Simulating Stress for Practice

[expvideo]

Amen.

I particularly would like to agree with #6. NEVER give up. In a fight, particularly a gun fight, fight until you win. Do NOT accept a loss. Certain death is never certain. Shock is a killer, but it's mostly psychological. If you're not dead, you are still alive, so keep fighting or that will change.

A reminder that certain death is not certain would be the police shooting (the trooper lived) incident in Tyler, TX:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGGem_xShJM

I counted that as 28 shots, but I could be off...

 

[LAK]

Crofrog

(etc) .... That have practiced to the point where everything is firmly ingrained muscle-motor-memory performing exceptionally well under stress

No doubt. And it is well worth the effort to undergo such training because those ingrained drills and routines will generally be what anyone reverts to somewhat automatically under general heavy stress. I think this has been well proven.

What it does not overcome is potentially paralysing fear. Dealing with that is only really something that comes with "being put to actual test" first time as it were - where some first timers overcome it right off. Or through experience.

The stress drills are fine and extremely beneficial; but it should be made clear to people undergoing such training that it will in no way prepare them for overcoming the potential panic induced paralysis of fear.

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[SkyGuy]

Running, hunting, climbing, diving, skydiving, even FoF might barely help to manage some stress-fear response in a gunfight. But gunfights usually start and last only seconds with little time to prepare.
And what about the older or non-physical or the handicapped or the physically un-fit? It surely doesn't work for those folks.

The only logical way to stress-train for the close up shootout is to mimic the predictable, physical/mental default response to the fear of dying. It's instinctive and that's the way one 'will' fight.

Complicated, counter-intuitive, old school shooting methods should be practiced for aimed/controlled shooting, the range or competition shooting.

Recently, I went toe to toe with a trainer who mocked my insistence that people go into a combat crouch when under fire. He is a trainer who had read all the books, played all the competitive games, shot massive thousands of rounds over thirty years and talked the talk.
BUT, he'd never fired a shot with bad intentions or been under fire. Little did he know that in a real gunfight he would assume all the predictable, instinctive physical reactions and endure the mental responses.
(movement, seek cover, crouch, ext. arm/s, one hand, binocular-threat focus, tunnel vision, grip, multiples, etc.)

Instinctive response stress-training won't relieve the symptoms of an actual encounter, but it will be the useful, stress-mitigating training that reinforces, rather than inhibits, the automatic response.

I suppose the only saving grace of all the mis-managed training out there is that 99.999% of self-defense gun hobbyists....will never have to use their weapon for real.
.