Review: Beyond Fundamentals

 

I you don’t already know who Brian Enos is then you don’t know much about high level practical shooting.

 

An incredibly thoughtful masterwork written by a master of his craft at the peak of his excellence, this is more than a “how to shoot” book. It is a text on how to properly think about shooting and training in the context of practical pistol. The title, “Beyond Fundamentals” with the admonishment to master fundamental skills in order to go beyond them sums it up. Of course, one can never truly master the fundamentals and that is part of the thoughtful, no-thought approach this great book takes.

 

Many pointed out that certain sections will be beyond most shooters until they have already reached a given level of skill. True. Don’t take this as condescending, but certain ideas in here simply won’t make much sense until you’ve experienced shooting at a higher level. When training hard and scratching for skill gains, this book is always worth a re-read.

 

I’ve pointed out that the best way to find the “cutting edge” shooting techniques of tomorrow is to look at what winning competition shooters are doing today. Brian Enos, along with Rob Leatham, literally rewrote practical shooting and their ideas have trickled down to all forms of military, law enforcement and civilian shooting everywhere. Even Gunsite, Jeff Cooper’s famed school, has restructured parts of its doctrine obviously derived from this. That’s probably like getting Moses to rewrite the Ten Commandments.