Pistol-Training.com intended to shoot our first Action Pistol match of the season this week. That didn’t happen for a few reasons, but this is a good time to begin a long talk about competition. Bear in mind, our focus here is using guns in the real world, whatever that may mean. Anything we do on a range needs to help us use those guns off the range. If you have a different outlook, then some or all of this may not apply to you.
Let’s start with a little personal history to hopefully provide some context. My competition shooting background includes GSSF, IDPA, USPSA, Steel Challenge, sniper comps, overland rifle comps, and other random stuff. I’ve competed in local, state, regional, and national championships. I never made competition an important part of my life and have not shot a lot of matches but I competed when I was able to. I generally placed well, often making the podium and consistently outshooting many higher-ranked shooters.
Last year I started shooting NRA Action Pistol. Not as exciting looking as some other types of competition, nonetheless it is incredibly challenging. I am hopefully going to continue shooting Action Pistol this year as I think there is a lot to be had there.
My point in explaining my competition experience is to show that I have enjoyed at least some modest success in competition, and have participated in a variety of competitions now for over 20 years, though sometimes not every year. I am not in any way against competition, and even though I have never focused on competitive shooting, I still enjoy matches regardless of where I finish.
With that said, competition is not training for the street. This fact seems to trigger a lot of people online. That is not my intention. Competition can be useful in preparing you for conflict, but it is not complete in any way. It can also be absolutely harmful if not understood correctly. I don’t suppose too many people will argue that it is complete, but what about harmful?
Competition tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) have evolved over time to optimize a competitor’s chances of winning that competition, yet not all competitors use the same TTPs. We will focus for now on the techniques used and leave the tactics and procedures for another day. Some competitors use techniques that might be a hair slower much of the time (compared to a different technique) but rarely fail to work. Others may choose a technique that is usually faster, but when it fails, it is catastrophic to their performance. Draws and reloads are both good examples of this, and while reloads are not usually critical on the street, the draw certainly can be.
I have seen nationally ranked competitors ND on the draw and throw magazines through the air during reloads, all in an attempt to be faster. The competitors who I prefer to learn from don’t do that. Their technique is more stress-resistant, and applies more broadly, even though it may be a fraction of a second slower. How fast is your draw if you ND during it and are disqualified? How fast is your reload if the mag sails across the range when you miss the giant magwell you are trying to throw it into?
Not just limited to draws and reloads, trigger manipulation and malfunction clearance are also areas I have seen top-level guys drop the ball on. Most of the time, they get the job done. Some of the time though, they fail horribly. There are plenty of other aspects we could discuss, like drawing from concealment and mental preparation, but again, maybe another time.
Falling into this competition “trap”, is easier to do than you may think. It is human nature to take shortcuts, and that is one big way people end up using inferior techniques or being worse shooters than they would like. Another big issue is that everyone who shoots, and I mean everyone, regardless of what unit you are with or how serious you are, will spend more time on the range than in a fight or shooting at game. When you spend a ton of time in an artificial environment like a range, you begin to think that what makes you better on the range is what matters. A quick example is the Pistol-Training.com favorite, cold performance vs warm performance. Many other examples immediately come to mind. One reload one with your carbine? Splits? Quad loading shotguns? The list is almost as long as the list of things you can do with a gun on the range.
I hope that none of the above will lead anyone to think I am against competition. Competition should help your real-world goals, not hurt them. And it can if you choose wisely. The problem is if you don’t know what you don’t know, how do you pick the correct TTPs to ingrain? One way is to ignore most of the better shooters out there and just focus on the very few who have been winning for a long time. Chances are, their technique is holding up, even if someone else can do some of it faster.
If you watch the technique of the long-term best shooters, you will usually see the correct way to do things. Another way is to actually shoot with those guys and gals, and talk to them about it. You can sometimes take classes from them and learn firsthand why they do what they do. Finally, you can practice a ton and get to the point where you can compete with them, in addition to all the other things we have talked about. Shooting in the same match with them is great, but shooting on the same squad is much better. I have been fortunate to be able to do all of these things, and it has strongly influenced my thought process and technique.
