Competitions are fun and a great way to improve your mechanical gun-handling skills.
Photo: Lloyd Bailey
In addition to shooting matches, I continue to teach Combat Focus Shooting (CFS) courses and structure my defensive handgun practice sessions around the CFS paradigm. Recently, I’ve noticed some potential pitfalls that come with approaching your handgun practice from a defensive perspective while also participating in competitions. I hope my range experiences from doing both and having students who do both will help you avoid some potentially detrimental outcomes if you choose to participate in competitive shooting.
(Disclaimer: If you don’t accept that there is a difference between reality and playing a game, this article will be useless to you. This is only helpful if you understand that training for personal defense and competing are two different, often contradictory, pursuits that can nonetheless be enjoyed simultaneously.)
TAKING COMPETITION SERIOUSLY
The seriousness of your potential problems if you choose to compete will be directly related to how seriously you take the competitions. You could very easily go to a match, shoot in the way you have learned in a class like CFS, and lose miserably while racking up astronomical amounts of penalties. If you take this approach, you’ll look ridiculous compared to the other competitors, you’ll be mocked, and nobody will want to shoot with you. You’ll be “that guy,” so to speak.
Also, if you are a highly competitive and athletic person, it is going to frustrate you that you aren’t placing above anyone who isn’t either a total noob or disqualified from the match. While a few people don’t have ego invested when they sign up for a match, most of us don’t want to be “that guy.” Therefore, most of us will start doing things that make it more likely we’ll score higher and get fewer penalties when we practice. In doing that, the things we know we “should” be doing from a defensive perspective will sometimes get neglected if we aren’t careful.
First, you will likely find yourself losing some of your ability to visualize reality. When you shoot a match, you get a stage description and a walk-through of the array of targets and obstacles prior to shooting the stage. In some matches, you even get specific instructions on how you must shoot the stage, such as how many shots each target gets and what level of precision is required for each target, or what order they must be shot in. After a walk-through, it behooves you to develop a specific plan about how to shoot the stage as fast as possible by deciding which targets you will engage in what order, when you will move, where you will move to, where you will do your reloads, where you have room to take make-up shots if you miss, etc. How well you develop and execute your stage plan can make a big difference in how well you score compared to everyone else. If you don’t make a stage plan and just shoot the stage cold, you’re likely not going to score well.
REALITIES OF DEFENSIVE SHOOTING PRACTICE
In defensive shooting, there is no stage description or walk-through, and everything you do will be based on your body’s natural reactions, your learned responses to recognized stimuli during the course of the fight (responses you have hopefully developed through realistic training and practice), and improvisation. Since you cannot possibly know in advance the specifics of what a given defensive encounter will look like, you should not artificially ingrain a choreographed approach to surviving those encounters.
A lot of the things you do in competitions are unrealistic and just part of playing the game.
Photo: Lloyd Bailey
In realistic defensive handgun training, you have to be able to suspend disbelief and start thinking about more than just putting holes as fast as you can in the paper you know is in front of you. In a competition, how well those holes in paper score against the timer is your only concern. This can create a big visualization problem that will cross over into your defensive practice if you aren’t careful. One of the biggest issues I run into in class when I have students who cross back and forth from competition to defensive training is getting them to think about more than just how fast they can get good hits on paper.
They often have issues integrating the body’s natural reactions prior to presentation from the holster, moving laterally, focusing on the threat instead of the front sight when precision isn’t required, processing information after shooting a string of fire at the target, etc. Basically, everything except shooting at the paper really fast and getting good hits becomes extraneous to them when in the context of personal defense, although those extra things are actually quite important. This inability to visualize the plausible circumstances of a fight comes from chasing tenths of seconds and zeroing in on speed and mechanics as opposed to the other elements inherent in a fight because those things aren’t present in competitions.
