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Avoiding the gamer trap
bullit:
I forgot to add that Mr. McCullough of recent Omaha Walgreen's infamy is/was a competition shooter. Not sure how much "tactical" training he had. Seemed to fair alright.......
NE Bull:
I will say, the July Rock Your Glock taught me one thing, a person cannot hit crap with sweat in his eyes in the scorching heat of 2:00 in the afternoon!
sjwsti:
OK, Ive got one more in me and then someone else can have the last 2-300 words ;D. This horse is beaten to a pulp and deserves to rest in peace.
I come from a competition background also. And the foundation I built there shows in my shooting today. Thats why I recommend it for novice shooters. But I left it behind, because that worked for me, and I believe I'm a better fighter today because I moved on and was able to concentrate on other things.
--- Quote --- In conclusion, I think this topic makes for good discussion, but one must be careful as presenting it as dogma.
--- End quote ---
I certainly hope I didn't come off as sounding dogmatic. As an Instructor I never want to become so invested in something that it cant be immediately replaced if I learn something more effective. No one knows it all and I'm always learning and always moving forward. JT is a hard nut to crack and if I came off as sounding inflexible it was not intentional.
The reason for my original post (if anyone remembers or even cares at this point) was to give information that I thought might be valuable to some of the forum members.
As a teacher, my job as I see it, is to provide students with as much information as possible allowing them to make informed decisions about what will work best for them.
If you decide that sport shooting works for you, thats fine. Some of us are of the opinion that there are pitfalls for the self defense oriented shooter. The original post contained some strategies that would allow you to sport shoot and either avoid or at least minimize the pitfalls. Thats it, no more, no less.
--- Quote ---No, I don't agree that there is such a thing as muscle memory (one of my pet peeves, actually). There are certainly mental pathways we can ingrain as choices, but the concept of "muscle memory" is quite faulty. Drives me nuts when people use that term.
--- End quote ---
Really, your going to make me say this...
I know that our muscles don't have little brains with short and long term memory. Its simply a common term and I'm sure everyone on this forum knows what I meant. (BTW, adjust your filter and keep the condescending remarks in your head)
You continue to use the word "choice". I think you will be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't believe that you can ingrain a conditioned unconscious response through repetition that isn't a conscious "choice"
It seems as if your saying that the unconscious mind doesn't exist. Well, Wikipedia has a little something to say about that...
--- Quote ---The unconscious mind is a term coined by the 18th century German romantic philosopher Sir Christopher Riegel and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.[1] The unconscious mind might be defined as that part of the mind which gives rise to a collection of mental phenomena that manifest in a person's mind but which the person is not aware of at the time of their occurrence. These phenomena include unconscious feelings, unconscious or automatic skills, unnoticed perceptions, unconscious thoughts, unconscious habits and automatic reactions, complexes, hidden phobias and concealed desires.
--- End quote ---
But here you concede that maybe it does exist...
--- Quote --- Now, if every time someone picks up a gun, they are unsafe or stupid, then yes, over time those habits will be ingrained.
--- End quote ---
So you can ingrain a conditioned unconscious response through repetition but only the unsafe or stupid ones?
I can tell you that we have worked very hard to ingrain safe and smart unconscious responses. And those responses manifest themselves during high stress training on a regular basis. Maybe you have never experienced an unconscious conditioned response to extreme stress. You should.
Theres more but who in the world gives a crap by now :D
Either way its been an interesting back and forth. Thanks for helping me brush up on my typing skills, Im going to go ice my index fingers.
Be safe!!
- Shawn
Chris Z:
--- Quote from: bullit on August 02, 2011, 04:11:59 PM ---I forgot to add that Mr. McCullough of recent Omaha Walgreen's infamy is/was a competition shooter. Not sure how much "tactical" training he had. Seemed to fair alright.......
--- End quote ---
Alot of good discussion here to think about.......... But to confirm your statement Bullit, no Mr McCullough had no formal training, just a hunter and a every-other-weekend USPSA shooter.
His hit ratio in the Walgreens incident one-handed shooting from 20ft away was 5/8. or 62.5%
A week after this OPD fired 18 shots at a driver trying to run them over on 84th & I-80, 4 Officers with a combined 55 years experience (as the news media gloated on), their hit ratio 4/18 or 22.2%. (Kohl's Shoplifter)
I find it amazing how biased the news media is against the average citizen as they were questioning why he missed 3 shots, yet gives the Police a free pass and don't even mention the 14 shots they missed. I would guess that the 22% hit ratio is more likely normal when you are facing a life/death situation like these officers were, and the 62% hit ratio that Mr McCullough had was proof (in my small brain) that competition shooting has SOME value.