To balance my “attack” on competitors who use bad TTPs, I have seen more real-world tactical guys fail than I have competitors. Their skill level is often relatively low, a combination of not using the best techniques and not putting the effort in. With enough rounds downrange, you can sometimes make sub-par techniques work, but I have not seen a lot of that.
So, maybe any competition is better than none. That is probably true, but I’m not interested in better, I’m interested in best. “Best” is not just going to shoot competitions, it is shooting them intelligently, with a focus on what matters for you outside of the competition.
Another good article. I started strictly as a “tactical” guy. After some time and convincing I started to compete to improve my skills. It worked but I got a little carried away and forgot why I started doing it. I think I currently have the balance back. That being said I am really looking forward to my first Action Pistol matchs in a couple months. Sorry to hear you weren’t able to do yours as I hoped to pick up some tips. 🙂
Balance is what it is all about. Action pistol tips? Don’t trust the NRA to get your classification right and don’t miss, lol. Enjoy it, it is definitely challenging.
I agree, mostly, with your assessment on competition vs real world application. I am 99.9999999% competition focused, having only been able to carry a gun a small number of times. I used to do a fair amount of Force on Force work with local agencies, but that stopped when Covid hit, but that training was where I liked to think I kept up my real world instincts, at least more than at an IPSC match. That said, I’ll disagree a bit, with your statement about tactics comp shooters might employ. Maybe 20 years ago, seeing guys race their draws or reloads and have NDs or catastrophic screwups occur, was, “more common”, but I’d say now, not at all. At least not in IPSC, maybe it’s a USPSA thing more than an IPSC thing. But competing regularly all over the world, Russia (although not anymore I guess), Ukraine (same sadly), Serbia (hmm), Czech, France, Germany etc, the top guys and gals employ solid, perfected techniques that aren’t high risk/speed traps. I’ve not seen people employ what I’d call, stupid, techniques in at least a decade. I think there was a fad for awhile, in trying to maximize speed and speed only, but that’s not around anymore.
Thanks for commenting! I think I specified in the post that USPSA was what I was talking about, not IPSC. I have never actually shot an IPSC match. I think that IPSC has stayed a bit more “practical” than USPSA, but that is just my impression and from talking to people.
Yeah depending on where in the USA you’ve shot USPSA you can really run into wildly different setups. Some places seem to just setup absolute hosemaster stages, with little thought to need of tactics to get through a course of fire. All huge stages with few small ones. In IPSC, for Levell III, IV and V, we are required to have a balance of 3 short courses, 2 medium and 1 long stage. And, you have to fulfill from short to medium to long. So a 10 stage match would be 6 short, 3 medium, 1 long, you need 12 stages to see 2 long courses in a match. Level II and I don’t have that requirement, which can get annoying. You do tend to see stages that require thinking a lot more too, although I’ve seen that trend come back in USPSA lately too.
I started shooting USPSA in 1993 and I’ve had many conversations about this very topic on the range with all sorts of people. Up until 2009/2010 I mainly shot competition pistols of one flavor or another (Single Stack, Limited and Open) and really enjoyed it and really cared about moving up in Class. But after one particular incident at a State Match, I got tired of chasing the M or GM Classification and started competing with my carry or duty gear.
For me, competition now is about hanging around with my friends, having fun and challenging my shooting skills with the guns and gear I carry daily. I have a twisted sense of fun, I guess. Because of my carry/duty guns I have usually ended up shooting a gun that most would see as a disadvantage in a particular division. Before CO was a thing I shot open minor with my RMR equipped duty gun, many times from AIWB. And before that, I shot limited minor because my duty gear wasn’t Production legal. One of the most fun matches I ever shot was the last Ft Benning 3 Gun match I shot when I shot my RMR’d P07 from AIWB in Open Division. The rules have finally caught up to allow me to compete in CO w/o having to adapt my gear to a strictly competition setup.
