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S-D-P - Smooth, Deliberate,
Precision……
Let's set the
stage for this lecture with some old slogans….."Speed is Good, Accuracy is
Better", "You Can't Miss Fast Enough!"……..who said those? Hell if I
know, I read that Wyatt Earp said the first one, I doubt it. I also heard that
Clint Smith said the second one, I doubt it……OK so I'm a doubter, it
really doesn't make much difference who said them, it's the content I'm more
interested in rather than the author. Both refer to trading accuracy for speed.
That is handling your gun so fast that you fail to get good hits. In the
content of a mortal combat gun fight, we need to launch tiny chucks of lead
that impact our adversary on a mark that will ultimately declare us the winner.
If time is no factor, I'll buy the "Accuracy is Better" idea, accuracy implying
my little chucks of lead will impact the chosen life sustaining organs of my
adversary.
Problem I am having is
experience……in every gun fight I have had, time was a
factor…..you could say, "time was of the essence!". It would be macho if I
could tell you during those times of conflict I stood my ground tall and proud,
took careful aim while bullets were flinging around me, got a good bead on my
target pressed the trigger smoothly and bang, my adversary dropped like a wet
dish rag! It never happened that way…..
This should not imply the gun fights you have
experienced or may experience, will be like mine. They will probably have
similarities, but will not be exactly the same. Hell, none of my fights were
exactly the same. They do have some of the same factors….for example there
will be at least one person trying to shoot at you and you will be trying to
shoot at least one of them (these are the basic components of a gunfight!!).
During about half of my gunfights I experienced moderate to extreme
pucker-factor, meaning I was somewhere between frightened and on up the scale
to scared shit-less! The others I didn't seem to experience any fear or fright.
This may have been attributed to the me having balls of steel, but more likely
because I was just to damm busy with the issues at hand to be smart enough to
be scared. During some of the fights I experienced some of the physiological
symptoms associated with the "Flight or Fight" syndrome. Like everything going
into slow motion. This seemed to be common with the early fights, not so much
with the later fights, except one, which I can't share.
Most often I experienced a desire to get it
over quick. Bullets whizzing by within fractions of inches of your head and
impacting your close surroundings, trigger your survival instinct and you want
to immediately end the situation that seems to be causing your dilemma!
Sometimes I would find myself racing to end it more concerned with getting to
the end, with complete disregard for the desired results at the end. I can
remember in some fights repeatedly saying to myself, "Dammit George, slow down,
slow the hell down and get it right….". In some fights I can remember the
stress of fighting off the tendency to blast away haphazardly and forcing
myself to settle down, get on target and hit the son-of-a-bitches!
The human instinct to race under pressure is
predictable. If your enemy is using your predictability against you, the
tendency we have to rush things can work against us. On the other hand, if we
understand these natural tendencies and control them, they can become a great
advantage and be turned against our adversary.
Once I found myself in a position that all my
instincts were telling me it was time to race. Better judgment was blocking my
way, but I had this overwhelming desire to race, or better put, RUN. In my
little world I was poking around doing my job, trying to find the enemy and
within seconds we realized the enemy was about to find us. There was a bunch of
them and a few of us. Time and distance was not on our side, hesitation for
more than a few seconds would mean detection and complete annihilation of my
small unit. Despite the danger of booby traps and ambushes, it was time to race
and race we did. I gathered my 2-squad sized unit and we run our asses off. We
run for over two hours through the jungle. When we finally stopped we had
managed to flank a company sized unit and avoid detection. The run, a
controlled cluster-fuck, wasn't completely haphazard. At first we moved as
quietly as possible, while moving quickly, in a direct line that would provide
the greatest distance in the shortage time period before we started the flank
and picked up speed, faster and faster. Just tripping one booby trap or even a
small ambush would have had disastrous results. The combination of good luck
and the instinct to throw better judgment to the wind, provided us an escape.
Being successful at being stupid doesn't mean this became my standard, it only
meant that it worked once. I'll never forget that it worked once, but will
always hope I never have to use it again. Controlling your RACE is much
smarter.
