Scheisskopf and Himmelstoss

August 11, 2020

John Buol MilitaryMarksman, rant and rave , Leave a comment

BLUF: Modern drill is found in developing currently-useful and relevant Soldier skills, not in the nonsense that now passes as Drill and Ceremonies.

A Leaders Corner podcast with CSM Ted Copeland demonstrates how some Army leaders have lost the plot.

https://www.usar.army.mil/News/Videos/audioid/61030/

“Time is our biggest enemy,” he says, and then harps on the “good ol’ days” as if boot polish, uniform starching, parade ground pageantry, and similar wastes of time can provide some sort of solution.

How about we take the idea of building NCOs by having them drill and then instruct useful skills to subordinates? Paying attention to detail demands learning which details are worth paying attention to. Identifying what skills are useful and then successfully training them provides the same benefit to learning how to pay attention to detail while actually helping with readiness.

Operation Cold Steel was the Army Reserve unwittingly admitting that units on their own were largely incapable of successfully training crew-served weapons and that “any NCO with the FM” does not work. Parade ground nonsense doesn’t help, either.

Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben and his “blue book” are cited by CSM Copeland. Upon Washington’s recommendation, Congress appointed Steuben as a Major General and the Inspector General of the Continental Army. Steuben promptly formed a model company of soldiers and trained them to march, use the bayonet, and execute orders quickly on the battlefield.

Learn more about Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben’s approach:
https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Revolutionary_War_Drill_Manual

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bs1A5Q45FgM



Critical point: Baron von Steuben’s drills in his “blue book” had nothing to do with current D&C. His approach used to be a relevant, useful, real-world skillset ideal for then-current equipment and tactics. It was not a self-serving exercise in discipline for its own sake or to look good. Unfortunately, D&C has since devolved into parade ground foolishness.

Effective drill emphasizes individual precision of movement and a manual of arms based on useful skill. See Appendix D (Drills) in all current small arms Training Circulars, starting with TC 3-23.9. You’ll note CSM Copeland never mentioned this in his interview that was recorded years after this manual was released. For precision of movement in small teams, do the same thing with Crew Drills for crew-served weapons. Couple this with an understanding of gunnery and basic ballistics. Perhaps if Soldiers were already doing this regularly, Operation Cold Steel could have been avoided.

Drill should also emphasize group teamwork and moving in tandem. Use the formations listed in Chapter 2 of ATP 3-21.8 (Infantry Platoon and Squad) and the drills in Chapter 8 in TC 3-21.76 (Ranger Handbook) as examples.

Modern D&C is NOT found in TC 3-21.5 and that manual should be discarded as the useless fluff that it is.

https://www.lethalityranch.com/how-to-train-using-tables-i-iii-of-the-iwts-to-maximize-results/

The Army continues to perpetuate a culture of illiteracy and fails to implement the notion of Disciplined Disobedience our former Chief of Staff of the Army prescribed. Sadly, CSM Copeland’s podcast reveals that our current leadership seems to have no interest or insight in how to fix this.

More:
https://firearmusernetwork.com/army-broken-culture-fix/
https://firearmusernetwork.com/literacy-us-army/

Squad Designated Marksman

June 17, 2020

John Buol MilitaryMarksman, Shooting , , Leave a comment

From Ash Hess:
The U.S. Army Squad Designated Marksman program is a source of much debate. Many are angry that this rifle fielded with a 1-6 optic. What those people fail to acknowledge is where the SDM really is in both doctrine and real world application.

The SDM is a Rifleman with an additional tasking of being the DM. He is employed by the Fire Team leader or Squad leader(ATP-3.21.8) This means he/she remains part of that fire team and must be capable of doing anything the Squad is tasked with doing, from trenches, enter and clear, to assault.

Thus, at the beginning of the SDMR, the optic choice was heavily debated. The result is an optic that allows the DM to engage targets from 0-600 meters with relative ease.

That’s part of the debate. Sniper trained SDMs are different from normal trained SDMs, and neither one want to meet the doctrinal concept.
The “program” should be a real course 2-3 weeks, immediately following OUSIT required for privates who are assigned to Light, Airborne or Stryker units.


Training the trainer does not work with SDM. You trained NCO’s, I trained NCO’s, MMTC is training NCOs and nothing has improved. By training the private, and all the privates that follow him, by the time that first private is a Squad leader, the entire squad would by SDM trained, improving the entire unit. As it is now, those NCO’s retain 60% of what they are taught, pass on 30% of that, and the private gets none of it. Then they task someone else with the role and handicap what they should be doing.

