The Downside to Competition
Upon completion of a defensive shooting school, students are often enthusiastic about finding ways to maintain that level of training. (Photo by David Golladay)
By
Sheriff Jim Wilson (RSS)
February 7, 2012
Quite often, folks hit upon the idea of entering the action-shooting sports to keep their skills honed. Unfortunately, this often leads to developing bad habits—habits bad enough to get them hurt in the real world.
Back in the late 1950s, law enforcement developed the Police Pistol Combat Course (PPC) in an effort to offer better tactical training than the old bullseye courses. PPC mandated firing the handgun double-action (the revolver was king back in those days). It put more restrictive time limits on strings of fire and required the shooter to fire from behind barricades to simulate use of cover.
Unfortunately, PPC competition also required the use of target-velocity ammunition, so shooters were unable to acclimate to the added recoil of their duty ammunition. In addition, PPC eventually allowed shooters to outfit their handguns with extremely heavy bull barrels, outlandish sights and impractical holsters—none of which would be of much use in actual gunfights.
By the 1970s, defensive shooters knew something better was needed. In 1976, the International Practical Shooting Confederation (IPSC) was founded with the purpose of using competition to test the guns, gear and ammo that could and would be used on the street. In addition, the courses simulated actual gunfights and encouraged real-world tactics.
Sadly, gamesmen soon took over IPSC, and pistols and gear that had no place on the street began to be seen on the line. Competitors began to reduce the power of their ammunition to get the lightest loads that still met match requirements. The use of good tactics went out the window—in 1981, Ross Seyfried was the last shooter to win the IPSC World Championship with anything resembling a practical handgun and holster.
In fairness, the International Defensive Pistol Association (IDPA) made every effort to stay practical and tactical with its competition. Founded in 1996, IDPA puts emphasis on using handguns, holsters and ammo desirable for street use against an actual criminal threat. Its courses of fire are designed to be as realistic as possible, and IDPA continues to resist pressure from those who would turn this defensive training aid into just another form of target shooting.
Now, all of this may sound like I am really down on action shooting, but that is simply not the case. The members of these associations make the rules. In a democratic society, that is the way it should be. Most of the guns, gear and drills, however, have little to do with actual gunfighting.
Competition is simply about competing. In such an environment, people will do whatever it takes to win. Some shooters say they enter matches with the intention of staying tactical, but being surrounded by people who are intent on winning is often too great a temptation. The defensive shooter can quickly get caught up in that same excitement and throw tactics out the window. Competition becomes the focus without realizing it, and the bad defensive habits develop.
For example, action shooting rarely reinforces the proper use of cover. In the real world, when one sees a gunfight is unavoidable, the most important thing to do is to get behind something that will stop bullets.
Then, once behind cover, the defensive shooter should only leave it when he is compelled to do so. The last thing you want to do is to be running from spot to spot, blazing away at bad guys like Rambo. Cover is your friend, and the smart defensive shooter will learn to use it.
Right in line with leaving perfectly good cover is this business of loading on the run. If you really have a death wish, try jumping out where the bad guys can get you in their sights and executing a spiffy speed reload while you sprint to a new location. Upon being compelled to move to new cover, the smart thing to do is to top off your gun while still protected by something capable of stopping bullets.
Another dangerous habit often instilled by competitive shooting is advancing on multiple targets. In the real world, that is almost a certain guarantee you will be shot. Distance is your friend. Multiple targets, assuming you can’t get away from them, should be engaged from good cover at the greatest distance possible.
For the defensive shooter, competition can still provide a benefit if he strives, at all times, to remain tactical. That means using the same gun, ammo and gear used for concealed carry. It means not completing the course in the fastest time, but in the most tactical manner, engaging targets from good cover whenever possible.
Gunsite instructor Il Ling New recommends attending matches with a partner who is also focused on the use of defensive tactics. When one succumbs to the temptation to get competitive instead of tactical, his partner can call him on it. In this manner, a match can be fun and tactical at the same time.
You may hear competitors say, “I will do ‘this’ in competition, and ‘that’ in a gunfight.” What they are really telling you is they have never been in a gunfight. Good or bad, a person is going to do what he practices. Fast times and impressive athletics don’t win gunfights. The use of cover and center hits, however, will do it nearly every time. Such things are worth keeping mind when attending an action-shooting event.
