I mean yes? Competitive shooting and gunfighting are two VERY different skillsets.

Every gunfight is a competition.

Yeah but I dont have a guy come up to me and say " I am going to shoot your dog and butt rape you" and hand me a belt with a race gun and draw a little square box around me and hold a timer for me will he?

Attached File


Like it always is in "discussions" comparing competition and tactics.

To clarify, I am talking about self-training using materials and videos from established trainers in lieu of taking a class in person.

I’ve seen quite a few people make it to A and M without taking a real life class but they definitely aren’t making up their own training methodology…. They’re using someone else’s.  Me included.

Why would he need to do any of that? Hopefully you brought your own gun. We don't need a box since for this stage the starting position is where ever you happen to be standing when you realize he is serious. Shot timer isn't needed since the par time is however long it takes him to shoot your dog, its a pass/fail event, and all procedural penalties will be assessed via suppository.

God damnit! You owe me a cup of coffee and a keyboard!

I'd argue this is the majority of competition shooters as well (me included)... typically the advice given is for newer shooters to grab a Stoeger book, start listening to podcasts, and check out certain youtube videos... and most importantly, DRY FIRE!

I would say, competition shooters coach and train each other. Somewhat unique to our sport is to help our competition. I benefitted from a LOT of pointers, solicited and otherwise. It is fairly easy to spot opportunities in newer shooters.

My experience agrees with this.

Most shooters will often give unsolicited advice to newer people and it is helpful, not in a belittling way.  Kind of unusual as far as sports go.  

Most people take to it pretty well.  You’ll get the occasional person who won’t listen.  But that is rare.

Movers in matches:
https://www.instagram.com/stories/casualshooterspodcast/3351971949561462540?utm_source=ig_story_item_share&igsh=OWFnZjBkYzJsN2c1

Saw that the other day.  

I’ve shot a lot of swingers, clamshells and drop turners but not a moving target on a carriage.  Would be interesting.  Different kind of moving target.

Those are some fast swingers.

I've been spoiled lol.

I use occular and sensory training for my college athletes. They play baseball, soccer, football, and rugby. Being a range runner ain't a sport.

Every time you shoot, you're using marksmanship fundamentals.

What group of people is the best in the world at marksmanship fundamentals?

Military vets that put on classes where the primary selling point is their war stories?

They are more common in long range rifle matches (formats like gas gun and PRS). There's different types but they are all the same basic idea. Some move faster than others. Some are capable of really scootin'. My former home club has one that I'd say moves at a medium pace. Like, its hittable but you better be ready to get it on. Putting targets that have their own movement on the cart looks extra fun.

Only if it’s war story Wednesday

Cops, obviously.

Keyboard warriors, duh.

So your contention is using transitions, like I described, between targets doesn’t train you to track your sights across multiple sight pictures like you would on a moving target?

I would disagree. From what I can tell, you’re adding in variables that are outside the scope of what I was discussing. I’m talking about developing the hard skills of speed and accuracy. Just like everything else i train on a flat range.

But, tbh, those things shouldn’t matter. When shooting transitions you should be finding your sight(s) every time and only pulling the trigger when you have an acceptable sight picture. That standard is the same between shooting bulls at 25 yards, shooting transitions focusing on your splits, force on force, or an actual shooting. Finding your sights and only pulling the trigger when you have met your standard. Use shoot no shoot targets, work transitions at different ranges, set targets at different heights, etc…

Part of developing the hard skills is honing them to a point where they are “running in the background” so you can use your mental bandwidth to process other information, such as what is going on in the environment around you, to include problems in the foreground or background. Side note, from an LE perspective, I’m more worried about someone having poor accuracy and hitting something they’re not aiming at than foreground or background issues.

As I mentioned previously in this thread, force on force is great, obviously it is the closest thing you can get to a real gunfight. But it’s impractical for just about everyone on this site to do it often enough to keep you proficient at it. The stuff I describe above you can do dry in your garage… I do it all the time with scaled targets and a timer. It’s like anything else, develop the skill dry, confirm it with live fire, then use the skills you’ve developed in real world application (FoF, for example).

What I typically see in force on force is two guys blazing away at one another as fast as they can pull the trigger with no regard for sight picture. I’ve seen the cyclic rate of “Glock” simuniton pistols pushed way past what I thought possible. If you ask them if they saw their sights for every round they fired you’ll get the “uhhhh” look. They’ll have a bunch of misses and some random hits here and there. I would bet my next paycheck that if those same dudes were trained to work transitions their performance would greatly improve. Because while the target’s movements are random and unpredictable, they still have trained the skill of reacquiring a sight picture across multiple targets

NRA Bullseye competitors

Not if you're worried about managing recoil to make follow on shots in any sort of realistic time...

Seriously... they're not even shooting 2 handed.

Now it becomes clear.

Yes it is. It has more in common with golf than rugby, but it's definitely a sport.

Attached File

What would I rely on a group for?

Collective action, sounds like communism to me.

Yup. Definitely LARPing.

Despite the competition copium here, the truth is that force on force training is better prep for a gunfight, than competition. And no it isn't, or at least doesn't have to be, prohibitively expensive or difficult to do. It's definitely one of those get both situations. You need to build the shooting skills and the tactical skills to apply them.

At least half of the USPSA / IDPA shooters would be better preparing for a gunfight, by playing paintball with teenagers for an afternoon, than going to another shooting match. Of course it would be better to do something with some folks who know a bit more about what they are doing.

People bringing up SOF getting competitive training is a valid point. It's the natural and logical progression for them. They typically get this training AFTER having learned at least the basics of most everything else.