I’ve seen the “bad” TTPs evolve over the years and to be honest, I avoid shooting w certain people because those “bad” TTPs make them what I consider to be unsafe and I don’t want to be around them. I have to shake my head at some of them. Speed (whether it’s splits or movement) has become so important for many shooters that I think they sacrifice way too much safety while they’re chasing that speed.
Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE shooting USPSA and will continue to do so. But I’m honest enough to admit that we should really change the name to United States Pistol Shooting Association because the Practical part has been gone for a long time.
Well, I think you have the right take on it. As long as you are enjoying it and understand where it can help or hurt, have fun! I do think that current USPSA has gotten to be much closer to the old Texas Double Tap, rather than like the old Single Stack Classic which I think was closer to IPSC. Either way, I will still shoot it from time to time. Give Action Pistol a chance. I am using my duty gear (Glock w/RMR, and my tac holster), and I assume you can use AIWB if you prefer. It is great for what I think of as field accuracy at field speed.
I tried Action Pistol a couple years ago. It was fun. The shooters were much less intense (at least at that club) than the USPSA crowd. Didn’t realize they had those fancy red dot mounts for the running man target. The first match was a learning experience, for sure.
A couple of my buddies want to do some more of that and some more Steel Challenge. I’ve been shooting Rimfire open with a Glock 44 that mirrors my duty pistol. Once I find the secret sauce for getting it to run w/ the Nelson Precision slide/red dot I’ll be a happy man. Right now it’s really finicky.
I miss the old school Single Stack Classic days. Those were a lot of fun.
Yeah, the Action Pistol crowd at the club level is definitely not as intense as USPSA. Pluses and minuses. I got to shoot with the the Border Patrol team at a match last year and they were a hoot – made me an honorary member, lol. I do think that every sport has a place, but a mix of steel challenge and Action Pistol is a pretty good blend of horsepower and accuracy. I need to shoot some more steel matches. As far as the moving target stage, since I’m shooting carry optics (I think they call it Production Optics), I have to just lead the target the old fashioned way. It is still artificial, but more useful for me than setting my mount to compensate.
SLG,
You had a very interesting statement there saying a mix of action pistol and steel challenge is a possible better answer. Could you elaborate? From that can I assume you don’t put IDPA into a super useful category?
I’ve never liked IDPA much, as it was so stylized. It limited your creativity in how to solve problems, and allowed unqualified people to make judgements on stage tactics. Haven’t shot it in a long time now, maybe it is different. I like USPSA when it is more like old school IPSC. A good mix of 50 yard stuff, mid range stuff and some close stuff. Seems like it went away from that a while ago. Steel challenge is great for real speed, and it is truly an accuracy match, but the targets are still a bit big. Action pistol has realistically tight accuracy standards, at pretty good speed. Combine the two and you cover a lot of useful ground. Of course, there are many ways to skin a cat and someone else could make an argument for a different combination. The older I get and the more I do this stuff, the more convinced I am that there is no such thing as being too accurate. Of course, Bullseye type shooting has been proven to be of more limited value for field shooting, but nonetheless, I will always take as much accuracy as I can. Most people are plenty fast, but not so accurate. Better to be really accurate and pretty fast, imo.
Thanks. I really appreciate the response.
I had to chuckle when I read you’re comment on unqualified people making judgements…..That’s why I stopped shooting IDPA 20 years ago. I’ve thought about giving it a go again, especially since I think AIWB and MRDS pistols are allowed now so I could run my carry gear.
I originally came from the tactical side of things, and made my way into the competition side. And though it is true, that there are A LOT of things in USPSA that are unrealistic for defensive pistol use, the thing is, it’s the same in all pistol shooting sports I’m aware of. The keyword there being sports. HOWEVER, there is definitely a practical aspect to USPSA. You have to learn to shoot FAST and ACCURATELY, and you learn how to balance those two concepts, and what you can get away with at different distances. And those things are priceless when it comes to real world defensive based shooting.