From Dan Shea:
The Dragunov. It was the doctrinal difference from US to Soviet thinking. The US, well, we want to hit a fly’s eye at 1000 meters with highly trained snipers we’ve invested heavily in. The Soviet theory was to take marginally trained people with reasonable skills and have them hit chest size at 600 meters. And as a bonus, a Dragunov in the hands of someone with natural skill honed in a better training environment, can shoot really, really well. Nothing like one of the Knight rifles of course…. but a Dragunov has a place well above an AK on a battlefield.

That bit, “…. theory was to take marginally trained people with reasonable skills and have them hit chest size at 600 meters” is telling.

This was the intent of U.S. Army doctrine. The old (around 2003) SDM qual as originally directed by the now-redacted FM 3-22.9 was supposed to be shot with a rack-grade M16A2 and M855 by personnel given a bit of additional training (which a fully-trained Rifleman arguably should already know…)

Table 2 of that SDM course allowed optics only if the Soldier’s unit had them available. If not, Table 2 was supposed to be shot with a base BZO (no wind 300 meter zero) and use hold overs and hold offs as needed.

Then everyone wanted to church it up and re-envision SDM into “sniper lite”… The quality of training behind it is has been all over the map. As Ash Hess wisely points out, to be fully useful this needs a formal course (possibly an Additional Skill Identifier) taught by vetted instructors rather than the Army norm of “telephone game“*** training, euphemistically known as “train the trainer”, which is too common with all small arms skill. The myth that “any NCO with the FM” (TC now, but most NCOs are still unaware of this, hence the problem) can teach small arms skill is one of the most detrimental training lies infesting the U.S. Army.

*** “The game has no winner: the entertainment comes from comparing the original and final messages. Intermediate messages may also be compared; some messages will become unrecognizable after only a few steps.” It would be funny if it weren’t such a tragic waste of taxpayer money and Soldier ability.

More:
https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2020/06/12/raiders-field-new-squad-designated-marksman-rifle/

Mark Westrom: Rapid Semiautomatic Fire

June 8, 2020

John Buol MilitaryMarksman , , 1 Comment

“I could never get a kick from full-auto.”

– J. C. Tate, CDR USN (Ret.)

Lt. Col. Mark A. Westrom was one of my previous commanders as well as the former owner of ArmaLite and Eagle Arms. Before retiring from the Army, he published an informative paper:
Rapid Semiautomatic Fire and the Assault Rifle
Firing Rate Versus Accuracy
United States Army Reserve Command Small Arms Training Team

In his paper, LTC Westrom detailed a series of tests conducted with competitive shooters and military personnel shooting scored and timed courses at various rates of fire. With him in attendance, we ran a similar test based on his findings at the All Army Small Arms Championships at Fort Benning one year.

The basis of testing was to have shooters to fire on scored targets at varying rates. Given there was no fixed round count, every shot fired added to the score, but only if it hit.

The results were unsurprising to anyone in the know: Rapid semiautomatic fire at the maximum pace a shooter can get something resembling aligned sights on target ends up with the highest score. This is much faster than Rapid Fire in High Power and is fast enough to result in occasional misses, but is controlled. Obviously, the pace varies based on shooter skill and target size/distance. Taking the speed above the shooter’s limit sees the score decline and increasing the rate of fire further reduces the score even more. All shooters maxed their score with semiautomatic fire; nobody improved their result with full auto.

Lt. Col. Westrom concluded his paper with this:

IV. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

Today, the U.S. Military is generally conducting small arms training with much the same emphasis on single round accuracy that it did eighty years ago. Preliminary data suggests that a substantial increase in lethality can be obtained by increasing the firing rate of the line. The principles now taught are generally sound, and little additional training is needed to squeeze an important increase in effectiveness from our soldiers. Rapid semiautomatic fire is a simple extension of existing training, and its benefits are easily achieved by emphasis during training.

To make the best of Rapid Semiautomatic Fire we must:

  1. Test the benefits of rapid semiautomatic fire.
  2. Experiment. Additional firing data needs to be gathered to learn the effect of training, position, tactical situation, and weapon design. Fortunately, the experiments aren’t lengthy or difficult to conduct. The apparent flattening of the firing rate curve suggests that a rule of thumb rate of fire such as “50 shots per minute in the final assault” is adequate guidance. Lengthy testing to pin down exact numbers under a variety of scenarios might be interesting, but will probably not prove useful.
  3. Train soldiers to use rapid semiautomatic fire, and to shoot until the target is down.

Current qualification courses provide the shooter one round with which to engage each target. This isn’t tactically realistic. The current courses punish a shooter using rapid semiautomatic fire for even nearby targets.

In combat, the soldier is presented with a significant logistics issue: how to consume his basic load of ammunition with greatest efficiency. When presented with a distant target, he may need to fire several rounds to get a hit. If he does so, however, he may run low on ammunition. When presented with a threatening, nearby target later, he may be out of ammunition. He certainly must not decline to fire a second shot at that nearby opponent if the first shot is a miss.