Before I entered combat I had a lot
of training. A lot more than most GI's got before deployment. I learned the
value of fundamentals and getting things right the first time. I learned how to
force myself to slow down and get it right. I learned to keep the selector off
"full" and keep it on "semi" and take precise aim. I learned these things well
during training. When I hit the jungles I knew I had the skills necessary to
win. Unfortunately you don't know what you don't know. Despite my confidence, I
didn't know moments before my first battle that all these skills and confidence
was about to go down the shitter……and fast!
Although I didn't realize it then, regardless
of all the confusion and stress of my first fight, some of my training and some
luck prevailed and I survived. When my first battle was over, if you would have
asked, I would have said something like this, "I am woefully unprepared for
this shit and I'm probably going to get my ass waxed in this country!". During
my early combat days I quickly learned some valuable lessons, perhaps one of
the most important was the value of
SDP.
Smooth, Deliberate, Precision. It applies
to techniques, skills, tactics, strategies and just about everything. It is
most valuable during times of mortal conflict whether caused by combat or some
other event such as battling a hurricane or flood, or performing a rescue. To
optimize on SDP is to understand the relationship it has with our instinct to
race. It is funneling our power to race constructively into the SDP. Often our
adversary doesn't have a distinct advantage, rather we give them the advantage
by ignoring or throwing away our SDP.
We can
develop smooth deliberate precision by eliminating waste. It's economy of
effort, whether it be in physical motion or in thought process. If we boil
things down to only those elements absolutely essential to the task, place the
elements in the order of greatest economy and perform them deliberately, that
is, on purpose, we only have to gain our confidence and reduce the rough edges
to smooth them out.
Our tendency to race
needs to by redirected to help us quickly perform those essential elements and
not allow our natural instinct to get to the end before the purpose. There is a
means to the end and our instinct can help us most effectively reach the end if
we redirect the power to race, to the power to perform the elements of the
means.
It's difficult to teach someone how to
funnel their natural instincts into positive and productive energy. It's easy
to say do this, but hard to say how! If you already know this, or believe me,
you either "get it" or not. There is no easy 1-2-3 method I can provide to
guide you along the path of perfection. If you don't believe me, then stop
wasting your time, instead pickup a copy of Home and Garden or Vanity Fair
magazine and entertain yourself. If you do believe me and already "get-it",
then you are just reading stuff you already know and congratulation on your
great wisdom and enlightenment. If you believe me and want to capitalize on the
SDP, then you will fall into two groups. Those that "get-it" and can grasp the
importance of the effort required for self-improvement. Or, you don't "get-it"
and you are hopelessly lost and destined to panic every time you get into
mortal combat. It all boils down to, there are those who will open their eyes,
embrace the new enlightenment, find their way to take advantage, and forever
experience the confidence SDP provides. Then there are those that just don't
"get-it", and never will…..
Our instinct
to race is triggered by outside influence or a perception. That is, something
happens, usually during or in itself inflicting stress and our subconscious
mind starts pushing us. If we can experience the use of funneling our instinct
into productive energy instead of runaway uncontrolled reflexes, we can see the
value, experience what it took to control our instincts and better apply it to
all things in our lives. It's one of those things, we can't do it when we want,
until we have done it at least once to recognize it. There lies the biggest
obstacle to our learning, the first experience. And, although I haven't got a
1-2-3 manual for you, I have provided a key…..you can't funnel energy you
don't have, and you don't have the natural instinctive energy to race unless
you are under some kind of stress, either real or perceived.
With that in mind we have started a path. The
path requires us to get into a situation that will trigger our natural instinct
to race. You could find a real combat situation and place yourself in the
middle of harms way, but that probably isn't the smartest thing you could do to
learn, so we are probably stuck with pretending. We need to place ourselves in
a situation that elevates our stress level and is perceived to be a threat
challenge and hope that our instinct will blossom. When our natural instinct to
race starts to runaway with us, the challenge will be to direct the power to
race into constructive power to perform what ever task is recognized to be of
value. If we use a pretend situation, it allows us to fail without harsh
repercussions, and try, try, again.
