Reload Video?

Duane Thomas · October 15, 2013

Does anyone remember a video that was posted on this site awhile back where someone went out to the range and timed the difference in slidelock reload speed between thumbing the slide stop versus racking the slide? I would have sworn it was G-ManBart doing it, but I could be wrong on that one.

JDW174 · October 15, 2013

There's a YT video done by "Corey & Erica" that has both of them doing slidelock reloads using both methods.

Nimitz · October 15, 2013

Hmmmm .... Do we really need to see a video? I can't see how grabbing the slide and racking it could possibly be faster than just moving your strong hand thumb a 1/2" at most to release the slide .... I must be missing something

Waterfowl-widowmaker · October 16, 2013

You loose your fine motor skills when placed in a high stress situation. Using your thumb to depress the slide lock is a fine motor skill. If you train to reach over the top and slingshot the slide, that is the way you will perform when under pressure such as a match. Should you have a malfunction, it will be secondary to perform this drill. There is a reason it is called a slide lock and not a slide release. If you practice placing the gun back in battery by utilizing the slide stop, your only cheating yourself. Just my 2 cents.

waktasz · October 16, 2013

If that is the case how do you get the magazine out in the first place?

mgrs · October 16, 2013

...or pull the trigger.

Also interested in the video if found. I would be surprised if power racking or slingshotting the slide is faster than using the firing hand thumb or support thumb, depending on the gun and shooter.

I got away from the rack or slingshot on slide lock reloads shooting and M9 at work. I'd end up wasting more time sweeping the safety/decocker off after hitting it while racking the slide.

Magsz · October 16, 2013

Who taught you this? Or are you just regurgitating garbage from the internet?

steel1212 · October 16, 2013

I'm gonna call BS on this one. Brandon wright has a video doing a .96 slide lock relaid thumbing the lock. You shoot how you practice. You practice not to get it right but so that you can't get it wrong or the saying goes.

johnhhuber · October 16, 2013

I believe this is absolutely true....for new shooters or shooters who do not invest time practicing. If someone is not willing to take the time to learn, practice, and master a technique they should not use it. However, if mastered and programmed into your subconscious mind, it is no harder than not jerking the crap out of the trigger or hitting the mag release button.

razerok1 · October 16, 2013

In the training I have received at work I have always been told the same thing. "In high stress situations you will lose all fine motor skills always use gross motor functions when shooting" However I believe its aimed to those people that rarely shoot or shoot once or twice a year when required to do so for work. As someone who has used the "slide release" to return the slide to battery after running empty and performing a mag change since I started shooting I would not change a thing. If I have lost my fine motor skills in a real high stress situation to the point that I can't return the slide to battery using the slide release I can bet anything that I would not have not been able to insert a new mag in the magwell.

Jshuberg · October 16, 2013

Waterfowl has this right. Under a high stress situation, you lose all fine grained motor skills, and go into caveman mode. Specifically, finger tips cannot be relied on to function correctly. Releasing the slide lock, or slingshotting the slide from the rear both require dexterity in the fingers/thumb, and so is subject to stress induced errors. Using the slide lock is additionally problematic, as its potentially located in a different position on different pistols. Give a Sig to a profocient 1911 shooter, and you'll be amused by the blank look on his face when he has to look at the side of the pistol to try to figure out how to drop the slide.

If defensive shooting is of any importance to you, you should use those techniques that work for all semi pistols, and maximize your ability to operate the weapon under stress. Military and law enforcement training stresses using the palm of the hand to rack the slide. If all you are concerned with is sport shooting, hitting the slide lock is definately faster, but it is in fact contrary to modern combat or defensive shooting techniques.

Don't believe it? Soak you hands in ice water for 20 minutes until they go completely numb and then try to operate your firearm. This is a rough aproximation to how a loss of fine grained motor skills will effect your shooting technique.

One last note on training - there are 3 ways that we perform a physical action:

1) Consciously using declarative memory

2) Subconsciously using procedural memory

3) Subconsciously using specialized neural networks

People who have been shooting for decades will likely develop neural networks specific to the various physical skills for shooting. Think of it as hardware vs software. If the mind decides that a particular skill is so important or often used it will begin to physically rewire itself for maximum performance of that task. Walking is a very good example. You will note that walking requires a significant amount in finesse to perform, hundreds of simultaneous muscle motions, balance, instantaneous feedback from the surface being walked on etc. The reason a person can walk or run properly under extreme stress is that this action is being performed in the brains hardware, and so is largely immune to stress induced motor function loss.

Unfortunately, there aren't any training techniques that are know to accellerate the develoment of specialized neural networks for a particular task. Because the physical cells in the brain available for custom hardware programming are limited, only those actions that we utilize frequently over the course of years or decades are moved into custom networks. The process of developing these networks also takes years.

