Last week, I had a great conversation with a fellow Marine and long-time friend. We were talking about DTFS and he kept hitting snags. There are things he knows not to do, but he keeps doing them. He was consciously thinking of the steps of his draw, and he wanted to get them to where he can "Just do it." This is the difference between conscious competence and unconscious competence.
What we noticed together was his mental prep. He was doing something that I used to do when I got started. It was holding me back for a long time, and it even kept me from having as much fun with shooting as I really wanted.
Every draw was a test, and failure is not an option.
Every repetition was a simulation of a street encounter. It would determine if his skills were ok, or if he just sucked. Each rep was all-or-nothing, and failure was not an option. This adds pressure and exposes flaws, but there are several issues with this mental state.
1st Issue: When you're "testing," you're not learning.
The "Test" calls forward the motor programs that are already burned into your subconscious. You're testing what you've already overlearned, but in that moment you're not learning anything new.
W. Timothy Gallwey wrote in "The Inner Game of Tennis that to learn your backstroke, you should perform your repetitions at a speed that allows you to assess its properties.
This is how I want my wrist. This is where I want my elbow. This is how I want my muscles. Keep doing it until you no longer have to think about it, and it just becomes "your" backstroke. That speed will be slower than when you're playing a match, but you're currently learning not testing.
Tom Givens once told me, "You shouldn't just practice until you get it right. You should practice until you CANNOT get it wrong."
Example: My sights are shaking all over the place when I draw.
Why is this happening? Because when I draw I'm snatching the gun with my strong hand and punching it out to the target. My support hand is racing to catch up.
How can I prevent this from happening? I can bring the gun to my support hand to ensure a proper index point. When I do that, the sights are more steady, and my grip is consistent.
So let's rep that out.
2nd Issue: When "failure is not an option," neither is learning from those failures.
Failing is a natural part of how human beings learn. A child will constantly fall until he/she learns how to walk. There is no amount of words that can teach a child to walk. They simply need to fall enough times to pick it up.
Likewise when you make a mistake on your draw, chastising yourself will not help you as much as (a) identifying what went wrong, (b) figuring out how it happened, and (C) developing a motor program that corrects the mistake.
Example: My hand will miss my shirt on the draw, causing material to get between my grip and my gun.
Why is this happening? Because my shirt shifts as I move and my fingers can't always find the hem.
To fix that: Let's try to grab at my body beneath my shirt. My belly button doesn't shift, so it should help my fingers find shirt, every time.
So let's rep that out.
Let's wrap it up with this: There's a time and a place for everything.
On the street where real consequences exist, failure is not an option. However in practice, there is a place for applying pressure and testing your skills with consequences. Testing is great for identifying flaws. We need to pressure-
test our technique, so that we know when and where the wheels fall off. We should be looking for “how much we can get away with,” so to speak. Once we've identified these areas that need polish, we should acknowledge that data and shift our mental state to that of observation & data-gathering, and then to correction.
If you've ever wondered how anyone can enjoy dry fire, how they could dry fire for 30 minutes or an hour at a time, this is why. Dry fire should answer questions for you. You should be solving problems with your dry fire.
We should be looking for new and exciting ways to fail. It’ll be great. 🙂
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