This is just what the current qualification courses train the soldier to do. Current training teaches the wrong lessons. Each target is addressed by one cartridge. The correction to this is simple. Issue sufficient ammunition to allow for misses. Reward the shooter based on targets ultimately hit. Reward him further with a few points based on ammunition remaining. The highest scores obviously continue to go to the best shots, who both hit many targets and return with ammunition, but all are trained to engage.

  1. Aim every shot.

The current edition of FM 23-67 [since replaced by TC 3-22.240, TC 3-22.249, and TC 3-22.50, and TC 3-22.19 – Ed.] providing doctrine for the [then-current] M60 Machinegun, shows a machinegunner boldly firing the weapon from the hip. An M60 is too heavy to fire readily from the shoulder, so aiming every shot with this manner may be difficult. Nonetheless, advancing with a weapon firing from the hip must be regarded as an act of desperation or idiocy. The very fact that such an unsound technique is posted to the cover of a major document is a poor indicator of fire discipline.

The correction for this omission rests properly with the NCO Corps. Every NCO must assure as a matter of faith that every shot must be aimed in both training and combat. Even machineguns must be sighted. There can be no exceptions for blanks.

  1. Avoid burst or automatic fire.

As previously noted, there is ample evidence proving that automatic fire is almost useless beyond 25 yards. It is essentially useful for room to room fighting or trench clearing. Three shot burst if largely useless for both close combat and longer range fighting. It is truly the worst of both worlds. Both automatic fire with the M16A1 and burst fire with the M16A2 should be strenuously discouraged by the same NCOs who reinforce the act of aiming every shot. This is especially important during training with blanks, because soldiers enjoy automatic fire as a matter of play.

In summary, aiming assures maximum efficiency with each shot. Rapid semiautomatic fire assures maximum efficiency with each moment of contact. Combined, they offer a substantial increase in combat effectiveness with little change in resources or doctrine.

Coaching Tips

May 28, 2020

John Buol Fitness , Leave a comment

Dr. Jordan Feigenbaum is a strength coach. Here are his basic guidelines for working with trainees.

TL;DR: Good coaching is the opposite of how drill sergeants “teach” recruits.

Basic Coaching Review Principles

1. Remember you are coaching a human being, not a machine.

This is a person who has previous experiences, successes, fears, struggles, and ideas.  You probably do not know all of these, so take a moment to ask a few questions, to look at the demeanor of the lifter, to see how they are talking about themselves and their lifts. You can in fact do this online and with a video.

This practice tells you a lot about how you can proceed.  I can yell forcefully (or write very direct cues without always noting all of the positives as well) at some people and that’s effective.  For others, they would shrink and immediately become less confident or their overall anxiety about mistakes or problems can increase.  For some, they are assured with some affirmation of a positive before they can really hear a correction or problem.

A lifter might have some long-held habits and ideas about a lift and I won’t get very far if I immediately contradict those unless we have a chance to communicate about this first. For example-a guy who has been benching for YEARS usually thinks he’s an awesome bencher.  He and the bros have been maxing out forever.  I can usually find things to improve, but if I make him immediately feel like I think he’s “not a good bencher” or if change something that he has been doing for years without explanation as to why the change might be helpful, chances are he’s not going to hear or accept what I have to say.

Someone else might have long-standing knee trouble and hold quite dearly some ideas/narratives or fears about a squat.  I want to know a bit about this before I yell cues about going deeper or cueing the knees at all.

2. Be patient, step back, and be quieter than you might want to be.

Coaching is not about filling someone’s brain with feedback, words, and corrections.  It’s not even about praising them as much as possible. It’s about providing fitting feedback at the fitting time and in a fitting manner.  You’re not a better coach because you have something to say right away or can fill the time with words.  Remember this is not about the coach and all you can write or say to fill the rest times, it’s about the lifter and what you can do to help them.

3. Aim to take in the whole picture: their entire movement, confidence, control, speed, balance, and all that.

Do not fall back on those “handy cues” that are easy to hyperfocus on and miss the more important things.  You’re a better coach when you can step back, see the overall movement, consider THIS lifter, and offer coaching cues to improve the most impactful problems first.  Think about things like this lifter’s confidence with this lift, with this weight.  Look at overall balance, control of the bar, range of motion, and bar speed.  These are the places to start, not necessarily their fingers, an exact toe angle, and even their head position.

4. Be careful with your words.

You might not share a coaching language yet, and you certainly can’t assume that you’re going to have one way to coach everyone. Simply offering short cues without any shared understanding is ineffective and incredibly frustrating to a lifter.  Imagine trying to execute a lift and someone is now using phrases that mean very little to you, yet they expect you to do something with that information WHILE you are moving.  Ack!  Also, this is why short cues posted to videos on Facebook generally drive me crazy.  No one needs a series of one-liners, they need a cue AND an explanation on what that means, unless you know that lifter and share this language already.

