Bartholomew Roberts
Moderator
Recently, I was listening to one of the American Warrior Show podcasts hosted by Mike Seelander. He had Rob Leatham on as a guest. That podcast inspired this post; but first let me wind the clock back on my own training.
I started shooting IDPA around 2000; because I wanted to become better trained for concealed carry and at that time I didn't know any other place to practice those skills. When I would shoot, I would see guys scout out the scenario. They would look at it, practice movement, they'd even do dryfire runs. At the time, I considered this "gaming" and an unrealistic approach to the real purpose behind the sport.
Fast forward to 2008 or so and I have done multiple shooting schools and I am doing simunitions work in force-on-force scenarios. One of the things I realize very quickly in doing this is that your weapon handling skills have to be autonomous - like walking or driving. You have to be able to execute them flawlessly without conscious thought because you already have a whole lot to think about and if you aren't at that level, your OODA loop gets overwhelmed quickly.
Flash forward even further to the podcast, Rob Leatham talks about a guy with multiple combat deployments with special operations telling him competition is more stressful than being in a firefight because in a firefight, things just happen and you respond to it. In a competition, the stress of planning his next move and thinking through the scenario was greater to him. And that is where I had the thought that what I had discarded as "gaming" was actually a skill that was really useful in a fight - being at the level that your weapon manipulations were so autonomous that your brain was freed up to worry about things like foot placement, movement, most efficient use of time, etc.
It occurred to me that while the worries might not be the same, the ability to operate the weapon autonomously while having brain power free to assess the situation was a very critical skill in a fight.
Thoughts?
I started shooting IDPA around 2000; because I wanted to become better trained for concealed carry and at that time I didn't know any other place to practice those skills. When I would shoot, I would see guys scout out the scenario. They would look at it, practice movement, they'd even do dryfire runs. At the time, I considered this "gaming" and an unrealistic approach to the real purpose behind the sport.
Fast forward to 2008 or so and I have done multiple shooting schools and I am doing simunitions work in force-on-force scenarios. One of the things I realize very quickly in doing this is that your weapon handling skills have to be autonomous - like walking or driving. You have to be able to execute them flawlessly without conscious thought because you already have a whole lot to think about and if you aren't at that level, your OODA loop gets overwhelmed quickly.
Flash forward even further to the podcast, Rob Leatham talks about a guy with multiple combat deployments with special operations telling him competition is more stressful than being in a firefight because in a firefight, things just happen and you respond to it. In a competition, the stress of planning his next move and thinking through the scenario was greater to him. And that is where I had the thought that what I had discarded as "gaming" was actually a skill that was really useful in a fight - being at the level that your weapon manipulations were so autonomous that your brain was freed up to worry about things like foot placement, movement, most efficient use of time, etc.
It occurred to me that while the worries might not be the same, the ability to operate the weapon autonomously while having brain power free to assess the situation was a very critical skill in a fight.
Thoughts?