Why do some competition-focused shooters make fun of tactical training, force-on-force or shoot-house exercises?
Much tactical training is not effective training. Too often, it is misplaced and performed by personnel not yet skilled enough to benefit from it.
Shooters of low skill claiming to be tactically oriented that make fun of competition as untactical fare poorly in such events (if they ever show up…) due to a lack of fundamental skills. Instead of realizing and correcting their low basic skills they instead insist on tactical training, force-on-force and/or shoot-house exercises.
This is endemic in military and police circles who just can’t be bothered to ever learn fundamental skills to decent levels. Civilians attending Operator Fantasy Camp are likely worse. There’s no emphasis to train solid fundamentals. Everyone thinks they understand fundamentals because any novice can quote some training institution’s description of them. Novice shooters know the fundamentals. Master shooters apply the fundamentals.
Skill standards good enough to pass qualification in basic/academy will continue to pass a twenty year veteran. No public sector marksmanship training procedure requires any shooting skill progression beyond basic. Not one! Many tactical trainers don’t even bother to establish any skill baseline. Some insist such a thing isn’t useful.
Can’t pass a simple ball-and-dummy drill or suppress flinch well enough to pass a dot drill? Never mind, we need Simunitions and force-on-force training.
Can’t complete El Presidente with 12 hits somewhere on target (never mind elapsed time or score)? Doesn’t matter because that’s gaymer shit. We need to prepare for Dynamic Critical Incidents in the shoothouse.
Can’t shoot a series of shots well enough to be called a group from any position beyond prone supported? Doesn’t matter, we’re designated marksmen preparing for tactical environments.
Then some novice-level turd billing himself a tactical trainer tells these fools that practicing for and participating in local competition will somehow instill bad habits. Said turd creates a slick website and develops an Internet following with his sycophants parroting his nonsense. Hopefully, none of these people will ever be called to depend on the “skills” they spent thousands of dollars on classes with their hero.
It doesn’t matter what’s true, only what gets repeated.
I appreciate it isn’t possible to insist on high level skill upon graduation from recruit/academy training. It’s called basic training for a reason. The problem is the complete lack of required progression.
The first time musician plays “Hot Cross Buns” after learning how to hold the instrument. The first time programmer codes up “Hello World.” The first time shooter completes a simple qualification at academy, basic or CHL class. All good.
There’s a problem if the musician or programmer remain stuck on “Hot Cross Buns” or “Hello World” ten or twenty years later. Yet, a cop or soldier can successfully qualify on the same academy/basic qualification course throughout their career. They forever remain at novice levels unless they get involved in higher-level programs, such as competition. Worse, Dunning-Kruger effect fools them into believing their service experience merits value in this realm and an equally ignorant public believes them.
Force-on-force is extremely useful. So is a better application of fundamental skills. Too bad the personnel who remain at beginner levels demand the former and ignore the latter.
Colorado Pete
Jul 27, 2015 @ 00:24:09
” Hot Cross Buns”? “Hello World”?
Damn did you really have to make me dredge up those old memories?
Hell’s bells, I remember the former from the late sixties…along with all the other associated bad stuff! And yeah I did the latter in the mid eighties…heheheh.
Gittin’ old.
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John M. Buol Jr.
Jul 28, 2015 @ 11:13:20
That “old stuff” is still used routinely today. I don’t think I’ve read a programmer’s tutorial for any language or framework that didn’t include “Hello World.” Same with very simple, public domain songs, though more popular guitar instruction will try to sound a little more blues or Van Halen rather than “Go Tell Aunt Rhody.”
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Randy Erwin
Jul 28, 2015 @ 11:13:46
When we put the troops under the stress of a simulated street reality course of fire (LEOSA) what was among the first things we learned? Safety occasionally went out the window (why we were 1×1 with them), but marksmanship (fundamentals) was ALWAYS in the shitter! Basically we saw the same thing in regular quals.
What did we do in both instances to correct the issues? We started training on the fundamentals for 2 hours before putting them through a course of fire. Occasionally I have had the opportunity to put them cold on the range at 7 yards and have them do 2 rds in 2 seconds (one time only). Then have them look at their targets and say, “This is the very best you will do on the street in a surprise attack, especially if you add the adrenalin, someone is closing with a big knife, you are moving and they are moving”. It was always a reality check for them and suddenly they were interested in training the basics.
Alternately, when I would ask if anyone wants to do a tactical school everyone’s hand would go up. Then they were all pissy with me when we spent the first 4 days doing nothing but basic fundamentals on the range. “WTF, this is not what we thought we were getting for our time and money (ammo)?”
My answer was always the same, being an operator is not about doing neat and different stuff that no one else gets to do. It is about training the 7 fundamentals to the point you have mastered them in every contorted position you might ever be called to shoot from/through/around/under, in every high stress and compressed time frame, and at any state of exhaustion you may possibly find yourself. When you have that solidly mastered in your tool box, then you continue to train those fundamentals to the point you can’t ever forget them even if your are losing blood pressure from a severed artery and intend to take your attacker with you if you have to go.