Common Core Math

April 6, 2020

John Buol rant and rave , Leave a comment

Many people have strong opinions about what is commonly known as Common Core Math. As with many things, the general, popular opinion of laypersons is often wrong.

This has a number of parallels to small arms instruction. Personnel with minimal experience (which describes most military and law enforcement) assume their limited exposure is The Way and anything that deviates from that must be wrong because they’ve never bothered to consider it.

It’s also similar to anti-gun arguments. Non-shooters with little-to-no formal firearm education that know little-to-nothing about guns and unwilling to study the matter beyond looking at memes are only too happy to spew their opinions about it and demand their way into public policy. Similarly, non-mathematicians with little-to-no formal math education that know little-to-nothing about what the common core approach is intended to teach and unwilling to study the matter beyond looking at memes are only too happy to spew their opinions about it and demand their way into public policy.

As a non-mathematician, my initial, layperson, knee-jerk reaction was similar to the common, negative response: “What is this? That’s not how I learned it!” Then, I took the path less traveled. Within minutes, I was able to Google up writings and videos from the mathematicians that created it (including the video by Dr. Jo Boaler below) and quickly reversed my opinion. Part of the approach is learning how to learn. I quickly found similarities with this teaching approach to what is needed to understand theories in computer science. A few examples:

https://www.ece.ucsb.edu/~parhami/pubs_folder/parh02-arith-encycl-infosys.pdf

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lambda-calculus/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_calculus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_algebra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_O_notation

For a given program’s computation, a programmer may not need math knowledge beyond simple arithmetic, however, that doesn’t teach the theory behind how a computer works. Understanding the how and why behind the scenes requires a level of knowledge beyond working a simple algorithm.

Doing math “like they used to teach it” is mechanically working a single, basic algorithm without true understanding. Some people can successfully intuit a number sense without being deliberately taught it but many do not. Showing how to solve the same problem in different ways, demonstrating “backwards and forwards, inside and out” requires a full command of the knowledge. It’s not about which way is faster (use a calculator, or a spreadsheet program, or MATLAB if you just want to compute the answer fast), it’s about developing a deeper understanding.

The worst part about it is that it breaks one of the most important things in education: Parent involvement. Multiple studies have shown that the most important thing to educate kids is parental involvement. And parents look at this, don’t understand it, and then tune out of their kid’s education.

What the “new” approach labeled as “common core” is supposed to be is alternative ways of doing problems. It’s supposed to simplify things and help students use the same “math tricks” that a lot of people learn to do in their heads. Learning math in a variety of ways to gain a full understanding. But it fails.

  1. Parents aren’t given any guidance on how to help their kids use these methods.
  2. Methods are often instructed using small numbers where “the juice isn’t worth the squeeze” to apply these methods, and where such methods appear to be nonsense.
  3. The teachers themselves seem to not really understand what they are teaching, and just read it blindly from a book.
  4. The books themselves all too often have errors.
  5. Just as “the old way” doesn’t work for all students, the “new way” doesn’t work for all students either. Forcing students to learn all the ways and be equally proficient with them is dumb.
  6. Frankly, good math teachers are as rare as hen’s teeth. Good math students go and do things like be developers for Google and get to be millionaires by 30. They don’t go and get paid $45K a year to teach in public schools. Entirely too many math teachers don’t get these concepts themselves and stand virtually no chance of teaching it.



Consider the following explanations of the rationale of this education approach by some of the mathematicians that created it. This will take longer and require more deep thinking than blindly sharing and/or liking memes on social media. Perhaps that’s the cause of the real problem.



You’re wrong about Common Core math: Sorry, parents, but it makes more sense than you think

8 Common Core Math Standards, Explained



From Michael Goldenberg The mistake here is pretending that there is any such animal as “Common Core Math.” There is not. There is a set of content standards; there is a set of standards of practice for both students and teachers (which is very similar to the Process Standards from NCTM going back more than a decade).  And then there are a bunch of curricular packages (mostly textbook series for various grade bands, but also some online material, most notably (and horridly) ENGAGE-NY, which has been forced on all public schools in NY State and Louisiana). Those materials are not “the Common Core” but merely various implementations that CLAIM to be aligned to the standards. Period. So anyone who uses the term “Common Core Math” other than to refer to the standards is in error. And that goes for Dr. Boaler, much as I respect her and her work. It’s just silly and misleading and dangerous to pretend that there is some monolithic entity that is isomorphic to COMMON CORE MATH. There isn’t. And likely won’t be. 

