The myth of “Point” or “Instinctive” shooting

I got a great question/comment on Facebook today and I wanted to share it, and my response, with you…

I talked some with Stephen…he has real world experience stopping lethal force threats with a pistol.  But he had 10s of thousands of rounds of practice ammo provided for him that allowed him to develop the ability to shoot…it wasn’t something he was born being able to do.

The fact is that there are 4 major reasons why your ability to shoot a pistol accurately has absolutely nothing to do with your ability to point.

It’s a myth.

It’s a false belief system that many use to justify not practicing, but one that will bite them in the butt if they ever have to perform with a pistol in a high stress situation.

But there are solid, proven ways to either use your sights subconsciously (faster than consciously) or to line up your sights with your intended target without having to use your eyes.

It’s important to note that there are a couple of definitions of “instinctive.”

“Instinctive” can mean that you’re born with the skill or “instinctive” can simply mean that you’re executing a skill subconsciously.

It is not possible to shoot a pistol at a high level under stress with inborn ability.

It absolutely IS possible to shoot a pistol at a high level under stress subconsciously after a high volume of deliberate practice.

Here is my response to Stephen:

I understand why you might think that, but it’s a common myth that pointing your finger has anything to do with shooting a pistol accurately.

This is a really important thing to understand, and there are 4 major reasons why “instinctive/inborn,” or “point” shooting is a myth.  They are vertical offset, horizontal offset from an inconsistent grip, isometric tension and trigger finger isolation, and recoil management.

First, please do me a favor…hold an unloaded pistol in your left hand, gripping the slide, with the muzzle pointed away from you in a safe direction.

Now pick a target with a safe backstop and point at it with your right index finger.

Without moving your index finger at all, open your grip and put your unloaded pistol into your hand, and re-grip it.

Again, without moving your index finger at all, look where the sights of your pistol are pointed.

A proper grip on your pistol will have your finger pointing higher than the barrel when you’re indexing and lower than the barrel when you’re finger is on the trigger.

This means that if you use your “instinctive/inborn” finger pointing to aim a pistol, your shots will consistently sail over the top of whatever you want to shoot.

Your finger and the barrel should never be parallel while shooting.  If they are, it means that the webbing of your hand between your thumb and index finger aren’t as high as they should be on the backstrap of the pistol and you’re going to experience many times more felt recoil than you should.

Second, even if your vertical alignment is correct, gripping the gun is not “instinctive/inborn” and just a few degrees of rotation will cause misses on man-sized targets at ranges as close as 10-20 feet.  (This is the hand-eye coordination issue he mentioned)

Third, even if your vertical alignment of the muzzle is parallel with your finger and your grip is perfect, holding isometric tension with 3 fingers and your thumb while pressing your index finger straight back without disturbing the sights…knowing that the end result will be an explosion 18” from your face, is not an “instinctive/inborn” behavior.  It’s learned.

And, fourth, since almost no threat is stopped in a timely manner by a single pistol round, you’re going to need to have a grip that automatically brings your sights back into perfect alignment for subsequent shots…again, this is something that’s not “instinctive/inborn.”  It’s developed through deliberate practice.

In short, there is no such thing as instinctive/inborn shooting as it’s popularly understood.  Nobody is born with the ability to shoot a pistol well, and it’s not something that you can learn in a day and expect to use with any success in the future unless you do continual deliberate practice…and that’s kind of the opposite of “instinctive/inborn.”

A parallel example would be throwing a football.  Some people pick hand-eye activities faster than others, but nobody can consistently stand in the pocket while being blitzed from multiple directions and hit a receiver 30 yards down field who’s being double covered based on “instinct” alone.  It takes lots and lots of deliberate practice.

There IS such a thing as being able to put fast, accurate rounds on target without visually lining up the sights and focusing on the front sight, but that’s the result of a highly developed cybernetic loop and has absolutely nothing to do with “instinct.”

There IS a straight forward process to develop this ability through deliberate practice on your sighted shooting…

1. Practice your grip until it is exactly the way you want it and exactly the same, every time.
2. Practice your presentation so that your sights automatically come up into perfect alignment between your dominant eye and your intended target every time. At some point, you’ll transition from using your eyes to line up your sights to simply using your eyes to verify sight alignment.Once you know, from repeated validation, that your sights are going to be lined up with your intended target, you can put fast, accurate rounds on target…even in situations where your eyes aren’t able to shift focus to the front sight.

This is not “instinctive/inborn” shooting or “point” shooting…it’s simply the natural result of doing deliberate practice and building high quality muscle memory.

Back to the cybernetic loop…a cybernetic loop is a feedback and reaction loop.  In the case of shooting, your eyes, arms, and hands are continually assessing and adjusting alignment of the gun with your intended target from the time the gun leaves the holster until you are done shooting.

It involves coordination between your visual system, vestibular system (inner ear), proprioceptive system (where you are in space), and the major and supporting muscles of the arms & hands and even the muscles of the eye.

In a self-defense situation, all of this coordination/action has to happen instantly, automatically, reflexively, as a conditioned response.  There’s no time to think through the process like you can when you’re shooting paper or plinking.

And the absolute best way to develop your grip, extension, trigger press, and visual skills necessary to be able to put fast, accurate rounds on target in a high stress situation is the 21 Day Alpha Shooter at-home study course.  It costs less than a single trip to the range, it’s more effective than just doing live fire practice, and you can find out more about it right now by going >HERE<

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