In the law enforcement firearms training space it’s common to hear adages such as; “you’re responsible for every round you fire”, “slow down and get your hits”, “every bullet has a lawyer attached to it”, and the list goes on and on. These sayings are hurled at students in an effort to slow down the shooter's pace in order to tidy up their target accuracy wise. The premise being that an officer is legally responsible for any and all bullets they fire in public and that missing an intended target can have dire consequences legally, ethically and/or morally. While this is generally true in the real life application phase of shooting, it is a misguided philosophy in the training space that handcuffs students to a low performance ceiling.
So, why/how do instructors use the speed of the shooting as the mechanism to control a student's accuracy in the training environment. The answer to that is pretty simple: it’s easier. The lack of a relevant speed component allows the shooter to get away with fundamental error in some/all of the three fundamental cornerstones we discussed in the last blog post (physical structure, trigger management, vision). Instead of exploring and fixing shooters at a fundamental level, the instructor just slows them down and like magic; the target looks better. This is because in the grand scheme of things there’s only two things that can impact someone's accuracy on target when speed isn’t a factor:
#1 - The sights/dot being parked on the target at the appropriate spot
#2 - The shooter not moving the sights/dot (gun) away from the spot until the bullet leaves the muzzle
It typically looks something like this: The instructor tells the student to slow down and only focus on two elements. “See as close to a perfect sight picture as possible (clear front sight, completely stabilized sight picture etc.) and once you do, slowly apply consistently increasing pressure to the trigger until the gun goes off delivering “a surprise shot”.
Unsurprisingly, this style of training usually achieves the goal of good accuracy from the students. The major dilemma here is that the speed element is completely missed. It gets relegated to the “speed comes with time” mindset. Spoiler alert: It doesn’t. Speed comes with the exploration of….you guessed it, speed.
How the shooter is standing, holding the gun, weight bias, arm extension etc. has no bearing on a single bullet as long as the above two have been met. The intent behind a shooter's physical structure is to get the gun returning to the same spot it left from at the same speed it left at. If this is happening, the shooter can maintain a high level of accuracy at a high rate of speed. Take the speed component away and it doesn’t matter where the gun returns or how fast. The shooter has all the time in the world to correct it between shots.
How the shooter presses the trigger also lacks substance. In this style of training they are only taught to press the trigger in one manner, slow and steady. In order to shoot at the “real life” speeds required, trigger speed is going to (or should) vary based on what the target requires. Lower risk targets (close, big etc.) allow a shooter to press the trigger quickly, medium risk a bit slower (not slow), and high risk targets are going to require the shooter to be even more careful during the press. Regardless of how the trigger is pressed, getting a shooter to reset the trigger the moment it breaks is also a critical piece of the speed component. This is typically taught as either a slow let off until the tactile/audible click or disregarded entirely in traditional LE firearms training.
On the visual side shooters are only taught what I would refer to as a confirmation level 3 sight picture (clean/stabilized) regardless of what a target actually requires. Even on low risk targets, students are ingrained to wait for maximum stabilization out of the sights before firing. This creates an unneeded delay, effectively slowing the shooting down without a performance gain elsewhere in return.
So, What needs to change in order to produce shooters who are legitimately competent instead of those striving to meet minimum standards?
That begins on the instruction and coaching side with proper instruction on physical structure, trigger management and vision. That alone would go a long way toward shooter proficiency and understanding instead of the one size fits all puppy mill approach we typically see in place now. Setting and enforcing relevant shooting standards with regard to accuracy AND speed would go a long way as well.
Outside of that instructors need to understand that exploration isn’t a luxury, it’s a requirement. They also need to understand that during exploration, the measure of success is going to shift. Clean targets are A measure of success, not THE measure of success. The information a shooter is getting out of a specific drill and the adjustments they’re making can be a measure of success. Meeting a specific goal time on a drill regardless of accuracy can be a measure of success. Meeting a specific hit factor (points divided by time) can be a measure of success. In a training environment, the measure of success used will/should vary based on the current topic being covered, the students current proficiency level, the students (or instructors) goals, etc.
(It should be noted that the measure of success being used during a specific training evolution must be clearly defined prior to the drill/s)
For example; when shooters are exploring physical structure through drills like doubles, bill drills, etc., the goal is to have the gun returning where it left from at the same speed it left at. How we develop that ability is by forcing the student to shoot at a pace that's faster than what they’re comfortable with while consciously paying attention to what they are seeing/feeling. We then compare what they saw/felt with the trend of impacts on target. While the results on target aren’t likely to be good initially, the target will give us clues as to what is actually happening. Pair the target results with the shooter's perception of what was happening behind the gun and we get a clear picture as to what corrections to apply. This is success regardless of how the targets look.
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