Those who know the history of math education in the US know about “The” New Math, c. late 1950s into the early 1970s. But again, no such animal ever existed. There were a bunch of separate projects funded by the federal government to design new approaches to math. Some produced textbooks, but few of those got published and distributed past the pilot schools/district with which each individual project worked. One series, however, did get widely published and used: the Dolciani series. Some people, including people who generally hate what NCTM was pushing in the ’90s and henceforth and also hate “Common Core Math” to the extent that it is similar to those ’90s reform math texts, really LOVE Dolciani. Others despise it. I have mixed feeling about the series. It is VERY formalistic, much more like college math books than anything that appeared in the US prior to the ’60s for K-12.

As someone who now knows a lot of math, they’re okay. But as a kid, I probably would have found them dry and off-putting. And my dad, who had to try to help my younger brothers with homework out of those books, was at a loss, despite having studied math through calculus in school. It was too far from his own experience.  What we see now is people who are reacting against Common Core math books similarly to how my father reacted in the ’60s to Dolciani, but he didn’t blame everything on Obama. He didn’t blame it on Eisenhower or JFK, either. He just knew that he was out of his depth.  

Note, I’m NOT claiming that all the materials being hawked by publishers as “Common Core Math” are any good. Maybe NONE of them are. But that’s not really the issue. Most of what people are screaming about and finding a host of conspiracies behind (see all the crazy videos and many of the nastier comments against Common Core) is just ideas about teaching math better that have been around for decades.

The math isn’t new, and neither, really, is most of the pedagogy. Most of it makes perfect sense if done intelligently, but of course is confusing if it’s presented badly (seriously, folks: what ISN’T confusing in math if presented badly?) or if you’ve never seen it before and are so angry that you won’t even stop to think about how it might be sensible either because you’re embarrassed to say to your child that you simply don’t get it.

Bottom line: calm the fudge down, folks. When the smoke clears and the Common Core is gone, most professionals in math education will still want your kids to learn how to approach math more deeply and thoughtfully than you were presented with. That’s the nature of people who actually care about more than a small elite learning math. I’m one of them. Jo Boaler is one of them. There are thousands of us out there. We’re (mostly) pretty smart folks who spend our lives studying math, kids, learning, and teaching.

You may certainly disagree with anything or everything we think and say, but that doesn’t make it communism or corporate capitalism, either. You can fight it, but you’re not really helping your kids when you do so blindly and with great prejudice, when you swallow every horror story your read and hear, when you react out of fear and ignorance (and tell yourself it’s really out of deep knowledge of mathematics and its teaching, when few Americans really know mathematics deeply or are at all familiar with research on teaching and learning the subject at various levels), and kick and scream that you know more about all this than any college professor or K-12 teacher (you might be right to some extent about any given teacher, of course).

I wait patiently for parents who take the time to actually think rather than just react emotionally. Those who do the former often find that there’s a good deal to like out there, no matter what label is put on it, and the anti-Communist lunatics who post videos here are for the most part out of their minds. But of course, if you need to believe that progressive math (before or after the Common Core label got placed on it) is really about “dumbing down” kids, be my guest. Your loss, and, sadly, your kids’ loss. 

From Rufus Driscoll
It looks weird because you’re seeing it from the other side of the wall. I used to think it looked stupid and over the top until I became a Maths tutor.

When teaching a child maths before they truly understand what numbers are and how they relate to each other, telling them to simply put numbers on top of each other and follow the steps to make a new number gives them very little understanding. Some kids will see the relations without all the added breakdowns but you’d be surprised at how many will simply chug along doing the usual steps and never really get the process of what they’re doing.

The issue with this is that once you forget just one of the steps involved in getting from a to b, you will be completely unable to solve the problem. If someone is taught to understand how numbers form and work together, it doesn’t matter if they forget the one way they were taught to solve a particular problem; they will be able to reach the correct solution even if it does take longer than using the perfected method.

From Violet Crawley
The gag is, all the countries who score at the top of the PISA actually do teach their kids the “number sense” way. It works.

The problem is that American teachers are woefully underqualified, so they confuse the kids because they themselves aren’t good at math.

Traits of the Very Best Leaders

July 1, 2019

John Buol rant and rave , , , , , , Leave a comment

Spoiler: It’s also the opposite of every drill sergeant stereotype and other incompetent leaders in the military.

Google’s research is in line with the Disciplined Disobedience approach that the Army is supposed to be following but few personnel actually do.

1. Be a good coach.
You either care about your employees or you don’t. There’s no gray zone. If you care, then you’ll invest time and energy to help your employees become better versions of themselves. That’s the first 50 percent of being a good coach.

The other half is knowing you’re a facilitator, not a fixer. Ask good questions, don’t just give the answers. Expand your coachees’ point of view versus giving it to them.

2. Empower teams and don’t micromanage.
Absolutely no one likes to be micromanaged. Research indicates empowered employees have higher job satisfaction and organizational commitment, which reduces turnover and increases performance and motivation. Also, supervisors who empower are seen as more influential and inspiring by their subordinates.

