Shortly after the invasion of Iraq began, Donald Rumsfeld famously said, “you go to war with the army you have—not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.”
This truth that applies to armies at war also applies to individuals in a fight for their lives, whether it’s a soldier overseas, local law enforcement or you a civilian at work, home, or enjoying time with your family.
We continually have to balance the need to be prepared for an event that may or may not happen with the reality that we might encounter a real life threatening event. We’re seeing more and more life threatening occurrences every day. When a fight for our life happens, we not only want to bring enough courage, but we want to bring enough skill into the fight. And the harder you train, the easier you’ll fight to defend yourself and family.
You want to train past the point where you feel confident…you want to train to the point where failure is impossible.
You may not need to shoot fast, but it certainly might help to be able to put rounds exactly where you want them and practicing shooting fast with a precise group is a great way to make a dangerous encounter something you and your family walk away from. Keep pushing your speed, but don’t be overly critical if you’re not blazing fast.
One of the most common phenomenon’s in shooting is that people freeze for way longer than they believe possible, unless you have trained for such an encounter. What in the world am I talking about? You are out with your family at the local mall and suddenly shots ring out. How long does it take for you to react? Oh, I can react in a matter of seconds you say. Well in reality, studies have proven it can take a lot longer. Experts state most people can’t distinguish a real shot from a loud noise. You take several more seconds to process the reactions of people around you. Everyone stands around looking at each other. Then people start running, some away, some toward the danger. So, your reaction time as gone from seconds to 30 – 45 seconds.
You have now process everything, (30-45 seconds) you take action. A trained civilian defensive shooter who has a 3 second drawstroke from concealment and a 1 second reaction time to bring a firearm on target (4 seconds total) will now have to identify the bad guy. Therefore, your total time has expanded to close to 50 seconds.
In a recent work by Dr. Bill Lewinski a law enforcement professor at Minnesota State University tested 101 police officers. Their average Reaction/Action time was under 15 seconds total:
Time to recognize possible threat 13 seconds – your time 30 – 45 seconds
Time to Draw (a firearm) from a Holster 1.19 seconds – your time 3 seconds
Time to Raise (a firearm) and Fire 0.59 seconds – your time 1 second
Most lethal encounters involve fear…and the release of fear/stress chemicals. Life and death situations are stressful. But the effects of stress have more to do with how you react to situations than the situation itself. If minor things cause you to over-react, a life and death situation will probably make your stress meter go to “11”. If you make a habit of calming yourself in stressful situations, and expose yourself to stress and simulated stress like competition and scenario based training, you’ll condition your body to be calmer in a life or death situation and your stress meter might only go to a 6 or 8. Any time you make practice harder than reality, real situations become that much easier to deal with. So if you want to become a better defensive shooter, what are the best areas to focus on? Start with mastering the fundamentals BEYOND what you think you might need in a real-life situation. The easiest way to do that is to focus on precision shooting, and then pushing the speed on your precision shooting. Practice your drawstroke so that it has absolutely no wasted movement. No wobble. No hiccups. Just as smooth as if you were a robot and simply executing perfect repetitions. Focus on perfection first, and speed will come. Same with your reloads and malfunction drills. Slow down and drill perfectly efficient technique with no wasted movement.