I talk a lot about how to shave 10ths of a second or even a second off of the time it takes shooters to clear cover, draw, and accurately engage a target.
But, did you know that there are things you can do to shave SECONDS off of your draw stroke?
I’m not talking about shaving seconds off of the time it takes you to respond to a beep that you know is about to occur…
I’m talking about real world reaction times where you’re drawing and engaging based on things you see in your environment.
It has to do with something I call “Time warps in a gunfight.”
In short, if you can manipulate time, you can respond sooner without having to move faster.
You may be wondering what kind of hocus-pocus mumbo-jumbo I’m talking about.
In reality, it’s pretty darn simple…and I’ll give you an example.
A friend of mine is known around the world as a FAST shooter. I won’t say his name because the story I’m going to share is a little embarrassing…he’s OK with me sharing it, but I still want to provide him some cover.
He was one of the top performing shooters a few years back on the TV series, Top Shot.
He regularly reacts, draws and puts 2-3 shots into the A zone in under a second. The guy is like a thoroughbred…his mind and body are optimized for speed, both because of genetics and because of decades of hard work.
So, a few years ago, he went up to Minnesota to a stress shooting lab that some friends of mine were running.
They ran him through some true “surprise” force on force scenarios.
In most force on force training, the participants KNOW that they’re going to need to shoot something soon and their minds are primed and ready. This is completely different than real life where the need to shoot is almost always a shocking surprise…even when it’s likely or expected.
They would run people through multiple fragmented scenarios where the shooter wouldn’t need to touch their gun.
And then, when they least expected it, they’d present the situation where lethal force was justified.
It took him 5 seconds, 10 seconds, and in one case 15 seconds to realize that he needed to use his lightning fast draw stroke and engage the threat.
Give him a beep and he’s a world class shooter.
But with a complex, evolving situation, his visual processing speed and situational awareness put him WAY behind the curve.
When the average self-defense shooting is over within 3 seconds, a 5-15 second delay almost guarantees defeat.
So, how do you fix it?
It’s a 3 step process…
First, you program the mind with accurate threat profiles.
What does danger look like?
What does a lethal threat look like?
This can, quite literally, let you see 3, 5, or 10 seconds into the future and prepare you to get a jump on your attacker. That has the net effect of shaving SECONDS off of your draw stroke.
The broad umbrella name for this is “situational awareness” but most situational awareness “training” is severely lacking. It doesn’t teach people HOW to look, where to look, what to look for, or when to look and it creates overly amped-up, paranoid people looking for boogeymen behind every bush in situations where the likelyhood of a boogeyman behind a bush is essentially zero. Healthy situational awareness allows you to be aware, but relaxed…to see real threats sooner and imagine fewer fake ones.
Second, you train your immediate action drills
These would be drawing and making a fast first hit, punching the throat, throwing what’s in your hand to create time and space, etc. This is what the majority of gun training is.
Third, (this is key), you tie #1 & #2 together with your practice.
You see, my friend was lightning fast. He had #2 down pat.
But he hadn’t trained his brain to identify accurate threat profiles.
And he had spent all of his training time responding to a beep rather than a rapidly evolving complex situation that he had to interpret with his eyes.
How did they fix it? First, they helped him learn how to calmly identify threats quicker and more accurately with >>this training<<
It will teach you the right process for scanning your environment, evaluating threat levels of people & situations, and tying those assessments to constructive action.
Check it out now by going >>HERE<<
We’ll talk about the next part tomorrow.
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