Everyone wins when you learn to let go.

3. Create an inclusive team environment, showing concern for success and well-being.
Individual fulfillment is often a joint effort. People derive tremendous joy from being part of a winning team. The best managers facilitate esprit de corps and interdependence.

And employees respond to managers who are concerned about winning, and winning well (in a way that supports their well-being).

4. Be productive and results oriented.
Take productivity of your employees seriously and give them the tools to be productive, keeping the number of processes to a minimum.

5. Be a good communicator — listen and share information.
The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place. It often doesn’t happen because of a lack of effort from both the transmitting and the receiving parties. Invest in communication, and care enough to listen.

Former CEO of Procter & Gamble A.G. Lafley once told me his job was 90 percent communication–communicating the next point especially.

6. Have a clear vision/strategy for the team.
With no North Star, employees sail into the rocks. Enroll employees in building that vision/strategy, don’t just foist it on them. The former nets commitment, the latter compliance. And be prepared to communicate it more often than you ever thought you could.

7. Support career development and discuss performance.
The best managers care about their people’s careers and development as much as they care about their own. People crave feedback. And you owe it to them.

People don’t work to achieve a 20 percent return on assets or any other numerical goal. They work to bring meaning into their lives, and meaning comes from personal growth and development.

8. Have the expertise to advise the team.
Google wants its managers to have key technical skills (like coding, etc.) so they can share the “been there, done that” experience. So be there and do that to build up your core expertise, whatever that might be. Stay current on industry trends and read everything you can.

9. Collaborate.
In a global and remote business world, collaboration skills are essential. Collaboration happens when each team member feels accountability and interdependence with teammates. Nothing is more destructive for a team than a leader who is unwilling to collaborate. It creates a “it’s up to only us” vibe that kills culture, productivity, and results.

10. Be a strong decision maker.
The alternative is indecision, which paralyzes an organization, creates doubt, uncertainty, lack of focus, and even resentment. Strong decisions come from a strong sense of self-confidence and belief that a decision, even if proved wrong, is better than none.

https://www.inc.com/scott-mautz/google-tried-to-prove-managers-dont-matter-instead-they-discovered-10-traits-of-very-best-ones.html

Recoil Anticipation

June 10, 2019

John Buol ConventionalShooter, MarksmanshipQualification, MilitaryMarksman, SensibleShooter , , , 2 Comments

I’d argue that recoil anticipation (also known as flinch, pre-ignition push, trigger jerk, and a variety of cuss words…) is the single biggest detriment to novice shooters. Novice here also includes gun owners, law enforcement, and military personnel with years and decades of “experience” that never developed shooting ability beyond passing routine qualification.

Learning how to overcome (or at least greatly reduce) the very natural tendency to react to recoil, noise, flash, and movement of a discharging firearm while attempting to maintain alignment on target is the most single most important thing a firearm user can do to improve proficiency. This also increases the ability to followthrough and call shots, critical to refining a shot process.

The lack of attention paid to this critical element of successful shooting is the biggest reason why many gun owners, law enforcement, and military personnel never progress beyond the elementary, initial, basic skill levels used during initial entry , basic, academy training. Far too many personnel are not even aware of this being an issue and most of them completely fail to actively address it.

For intermediate shooters, DRY FIRE DOES NOT FIX RECOIL ANTICIPATION BECAUSE KNOWLEDGE CHANGES EXECUTION . Here’s the proof right here and this is extremely common. Slight disruption to the gun sufficient to cause a miss as distance increases. At close range, people often chalk this off to sight picture when actuality it’s a slight case of recoil anticipation. Take this back to 15 or 25 yards, it’s a miss. This drill works great with a partner but if you’re working alone, try mixing in some dummy rounds. Facts not opinions is what I am after. Hold yourself accountable and fix your deficiencies.

Note, this doesn’t mean that dry practice isn’t useful and won’t help at all. Continued dry practice will continue to enhance (or at least maintain) the ability to more rapidly obtain sufficient alignment on target and manipulate the trigger without causing disruption. The point is that after a certain point of development, dry practice alone won’t magically fix recoil anticipation because it’s purposely done dry/empty (obviously) and knowledge of that removes that tendency. Only intelligent exposure to live fire, preferably done with dummy rounds (skip loading and other approaches) and perhaps additional feedback from sensors (MantisX, SCATT, etc.), can do this.