If a person performs an action utilizing declaritive or procedural memory, they *will* suffer the loss of fine grained motor function under extreme stress. It's simply how the body works, and no amount of training will be able to overcome this short of developing specialized neural networks for performing the action.

This is why the training techniques for defensive/combat shooting and sport shooting diverge. The sport shooter strives for perfection under ideal conditions, the defensive shooter strives for competence under distressed, chaotic and disadvantaged conditions.

Edited October 16, 2013 by Jshuberg

steel1212 · October 16, 2013

So explain something to me. If you lose fine motor skills under high stress situations how do you continue to pull the trigger, aim down the sights, hit a itty bitty little mag button. If you can't manipulate one part of your firearm under stress how are you going to manipulate any other parts?

Jshuberg · October 16, 2013

In a high stress situation a person does exactly what you stated - they *pull* the trigger with gross motor skills. They mush the mag release with their thumb, and they don't see the sights at all. All the operation of the firearm is done with gross motor skills.

Why do you think that the hit rate for law enforcement officers at typical pistol distances (<10 yards) is less than 20%? A pistol is simply a very difficult weapon to use under high stress.

Nimitz · October 16, 2013

All this is interesting but I can tell you that I am way faster using my thumb to release the slide after I insert the mag than inserting the mag and then reaching up to the slide to grab it and pull it back to rack it. It's all about how you train and I never go for the slide if I find myself having to do a slide lock reload. I've already screwed up given that I'm doing a slide lock reload so the last thing I want to do is add more time to the reload.

It's a matter of simple mechanics. If you use the slide lock release to chamber a rd your fingers/hands are moving less distance and doing less activities ... As your weak hand inserts the mag and slides up the grip to rebuild it your strong hand thumb simply moves a 1/2" to release the slide and your grip s complete.

In the other method after your weak hand inserts the mag you now have to move it up and over the top of the pistol, grap the slide and slingshot it to chamber a round, than move your weak hand back down the gun covering the same ground twice in order to rebuild your grip .... No way this is ever going to be faster no matter what stress you are under or your age or any other factors

Jshuberg · October 17, 2013

I never said it would be faster, in fact I said the exact opposite. What I said was that an overhand grip minimizes the potential for error during a loss of fine grained motor skills.

Actually try this - soak your hands in ice water for 20 minutes, pull them out and immediately try to operate your firearm while wet (careful of frostbite!!). You'll be surprised at how difficullt it is. Don't try to force your hands to work normally to operate the weapon, but instead figure out how you need to use your hands to operate your weapon when your hands are stiff, wet, and completely numb. This aproximates the physiological changes that occur during a lethal force encounter.

Chances are, you'll discover that slingshotting the slide or hitting the slide lock will prove to be more difficult and error prone compared to an overhand rack with the palm of your hand. It's not about speed, it's about competance under extrteme stress.

If your'e not concerned about defensive shooting, it only makes sense to utilize all of the tools at your disposal to maximize your performance. If you *are* concerned about defensive shooting, it only makes sense to intentionally limit yourself to only those tools that will actually be available when suffering extreme stress, or even potential physical injury.

Edited October 17, 2013 by Jshuberg

Duane Thomas · October 17, 2013

This is a nice theory. The problem I have with it is that puting my thumb on the slide stop and moving it downward to manipulate the slide release as part of reacquiring my grip during a slidelock reload is not a complex, fine motor skill. Having to come up over the top of the gun, grab the slide, pull to the rear, let go at exactly the right moment, then come back down along the side of the gun and reacquire my grip is.

I find that those people who actually believe this whole "racking the slide is more stress resistant and works better than thumbing the slide release" stuff have an amazing ability to ignore input that doesn't fit what they want to believe. For instance I regularly shoot a league match put on by a school, at which I have trained in the past, that teaches racking the slide during a slidelock reload. The shooters at this match are all their students, who have a MUCH higher level of skill and training than the typical person. We frequently do drills that require shooting the gun to slidelock and then reloading. At any match you'll see a blend of people on the line using slide racking and thumbing the slide release during slidelock reloads. And you'll also notice something else, if your mind is open to it.

The people racking the slide frequently screw up.

They ride the slide forward and cause a failure to feed. They rack the slide several times and spit live ammo out onto the ground. They rack the slide before inserting a magazine and don't afterward. You will see these things happen over and over again thoughout the course of a match. They get CONFUSED, because this is a complex, multiple-step sequence of movements that must be executed perfectly or it won't work. It's especially important to get your hand off the slide at exactly the right moment after you've pulled it to the rear, and not ride it forward into a failure to feed. Essentially, your technique must be perfect or it doesn't work. In fact, this technique has a high disaster factor. It's easy to screw up. And when it does screw up, it tends to cause real problems. Soime people might say, "Well, if they executed the technique correclty it would work." Frankly, in my opinion, complex, multi-step techniques that must be executed perfectly to work set themsevles up to fail when real people have to execute them under stress. If this is how that technique works for people who are only operating under match pressure, is it supposed to somehow magically get BETTER in a real fight?