Sparring
is one method used quite often to elevate our heart beat, induce stress and
present us with some unknowns. We can strap on some protective gear to prevent
sever injuries and have at it. You can spar with guns too. Guns like paintball,
airsoft or siminutions provide us the means to safely spar one-on-one or
multiples and is most often referred to as force-on-force. We can also spare
with real guns by adjusting the course so all projectiles go safely down range,
but one shooters action in a way effect their opponents actions.
One of the methods I use for this training is
to ask my students to successfully reach an objective, placing various unknown
obstacles in their path and attempt to overload their ability to cope with all
the elements. Most often these methods are what we refer to as scenarios. I
assemble various props and targets along with a life threatening situation and
thrust the student into combat with little information and let them fight their
way through the problem(s). What they are learning is Solution Analysis based
on sound fundamentals. Often times we set a student up to fail. This is called
negative reinforced learning (please don't tell the NRA or they might jerk my
NRA Instructor Credentials!!!!). I think probably the fastest way to learn is
by a negative traumatic event, like being shot and killed. Problem is we only
get to learn this way ONCE! So we take the "shot and killed" part out and
replace it with simulations. This is why it's called "pretend". Hey it's not
perfect, it's just one of the methods used.
For example, let me take you through a simple
scenario I have used in the past and try to explain how it works and the effect
it has had on some of my students. Please keep in mind scenarios we use to
train with unlike the IDPA, doesn't have to be based on a real event, so it
doesn't have to be absolutely realistic. It does have to challenge us to use
our skills and use our brain to arrive at solutions. Some challenge our
reaction and reflexes, others challenge our responses. Some are designed so
students will build their confidence, while some overload students until they
fail.
This scenario starts with the student
sitting on a stool. The stool has nothing to do with direct action they take
during the scenario and the student is told this, only that it is a position
they start from. It does however have a benefit. Sitting on the stool is a
relaxed position compared to the normal standing and tensed position. It
permits the student to relax both mind and body. Everyone knows that your
strength is optimized by periods of relaxation. Continue to flex your muscles
and they will tire and be less effective, that is weaker. Relax the muscles
between moments of flex, and each flex is then full force strength and much
more powerful. If you didn't know this, well….there you go….you
learned something. It applies to both physical strength and mental strength.
Think hard and long, push yourself 10, 12, 14 hours a day under heavy stress,
with little sleep and your mind will start to become weaker, you will start to
make mistakes…..it's called fatigue! The power of meditation is the
relaxation of the mind, clearing out all the junk and clutter to make room for
more powerful thought. Think harder for shorter periods interrupted with short
breaks and do it more often and you will experience a stronger mind making
better decisions. Same thing physically, whether it is a punch or gripping a
gun while shooting, relaxing the muscles in between those moments of the strike
will provide the rest, your muscles need, to obtain explosive
strength…..boxers call it staying loose. Anyway back to the scenario.
From sitting on the stool, students are
advised…..the blank frames in front of them about 7 yards away represent a
barricade. They can only negotiate the barricade from the left hand side.
Behind the barricade are several people. The people are represented by common
silhouette targets. This is probably a hostage situation. The bad people have
weapons. Your objective is to neutralize the bad people and save the other
people. You may start when you are ready.
Each student is given the freedom to run a
scenario as they believe it to be, only restricted by the limited instructions
provided. Behind the barricade I have placed four standard sized silhouette
targets mounted on four target frames and stands about 7 yards beyond the
barricade. The one to the far left is a typical "Q" type target, the second
from the left is a picture type target of a menacing women with a revolver in
her right hand about hip level pointing it at you. To the right and in front of
this target is another standard type silhouette B-15 target that covers about
half of the women pictured with the gun. Just to the right of these is the
fourth target, a silhouette typical of the another "Q" design. All of the
students have shot at all of these targets thousands of times in the past
during various scenarios and square range exercises.
