Accuracy is Yes or No

Here comes another important tip from the Personal Defense Network. Was that shot accurate or not? That's the most important question we can ask about a shot in a training environment. Accuracy needs to be thought of as yes or no. If the shot was accurate, I achieved my goal, I did what I wanted to do and I need to maybe change the parameters, change the level of precision, try to do it faster, try to do it from further away, try to do it in a more complex environment, I need to push myself. If the answer was no, if I wasn't accurate, then I need to change what I'm doing. I need to apply my fundamentals at a higher level, maybe I need to dramatically change the technique I'm using in order to achieve the goal of getting that bullet to go where I needed it to go. So in a training environment, the answer should be no every once in a while to let us see what we need to do, where we need to improve, we should always be pushing ourselves again. So was that shot accurate or was it not accurate? Well, if my goal was to get inside of the nine ring, which on this type of target is a good approximation of the area that we talked about when we talked about the high center chest, if my goal was to get inside of the nine ring, that shot was absolutely accurate. Now let's make it a little more complicated. That shot was just as accurate as the nine, the first time. This shot is also just as accurate. It's important to understand that those second and third shots are not only equal to the first shot, but they're also equal to one another in terms of accuracy. All three shots are accuracy, yes. Far too often in shooting world we obsess over the idea that that shot that cut into the X ring is somehow better than the shot that's in a nine ring. But we have to remember that once we've decided that anything inside of the nine ring is good, that that's our goal, then it's really about achieving that shot inside of the nine ring as quickly as we can with as little effort as we can, with as little energy as we can. That of course is efficiency. We wanna make sure that we're getting those hits quickly. Of course in a target shooting environment that X might be seen as better. But in the target shooting environment, we would probably start out by defining our goal not by getting inside of the nine ring, but by simply being inside of the X ring. In that case, if I'm gonna fire this next shot with the goal of being inside of the X ring, the answer is no. I'm way out on the edge of the nine, that shot barely meets our first criteria for accuracy. And of course if I go down here, that shot at the edge of the eight ring absolutely doesn't meet the criteria for accuracy on either level. When you get ready to shoot at a target make sure that you don't get fooled by the design of the target and pulled away from what your actual goal is. Understand that precision is the variable. Am I looking to get inside of the 9? Am I looking to get inside of the eight or is anything on the black acceptable? Once you set your level of precision, fire your shot and then ask yourself, accuracy yes or accuracy no. Be sure to check out the Personal Defense Network for more important tips just like that one.