Absolutes

[38supPat]

I've seen a number of posts lately that are looking for the abolute answers on certain techniques. A lot of the answers come in the form of "This is the way to do X" or "Always do Y" and I've heard this at matches too. The answers are usually qualified with "Robbie does it that way" or "Todd would do that" or the infamous "WwEd" (What would Eric do?) In one recent thread we saw the "GM's A, B, and C do it this way," countered with "Well GM's X, Y, and Z do it that way" This should be your first indicator that the question is probably flawed. Just because you can form a sentence and put a ? at the end doesn't mean there is 100% correct answer to the question, or even an answer at all!

If you ever get to shoot on the Super Squad, or even to sit and watch them shoot a stage together, pay attention to all the minute details of how each shoot the stage. You will see quite a large variety of techniques. Instead of fussing about those individual techniques, and who did what, look for the similarities. Find the things they all do. Ask two or three (or all) of them why they did it, then go back home and practice a number of different ways to accomplish it. Then you will have your technique, one that suits you but accomplishes the task. Plus you will have a whole bag of tricks to call on if something unusual comes up in a match. A good example is entering a box. If there are 15 shooters on the Super Squad, you may see 7 different ways of entering the box. But they all have the gun up and ready to shoot at the earliest point possible. So the exact detail of whatever foot, or angle, whether they are fast in or sneak in really isn't that important. What is important is being ready to shoot. Go home, lay it out on the range, and try it a number of ways. Pay attention to the time and points (a fast technique is useless if the points are not there) and how it feels. Even a fast technique may not be a good one for you if you are not comfortable with it. Work on it.

Top shooters are there because they did their homework, not because of "X" technique. They are flexible and adaptable and have tried umpteen different ways to get the job done in practice and know what works for them

[Chris Keen]

Well said Pat. And ironically it's all right there in your sig line for anyone who takes the time to read such things.

It is not the critic who counts, nor the one who points out how the strong man stumbled, or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

[ihatepickles]

Flex used to have a quote on his profile: "Do the f*#king work" That's what it's about, doing it and learning how to improve it. Asking questions will take you a small distance and the rest of the large gap is covered by hard work.

[little_kahuna]

Well said Pat. And ironically it's all right there in your sig line for anyone who takes the time to read such things.

It is not the critic who counts, nor the one who points out how the strong man stumbled, or how the doer of deeds might have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes up short again and again; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; and who, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Epic

And so true. W/e you are trying to learn, try it different ways. Then change it. Because if you learned it from someone else then it's not yours.

[Singlestack]

The questions get asked because not everyone gets to shoot on the super squad.

[Flexmoney]

Anderson and I used to get a kick out of watching Robbie shoot a stage all wrong.

{edit to add...of course, Robbie would win the stage}

[Canuck223]

It is only natural to try and find the trick that the top shooters use, and include them into your bag of tricks. Let's face it, if you stick around in this sport long enough, you will collect a huge amount of useless and just plain wrong gear and techniques. However, learning requires failure as well as success.

Pat knows my one pet peeve recently. At several club matches, the course designer has tossed in stages meant to challenge your weak and strong hand skills. Far too often I see really good shooters seeming to be killing time and risking injury to contort and overbalance themselves so they can avoid one handed shooting. I can't help but wonder if it's due to a lack of confidence.

[38supPat]

Pat knows my one pet peeve recently. At several club matches, the course designer has tossed in stages meant to challenge your weak and strong hand skills. Far too often I see really good shooters seeming to be killing time and risking injury to contort and overbalance themselves so they can avoid one handed shooting. I can't help but wonder if it's due to a lack of confidence

Lol....nope, I love strong hand and weak hand mostly because I know most don't and don't practice it. I won a forced weak hand stage at Waterford shooting weak hand only and I gamed out the stage at Sharon to shoot freestyle instead of SH/WH and I won that too....the point is to win, there are no style points in IPSC.

The fun part is watching the copy cats that haven't done their homework and try to do what I did....I've been known to shoot courses of fire the "wrong" way, knowing the rest of the squad would follow suit and not get away with it.