Note: Several veteran law enforcement officers and Police Pistol Combat (PPC) shooters have pointed out Sheriff Jim Wilson’s criticism of PPC competition was unfair. While Wilson raises a valid concern about PPC Open Class competition being somewhat removed from the gear and situations officers typically use and encounter on the street, it is but one area of the discipline. Rules governing Stock Revolver and Stock Semi-Automatic—the latter being the most popular class at the National Police Shooting Championships—emphasize that officers compete with duty guns and gear, and prohibit the use of target ammunition.
In addition, the NRA Law Enforcement Division’s Tactical Police Competition (TPC), a nationwide series of LE and military-only multi-gun matches now in its fourth year, mandates firearms, holsters and other equipment be patrol duty gear. TPC matches consist of skill-based and scenario-based courses of fire. Skill-based courses challenge officers’ skills and abilities in handling, accuracy and overall proficiency with a given firearm system under set conditions, while scenario-based courses place officers in hypothetical law enforcement encounters and encourage them to solve the challenges presented according to their own tactics and skills.
Many aspects of firearm training are reinforced in PPC and TPC competition, such as use of cover when available, rapid reloads and proper and safe gun handling. For more information on PPC and TPC, visit www.nrahq.org/law.
Tags: competition, self-defense, Sheriff Jim Wilson, tactical shooting
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Jim Cirillo, the famous NYPD officer who won 17 documented gunfights, considered competition, including PPC competition – useful and valuable, not because it taught tactics, but because it challenged shooters’ skills under stress.
Many ranges do not allow customers to draw, move or shoot quickly; some restrict that privilege to those with documented proof of competence, most often successful completion of an IDPA or IPSC match, because those events have well documented rules and require disciplined gunhandling.
The average shooter may not have thousands of dollars and weeks of vacation available to attend week long, 1000-round classes at major schools, or even weekend only classes taught by traveling instructors. For many, local matches may be the only affordable, accessible opportunity to engage in realistic handgun practice and/or learn those skills from others.
The primary weakness of competition isn’t specific tactics; it’s that it teaches that every problem has a “shoot” solution, when in practice far more armed incidents are resolved through verbal commands and the threat of deadly force.
For the past 20 years, I’ve run force on force scenarios in my classes for armed citizens, including many with IPSC and IDPA experience. The mistakes they make in those scenarios are overwhelmingly related to weaknesses in communication, reading pre-fight cues, and other facets of human interaction that can’t be learned on a live fire range, whether it’s on match day or in class. My observation is that competitors, even those with no tactics training, handle stress better, and get better hits when shooting is required, so I share Jim Cirillo’s opinion that competition is valuable, even though competition is a poor source of instruction in tactics.
Before claiming things are “required” in competition read the rulebook first.
PPC:
http://www.nrahq.org/compete/RuleBooks/Police/pol-book.pdf
USPSA:
http://www.uspsa.org/rules/2010HandgunRulesProof3web.pdf
Equipment and technique first designed in competition has found valuable use in tactical environments. For more on this, read:
http://firearmusernetwork.com/2011/12/22/competition-shooting-ftw-again/
Complaints about competition are against specific issues with specific events. An organized shoot can take ANY format the designers wish. Sheriff Wilson should describe the format he created to address the issues in his article.
Out of 80 million gun owners and 4.3 million NRA members there are less than 0.25 million classified shooters in the United States in any formal shooting competition. 98% of card-carrying NRA members have never attended an NRA shooting event. Most gun owners aren’t participating in these events anyway.
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“the smart thing to do is to top off your gun while still protected by something capable of stopping bullets.”
You mean like how IDPA rules require you to do your reloads? From page 42 of the IDPA rule book:
“NOTE: Reloads may only begin when the shooter is fully behind cover”
I also have yet to see a stage the required me to advance towards targets while engaging them. The only time I’ve had to engage without being behind cover is in a stage where I’m moving back towards cover while engaging the closest targets, and then engage the farther ones from cover.
Your whole article comes across as a “holier than thou” attack on action shooting from someone who hasn’t actually been involved in them at all because they may taint the purity of your elite skills.