COMPETITION GEAR
Second, you are likely going to have a resource allocation problem. If you want to compete and do well, you need gear that is designed specifically for competition. I have an entirely different holster, belt, and gun for competition, and they deviate significantly from what I use for concealed carry. The trigger on my competition gun is about three pounds, while my carry gun trigger is five pounds. The holster I wear for competition is an outside-the-waistband strong-side hip rig due to the match rules, while the holster I carry concealed with is an inside-the-waistband appendix-carry rig. Aside from the monetary expense of having the right gear for competition (probably not a real issue for a hobbyist), the transition back and forth has caused me some neurological issues.
One example of this happened when I had shot nothing but matches with my competition rig for two months and then took an Advanced Pistol Handling class with Rob Pincus with my carry gear. Something as simple as the difference in trigger weight on the carry gun I hadn’t shot in a long time gave me fits when trying to achieve precise hits on smaller targets, because my fingers were used to a much lighter trigger with less travel.
As a result of switching between triggers, the sympathetic muscle tension in my fingers was heightened, which caused me to pull the muzzle down when I pressed the heavier trigger that I wasn’t used to. You may not realize how much of a difference little tweaks like that can make when going back and forth between the different gear setups.
Once the gun is in your hand, “shooting is shooting,” but that’s only one piece of the puzzle. Photo: author
If you allocate a bulk of your training resources to developing skills that will win matches, the tradeoff is going to be that you spend fewer resources on the kind of contextual skills that are important in a fight. At the end of the day, once the gun is in your hand, “shooting is shooting,” but shooting is only one piece of a much bigger puzzle. If you carry a gun for personal defense, be careful not to overlook the other pieces of the puzzle. You have to deliberately keep the context and gear of personal defense a part of your practice sessions. This requires discipline.
“IT WILL GET YOU KILLED ON THE STREETS!”
All of that said, I don’t believe you are potentially putting your life at risk if you decide to participate in shooting competitions. The “it will get you killed on the streets” cliché is mostly hyperbole. But if you aren’t careful, you will be sacrificing some things that could increase your survivability in order to focus on playing the game better and potentially winning trophies. You could theoretically alleviate all of this to some extent by shooting matches with your concealed carry gear, not coming up with a stage plan, and integrating the byproducts of visualization and context into how you shoot each target. You’ll subsequently rack up a lot of penalties and lose the match as mentioned above. But I doubt many of you will do that. I certainly will not. Therefore, you’re going to have to be careful how you structure your practice sessions if you’re going to do both.
Practicing for personal defense requires simulating context. The body’s natural reactions, lateral movement, intuitive use of your sights, and processing information after shooting are all factors that aren’t present in competition but should be part of your defensive practice. Photo: author
WHAT’S MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU?
One thing I’m working on doing to guard against these issues is to only practice specifically for matches in the lead-up to bigger regional matches, where prizes and bragging rights are at stake. This is only a couple of times per year. The rest of the time, I do my normal defensive practice in context and throw in a match or two that I don’t care about winning just for fun at the club level. This helps me keep my focus where it needs to be from a personal defense perspective most of the time, while shifting focus to trying to win matches only for short periods of time.
This probably means I won’t be winning a lot of first-place trophies or picking up big sponsorships, but I’ll at least post a modest showing and not feel like I wasted a weekend, as someone who values “making a showing.” If you take competition a lot more seriously than I do, that will be harder for you to do. But keep in mind there’s always a trade-off no matter what you do. At the end of the day, you have to decide what’s most important to you, and you’ll have to make sacrifices somewhere. You must choose, but choose wisely.
Greetings. My opinion has no more (or less) value than anyone else, however the numbers speak for themselves. 35,000 USPSA members and 25,000 IDPA members out of 110 million gun owners. Evidently, most folks don't dig it.