Most students (most meaning more than half,
but not a great majority), when given the queue, "You may start when you are
ready" spent only seconds on the stool, before they leaped onto their feet and
quickly advanced to the barricade (keep in mind there was no time frame
specified for this evolution). They started to pie around the left edge of the
barricade (they were restricted to left side only). As they see the first "Q"
target on the left, some delivered several hits to the upper chest, others held
their fire (this target had no implication of a weapon, it was however a target
that students had shot thousands of times during other shooting drills). They
continued to pie the corner and the next target they see is the angry women
with the revolver, some maintained there partially covered position behind the
barricade and delivered several hits to the upper chest, around the weapon and
torso area without hitting the "Q" target that was partially obscuring the
women picture target, while other students completely exposed themselves while
addressing an armed and dangerous suspect holding a hostage, but pointing a gun
at them. All students recognized the fourth target as a "no-shoot" and held
their fire.
Because I give every student the
freedom to run a scenario as they visualize it, outside of the limited
guidelines and restrictions I impose, there are two parts to the performance.
The evaluation consist of what actions the student took and more importantly
why. So at the end of the scenario, we review the hits and actions the student
took and I ask why they did this, why they did that, what was their thought
process, what logic was used, etc. I could easily set up a scenario and then
spend all morning telling the student ahead of time this, that and the other
thing until there were no surprises, no unknowns and no options. That of course
is counter productive to inducing stress by the unknown. But because I give the
students so little information, they are free to feed their thought process
into the scenario. Let's say I set up a scenario that places a student in their
home late at night to have a shoot out with a burglar. Each student is going to
run the course visualizing their home. Each home is different, so different
students will automatically feed the scenario with what they are familiar with,
being different from all other students. Scenario results are neither right or
wrong until I know what was going through the students mind……so a
part of the critique and lessons learned is by me
asking.
Most often the response I get from
students is, "I didn't think about that". For low time students of course they
didn't think about that, they have little experience and a lot to learn. But
when high time students say, "I didn't think about that", what they are really
saying is, "I didn't take the time to think about that". They raced to get to
the end instead of racing to work toward the end. When we race to the end, we
are accepting what has been presented and the end is usually a surprise we
don't anticipate until we get there, but most likely our destiny has been
forged. When we race to work toward the end, we are taking command and position
ourselves to better dictate what the end will be, good, bad, or indifferent. We
may not dictate everything that happens, but we get to participate and
determine most of it and not just let things happen without
effect.
During scenarios my students neither
fail or succeed by my standards. They are given the latitude to determine their
own performance. I give them options, suggestions, recommendations. I point out
what may or could have happened at various stages of progression determined by
their actions and they become the judge of the results. I think this method
better sets them up for self-learning, which with proper guidance to me, means
more meaningful and more powerful learning. In this manner, each student
becomes their own instructor and usually their own worst critic!
Let's go back to the scenarios example and
discuss some of the options and the results. Students were given the freedom to
start when they were ready, so there would be no reason to rush into this
situation without thinking things through. It may very well be most students
felt there wasn't a whole lot of thinking they needed to do and therefore
leaped into action, but I think it was a self-induced reflex to get this thing
done. I didn't imply there was a need for speed, there was no intel about this
scenarios which implied any hostage would be injured if we didn't move
immediately, in fact I keyed each student specifying "probably" it was a
hostage situation, not "in fact".
Most of the
students who shot the first "Q" unarmed target representing an innocent
bystander, stated they did so because of habit, they didn't think it was a good
guy, because they didn't appear to be a hostage and oh well, our trigger got
ahead of our brain. This is one of the pitfalls of a real life dynamic
situations and it is a damm good lesson we learn while training!
All of the students fired on the menacing
women with a weapon holding a hostage without a single word be spoken. There
was no communication used. That doesn't mean it would be the right thing to do,
it means that no student used that option. It could have been that each student
felt they were not detected, so as not to give up their advantage of surprise
would shoot first rather than give up their position and offer the suspect an
opportunity to injure the hostage. This could provide a good approach, but each
student was capable of making a precision hit on the suspect that would have
most likely provided a "one-shot" stop, meaning they were in a position and
capable of delivery damage to the suspects cranial region for some rather
dramatic incapacitation. However, no students hit this area first instead
trading precision for a couple rapid hits into the torso area which some were
good hits, others were not so good, none of them would have reliably provided
an instant "lights-out" smack to the spinal nerve stem.