Honestly, I see way too many spec war guys at the local matches to really give much weight to your argument.
Another newbee here, often derided in other places, but then there is always hope in one’s future.
My interest is not in attitude, willingness, marksmanship, etc., only in hitting what one is shooting at, and if the method employed to do that, will work in a real life or death CQ encounter when one’s life is on the line.
If one will fight as they train, or something close to that, then IMHO one should train based on the findings of studies or real life threat encounters, and what science has established regarding those situations.
To not do that, is to set yourself up, or your charges, to be killed.
Per the NYPD’s (old but still good), study of 6000+ Police combat situations, SS was not used in > 80% of them, and Officers fired with the strong hand with few exceptions. The necessity for rapid reloading to prevent death or serious injury was not a factor in any of the cases, and in close range encounters (under 15 feet), a reload was never reported as necessary to continue the action.
Also, in CQ life threat situations, our “Fight or Flight” response will kick in according to science, and that will result in the loss of near vision which is needed for focusing on the sights.
So……..
I’m looking for studies, videos, and pics of Sight Shooting or FSP being used in CQ life threat self defense situations where most all gunfights occur, and where if you are going to be shot and/or killed, there is the greatest chance of that happening.
Since millions of students have been trained to use SS or FSP in CQ for more than 100 years, there should be hundreds to thousands of them.
But they are rarer than hens teeth.
And lacking them, the question that comes to mind is what do trainers who teach SS or FSP, base their teaching on: hearsay, opinion, or just what ?
To cut to the chase, so to speak, if you know of videos or pics of SS or FSP being used in a real CQ life threat self defense situation/s, or verifiable studies that support their use at CQ, please provide link/s. Thanks.
And lacking pics/video inputs, looks like Point Shooting (QK, P&S, Applegate, CAR), or something close to them would be what one should train in and at 21 feet or less. NO MORE, no less.
I could go into the many reasons why the arguments against competition are silly but instead I’ll say this. iPSC, IDPA and the rest are NOT tactical competitions. If that’s what you want go somewhere else, set up a course and shoot it ‘tactically.’. There’s no point in going to a shooting competition and not competing. And competing means shooting the course as fast and accurately as possible. I’ve seen guys take forever to shoot a 30 second course because they did it ‘tactically.’ In other words, they wasted everybody’s time.
Sherif Wilson is not making “arguments against competition”. He writes a monthly article in SI relating to concealed carry and use of deadly force in self defense. With that in mind, he is cautioning against developing bad habits for the purpose of gaming a competition.
IPracticalSC, IDefensivePA, USPracticalSA and PPCombat were all formed to enhance the “real world” shooting techniques of the competitors. As the sports evolve, the practical aspects have sometimes been abandoned for the competitive aspects – If the rules don’t forbid me reloading while running between stages, why add precious seconds to my score? And why the hell not silhouette myself in a window or doorway? Those targets will NEVER actually shoot back at me and using cover sometimes means you have to shoot off balance – and potentially miss. And my personal favorite – hitting the no-shoots – much easier to recover from in competition than in life.
Nobody disputes competition improves skill. Unless you work for an agency with a big ammo budget, action shooting is hands down the best way to improve your skills, especially speed. But if it’s the only training you do, be aware of the habits you’re forming. That is all the article was about.
great article… people put to much emphasis on speed and tacticool gear… while competition does provide a “stressed” environment those same people that do well and shoot fast in competition may piss themselves when faced with real danger… that boils down to the individual and many variables as to what actually makes someone have the right mindset to get the job done… shooting targets, no mater how competitive will never make up for someone with experience in facing danger or life threatening situations
Competition is invaluable. Competition is like training. Just like poor training can make a person worse, poor competition can too. But as another noted, competition can be the only way to teach a person to operate under stress. Take shooting under time pressure in comp. Properly done, it doesn’t teach a person to rush; rather it puts performance stressors on the shooter. LE trainers know it’s difficult to instill fear or stress onto in-service officers. Proper competition is the best way. BTW, Cirillo trained me too many yrs ago. He was the most practical gunfighter I ever met. He was all about mental state and confidence. He affected my instructor style a lot, and I’ve built my syllabus around developing and maintaining shooter confidence.