, whatever, get out there and get involved in as many disciplines and shooting events as you can. Yes, we all should be having fun doing what we do, and truth be told that’s the reason the vast majority show up to any event, but if your end-goal is survival, and how to implement firearms as part of that end-goal, you need to find ways to test yourself in all aspects to discover your deficiencies in the clinical environment before you discover them in the final seconds of your life.

[SteyrAUG]

I think you're taking my post and using it to justify sub-optimal methods.

Sub optimal for who? To me the RDS is an extra step. I have 30 years of using irons so as a result that is what I do the most effectively and efficiently.

I am as fast or faster with irons than I am with a RDS so what makes it sub optimal?

Of course, using something new means taking one step back to take two (or ten) steps forward. That's a given. Very few people are just going to pick up Y and immediately do better than they do with their X.

And I think this is our disconnect on this issue. Why do you assume there will be an eventual two steps forward? What if it is simply one step back and I never manage to improve the new technique beyond that because it is at odds with 30 years of muscle memory and developed body dynamic? Even if it can be improved what if it can only come up to the level of my current ability with constant practice?

You seem to be of the opinion that I look at pictures in a book and go "icky" and that is that. What you don't seem to understand is that I have been taught all manner of techniques and methods, practiced to develop them and then "retained" those that were useful to me which had the greatest capacity for development.

I don't see much benefit in discarding something useful, practicing something completely different for a few years so that I can eventually be as good as I was simply so I will look more similar to the younger shooters. I suspect one day, when you have been shooting long enough you will come to learn exactly what I am talking about.

The reality is how a man holds or shoots a gun in the most basic terms has not changed that dramatically in the past few hundred years. The man who carried a rifle at waist level and brought it up to his shoulder in conflict 200, 100 and 50 years ago is more or less the same way it is done today.

The idea that the specific placement of the thumb or the exact nature of the feet in relation to each other being more significant than that basic body dynamic are really focusing on peripheral issues. These of course make a difference in competitions where parts of a second are the difference between first and fifth place (same as the Olypmics) but it real world defensive situations that focus is better served on more immediate issues like use of cover, not being shot and making sure you are aware of all the threats to you rather than making sure your feet are exactly right according to the new guys.

Now this isn't to suggest anything "new" is of no value (that would be as ridiculous as the notion that anything "old" is now irrelevant), and I have picked up a lot of really good information in the past years that I have been able to effectively incorporate into my existing shooting style. One of which comes to mind is use of the sling, the way rifles and carbines are slung today is much different from the "wrap the sling around your arm" method we used 30 years ago.

The muzzle down in the sling carry position offers a lot of advantages to the carry in low ready with a sling hanging method that used to be common. But I'm not sure the new sling positions make you any faster or more accurate. But they do not inhibit my ability to shoot or move effectively so I will frequently use them.

What you need to understand is that you have practical, fast and efficient shooting methods. The part you don't seem to understand is that more than one exist. Sooner or later the specific "methods and techniques" will change. You may adopts the new ones, you may not. What you will come to realize eventually is that they are simply "different' and not necessarily "superior."

But until then feel free to discount all of this as the ramblings of an old and irrelevant guy who has no idea what he is actually talking about.

[markm]

Dude.... He worked in a gun store! You can't win this debate!

[NCPatrolAR]

Steyr

I honestly got the same vibe from your post that Rob did. Your posts make it seem that you are extremely resistent to any kind of change and are quick to dismiss things (technique, tactic, gear, etc) simply because you've either been doing or using something else for X number of years.