All students fired on the suspect without
further regard to other people they did not have in their line of sight,
specifically the fourth "Q" target to the right. As it turns out this target
was not a threat, but only those that jumped out from behind their cover
completely exposing themselves could have seen this fourth target and then only
for an instant as they were focusing on the suspect.
This is just a simple scenario and I have
only touched on a few of the concerns, but it is obvious even the simple may be
comprised of enough elements to build it's complexity. Did any of the students
fail the scenario? You should know by now, my opinion is "no". For two
reasons….first regardless of each students actions, they learned some
options that may have been better than those they selected or failed to use and
if you are learning during training you are not failing…..second, each
students performance is judged by the student, not me. I present the challenge
and some alternatives I think are important. Each student determines their
score, how they view their performance, establish what they think can be
improved and develop their own list of "do's and don't do's". While running
thousands of scenarios inducing stress I have recognized one common
overwhelming hazard….you guessed it……racing to the end!
I would like to dispel what I think is a
myth, that being fast is not as important as accuracy, that speed impedes
accuracy. I think just the opposite, I think speed is an equal asset to
accuracy and should be developed with as much commitment. I think what is
confused by most is not the hazard of speed, but the liability of rushing. We
rush to conclusion, we rush to accomplishment, we rush to get that first shot
off, and in doing so we neglect our ability to combine speed with accuracy.
Some may say this is just semantics…..perhaps, but I will stand on my
logic and experience. Through the use of "economy of effort" performing tasks
smoothly with deliberate precision will equate to speed….and speed means
being fast. I like being fast…..there is another slogan you may have
heard, "don't go any faster than you can get good hits". There you go, that
slogan provides you with a thermometer to gauge your skills. A yard stick so to
speak, you can use against yourself, for yourself. Just change it a little bit
for me, "go as fast as you can get good hits", it's an attitude thing!
There seems to be a trend in some corners of
the training industry which leans heavy on the accuracy and purposely neglects
the speed. I'm not talking about the need to start your coordination of a
physical task or develop fundamental parts or to assure safety. I'm talking
about leading a student into believing in their confidence based on accuracy
alone. I have many students falling into this trap of slow-motion fighting.
With the exception of the old time "duels of honor" (who thought those stupid
rules up?), no gun fight waits for any man. The constant leaning on students
for accuracy with little to no training for smooth deliberate procession is
especially harmful to the older adults. As we age, most approaching those
senior years start to slow down. We slow down our pace and fail to realize we
can still be pretty damm quick if we force ourselves.
Not withstanding requirements for safety, we
need to learn again how to be fast. How to move fast and how to think fast. In
our training we need to move and think fast not because we have to, but because
we can. We are not discussing haphazard speed with disregard for repercussions,
we are talking about "economy of effort" to develop smoothly executed
techniques with deliberate precision. We need to develop our skills to do
things on purpose when they need to be done.
As we develop our skills, we need to pay
attention to the details. Training is usually not easy. It should be fun and
enjoyable, but needs to involve hard work. If while you are training you are
breezing through the process, you may want to reconsider what you are doing.
Are you really improving your capability or just going through motions that
resemble proper training. Have you examined lately what you have been doing to
determine if it is the shortest and best way to accomplish a task? Does your
method gleam with "economy of effort" or ignore it so it looks cool like in the
movies? Almost all techniques are higher performance if they allow us to use
what is natural and easy, but developing these techniques are not without
effort and sometimes pain.
There has never
been a Gold Medal Olympic Winner born with the natural ability to win a gold
medal. Some people were born with a natural talent for one thing or another in
a raw form which needed to be trained, harnessed, and cultivated into
perfection. I have never known anyone who was born with SDP, but I know of a
few who have reached near perfection using it to take advantage of their
developed capabilities.
So there you have it!
SDP is really SDP-F. Smooth, Deliberate, Precision done FAST! Use it, develop
it, train with it. Physically and mentally work on SDP to become fast. Avoid
racing to the end and channel your instinct to race, for working toward the
end, you'll get there much faster. "Economy of effort" is your friend and you
should learn to exploit it at every
opportunity…..SDP-FAST |