How often do you break yourself down?

[Jshuberg]

I have a question for you guys, how often do you break yourself down to fundamentals and then build yourself back up again?

I do firearm instruction with new shooters, but not in the traditional way. I take on one or two guys at a time, and work with them a couple hours a week for at least 3-4 months. When I do this I'm actually more of a training partner than an instructor, as we alternate shooting, and I put just as many rounds down range doing the exact same drills and exercises as my student. If he's having trouble with a particular thing, and I give him some drills to do to work through it, I shoot the exact same drills he does. I believe that this helps the student since this back and forth lets him see more easily what I'm trying to show him, and the overall schedule is much better than their simply going to a class here or there, and then training on what they've learned individually.

What I've come to find is that by doing this, I completely break myself down and rebuild my skills several times a year. I'm also working with different people who have different issues, so I'm constantly trying to find ways to properly diagnose and verify the diagnosis of underlying errors. I definately see the benefit to doing this, but I suspect that there may also be a negative, as I don't do as much higher level or complex drills as I suspect many people here may do.

I basicly subscribe to the theory that that are no advanced shooters, just people who have a better understanding and execution of the fundamentals, but the question nags me from time to time that by breaking myself down as often as I do, that I might be starving those higher-level skills of the necessary training time. I have without question discovered numerous issues with my own technique that would have gone undiagnosed without breaking myself down like this, I'm just curious what some other exeprienced shooters think of the idea, and what they think might be the correct intervals for doing a full fundamentals breakdown.

Thanks much!

[CHA-LEE]

The more I shoot, the more I am able to observe or even comprehend what is going on. So yes, as time goes on I am able to notice a flaw in a skill and formulate a rebuilding process to fix the flaw. As your skill level increases the more fragmented or detailed each skill gets in how you interpret or observe it. I like to think of it in steps of understanding or observation. When a shooter is new or you are trying to learn a new skill you must first learn the primary or basic Steps of the skill. Once you can effectively execute these primary steps, then you can start to break down each step into sub steps. As time goes on and the more I shoot, I have noticed that the evolution of skill "Sub Steps" is never ending for any particular skill. But it’s always up to you to stay diligent in keeping your observation of what is going on active. Once you stop thinking about or trying to do things better, sooner, or more efficiently and consider a skill "Good Enough" that is when the learning stops and you usually hit a stagnant point in your skill development.

As a trainer I have found that it’s very important to know the basic competency level a shooter has with a given skill. If they can't effectively understand or perform a basic 2 - 3 step process that are requirements for a skill, it does not make sense to banter on about how they are failing to do step 10 of a far more detailed 15 step process. I like to convey to my students that its best to focus on the failures in their skill set that are costing them multiple seconds on a stage run first. Once those are solved then we can worry about the half second issues, then tenth of a second issues, then the hundredth of a second issues. For example, if a student is giving away multiple seconds of stage time by simply not running when they have to run hard I will focus on fixing that first. Then worry about their draw that is wasting half a second until way later in their training.

[juan]

I taught youngsters

I shot my personel drills before and after thier instruction and shot thier drills with them.

[J.P. Thomas]

Strong believer in not over-analyzing ...

Hmmm, might be my problem

[kylehb]

I learned a ton from watching videos of myself shooting various stages, one of the first things I noticed was that on a few occasions I was getting really lazy with my stance, so yea I think it definitely helps.

[lknbigfish]

Strong believer in not over-analyzing ...

Hmmm, might be my problem

mine to