JTH:
--- Quote from: sjwsti on August 02, 2011, 10:17:35 PM ---[snip]
As a teacher, my job as I see it, is to provide students with as much information as possible allowing them to make informed decisions about what will work best for them.
--- End quote ---
Absolutely. We just have to be careful that what we are saying not only is something we truly believe in, but that what we believe in is actually true. :) And we need to be careful that when we say something, we carefully state the difference between "This is TRUE!" and "I believe this is true."
Which, by the way, I think you did. I happen to disagree, and so we had this long conversation. :)
--- Quote ---Really, your going to make me say this...
I know that our muscles don't have little brains with short and long term memory. Its simply a common term and I'm sure everyone on this forum knows what I meant. (BTW, adjust your filter and keep the condescending remarks in your head)
--- End quote ---
That wasn't condescending. It is a pet peeve of mine, and I never said you believed anything like that. It is a common term---but many people who use it don't actually understand kinesthetics, nor do they understand how to build effective reflexive responses. As such = pet peeve.
--- Quote ---You continue to use the word "choice". I think you will be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn't believe that you can ingrain a conditioned unconscious response through repetition that isn't a conscious "choice"
It seems as if your saying that the unconscious mind doesn't exist.
--- End quote ---
I don't believe I ever said anything like that at all. As with my pet peeve, please don't read more into what I wrote than what I actually said.
I said:
--- Quote ---Now, if every time someone picks up a gun, they are unsafe or stupid, then yes, over time those habits will be ingrained.
--- End quote ---
To which you replied:
--- Quote ---But here you concede that maybe it does exist...So you can ingrain a conditioned unconscious response through repetition but only the unsafe or stupid ones?
--- End quote ---
You'll note the important section of what I said was over time. You said you practice all the time. I said I don't. Doing things once, or even several times, is generally not sufficient to ingrain any sort of conscious competency, much less unconscious reflexive usage, unless there is a significant amount of emotional/physical background (and normally, trauma) in the one repetition. As such---if you want to build reflexive reactions, unconscious responses, or unconscious habits, you only have a couple of ways to do it:
1) respond once under extreme emotional/physical stress (such as when attacked, when in an serious accident, etc),
2) consciously practice with focus and precision a number of times, or
3) unthinkingly repeat actions often over a much longer period of time.
Each will build a set of unconscious reactions/responses/habits. You'll note that because of this, picking up a firearm by the slide once will not cause you to screw up your grip on the handgun the next time you pick it up. Either you do something without thinking often over time, or you do something while thinking about it for less repetitions---both get results. But that is exactly why I said that I don't practice all the time, and why I don't believe that every time I pick up a gun suddenly I'm training. (If so, then I've spent a lot of time training to clean a gun.) If what I'm doing is to have an effect, then either my attention needs to be focused for that time period on what exactly I'm trying to ingrain, OR I'd have to do it often over time.
The trick, of course, is to pay attention to how many times we unconsciously do something that is detrimental to our goals. :)
(I also note that option 1, above, is often the best way to quickly ingrain very bad responses to high-stress situations.)
--- Quote ---I can tell you that we have worked very hard to ingrain safe and smart unconscious responses. And those responses manifest themselves during high stress training on a regular basis. Maybe you have never experienced an unconscious conditioned response to extreme stress. You should.
--- End quote ---
Ah. Would it help to know that I've been teaching martial arts and self-defense for 15 years? And that conditioned responses to high-stress situations is what that is all about? That I've helped attack victims re-wire their conditioned responses to trauma into something useful? That I was a mental health worker with a number of randomly violent patients? Or that I was a correctional officer for a number of years, including on the CERT team, so oddly enough, "extreme stress" has occurred? Or that I've gone through "high stress" training under a number of different circumstances for a number of different reasons?
The thing is, while all of the above are true, none of it should matter. Again, this shouldn't be based on merely our opinions or even our personal experiences---because our personal experiences don't give us a wide enough set of data to really see what is going on. So instead of making this about your experiences and my experiences (other than as an initial point of information) this should have been about what the vast majority of instructors see in their students, and about discussing the topic, not basing it on "who's done more" ---or insinuating that someone else probably doesn't know what it is really like, because they haven't "been there".
I do know what it is like. In this case, however, that isn't necessary for this discussion, as there is a large body of evidence gathered by many teachers for many years, on this topic. And their response is quite simple: Shooting competitions is perfectly fine, and can be done while still ingraining effective self-defense tactics. There is no "gamer trap" that occurs merely because people shoot competitions.
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