A quick search of the term used in the title will show you that the Army, Marine Corps and Air Force have all embraced this concept. Countless other entities have as well from professional sports teams to musicians, and probably almost every other group that wants to perform at a high level.
Here at Pistol-Training.com, high level basics are what we have preached and practiced since day one. There is no such thing as “advanced skills”, just the basics executed as perfectly as possible. Whether that is completely true or not doesn’t matter – the point is sound.
If you want to hit a small target, you first have to hit a larger target. If you want to hit two targets, you have to be able to hit one first. If you want to hit a target fast, you must be able to hit it slowly first. Hopefully this is obvious to everyone by now. Even people who believe in the idea of fixing problems at speed, generally understand that you have to able to do the thing at some level first, before attempting to do it fast. No one teaches their kid to drive by putting them on the freeway at 75 and saying “Figure it out!”
There is no one single magical way to shoot well. Some high level shooters grip the gun one way, others do it very differently. Some like to prep the trigger, others do not. Please don’t waste my time or yours telling me your way is better. No matter who you are, better shooters than you do it the other way. Even at the very top of USPSA, that is true. And by the way, USPSA is not the be all end all. It is very useful for many aspects of shooting but it is not everything.
What is everything, is mastering the fundamentals. Within reason, I don’t care how you accomplish the task, but you must accomplish the task. What is the task? Hit what you want to, when you want to, in the time you want to. This “mission statement” covers every aspect of shooting there is, and will drive your practice and technique when applied to your situation. If your interest is slow fire accuracy, then how fast you draw the gun is pretty meaningless, and practicing for slow fire accuracy will not drive improvement in your draw technique. If your interest is fast hits up close, simply practicing that will not drive improvement in your mid or long range accuracy.
My interest is basically everything. I want long range accuracy. I want fast hits up close. I want to do it from a ready position and from concealment. The way to accomplish this is to work on each component skill until it is at a level that makes you happy. The way you don’t accomplish this, is to run courses of fire over and over. It doesn’t matter if the course is an LE qual course, or a USPSA classifier. Paper GM’s are called paper GM’s because they can’t apply their skills in actual competition on unknown courses. That is because of how they trained. Train correctly, get better, repeat. It really is that simple.
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