It's like teaching a kid to drive in an empty parking lot to learn the basics of handling. Then progressing to the track and teaching them how to drive the car faster, with better handling skills. Yeah those skills might be handy. But you also need to learn some other things, before jumping into driving in the city during rush hour traffic, with all the crazies and idiots. At some point, driving on the side streets and country roads is clearly a lot more beneficial than knocking 1/4 second off of their track lap time.

SF guy weighs in…

Why do you equate that image with bullseye shooters?

The shooting skills carry over to the FoF. If you are better at shooting you will do better at FoF that someone who does everything else the same.

The meme spiritually fit the attitude of the poster.

Agree. Get both. I like Pat Macnamara's philosophy of training on a lot of things and being good at them. I like a lot of Stoeger's philosophy too.




I like the SF video a few posts up. The message is essentially that the military needs to up their game on basic weapons proficiency and a good way to do that is in competition. 100% true.

It's also true that a lot of the civilians in competitions know fuck all about tactics and have zero training or experience relevant to gun fighting. They would benefit a lot from even simple things like airsoft, laser tag or paintball. Better yet get some proper tactical force on force training.

My first experience with legit shooting instruction, not basic .mil instruction, training, and OJT-

Was in the 80s.  There were still some 11B-sierras from E6 and up and a Tango here and there knocking out platoon sergeant time or an E8 job in Ranger Bn.  The AMU even came and gave us a MTT when we fielded the M9.  Plus a few squads would go to SOT.  We also had an SOT MTT.  Between then and 2014 I had interacted with a ton of instructors be it SOT, SFAUTC, SFARTEC, OTC, etc.  I was not an operator or 18series CIF guy,  but either had instruction from such either as guests to my unit, contracted for a unit, etc.  I was also see them because our kids went to school together, we met deployed together, they were in the neighborhood, kids on the same team, -and-
At matches.

And everyone of them recommended competition as a good training modality.

Not the only form of training obviously, but as a good building block of it.

The vast majority of them were not going to be a GM.  Or if they did it was a lot of effort spent and dry fire, etc.  And most didn’t recommend that going full in regimen.

But, around late 90s to 2014 or so-
They universally felt a half dozen or dozen or so matches a year of SS or production was a great shooting on the move, shooting moving stuff, not hitting white stuff, mag changes, etc. on the clock on a random assortment of stages against a random assortment of shooters had benefit.

As to the comment most SOF shooters doing matches at the hobby level are not that good-
Well- to be honest, the main difference is, yeah-
The average guying doing half a dozen hobby interest matches over a year may only be a C or B shooter or whatever.  But in general, after a no notice TST, rush to the airfield, 10K offset infil through the winter mountains of Afghanistan or whatever, if their carbine went down and they pulled secondary they’re still a B level shooter.  Which is better than like 98.7% of people on the earth.  And that there are virtually no GM dedicated champion type shooters that can breach, run their comms, navigate, cross trained in basic lifesaving pre-hospital trauma, etc. who could even make the infil, let alone still shoot GM level after.

Is anyone making that argument or are people conflating the arguments as happens over and over in every thread like this? Copium huh cool story bro.

Maybe not by you, but there are tons of "tactical timmy" "fantasy camp" and "larping" comments categorically disparaging any tactical training in this thread.

That position is just as arrogant / ignorant as the people who categorically dismiss competition.

Plenty of hubris in both camps.

Ironically Ben Stoeger seems to disagree and believes the tactical guys have value and things to learn from. He's just not afraid to call people out for BS where he thinks he sees it.

Thanks for posting that.

Felt both pertinent and nostalgic.

I have the chance to do some research with Haley’s team. The science is there and he’s providing an important service.  Biomechanics and research isn’t wild. You’d shit if you saw how much money the federal government gave my previous team to research stupid stuff for the military.

So you think Haley employs three ocular scientists full time on his staff, like his comments suggested?

So have you done research with Heley yet or not? .........if you have not yet......how do you know "the science is there".........

.....and how do you qualify what science is?  .......(if you have already done the research with Haley)...(if you have NOT done "the research"....aren't you speaking a bit prematurely?...not very scientific??)

P.S. Using medical and anatomic terms is not scientific.........they are just words.....science is much more..

I sort of picture Haley like this:

Now look.  I brought back the checkbook and took us to three new ocular scientists.
Three.  
A child can count to three on fingers.  We should own the tactical space.
...
We need more ocular scientists than can ever be assembled.
Millions so we can train trillions.  More.  Ranges beyond ranges, diamond berms.
We could storm the market space and retake her.

Have absolutely ZERO idea if he does. But they do research and they do put out contract solicitations sometimes. I found out about it when I had a contract with CGS (Compass Gov Solutions). Very interesting. Could he bullshit could be accurate. But I think stoeger just has it out for Hayley for some reason. This isn’t the first thread made where he’s trolled them.

What research are you referring to????

When folks just through our words with now evidence of real study, I get VERY suspicious......(this is coming from someone who has performed research, written thesisis and defended that research in front of a panel of experts/colleges)

Please, tell us about this research...................

I don’t know much I’m just a Clinical EP with a focus on cardiovascular metabolism and motor unit recruitment.

Even pseudo science is science.

We literally got a 500,000$ federal grant to study why obese people who get shot in a high stress situation are more likely to die than someone with superior cardiovascular health and fitness. lol

I'm not asking about your research......Im asking about Haley's............

You haven't yet expressed what science Haley is doing........and the definition of pseudoscience is NOT SCIENCE. (pseudo=not genuine)

You said, "the science is there"........what is there?????

Semantics. Everything you do throughout the day is a part of the scientific process. Science is Latin for ‘too know’ or just knowledge.

Hayley does not do research. He solicits research and offers funding. I’m sure it’s not groundbreaking. But the fact of the matter is he’s offering something different.