When I was shooting Collegiate Bullseye, I was pretty good. Then I started shooting IDPA, and I realized that I wasn’t very good. So I practiced until I was, and made Master class. Then I went to my first Nationals and got wrecked. I also started shooting USPSA and wasn’t very good at that. So I practiced until I made A-class. I thought I was an accurate shooter, until I started shooting Bianchi Cup.
The point is that shooting well is actually hard and there are no shortcuts to the top. I know if I want to win an IDPA Championship, I’m going to have to train my butt off so I can beat some of the best revo shooters in the world.
The difficultly of shooting well is exactly why guys like Robin Brown or Matthew Temkin exist. Guns get wrapped up in ego, so when you’re suddenly confronted by your own suck, it’s awfully tempting to hear the siren call of these clowns. “Shhh, it’s okay” they say as you dump 500 rounds aimlessly into the berm, “that’s how it will be on the street.” Instead of teaching you to excel, they give you an opportunity to hide from your own inadequacies with their pablum of “the streets.” It feels good to shoot a lot of rounds and have a nice old man pat you on the head and tell you that you’re “combat accurate.” It feels good to do drills without a timer and have the instructor (who doesn’t even demo) tell you that he “felt” like it was faster.
You know what else feels good? Masturbation. But it’s no substitute for the real thing, and neither are these fraud trainers teaching meaningless nonsense that not only won’t make you any better with a gun, but could actually endanger yourself or others.
If your instructor isn’t using a timer to objectively measure standard drills, you’re wasting time and money. If your instructor doesn’t believe in using the sights ever, he’s a fraud. I understand the temptation of “feel good” shooting, and there is absolutely a time and place for that. If you want to feel good about your shooting, train for a year. Then go to a public range. I guarantee that you’ll feel smug about your shooting for at least a week. But after that, go to a class that kicks your ass.
Feelings are liars. Your feelings will almost always lead you down the path of mediocrity. The best way to feel good about your shooting is to look an objective metric like a standard drill and see your performance on it. Or look at your match scores and how they’ve improved. Then you have something that you’re justified to feel good about.
😀
It’s like you’re inside my head or something.
When you’re right , you’re really right
I like to keep it in balance by sometimes being hilariously, cartoonishly wrong.
“I like to keep it in balance by sometimes being hilariously, cartoonishly wrong.”
There’s also nothing wrong with getting it hilariously, cartoonishly right, either.
But that doesn’t apply here. You are dead-on accurate. Shooting to “feel good” is a blast, and a great way to initially get women and children involved. But real progress, in ANY discipline, can only be accomplished by meeting, AND exceeding, objective standards. I’m a professional drummer and instructor. I would NEVER dream of teaching my students without impressing upon them the importance of practicing and training with a metronome. The metronome is my discipline’s equivalent of a shot timer. Otherwise, I might as well just tell them to play along with Rush (or dump 500 rounds aimlessly into the berm.)
Wait… you mean making the gun go “BANG” the most times possible regardless of the results isn’t the mark of a good trainer or good training??? lol
Dann in Ohio
10-4!