While I agree with some of what this blog has been spewing forth, their position of attacking the tactician in order to say that competition is valuable gets old quickly. Perhaps it is only me that draws a distinction between what they call a tactician and what I call an operator, but they don’t seem to note there is a difference. I might counter that there is a difference in their world as well – between the gamesman who buys the latest go fast gear at the expense of mastering the basics vs the true competitor who has mastery and can do better with a stock G19 than most can with a race gun.
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John M. Buol Jr.
Jul 28, 2015 @ 11:32:28
>> What did we do in both instances to correct the issues? We started training on the fundamentals for 2 hours before putting them through a course of fire…
Your experience on effective training sums up and proves my point nicely. Thanks!
>> …their position of attacking the tactician in order to say that competition is valuable gets old quickly. Perhaps it is only me that draws a distinction between what they call a tactician and what I call an operator, but they don’t seem to note there is a difference. I might counter that there is a difference in their world as well – between the gamesman who buys the latest go fast gear at the expense of mastering the basics vs the true competitor who has mastery and can do better with a stock G19 than most can with a race gun.
A tactician, operator, or any other title is great if they focus on training that matters. Too many don’t as they complain, “WTF, this is not what we thought we were getting for our time and money (ammo)?” Wise trainers will point out that being an operator is not about doing neat and different stuff that no one else gets to do. It is about training the fundamentals to the point you have mastered them. But you already knew that.
When I point out the advantages of competition shooting it is for the actual competitor, someone striving for and achieving better results over time. Some “competitors” are really just participants that enjoy attending matches and/or like buying go-fast gear.
There’s nothing wrong with participation or go-fast gear, and there’s certainly nothing wrong with tactical instruction and training when warranted, but the difference in effective vs. misplaced is found in those who effectively train fundamentals. But you already knew that.
One doesn’t need to be a competitor to do the hard training needed to achieve heightened skills but I’ve observed few gun people outside of serious competitive circles doing so. From 2003-2009 I assisted with mobilization of over 30,000 deploying personnel and range training for every competitor I’ve worked with was far more intense and productive than with Soldiers with go-to-war orders in hand. Sad but true.
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John Tate
Jul 28, 2015 @ 11:34:01
Randy,
Your reminder of the LEOSA classes causes me to grin. Some errors we saw together:
leaving cover with an empty gun
1/2 using cover by having 1/2 of the shooter’s body exposed (ostrich)
wild, wild shots hitting only the air, nun and orphan
failing to use engine block and/or wheels & differential for cover
failing to pick up firearm of the 1st bad guy prior to leaving him
Some I saw at Silver City:
crawling UNDER a truck for cover
Most of all, what I saw was folks losing their minds. Total loss of situational awareness.
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John Tate
Jul 29, 2015 @ 09:00:06
Randy Erwin and I have too often spoken about the wild and unsafe conduct of officers during the shooting phase of our LEOSA class. A little excitement and folks lose their minds … and their shooting senses. Here, in the article forwarded below, is an apt description of that same poor training.
“Witnesses, including tourists said soldiers indiscriminately shot at anything, buildings, people outside, anything. Some people were hit simply sitting inside their homes.” “[P]rotesters and citizens were unarmed, and soldiers did not seem to care who they injured or killed, they just shot ‘everywhere’ at citizens.”
Over the past 20 years or so, New Mexico firearms training has evolved from static, firing line oriented qualification shoots to requiring dynamic shooting from cover and on the move, and with good-guy, bad-guy decisional exercises. Vigorous, mature supervision, dynamic shooting exercises, and realistic Simunition/paint ball training is a large part of what is needed to avoid such free fire incidents.
And, a minor footnote on things Mexican: It is tragic but to be expected that the government blamed the shooting of innocents on “the firing of weapons from armed citizens,” when, as the government later admitted when confronted with contradictory imagery, these intolerable acts were committed by government troops. This is an object lesson for US police and US citizens: if truth is a desired result, the recording of public incidents by all concerned is a good thing for all concerned.
http://www.borderlandbeat.com/2015/07/semei-to-be-released-and-american.html
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John M. Buol Jr.
Jul 29, 2015 @ 09:07:31
>> New Mexico firearms training has evolved from static, firing line oriented qualification shoots to requiring dynamic shooting from cover and on the move, and with good-guy, bad-guy decisional exercises. Vigorous, mature supervision, dynamic shooting exercises, and realistic Simunition/paint ball training is a large part of what is needed to avoid such free fire incidents.
Excellent points, as usual. Improved fundamentals that yield ever-increasing results in static, firing-line oriented drills, from bullseye/group shooting to timed stages of fire, will also help in more dynamic, moving, fluid, decisional exercises as well. Conversely, a person that never bothers to improve the “boring ol’ basics” won’t improve the dynamic/tactical stuff if measured objectively.
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