If you want to get stronger, you need to subject yourself to the stress of lifting heavier weight, preferably done with intelligently-programmed increases. If you want to eliminate recoil anticipation, you need to subject yourself to recoil, preferably done with intelligently-programmed intermittent exposures (training partner loads as demonstrated below, dummy rounds, intermix shooting with lower recoiling firearm/cartridge, etc.)

https://www.facebook.com/114008039194217/videos/vb.114008039194217/435200330372416/

More on this:

https://firearmusernetwork.com/grooving-bad-habits/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/training-and-habits/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/misplaced-tactical-training/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/pistol-shooting-questions/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/head-shots-are-still-misses/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/shooting-basics-uspsa-idpa-ipsc/

https://firearmusernetwork.com/dummies-steal-dummy-rounds-smart-shooters-use-them/

Dental Hygiene Level Effort

May 12, 2019

John Buol Shooting , 1 Comment

One of the most frustrating things I’ve encountered when trying to help shooters (military, law enforcement, and civilian/private gun owners alike) is that it wouldn’t take much effort to make a marked improvement.

My advice to LE students at the academy I instructed for was a simple dry practice routine:
Five careful “shots”
Five presentations from the duty holster

Do this in the locker/ready room at the start and end of each shift. The officers were gearing up/down and checking equipment anyway, so adding this only takes a minute or two. However, even for those skipping half the sessions would end up with well over a thousand quality “shots” and presentation reps before the end of their rookie year taking no real amount of time and costing nothing.

Everybody that bothered to do it reported their next qualification went notably better with a much improved score. Amazingly enough…

I refer to this as the dental hygiene level of effort. Dedicate about the same amount of time it takes to brush and floss your teeth every day to learning a new skill can yield long-term results.

The big problem was how few bothered to do so.

Solving Dunning-Kruger Effect

January 20, 2019

John Buol Shooting , , , , 1 Comment

Dunning–Kruger Effect is a cognitive bias in which people of low ability or skill maintain illusory superiority and mistakenly assess their ability, skill, and/or experience as greater than it is. The cognitive bias of illusory superiority comes from the inability of low-ability people to recognize their lack of ability. Without the self-awareness of metacognition (an awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes), low-ability people cannot objectively evaluate their actual competence or incompetence.

Dunning–Kruger Effect impacts all humans and everyone (including you and me) is potentially susceptible. It has been recognized by many people over the course of human history. Dr. David Dunning and his graduate student Justin Kruger established a variety of test methodologies to measure this phenomenon and published a formal research paper about their found results.

David McRaney is the host of the excellent You Are Not So Smart podcast. He recounts when he first realized the Dunning-Kruger Effect impacted him.

I remember the first time in my life that I really recognized that [Dunning-Kruger Effect] was true.

In college, I staged a fighting game tournament where I set up all these video game systems and I invited people from around the country to the university to play. We had a group of friends – it was like, 8 to 10 people in our hometown who played this game – and we thought that we were amazing at it. We thought that we were the best in the world and I had no problem inviting the champions at this game from around the country to come to play against us.

Every single one of us lost our matches immediately. Like, we didn’t even place. We didn’t even come close. We were absolutely destroyed. And I remember all of us sort of shaking our heads and rubbing our temples and thinking, “How could we not just be not okay but actually suck? I mean, how is that possible?”

I bet that sort of thing happens a lot amongst people who are sort of at the amateur level and feel that they have achieved something.

Every human is susceptible to Dunning-Kruger Effect. The challenge is to be willing to find the means to overcome it. Because this is a cognitive bias – a mistake in reasoning, evaluating, and/or remembering – nobody can reliably do it on their own. As McRaney’s example illustrates, it was only after he and his friends organized a tournament, invited everyone that was interested and thought they were good, and measured the results did he finally snap out of his delusion of competence.

Dr. David Dunning confirms this is the path to solving Dunning-Kruger Effect.

“Why don’t people know themselves?”

You begin to realize that there are just some really big barriers to knowing yourself. That’s if you make it a private task that only you are engaged in. If you don’t talk to [and engage with] other people.

If you talk to other people, they can be sources of invaluable insight into yourself. Some of these insights may be unpleasant. Also, just watching what other people do and benchmarking what you do versus what they do can be a source of insight. It takes a village, if you will, for a person to know themselves.

We engaged in a number of studies where we exposed people to others who are performing very poorly to performing extremely well and what we find is that the collective is pretty good at knowing who’s bad.

A last hint is to ask, “Are you vaguely embarrassed by things you did 5 or 10 years ago?” And if you are, that means you’re improving. I mean, if you think about the self you were 10 years ago and you’re not embarrassed by something that you did, you might be off the task.

TL;DR
Go shoot a match or compete in something outside your unit or immediate group of friends once in a while. If you don’t, you’re almost certainly a victim of Dunning-Kruger Effect and are not able to even realize it.

Full interview with Dr. David Dunning:
https://youarenotsosmart.com/2014/11/10/yanss-podcast-036-why-we-are-unaware-that-we-lack-the-skill-to-tell-how-how-unskilled-and-unaware-we-are/


As measured ability/knowledge improves, so does the awareness and self estimate of that ability/knowledge. The top 20% will tend to underestimate their measured ability/knowledge.