"Since you cannot possibly know in advance the specifics of what a given defensive encounter will look like, you should not artificially ingrain a choreographed approach to surviving those encounters." AMEN. Like the people who carry a 7-shot panty pistol or a snub-nose revolver, because they assume they will most likely just be getting into a shoving match with someone who is armed only with a pocket knife. I carry my full-size 9mm w/optic and laser/light combo ALL THE TIME... because I DON'T KNOW what I may have to face. And what about the people who say "Open carry is for idiots, because it will make you a target and get YOU shot FIRST!" OK. So are we to believe that when a mass shooter armed with a rifle decides to target a grocery store for example, he will initially walk up and down the aisles, quietly looking for any open-carriers to "shoot first", and only proceed to fire on the UNARMED once he is confident that the "coast is clear"??? Or maybe they think he will just wait in his car, watching all the UNARMED people walk by, waiting for an open-carrier to come into view so he can "shoot him first", and only THEN proceed to fire on the UNARMED??? 99.99% of people shot by criminals are those who at least APPEAR to be unarmed, and some of THOSE were concealed-carriers who looked like easy targets. LOOK: I'm not going to open carry in a CROWDED DISCO, but there are MANY advantages to open carry, and I take advantage whenever it is appropriate. I KNOW where I am going when I leave my house, whereas cops DON'T know where they will have to go while on duty (might be a CROWDED BIKER BAR), and THEY... even most plainclothes officers in unmarked cars... open carry, so... As far as open carry making you a "target", well, so does your PURSE, and your WATCH, the MONEY you just pulled out of the ATM, and your CAR... why worry ONLY about someone seeing your actual DEFENSIVE WEAPON, as if common criminals are looking ONLY to target those who are ARMED? Millions of UNARMED victims would beg to differ, and concealed carry can make YOU appear to be an easy target, just like the UNARMED. Yes, RARELY you might run into a perp who is actually out to "steal your gun". First of all, good luck to them if you have more than half a brain (because they obviously DON'T), but they also steal guns out of SAFES... does this mean putting your guns in a safe makes them a "target"? Should we stop buying safes? Note that I DO carry my full-size 9mm "concealed" (so to speak : ) most of the time, just making the point: I would compromise on HOW I carry before I compromise on WHAT I carry. And finally: "Aside from the monetary expense of having the right gear for competition (probably not a real issue for a hobbyist), the transition back and forth has caused me some neurological issues." YES. As I stated above, I carry my full-size 9mm (S&W M&P SKU 13567) ALL THE TIME, because it checks the most boxes. My "practice" pistol is a full-size M&P .22; identical in dimension, safety placement, grip angle, same laser-light combo, etc. (sadly, no good options for a slide-mounted optic, though). And both of THOSE, except for weight and the manual safety, feel AMAZINGLY CLOSE to the S&W 5926 I carried for 30 years prior. POINT BEING: I don't have 5 or 6 carry pistols (e.g., full-size, compact, subcompact, micro-compact, revolver, .22 pocket-pistol) I routinely switch between, depending on where I'm going, how hot it is, what I'm wearing, etc. I stick to my exceedingly-familiar, and highly-capable setup since, while I can easily avoid getting into a shoving match with someone armed with a pocket knife, I'm not so sure I can avoid "dancing" with a rifle-armed mass-shooter who has me and others trapped in the back corner of a grocery store. A mass shooter who likely HASN'T, by the way, quietly walked the aisles FIRST to check for armed civilians : )
You are 'spot on' with your comments here. I have always felt that shooting competition is a good thing for people in law enforcement because it increases their shooting skills and gun handling skills. As long as they don't let it overtake their real life defensive skills.
I shoot IDPA at least once a month. BUT......I use my EDC holster AND my EDC G-45 with Holosun. I am sometimes "that guy" because I really don't give a dang about the gold or the silver trophy. I am using my EDC gear to get better with drawing, presentation, shooting as quickly and accurately as possible - and get better all the time. I wish the stages were 'blind' - so we wouldn't know when and where the targets were, or how many. THAT would help us a lot. Yes, everyone 'figures out the stages for reloads, etc. Even so far as dumpling extra rounds in the berm just to be able to reload while on the move.....NOT realistic ....but it's a helluva lot better'n standing in the bay shooting the paper at 15 yds.....WITHOUT being allowed to even draw....and ...it's fun.
I am considering shooting some matches so this was very timely for me. As always, a well written and well reasoned article. I am really enjoying the insight. I appreciate that although these articles are written by "gun guys", they are written with a hard driving zealot attitude. Well done.