Thats the other part of my sig line... "I aim to misbehave"

[Storm52]

Teddy quotes are always appreciated and respected.

[benos]

Thanks for the great opening post Pat!

be

[kimel]

As staff working the same stage for several hundred shooters watching the entire squad shoot it pretty much the same way the first guy on the first squad shoots it, squad after squad; I always enjoy it when the Super Squad arrives...especially the one with Robbie in it. I enjoy it because I *KNOW* that I will see some folks come up with a new way to shoot the stage and one of those folks most always will be Robbie. And it usually works for him because he understands his abilities and what it is going to take to win the stage.

If you pay attention at matches >95% of the time the entire squad will shoot the stage exactly the same. If someone on the squad tries something different and it seems to have worked the rest of the squad will follow the new model. It is easier to just follow someone else's game plan than come up with one for yourself I guess.

Same thing goes for techniques. Take table starts: Probably 90% of shooters do table starts the same way. There are a few of us weirdos that do it differently. For me, my way works 100% better than the "normal" way. But it took me a couple years to even try something different...because everyone else did it the other way.

[BritinUSA]

Bruce Lee did this whole thing about the rigid forms of martial arts, and why they failed. Those rigid forms were constraining and did not allow adaptation or improvisation that is necessary in any fluid situation. By all means look at how others shoot a stage and the techniques that they use, but understand that they will never work for you the same as they work for others.

If Robbie, Max or Travis shoots a stage in a particular way, is that the best way to shoot the stage ? Maybe or maybe not, it's just the best way for them.

Identical method does not imply identical result.

[boz1911]

With some recent videos that SingleStack made I do see different styles can yeild similar results.

[Bigpops]

The questions get asked because not everyone gets to shoot on the super squad.

+1

Remember for some of us this forum is the same as asking the super squad.

[Canuck223]

Of course, the one risk that comes with not following the pack is failing in a vivid and notable fashion, as evidenced by my stage 4 performance at the latest BGC match.

How I placed 3rd boggles the mind.

[j1b]

Great post!

We see it everyday in professional sports the difference in top competitors. Between Tiger and Phil. Or Dale Jr and Jeff Gordon. Between Tom Brady and Patton Manning.

All are great, but each approaches their sport differently depending on their skill, their mental approach, and the style that they've developed. We'd be silly to think the same doesn't hold true in our sport.

A lot of how we want to excel will be dictated by how we want to learn. If you're a highly technical shooter, that is engaged in the detail of the motion and technique then Jerry Barnhart may be the shooter you want to study.

If you're more of a free flow you don't care how it gets done as long as it gets done type shooter then Rob may be the guy you follow.

There will be commonality in how all the top shooters shoot a stage. What will inevitably cause one to win will be the little (almost unnoticeable) things s/he did different than the others. Those little differences are based on how they shoot the game versus the masses.

In terms of "access" to these shooters. It's out there. In video. There are videos of most national championships and for me they were instrumental in my own development. Nothing like watching what happens when the folks are under real pressure. I swear I still feel like the 1990 nationals was one of the best I've ever seen. And I wasn't even there.

Jack

[R.Elliott]

Back when mammals were still the latest thing and I was in college (animation), we had a saying; "Kill your babies!" Basically, it meant that you had to be willing to destroy your work in order to progress the next level. In the world of animation you can't be precious about anything, because the bottom line is always about what works in this specific instance....and in production it probably won't even be your decision so it's good to get the ego component out of the equation early also. Of course, knowing what works and what doesn't can only be achieved by going down a lot of different roads to gain experience; many of them dead ends.

Lateral thinking and on-the-fly adaptability. It was a good lesson to have hammered into to my brain over the years, and I now believe this sort of mind-set helps in any sort of skills development; especially IPSC/USPSA shooting techniques.

So get out there and KILL YOUR BABIES EVERYONE!!!

[ihatepickles]

The questions get asked because not everyone gets to shoot on the super squad.

+1

Remember for some of us this forum is the same as asking the super squad.

I ask questions here too and I hope this is always the place to turn when something needs to be debated and discussed. In the spirit of the thread though it's very easy to mimic strategies and tactics of other shooters and never put them through your own crucible of learning. I hope everyone realizes I'm not criticizing the asking of questions but rather the lack of personal follow-through after getting advice.