You know how many errors in execution, and gun malfs you see among those shooters thumbing the slide stop? Zero. It never happens. Because thumbing the slide stop is a far simpler, one-step, gross motor skill, with far fewer movements, and less potential for error. We don't have to turn in perfect timing on a slide pull and release because that's not part of our technique, we simply press down on the slide stop and then let the gun do the work for us. I'd think that people who pride themselvs on understanding kinesiology would be all over this. And still the primary instructor at those matches, who has stood on the same range I did, who has seen the same things I have, who has seen repeated, blatant examples that racking the slide as part of a reload simply doesn't work, and that a different technique works much better, comments on the people using "that competition technique" when we get the job done faster and more reliably than anyone else on the range.

Hi-ho, as Kurt Vonnegut would say.

Jshuberg · October 17, 2013

What you are describing sounds like sling-shotting the slide with the fingers of the support hand. I agree that this technique is much more error prone than hitting the slide lock. That's not what I'm talking about though, I'm talking about using the palm of the support hand to rack the slide in a single gross motion. There are no fingers involved. There is no timing involved. It's a little slower than hitting the slide lock, but it works every time on all semi firearms.

In the following video I was demonstrating to a student how to make an accurate shot at the moment of full presentation, but it also starts with a reload and racking the slide using the technique I'm describing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AOaL_78lc0

Yeah, I know that the reload itself was a bit slow, but in my defense I was using my P239 single stack 9mm, and that's about as fast as I can seat a mag into that tiny little magwell without fumbling.

It's quite possible that you may own a pistol with a slide lock located where a gross motion of the thumb is all that's needed to release it. It's also possible that you have a pistol with a slide lock in a different location, where it might require fine motion of the thumb, or may require moving of the weapon or support hand to deactivate, etc. Unless you always train on and carry pistols with the slide lock in the exact same location, at some point you will likely find yourself fumbling with its location even without extreme stress.

What do you do when you have a malfunction? What if your pistol doesn't go into slide lock? You *must* also employ a technique for racking the slide. Using the same technique under every situation, be it malfunction, empty mag, etc. eliminates the necessity of pausing to assess and make a decision on which action to perform. Every time the slide needs to move, the exact same action is performed, and that exact same action works on every pistol whether a 1911 or an LCP. It may not represent the greatest efficiency of motion possible, but it is the most consistent technique across multiple weapon types and multiple weapon states, and so reduces overall complexity.

Anyways, you get the jist of what I'm saying. I don't feel the need to be argumentative, it comes down to individual point of view, and no technique is universally applicable to all shooters. As long as people know there is a difference of opinion between the sport shooting and defensive shooting camps, they can make up their own minds, as it appears we've already made up ours.

Cheers

Edited October 17, 2013 by Jshuberg

Duane Thomas · October 17, 2013

I knew what you were referring to re technique, and the technique you demonstrate is indeed that to which I was referring.

I wouldn't say my mind is "made up" in the sense that I'm totally resistant to new ideas. I treasure new ideas. You're just not giving me any new ideas, nothing I haven't already considered.

Anyone who doesn't know where the slide release is on their gun needs to learn their weapon. Anyone who uses multiple weapons needs to learn where all the controls are located, and how they work, on every weapon they use.

I think the hit rate for law enforcement officers at typical pistol distances is abysmally low because the average cop, when he reports for training, has never fired any gun before. Then they get a brief amount of trainig that, depending on the agency or department, can range from excellent to horrible. Then they qualify on an extremely simple, easy test. Then the typical police officer never fires their gun again unless you absolutely force them to, which for most departments translates into a once-a-year requalification. Most police officers have never fired any gun other than their service sidearm and maybe a few rounds out of a pump shotgun.

According to John Farnam, of the police officers who are shot in America every year, 50 percent shoot themselves. I'm not talking suicides here, I'm talking about accidentally putting a bullet into their own bodies. Thankfully these events are rarely life threatening as they consist mostly of bullets to the off hand while drawing, and the master side leg while reholstering. 30 percent of officers shot are accidentally shot by other cops. 10 percent are shot with their own guns after being disarmed. Obviously this is not expert level performance.

There are some few police officers who are very skillled and experienced shooters. Names like Darrion Holiwwell, Ron Avery, Phil Strader, Tom Ketells occur to me. I know these people. I also know they are greatly in the minority.

