Coaching Cues Vs. Actual Technique

A common issue in the training community is the tendency for instructors to pass cues along as if they were meaningful techniques. Usually, this is the result of those cues being taught to the instructor “when they were learning”, and they simply continue to pass them on. This continues because few instructors really make the technique their own. Making the technique their own means that they not only understand it very well and can adapt it to their shooting needs but also to the needs of their students.

Stance and grip are common areas where you see this, but if you look for it, you can find cues being passed off as technique in almost every area of shooting. A common stance cue is to tell people to get their nose over their toes. Another variation that I learned early on is weight “progressively aggressive.” The purpose of this is to get people to control recoil better because they put their weight behind the gun rather than leaning back and removing their body weight from the gun.

But wait! Doesn’t getting your weight behind the gun matter? Sure, especially when you are small and the gun is big (think shotgun recoil). If you are a big guy, and the gun recoils little, it is less important.

At a beginner’s level of understanding, the weight behind the gun, in and of itself, can certainly help control recoil. As you develop your skills though, you begin to realize that grip and vision control recoil more than weight does. If you get stuck on body position, you may not discover how to control recoil through grip and vision. If you can get an ideal stance, great, take it. But if you can’t, then you better have other tools in the toolbox if you still want to shoot fast and accurately.

If your grip is compromised (like when you shoot one-handed), then adding weight behind the gun can help a little, and it makes sense to do so. If you are rolled over under a car, then your stance won’t really come into play as much as you may like, and you are back to needing a good grip and good control of your vision.

The point here is that what matters is controlling recoil, not what your stance or grip looks like. The more understanding you have of what it actually takes, the better decision you can make about how to accomplish your goal in a given scenario. Different body sizes and types will need different levels of weight behind the gun in different circumstances. An instructor who owns the technique will be able to adapt to the specific students and circumstances, whereas an instructor who doesn’t own it will simply try to fit what little he knows to every situation.

This most often manifests itself as trying to get the students to look like the instructor, and is a sure sign of an instructor who doesn’t fully own his technique.

A particularly silly version of stance today is what I call the “modern operator stance.” The chest is artificially up and thrust forward, and the support leg is pretty far back, almost in a traditional martial arts front stance. This was adopted to solve the problem of shooters not getting their weight behind the gun. It also presents your plates to the threat in front of you, which is obviously a good thing. But it doesn’t really work; it doesn’t really make anyone better, but it does look somewhat aggressive and “modern”. It also limits your mobility in and out of positions, as well as your ability to transition the gun from target to target. Top shooters don’t use it because it is an affectation, not a useful technique. When you see someone using it, you know they don’t own their shooting. Kind of like flipping your gun hard to the side to eject a magazine.

Other common cues that are passed around as techniques include “Front sight!” and “Press the trigger without disturbing your sights”. There are many more I’m sure you can think of, so mention them in the comments below, and let’s see what we can come up with.