It's sometimes funny when you're talking to a brand new shooter at a match and they ask 'why did you do so-in-so?'. I've been surprised many times by those questions because often I can't say why I do something and I realize I do it that way because I'm just mimicking someone else. For me, that's not a very good answer. Even if it works 'OK' for you, have you spent the time to find out if there's something better? Asking questions is easy but doing the work is tough.

[dajarrel]

...... Asking questions is easy but doing the work is tough.

There have been any number of sports coaches and other figures who have made similar comments.

Such as:

"It's not the will to win, but the will to prepare to win that makes the difference."

Paul "Bear" Bryant

fwiw

dj

edited caus i cant spel

Edited May 5, 2009 by dajarrel

[kevin c]

The fundamentals are the only absolutes.

How one accomplishes them is an individual choice.

That being said, it is still easier to follow the beaten path than to strike out in your own direction.

(still stumbling along the same old path, and, what's worse, not watching where I'm going... )

[VegasOPM]

If absolutes really were, more folks would be using the Weaver... That was "The" way some years ago- we've progressed since then.

[j1b]

The fundamentals are the only absolutes.

How one accomplishes them is an individual choice.

That being said, it is still easier to follow the beaten path than to strike out in your own direction.

(still stumbling along the same old path, and, what's worse, not watching where I'm going... )

Interesting idea to explore. And this isn't directed at Kevin at all, just general observations. Your post made me think.

The idea that following the established path is an interesting one because history would tell us it's those that have strayed that have excelled the most. Think back 20 some years ago when the host of this site and some little known IPSC shooter threw out all conventional thought and decided to figure out things on their own. I can't imagine anything about that was easy (though I'm sure all of it was fun). Yet it was them blazing new trails that changed the IPSC world as we know it today.

I guess that further supports this theory that indeed there is no one true path for any one of us.

This idea has had me thinking most of the day. I'll take Dave Sevigny as an example simpy because I shoot production and he does too. Or he certainly became a super star in production. For him to do what I do is probably easy. We're at different levels, and his level is so much more advanced than mine that I suspect him replicating nearly anything I do would be not terribly difficult.

But when you throw Dave and Rob together, things are probably more interesting. Then, I suspect the game isn't easy for either one of them. Back off a little and you lose. Push too hard, and you lose. Makes me think there's nothing easy in this game no matter what your level is.

And that even got me to thinking about plateaus (SP). Because many of us plateau at some point. We reach that Master class level and can't get to GM. Or we get to where we can win a stage or two but can't win the match. Or we can beat all the C shooters but can't seem to beat that top B class person. Imagine if you're one of the top guys though. There the next logical step isn't another class. How you define "better" is tiny, tiny improvements that in fact may be very difficult to quantify much less describe and see results from.

I like this thread better now because it got me to thinking. Rob Leatham just won the SS classic for the 15th time in a row. Some would argue that he's probably got it all figured out. Yet I suspect he's thinking he's got to figure out how to get just that little bit better or win 16 won't come. It would be inconceivable to many that he has to get better and yet to him it is simply a fact. He has to. Probably to the point that if his performance 10 years ago was put up against today's competition he may not place in the top 5! Those little improvements day over day have compiled to make him better and better.

A little thread drift in there, but I appreciate the ideas it has had me kickin' around all day.

Jack

[Duane Thomas]

Recently I attended a firearms training class where the instructor, during lunch, played Robbie's Shooter Ready? DVD for the class and made the comment, "This is world class shooting technique. This was made awhile ago but I can't imagine he's any better today." Then, as the class token competition shooter, he asked me, "What do you think, Duane?" My reply: "Well, when this video was made what you're seeing was absolute world class performance. But it was shot 1985. Robbie is MUCH better today."

[Flexmoney]

The questions get asked because not everyone gets to shoot on the super squad.

+1

Remember for some of us this forum is the same as asking the super squad.

I don't think Pat's point was about the questions getting asked. I think it was geared more toward the answers we were seeing given.

Especially when those answers are being given second hand...