You need to understand, when you're posting on this site, you are talking to people with an extremely high skill level. The average skill level on this site is probably A-class USPSA or Expert-class IDPA. So when you start lecturing on how the average person, or the average cop, reacts in a gunfight it's not really relevant to the audience you're addressing because we're not average people. We have put in the thousands of hours - in some cases tens of thousands of hours - necessary to master our skills. And it never ends, working on our skill level with a gun in our hands is a lifelong passion for us. Telling a serious competition shooter that, in a shooting emergency, they're going to react like the typical cop is like telling an Indy driver they're going to react, in a driving emergency, like someone who only has a learner's permit.

frag316 · October 17, 2013

*shrugs* I don't teach people to use the slide to put the gun back into battery unless I know they're not going to practice like they should.

I disagree with the whole gross/fine motor skill argument, because manipulating safeties and triggers and magazine releases are fine motor skills--regardless of which body part you use to do them. If you practice enough, you'll do it correctly and efficiently.

The great Costa once said something like, "If you can't work your shit under stress, then I don't want you around if there's a gun fight." And I agree with that at a fundamental level. If you have to rely on only gross motor skills under stress, then you're not practicing enough.

steel1212 · October 17, 2013

Wow Duane beat me to it and said it much better than I could!

Jshuberg · October 17, 2013

I didn't mean to imply that experienced shooters will suffer the same performance degradation of cops do, and I also agree that the majority of cops are severely under trained. I'm new here, and if my statement rubbed anyone the wrong way it was not my intent and I apologize.

For better or worse, cops do represent the largest group that has been studied specifically to identify the amount of performance loss they experience under extreme stress. It would be *extremely* interesting and informative if someone performed a study on the performance loss of "expert level" shooters, but I'm not aware of any such study. I also have no personal experience here, and even if I did it would only be a sample size of one.

I'm willing to entertain the idea that a loss of fine grained motor skills is extremely overrated, but with all due respect I need something more than "I don't think..." to go by. The effect of extreme stress during a lethal force encounter has been studied by the military, the FBI, and independent researchers like Lt. Col. David Grossman. All the material I've read on the subject are in general agreement, that stress causes an adrenaline dump as part of a complex chemical cocktail that enters the blood, resulting (in among other things) a loss of fine motor skills. Here are a couple of many dozens of sources that state that loss of fine grained motor skills is a very real and expected condition:

My understanding is that the loss of fine grained motor skills is not a psychological condition, but a physiological one. The idea that a person can train to the point where they are able to overcome a physiological condition simply doesn't make sense to me. It would be like stating that a person can train to the point that they are able to overcome nerve damage. I'm certain that training will help a person in this condition immensely, but if the researchers are correct and that there is a loss of fine motor skills in the body, I don't see how a person can train to the point of overcoming a physical condition.

Again, I'm willing to entertain the idea that all of the published material on the subject is simply a retelling of tribal legends, but I need something more concrete to go on. If there are any research studies or other materials, please point me to them.

Thanks.

Racer377 · October 17, 2013

That's why fighter jet cockpits have huge brightly colored buttons that look like fisher price toys. Same thing in F1 cars or race motorcycles. They're in a high stress environment where the slightest error will kill them, and physiologically can't possibly perform any kind of fine motor skills.

Glshooter · October 17, 2013

No one argues that you lose fine motor skill under extremely high stress situations. What people argue is that moving your thumb from up to down is such a much more precise fine motor skill than aligning sights, pulling a trigger without disturbing the sight picture, hitting a mag release button, or performing all the steps rquired to sling shot the slide as Duane described. It's just silly.

Pdoyle · October 17, 2013

For a class 3 malfunction or stoppage or double feed in a classic sense, the first order of buisness is to lock the slide to the rear, release the magazine, and then tap rack bang. Hmmmmm....all fine motor skills, and if you are having a class 3 malfunction in a gun fight, I would certainly classify that as a bad day.

So the question I have based on existing curriculum for LEO and Military guys is this.

Caveman skills for reload and you wont find the little button;

BUt when performing a class 3 malfunction clearance you are required to use that little button in a trained response;

so is the curriculum just wrong.

I have drilled my LEO's tons and tons on USPSA and IDPA drills over the years...I cant say what because of pending lawsuits, but our agency is VERY well above the national average in shootings.

The problem is LEO and Military quals and training, is that we are taught at the bottom level of the ladder for our crappy shooters to make it. No real incentive to perform, so no real incentive to grow. Competition is all about growth and performance.

waktasz · October 17, 2013

I dunno about that

how-to-read-an-f1-steering-wheel-7154_4.

Reload Video?

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