In this book the author compares dry practice to shadow boxing, live shooting to the heavy bag and force-on-force to sparring. I think that is a perfect analogy. All are equally important and a skilled boxer will use them all. As a shooter/trainer whose primary experience is in organized competition I recognize the need for training on a target that reacts and shoots back. Suarez’s approach is a good way to get started.
Range training with a thorough grounding in fundamentals will always be key. Too many “high speed” types fail to do so and try to justify range performance failures instead of acknowledging and amending a lack of measurable shooting skill. The ignorant bleating of “games’ll getcha killed” to justify low scores is a typical cover excuse.
On the other hand, no matter how skillful at range exercises one becomes, there is a need to go hands on. This book defines five levels of simulation, with each level have a series of drills. I think most shooters will find the first level, Line Drills, to be most educational. Ten Line Drills are described, each one based on typical range exercises, but the guns are replaced with Airsoft/Simunitions and targets with live role players. The live fire (heavy bag) training is critical but the dynamic changes when the “targets” can now move and react. Suarez emphasizes the importance of avoiding childish “bang bang, you’re dead” games and suggests controls to prevent that, especially as the later simulation levels build the complexity.
There are other methods of conducting force-on-force training but Suarez’s methods are sound and this book is a good, inexpensive primer on the topic.
Firearm User Network 
KR
May 25, 2012 @ 09:24:43
For what it’s worth, many of the points made in Gabe’s book can also be found in my article on Airsoft-based Force on Force training, published in SWAT Magazine in 2002, several years prior to his book. http://www.krtraining.com/KRTraining/Archive/SWAT-Karl1.pdf He attended a Polite Society conference either in 2003 or 2004 (it’s been awhile) where I ran my version of “line drills” as part of the training block I offered that year. At the time, he was not offering FoF of any kind in his program. Since then, he’s developed some other drills and integrated the concept into his own program, as described in his book. The history of this type of training goes back to WW2 (Applegate and Fairbairn), and drills run with primer-fired cotton balls and wax bullets in the 60s and 70s in law enforcement training.
In my experience, the sparring drills are useful for learning a lot about timing and movement that you can’t learn on the live fire range. The next step beyond that type of training is full scenario-based training with dialogue, props, furniture, etc., run with red guns, or projectile firing training gear.
Ken Murray’s book “Training at the Speed of Life” is the bible for this type of training. If you haven’t read that book, it should be next on your reading list. I’ll be offering scenario-based and sparring FoF courses at my Central Texas facility this fall, as I’ve done every year since the late 90s.
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John M. Buol Jr.
May 25, 2012 @ 14:31:33
Yes, your material on this subject is excellent. Haven’t yet read Murray’s book but I’ve already heard good things. Thanks!
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