Back in the “explaining going faster without necessarily going faster” article, timaustintx posted a video of current USPSA Production champ Ben Stoeger shooting the F.A.S.T. drill.

Here’s the video:

Ben shoots the drill a few times, putting up amazing times on each run. What’s different about each run is he uses different gear and technique. And take note of the final comment he makes.

Gear matters.

It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, the tools you use can help or hinder you. It’s not just in shooting; in my daily life as an iOS programmer, using Apple’s blessed toolset of Xcode helps me write apps. I’ve seen some people try to use alternative toolsets and they always struggle or have shortcomings. In constructing a house, having a good hammer and proper screwdrivers enables you to better get the job done. Proper tools, and then the best of those tools will help you accomplish the task.

This is why in classes we implore people to get proper guns, ones that fit. Why we want people to get good holsters, good magazine pouches. They will help you shoot better, and yes the crappy stuff you bought at Academy will hinder you. Ben’s video is good demonstration of this because he’s got top skill and the only thing changing is his gear… and it affects his shooting.

To follow up on the “going faster” post tho, check out Ben’s “take 2” of the FAST drill.

Some people were giving Ben a hard time for not shooting the drill exactly as written. So Ben made this second video, and still put up awesome times. Heck, shooting the drill at 25 yards he shoots it better than most people do at 7 yards.

While there’s a lot of things you can learn from watching Ben’s videos, the one thing I want you to focus on in terms of the “going faster” context is how Ben changes up speed.

Watch Ben’s non-shooting movements. Look at his draw, his reload. Look how fast they are, and look how they are the same speed regardless of the distance he’s shooting at. He’s always fast on these things, not wasting time. But he changes up his speed when required, such as at 25 yards (you have to go slower at longer distances or smaller targets). It’s not one steady acceleration curve from start buzzer to end buzzer, but going at the right speed for the subtask at hand. And notice that while Ben changes up his speeds, he’s still “going faster” but not “going faster” and puts up some amazing times on this drill.

So don’t think that to go fast you always have to go fast. There’s more to it.

 

This past Saturday’s KR Training time was just one class, Basic Pistol 2. What was different was the KR in KR Training wasn’t with us. Karl was taking a well-earned day off, so this class was being run by Tom Hogel and staffed with myself, Paul Martin, and Ed Vinyard.

Things went quite smooth. Twelve students of varying demographics and experience levels. Equipment was in pretty good shape too for this class. Usually we have a lot more people with problem equipment, but we had only one that I think is going to ditch his DA/SA gun for something like a Glock or M&P. We don’t have to convince people of this, they convince themselves. Once they have to really run their equipment, they find out how much it doesn’t work. It’s just good that guns have a fair resale value.

All in all, class went smooth. The recent cold fronts and rain gave us some great weather. And with a good group of students that came with minds open and ready to learn, we couldn’t ask for a better day.

Biggest thing to emphasize to those in the class? Slow down. Yes, you have to know that speed matters, but right now you need to be correct. You now understand proper technique, so now is the time to apply it. Don’t worry about speed, don’t worry about trying to go fast; worry about trying to be correct and do it right every time. That said, don’t waste time, don’t dawdle. Realize that speed will matter and is something to work towards, but for now, work on learning the motions and being correct.

FWIW, a new class called “Skill Builder” is starting and will be running fairly regularly. I’d recommend folks check this class out as a way to practice under the eye of an instructor, and also to gain assessment of where you are and need to go.

Finally… Karl left a new acquisition for us at the ranch to try out. An M&P-22. Man, that’s a fun gun! In most all respects it’s the same as a full-sized M&P, just in .22 caliber. From what I remember now as I write this, the backstraps were not interchangeable, I don’t recall how ambidextrous-friendly it is, and the gun does feel lighter in the hand which make sense since the barrel and slide can’t be as heavy. Oh, and I do recal the trigger was actually pretty decent and had a tactile reset! It was a lot of fun to shoot, and certainly would make for a good .22 pistol, either as a trainer alternative from your regular M&P or just as a .22 to have fun with. It did have some ammo-related problems, like failures to feed, failure to eject, stove pipes, and such, but we’re not sure if those were due to the gun or due to the ammo itself. Would need more testing to determine, and I’m sure we’ll have a line of people willing to test that out. Fun little gun!

I took the M&P Shield out to KR Training last Saturday for Basic Pistol 1 and Defensive Pistol Skills 1. My original intention was to take it just for the BP1 class to have all the students try shooting it, given the “buffet” nature of the class. However a few days before class, Karl told me of a returning student that wanted to try shooting the Shield during DPS1. I remember the student, she had small hands, and so it made good sense to have her try it because that’s the main thing we’re thinking the Shield would be good for: folks with small hands. Plus I figured it’d be good to have the gun run for a little while in some different classes and environments, get more rounds through it and so on.

So how did it go?

I think alright.

I read somewhere someone’s description of the Shield as “too big to be a small gun, and too small to be a big gun”. I think that’s a reasonable description. It’s not really a pocket gun, tho I guess if you had big cargo pants pockets it could work; it certainly fits into the pocket of some of my larger cargo pants/shorts. But it’s not big enough to do things like allow me a really good grip on it, or have a nice long sight radius. But wearing it in a holster on my belt? That’s fine, and frankly I think a bit more appropriate than in a pocket.

There’s no question that it fits well for folks with small hands. Numerous sets of small hands went onto the gun and they worked out quite well. The recoil spring is strong so it takes a bit of work for people to rack the slide (many times small hands also means less strength), but with good technique it can be done. So this bodes well.

Given the “small/weak hands” situation tho… the trigger. Well, it can be worked, but it’s got such a heavy break on it that it can make it harder for these very people to shoot it. It’s not impossible at all, but they’ll probably shoot it better if they got some trigger work done. I’d be curious to see how the forthcoming Apex Tactical SCK trigger kit could help things out here for folks.

The gun ran well during the day. Probably had 300 rounds put through it over the course of the day (so now about 500 total). I only saw a couple problems. First, the slide often didn’t go into battery. My suspicion here isn’t the gun but the operator, but it does harken back to issues of strength and technique. Second, the lack of magazines was a bit hampering for a class. Whenever Smith & Wesson finally starts selling magazines, you’ll want to get a bunch. Having just the 2 magazines made it difficult to manage class. Plus, while the magazines claim 7 and 8 round capacity, you really only want to use 6 and 7, else it can become difficult to seat the magazines. Again, this harkens back to a strength issue.

I’m happy that the gun continues to run and seems to be getting better with break-in.

It’s a little hard to shoot because it’s a bit muzzle-flippy and a bit hard to get a grip on. It’s also a bit hard to manipulate. While it’s certainly proving to be a good fit for smaller hands, if those smaller hands are also weaker hands well… the gun isn’t unmanageable, but it can be tough. Technique can help overcome this tho, but that’s going to require some training and practice.

I’m not down on the gun at all…. just trying to be realistic about it. It’s quite appealing given the name, the engineering behind it, the features, the pricepoint. But is it just going to be sexy, or actually useful? I’d like to be useful in general and to specifically solve problems for people.

Speed is important.

And once you can go at one speed, you want to or may need to go faster.

In working with a student the other day, I realized a need to change my phrasing. And roll with me on this because it’s still a fresh idea in my head that I’m working on.

The scenario was Defensive Pistol Skills 1. In that class, we start to impress upon students the realities of gunfighting and self-defense with firearms. One of those realities is there there isn’t much time. The saying that the typical gunfight is “3 shots at 3 yards in 3 seconds”? That’s why Karl developed the “3 Seconds or Less Drill” as a test and measure of your ability to perform in that realm. DPS1 puts students under pressure, and then ratchets up the pressure by doing drills against a timer.

Most students end up discovering they’re too slow. Buzzer sounds, and they might get 1 shot off before the stop buzzer sounds 3 seconds later. They get better by the end of class because they start to understand a need to go faster, but I started to see how “going faster” isn’t always the right way to direct the students. It’s about the use of the phrase “go faster”, and what impression that leaves, what seed that sows, in the mind of the  student.

Here’s what seems to happen.

Start buzzer sounds. Student moseys their gun out of the holster and gets it up on target, but then realizes OH SHIT! I NEED TO SHOOT AND THERE’S NOT MUCH TIME LEFT! and then doesn’t get a good sight picture, slaps and yanks the trigger hard, and they have a gloriously unacceptable hit. And while they got their unacceptable hit the stop buzzer sounded.

What I believe is happening in the student’s mind is they think that they need to “go faster”. But this seems to be some sort of acceleration curve where they start at zero and just accelerate what they’re doing until the exercise is over. This is not what we want to do, at least, not always and not so simply.

There are all sorts of things that happen between the start and stop buzzer. You hear the buzzer, you recognize it’s time to start and make the decision to start, you start moving, you clear your cover garment, you get a grip on the gun, you draw the gun, you present the gun, you acquire the sights, you press the trigger, the gun goes bang. There’s lots of things that happen here, but often what the student is thinking about is “shooting the gun”, which many times just boils down to pointing at the target and pressing the trigger. But as you can see, there’s a lot more that goes on. They know they have to get the gun out of the holster, they know they have to do all these other things, but they don’t necessarily factor in that it consumes time to do those things.

Consequently, the effort to “make time” doesn’t necessarily mean we have to accelerate in a single linear manner from start buzzer to stop buzzer. What it may mean is that we use the alloted time in the most efficient manner possible.

As an example, in this particular DPS1 class, there was a student that I knew had the marksmanship fundamentals, but when all the time pressures were put on her she was having a hard time hitting much of anything. I took her aside to the small range to work on things. I broke it down. I had her take all the time in the world. Point the gun at a target, get a good sight picture, slow smooth trigger press, and see what happened. She rang the steel every time. When there were no time pressures she could do it all. So once that was established, I stepped it up just a little bit. Now I had her start in a low ready position, move the gun up, then sights, trigger, press off the shot, etc., but again, no time pressure. And she was fine. Next I told her to move the gun up but take a little less time between getting the gun up and getting the shot off. Not to rush anything, just to not waste as much time. To still move at her slow pace, just eliminate time where nothing useful was going on. And she did fine. And this is how we worked for a while, taking “half a second” off here and there, but never moving faster, just eliminating wasted time.

The upshot? The total time it took her to go from start to finish was reduced, but she never “went faster”.

The next step was trying to do some things simultaneously. Before I had her do everything in series: present the gun, acquire the sights, press the trigger. Now, I wanted her to do things in parallel: press the trigger while presenting the gun and pick up the sights as the gun is presented. Multitasking. 🙂  We did have to slow down, but it was about getting her to process the notion and actions. But even tho she moved slower, her total time from start to finish was again reduced because actions were happening in parallel, not serially.

We didn’t get beyond that, but I can talk about another aspect that might actually involve going faster, and that is in fact going faster. But realize that going faster doesn’t mean some constant linear acceleration across the entire task. What might happen is you divide up the greater task into subtasks, and accept those subtasks might move at different speeds. For example, when the buzzer sounds and it’s time to draw, that draw should be as wicked fast as you can draw it. And no matter when nor the circumstance, always draw fast… I can’t think of a time when you want to draw slowly. After you draw, you present the gun. But in this presentation, you may need to move at a different speed. If you’re shooting at less than 5 yards, you probably can get the gun out there as fast as you can and be just fine. But if your first shot is at a target 25 yards away, you cannot blaze away; you must slow down that presentation so you can make the precision shot. Again, it’s quite common to see in DPS1 class that as students are learning to draw from the holster there’s this linear acceleration from start to finish of the whole task, going slow to get the gun out, but once the hand is on the gun they smear the draw from position 1 to position 4, struggle to find their sights, waste time, and end up yanking the trigger all in an effort to “go faster”. In the end, they weren’t fast, nor accurate.

Which brings to another point about how to “go faster”, using proper and efficient technique. While it’s true that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line and thus likely it’s also the fastest way to get from A to B, the handgun draw does not abide by that rule. The right way to “go faster” is to make an “L” shape, drawing the gun straight out of the holster to the armpit, then straight out from the armpit/face/upper-chest area pressed out to the target. While technically it’s a slower path of travel, getting the gun from A to B isn’t the only factor involved — your eyes need to pick up that front sight. When you do this “press out”, it gives your eyes more time and ability to find and fix on the front sight and get the sight picture you need. When you start to couple that with simultaneous actions like pressing the trigger as you press out, all of these things come together to help you “go faster” without going faster.

Watch Mike Brook as he shoots the F.A.S.T. drill in 4.92 seconds

Buzzer sounds and he’s quick to react to it. His draw is wicked fast (and appendix carry doesn’t hurt either). But then his press out goes slowly — a must since the first (two) shot(s) of the drill is into a 3″x5″ box at 7 yards. Once second shot is over he’s right onto the reload, no dawdle there, and then completes the drill. If you watch, it doesn’t necessarily look fast in the sense of rapid acceleration and “pedal to the metal” shooting. There’s no blazing away. He’s not shooting faster than he can see and get acceptable hits, and at some points it looks like he’s going slow. But he’s doing all of the above in terms of not wasting time, changing speeds, performing simultaneous action, using good technique, and it all comes together for a fast time.

So… for me the thing I’m trying to figure out is a good and efficient way to express this to students. You can see in my above elaboration that well.. it’s laborious to explain. But it’s about how to “go faster, without going faster”. To find the right terms to help the students overcome the notions and help them really get it. Because when we say “go faster”, they’re not necessarily going to think about all the ways they can actually go faster without going faster. It’s not really the right term.

Hrm. Something to continue thinking about.

James Rummel has a cool (ha!) post about temperatures and ammunition.

What with summer pretty much here in Texas and the car interior getting mighty hot, this information could be relevant to some.

In short, it seems like dangers of “cooking off” are unfounded, but it will degrade the ammunition and could actually risk problems if fired when too hot because of pressure increases.

There are numerous ways you can rack the slide on a semi-automatic handgun.

While most of those ways work, there’s a particular way we teach it at KR Training that we prefer because it’s a single technique that can work across a multitude of situations and contexts. This technique is used by other  top”combative pistol” instructors like Tom Givens, Paul Gomez, etc. because of the superior nature of the technique for this context.

If you watch this Paul Gomez video, from about 1:27 to 1:29 into the video he demonstrates the technique:

The video is good for other things, but just focus on those 2  seconds for now. I don’t want to get too much into the specifics of this “over the top” technique, it’s strengths and such, because it’s not germane to the goal of this article.

The key I want to stress tho is to LET GO of the slide. In fact, it doesn’t really matter what technique you use to rack the slide. Pull the slide back, and then LET IT GO.

This was so common during this past weekend’s BP1/DPS1 classes that I wanted to elaborate on the topic.

People want to help the gun.

The gun doesn’t need your help. It’s designed to work in a certain way, so you need to let it work in that way.

Or perhaps they think it might damage the gun to let the slide slam home. Folks, when the gun shoots it’s subject to far more mechanical and physical stress than you could ever inflict upon it. But again, it’s designed to work that way and manage such things.

In the end, a gun is merely a hunk of steel with springs and levers and inclined planes and other simple machines cobbled together in a very ingenious way. These springs and levers are put together in a very precise way and need to work in their finely tuned orchestration in order to run right. One of those is the amount of tension and force required to strip a new round off the top of the magazine and load it into the chamber. Try this. Take a full magazine and hold it vertically in your hands. Now use the tip of your index finger, apply it to the back of the top round, and push it forward out of the magazine simulating how the round is stripped from the magazine and fed into the chamber. It’s kinda tough to do, isn’t it? Requires some strength, some force. Now, take your empty/unloaded gun and pull the slide back. If you hold on to the slide and ease it back down, there’s not much force generated; you could stick your finger into the ejection port, ease the slide down onto it, and it wouldn’t hurt much. But if you hold the slide back and then let it go, a lot of force will be generated; I’m sure you wouldn’t stick your finger in the way of that! It’s a simple equation: force = mass x acceleration. The mass of the slide is constant, but the acceleration changes. As you saw when you tried to push the top round out of the magazine, a high level of force is required to strip that round out of the magazine. So if you need a lot of force to strip the round, the only way you’re going to get that high level of force is to have a high level of acceleration. How are you going to get the slide to move its quickest? By using the maximum range of motion (pulling the slide ALL the way to the rear of it’s range of motion — something releasing with the slide lock lever won’t let you do), and allowing for maximum force… which means

DON’T HELP THE SLIDE FOWARD. LET IT GO.

When you pull the slide back, just open your fingers. Let the slide go and let it slam forward. It’s designed to work that way. Do NOT move your hand at all. Or if you are moving your hand, let your hand continue to move in the direction of the rearward slide (e.g. up towards your shoulder). Your hand should NOT change direction and start to move forward with the slide. If you do this, if you do not let go of the slide, you will slow the slide down, it will not generate enough force, and the gun will malfunction.

And I saw lots of malfunctions all DPS1 class long because people kept riding their slides (yes, we constantly remind them, but old habits die hard). The slide would not fully close thus the gun would not fire. Or the top round wouldn’t chamber thus the chamber was empty and nothing would fire (tho some of that was also caused by magazine problems such as old/weak springs and/or sand blocking the follower from moving). Or they’d cause the top round to only partially feed and seat, causing a larger malfunction. And this is why you need to run the gun like the machine was designed to run.

Let the slide go. It doesn’t need your help.

Another day, another group of enlightened students. 🙂

May 5th was a bit of a different day for us, having Basic Pistol 1 in the morning and Defensive Pistol Skills 1 in the afternoon. Usually we’ll run BP2 and DPS1 back-to-back, or BP1 and something else entirely unrelated in the afternoon (e.g. AT-4). And apart from being unseasonably hot out, it was a good day.

There are a few things I want to talk about that came out of the two classes, but after thinking about them on the drive home I realized they’re going to make for whole articles unto themselves, so I’ll be writing about them in the coming days. But for now, I can discuss a few small topics.

One thing I always like to point out is demographics. We had men and women, and a lot more women than usual especially for a DPS1 class. We had young folks and old folks. We had folks of various ethnicity/race. We have people of different political persuasion. I point this out because so many people want to stereotype gun owners as redneck, knuckle-dragging, old, white, men. It’s just not the case. Gun owners are all types and kinds, and no question the largest growing demographic is women. Frankly I’m thrilled to see more women shooters coming out for classes beyond basic classes, because all too often they get the basics and stop for whatever reason. Seeing more taking true self-defense classes, not just fundamental skills classes, is wonderful.

Since I have my new M&P Shield, I brought it out. I wanted BP1 students to try it to see how it fit and how a variety of people could manipulate it. And in the afternoon, there was a student that borrowed it for the whole class. She had come out previously to a Basic Pistol 2, had a Sig in .40 (IIRC), but all I recall was it being too big for her petite hands. I let her my M&P9 that day and she fared much better, but even that was still a wee big for her, so we lent her the Shield for the day. This Shield stuff will be topic of another article.

Most of my comments and observations tho are typical for these classes, because much of the same mistakes happen and revelations come to students:

• If you have a CHL, carry your gun. You don’t get to choose when and where the fight is going to happen. The fight will happen unexpectedly, you have to react, you will be behind the curve, and well… if you aren’t prepared, you’re screwed. This isn’t to say if you are prepared you still won’t be screwed, but you need to do all you can to work things in your favor.
• Do not be married to your equipment. This is life-saving material, so ego cannot and should not be involved, nor should money be a barrier. That doesn’t mean you need to go out and buy a $5000 Wilson Combat gun, but don’t buy cheap shit… unless I guess that’s where you value your life. Be willing to discard the gun you have (thankfully most have good resale value) and find a gun that works best for you, THAT FITS YOU (read this), that you can shoot well and are willing to practice with. We work to steer people down this road in BP1. When we get to DPS1, this is where you find out not only that guns with levers and switches and dohickies and gizmos are more problem than solution, but you also find out that your holster sucks, your magazine pouches suck, and you need to do better. Your skill is affected by your gear. No, you won’t be a Grandmaster IPSC shooter on gear alone, but no one made Grandmaster with crappy guns and gear.
• When racking the slide, don’t help it. This is another topic I wish to elaborate on in another article.
• Yes, you have to aim.
  • Bottom line: you need to make acceptable hits. All this fancy self-defense stuff means nothing if you can’t hit what needs to be hit. That means marksmanship fundamentals remain well… fundamental to it all. It’s at the heart of what we’re doing, just that much of the self-defense stuff means you have to do it faster, perhaps a little more coarse on accuracy (but still accurate enough), and with some other flourishes and such. But trigger control and sight alignment are still key.
• If you didn’t shoot as well as you wanted to, at least did you have your eyes opened? Perhaps was it a bit humbling? If so, do NOT consider this a bad thing. You now have an idea of what needs to be done, of the level that you need to attain. Now it’s time to work to get there. Consider it all knowledge and learning.
• In the Texas heat and sun, wear sunscreen and stay hydrated. Also consume some things to keep your energy up. It got into the mid-90’s, so drinking say a 1-to-1 ratio of Gatorade and water would be good, so you keep some sugar, electrolytes, and of course water in you.

As a final point, I got to meet “That Guy” from Rock in a Sea of Chaos. How cool!

Updated: That Guy posted his AAR of the class.