As a former and early competition shooter, circa 1985 when practical shooting was just taking off in my area I was shooting every weekend at a different course location and shooting at least a 1000 rounds a week practicing. Let me first say practical or defensive shooting it doesn't matter the biggest thing, to me, is a mental issue. You have to have a mind set and know what you are going to do when the situation arises. I had been shooting a couple of years and considered my self an average shooter, in that, I wasn't always the fastest or the most accurate. I did practice with a friend several days a week and when we had a competition we usually had a printed scenario to think about and could practice during the week, however one Sunday shoot at a range about 50 miles from me, the shoot was unannounced, no practice time. Sow up and shoot. There were several shooters ahead of me and I watched thinking that I could go a little faster than them. Let me say that at all shoots up until then you never holstered your weapon "hot" (loaded), only after you ran the course did you holster an unloaded weapon. This particular course first stage was to stand in a shooting box, shoot three stop plates, reload, re-holster and run to the next stage. I shot the plates, reloaded and started to step out of the shooting box at which time I remembered that I had to re-holster or be penalized. As I was re-holstering ( did not hit the safety) the tip of my trigger finger hit the top edge of my holster and sent a 200 gr SWC in to my right femur breaking it about 7-8 inches below my belt line. Needless to say I had a mental lapse forgetting about re-holstering. It cost me 42 days in traction in the hospital and another 4 months recovering. I was lucky in that I did not hit any arteries or worse. My right leg is a little shorter than before, but still very lucky, could have been much worse. I have not shot competition since then a I have a lot more respect for my weapons. So, what ever you are shooting you must be mentally ready for whatever comes your way. I just loaded up 2000 rounds for practice, my competition gun is a Colt 45ACP Gold Cup and carry is a Colt light weight Commander. Practice, practice, practice!!!!
A couple specific bad habits you are apt to pick up competition shooting: 1) reloading on the move instead of from behind cover. In real life you don't know when you have shot the last threat, so stay behind cover. 2) looking down to see if your foot is over the fault line. Just use cover the best you can, and if your foot is over the line, take the penalty. 3 second penalty is better than a new bad habit. There should eb a 5 second penalty for looking down at your foot.
I have a somewhat different look at this matter. As a retired police officer and someone who only came into "competition" after retirement, I look at matches as a way to work on things like gun handling, reloading, and such. I only shoot my carry guns. My personally reloaded ammunition is loaded with bullets the same weight as my carry loads and the cartridges are loaded as closely as possible to the chronographed factory carry ammunition. I currently switch between IWB at the 3 O'clock position and AIWB depending on how I'm dressed for concealed carry. I have one IDPAish indoor match which allows AIWB, but Sanctioned IDPA matches, as you know, don't allow this for safety reasons, so there I carry strong side. I have no interest, and to be honest don't have the skill level to win matches. My only interest is keeping by skill level at a point so I might have a chance to survive in the only match that matters
I agree with pretty much all you say. I have forced myself to learn to focus on the target because that increased my speed once mechanics practice got the weapon in the right place. I was always trained to "focus on the front sight" which blurred the target. Ifmy opponent is attacking me, instinctively focus will be on him. Hard to defeat that impulse. Since my emphasis is on defensive shooting, I have learned the "ghost sight picture" (see target clearly, front sight blurred but in view). I compete in both IDPA & USPSA. IDPA requires use of cover, reload only behind cover. Good things; but, too orchestrated and planned. USPSA gives more freedom to figure it out on your on (target sequence, movement, reload on the move); but, ignore cover and other poor defensive habits. I personally use my concealed carry gear for matches to avoid confusion and shoot iron sights production weapons. All weapons have 3.75-4.25 # triggers. All are Springfield XD or XDm. Only difference is barrel length. No manual safety; but, I don't use appendix carry. Thanks for the article.
Likewise, there are two forms of martial arts, competition and the other. The only scenario I have ever been interested in is my survival. I only shoot with family members and close friends, most of them also being serious defensive shooters.