mcb
Member
My problem with these standardize drills that get practice over and over is they give an artificial level of confidence and tend to not help the shooter be a flexible shooter in face of an unknown shooting problem.
Long winded example:
USPSA use standardized stages called classifiers. They are used to set your national ranking, D-class thru Grand Master (Its your average of your six best of your eight most recent, with a few exceptions) in the sport (the Bill Drill is based on an old USPSA classifier). I have never taken to practicing these classifier stages before a match I want my classifier scores and my national ranking to be a true measure of my skill. I had a friend I use to shoot Revolver division with that had the exact opposite view. He would, if an up coming match published what classifier they were going to use, practice that classifier over and over before a match so that when he got to the match he would be primed to do well on the classifier stage(s). It worked he shot the classifiers very well. I was a B-class Revolver shooters. With my friend's pre-practice regiment has allowed him to make it to Master-class in Revolver. The thing was he never ever beat me at a match, club level or even higher level matches. He would almost always beat me on the classifier stage but when it came to a stage he had never seen before, especially big field stages with lots of movement he was never able to break the stages down and solve them as fast and accurately as I could despite the fact that his scores on the classifiers indicating he was a better shooter than me.
Drills like these are good to practice as the help develop and practice particular skill sets but you need to practice other things and if possible shoot things you have not shot before to keep your mind flexible to solve unusual problems and not get fixed into responding the same way every time that drills tend to encourage.
This is why I think a better measure of carry competency is shooting matches like USPSA or IDPA. NOT because these sports are realistic scenarios but with most of the stages in these sports they will be unique stages that you have never seen before and probably will never see exactly the same again (unless they are a classifier). Just something to keep in mind, YMMV
Long winded example:
USPSA use standardized stages called classifiers. They are used to set your national ranking, D-class thru Grand Master (Its your average of your six best of your eight most recent, with a few exceptions) in the sport (the Bill Drill is based on an old USPSA classifier). I have never taken to practicing these classifier stages before a match I want my classifier scores and my national ranking to be a true measure of my skill. I had a friend I use to shoot Revolver division with that had the exact opposite view. He would, if an up coming match published what classifier they were going to use, practice that classifier over and over before a match so that when he got to the match he would be primed to do well on the classifier stage(s). It worked he shot the classifiers very well. I was a B-class Revolver shooters. With my friend's pre-practice regiment has allowed him to make it to Master-class in Revolver. The thing was he never ever beat me at a match, club level or even higher level matches. He would almost always beat me on the classifier stage but when it came to a stage he had never seen before, especially big field stages with lots of movement he was never able to break the stages down and solve them as fast and accurately as I could despite the fact that his scores on the classifiers indicating he was a better shooter than me.
Drills like these are good to practice as the help develop and practice particular skill sets but you need to practice other things and if possible shoot things you have not shot before to keep your mind flexible to solve unusual problems and not get fixed into responding the same way every time that drills tend to encourage.
This is why I think a better measure of carry competency is shooting matches like USPSA or IDPA. NOT because these sports are realistic scenarios but with most of the stages in these sports they will be unique stages that you have never seen before and probably will never see exactly the same again (unless they are a classifier). Just something to keep in mind, YMMV
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