It’s worth pointing out that it is wrong to believe the D-K effect applies only to people who are “incompetent.” This is wrong on two levels. The first is that the DK effect does not apply only to “incompetent people” but to everyone, with respect to any area of knowledge.

It is important to how the D-K effect is interpreted. The vast majority of people who bring it up seem to think that it applies only to dumb people and that it says dumb people think they are smarter than smart people. Neither of these things are true. Further – if you think it only applies to other people (which itself, ironically, is part of the DK effect) then you miss the core lesson and opportunity for self-improvement and critical thinking.

More:

Misunderstanding Dunning-Kruger

https://www.forbes.com/sites/markmurphy/2017/01/24/the-dunning-kruger-effect-shows-why-some-people-think-theyre-great-even-when-their-work-is-terrible/

Think, Don’t Plink

January 10, 2019

John Buol Guest Article , , , , Leave a comment

https://www.tacticalperformancecenter.com/blogs/the-dump-pouch/110306694-designing-a-practice

One of our mottos here at the Tactical Performance Center is “think don’t plink.” More than just a catchy phrase, there is deep wisdom in this statement: each round you fire should have a purpose.

I have lived by this motto and every shot I have fired, of my own ammo, in the last eight years has had one of three purposes:

Does the gun work?
Did my outcome match my intent?
Did I follow the process I wanted to follow to release this shot?

Unfortunately, this approach is rarely seen at the range. Too often I see shooters simply turning money into noise without gaining performance improvement. Occasionally I’ll even have a shooter tell me something like “Yeah, great practice. 1,000 rounds down range.” They grow quiet though when I respond with “Great! Did you get 200 bucks of improvement?”

As shooting becomes more expensive and the reasons we shoot–whether it be training to defend our life, protect the public, or win a match–have become more pressing, we owe it to ourselves, and those we protect, to be as good as we can be.

The good news is that improving our performance doesn’t mean that we need to spend more money on ammo or even more time at the range. We just need to build better practices!

At our TPC boot camps, we do just this. While we focus on principles and fundamentals for world class shooting, these concepts are new to most and unlikely to stick after just three days of instruction. For that reason, we also teach our students how to design practices that lock in those fundamentals and improve the speed and consistency with which they can deliver shots.

Here is how we work with our students to develop a practice:

START WITH THE FUNDAMENTALS

Start and end with the fundamentals of grip, stance, isolating the trigger, letting recoil happen, calling shots, and active follow through. If these are not holding, stop and work on just them. If you have 200 rounds, use a large percent of them here.

ONLY DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO WITH LIVE FIRE

You can perfect a reload with very little live fire but a lot of dry practice. We can hone technique dry and then measure or experiment live.

THINK SMALL, LOOK SMALL

I recently had a fellow instructor who was visually leaving targets early in a rush to get to the next target. This was causing misses and hurting his competition performance. Together we designed an *exercise using dots focused on follow thru. He did this exercise with 100 rounds a day, over two days. At his next performance at a large competition he found that his problem was solved.

*Note that we designed an “exercise”, not a drill. We want to improve a fundamental skill that we can reuse elsewhere, purposefully, not just as a series of sequences where we can fool ourselves with improvement by memorizing a sequence of actions.

END WITH THE FUNDAMENTALS

We used this process to design a 200-round practice with a group of students at a recent boot camp. Our “look small” goal was to improve our ability to isolate the trigger, including under speed stress. The class had wisely deduced that a lot of low hanging fruit in improving their performance could be found in the trigger pull.

Here is what our practice looked like:

  • 75 dots, dry, focusing on a different element of the shooting cycle on each row
  • 75 dots, live, focusing on isolating the trigger on each dot (3 shots per dot)
  • 40 alpha exercise (from the Army Marksmanship Unit Action Shooting team)
  • ½ USPSA metric target, at 15 yards (this simulates a 30 yard shot)
  • 40 shots, in 5 shot strings, as fast as the sights present what you need to see
  • Strong focus on isolating the trigger
  • 75 dots, live, focusing on isolating the trigger on each dot (3 shots per dot)
  • 75 dots, dry, focusing on isolating the trigger on each dot and active follow through

This practice took 190 rounds and an hour and a half to complete. Every person on the line got 20+ Alphas, with some in the high 30’s. When I asked them “was that worth 1.5 hours and 20 bucks in ammo?” the universal answer was that it was the best experience shooting, in terms of improvement, they’d ever had.

Now imagine doing that twice a week. How good would you get with $40 a week in ammo and three hours of your time?

I encourage you to bring PURPOSE and PLANNING to your practices. You will improve at a dramatic rate and the gains will be more permanent.

Think, don’t plink!

Older Entries

%d bloggers like this: