Talent, Skill, Trophies and Excuses

My favorite thing when it comes to trying something new isn't when I get it right; its when I reach the point where doing it right is consistent.  When something goes from the excitement of the first success to the confidence of performing the task at will, its like a veritable peak on the bro moment roller coaster that I can chose to share with the world or not because I know that I can do it.  Not only can I do it, but tracing back my path to arriving at that point, I can help others do it too.

Talent is a word we see sometimes, one that has differing opinions depending on the context but generally means

a special ability that allows someone to do something well

When it comes to most things, that "special ability" is usually hard work in disguise.  Nothing is more aggravating to the brain surgeon or fighter pilot than to have the work they put in dismissed as talent.  Dont get me wrong, some people are obviously more genetically prepared for certain things than others; Im never going to realize my dream of playing in the NBA because I didn't put in the time...and im not exceptionally tall, or exceptionally agile, or a fan of Wheaties....or basketball; I also didn't have any dreams regarding playing in the NBA so there's that as well.  But some people seem to be built to do certain things, physical things, anyway.

You don't often see an architect described as a natural because he looks good in Dockers and seems to have the hands to work a stack of blueprints.  No, his talent may be identified after he showed an aptitude for the study and at some point it may be used to dismiss all the work he put in; make it seem easy as if you can simply be born into Frank Lloyd Write-ing your way into history.  Hard work and dedication get dismissed as luck as well, and in the grand scheme of things I find that even more aggravating but it can almost be forgiven because its such a common, automatic response to someones skill that it might as well be asking "how ya doin?" without sticking around to hear the answer (fine, by the way).


In reality it may only be your ability to learn and to replicate techniques that garners the kind of success people will call talent.  Participation Trophies and the entitlement generation aside, its fairly well known that some people are smarter than others and this directly reflects on what they are able to accomplish.  As a PC society we don't want to admit this; kids are told they can be anything they want to be from a very young age though if this was true the world would either be full of unemployed astronauts or dangerously over populated with rock stars, princesses and despotic warlords ruling their fractured domains from tree forts.

You can be anything you want to be; but you have to be able to do the work and your quality of work will determine just how much of that thing you can actually be.  I don't believe in participation trophies anymore than I believe in sugar coating the truth.  Things are as they are and changing them is largely a personal problem.  If you want to be better at something, you have to develop the talent to do so and talent looks a wholesamedamnthinglot like work.  In Sage classes, students can earn a Sage Red Patch; the only way to earn it is to best demonstrate the instructed skills and show up with a firm understanding of what you are about to get into.  I dont give these patches out to make those who dont earn them feel bad, I give them out to make those who get them feel good about the work they have put in.  The idea of the trophy is to identify achievement, not highlight other's failure.  I do it without large ceremony and often hand them to students privately.  Its not a big deal, its my thank you.

When it comes to guns, athletics or anything that's Alpha, everyone is an expert until they aren't. People get comfortable with their performance and dont push the envelope or they are afraid to move forward because it means sucking at something for an unknown period of time until they begin to improve.  I see a man on occasion who is a very accomplished marksman with the handgun; he shoots long distance and well with a simple, no-frills 1911 and does so to a degree that I might not believe it if I was seeing it on youtube.  He shoots well, but he shoots slow and no prodding in the world will speed him up.  Hes an EDC kind of guy, but has little to no interest in any type of self-defense focused shooting.  "I'm too old to go down that road."  I'm told in conversation.  I disagree, he shrugs and the conversation stalls like it always does, comfortable but rock solid impasse.  He shows an obvious aptitude for shooting, just not for more self defense focused shooting.  Even at speed his draw is slow and deliberate and while some readers may be thinking slow is smooth, smooth is fast I have to say that Slow never equals Fast.  Proper technique can be performed at any speed, and slow is the least desirable of all of them.  Should he be comfortable with his performance? Thats not my call to make.  I would like to see him widen his skill set but I can force no one to do so.

Talent is putting in the hours.  Making the mistakes and never reaching a point where you are unwilling to pick up the next skill.  Everyone is going to have a "wall" they cant get over with performance and the height of that wall is directly related to how honest you are with the skills you arrived there with.  If your draw stroke is sloppy, you will suffer the clock.  If you lazy eye the sights, you will suffer the shitty grouping, if you slap the trigger for speed, it will become obvious. If you cant handle constructive criticism and good advice, you probably wont improve.  We can keep doing all the things we are good at, and that's going to do nothing to help us get better at the things we don't do at all.

Talent is unconscious competence.  its confidence (sometimes mistaken for arrogance) and it should be the goal for each and every skill.  Proper practice, proper training and dedication to the skill, the technique.  If you are waiting to discover a natural talent, chances are you will be disappointed.  If you think you have a natural talent but its scope is narrow, it may be time to broaden your skill set.  If you want to get better, you have to be willing to do the work and fail repeatedly until you have covered all the ways not to do something.  The best shooters didn't get anywhere doing anything that you cant do.  You can dismiss them as having access to ammo and time, the best gear showered upon them or any other manner of excuses but the fact is they likely sat there one day and decided it was time to put in the work and that work was more than others were putting in.




      

The FBI, the 9mm, Science and Opinion.

If anyone was in question over how I felt about caliber, "stopping power" and associated topics pretty much had their questions answered when I wrote about it last month for Breach Bang Clear.  In May of this year the FBI circulated a memo that eventually made its way to the internet and I have had people tagging me in posts about it on Facebook ever since.  The FBI is looking to go to 9mm.  If this is the first time you are hearing this and you need a minute to clam down, please take it now.  

Breathe deep.

You good?

im good.  Continue.

Okay, moving on. For those who have not looked at it, the FBIs May 6th memo cites a number of reasons why they should move to the 9mm round and they are all great reasons.  They are the same reasons they used in the late 1980s to move to the .40 S&W round (after the 10mm debacle, of course).  See the FBI Academy Firearm Training Unit did up a paper that should be considered the bible for handgun selection, Its called Handgun Wounding Factors and Effectiveness  and it addresses damn near every topic of argument you could ever see in any forum, anywhere, over caliber.  Since then we have had a great deal of amazing research put forth by Dr. Gary Roberts and others into which bullets are more shooty than others and which ones make bad people go away faster.  The (not in any way) surprising conclusions are always about penetration and shot placement, not caliber.

Now, the FBI, myself or Dr. Williams have not addressed the Glock vs 1911 debate so we will have to table that one for now but for everything else, the jury is in fact in and has been in since 1989. For those that didn't know the verdict was back, I have provided links.  For those that hate science, or disagree based on opinion, I hear there are places in Pennsylvania you can go where they dont have the internet; however punching babies is just as illegal and frowned upon there as it is here.

Obviously 1989 was a while back and if you are my age or younger, you probably missed the report coming out because the internet wasn't really a thing and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was on.  I first came across the report in 2002, which is also a life time ago in internet argument years.  It might as well be the beginning of time because memes hadn't been invented then that could be used to underscore your point or attack someone elses.  How did we ever debate anything back then?



So in 1989 and again in 2014 the FBI said the same thing.  Why should we listen to the FBI when Deerhunter1980, 1911guy,  ISIShunter22 or Beantownbadass "know" a guy, who statistically is a SEAL, who shot (x) number of people with the .45 (or .40) and his opinion is that the 9mm isn't good enough to blow out backs?

Well, all due respect to the gun store counter (both sides of it), the FBI has people employed full time to research ballistic performance.  It is literally their thing.  We cant have scientific controls in place on a gun fight, but we can best examine the performance of the bullet.  This isnt good enough since anyone with patience and/or a debit card can order Ballistic gel on the internet, we have plenty of disputed performance claims for each round because, well because we are curious by nature and some may even have their SEAL buddies reputation at stake.  Personal research is awesome.  Making the research fit your opinion instead of the research helping form your opinion is ridiculous.  Thank god the same approach isn't taken to brain surgery or gravity.

My point here isn't to rehash my position since I pretty exhaustively covered that already, rather I would like to think that those who want to espouse the holy properties of the .45 over everything else or swear their undying allegiance to the .40, .380. .357 SIG (or original .357 you unwashed heathens) do so with a stiff shot of education.  Sometimes it tastes bad going down but its far better than unqualified advice.  I am wary of gun store gospel for the same reason I dont take fitness advice from a random guy in the gym.  hes in the right place to know what hes talking about, he may even look like he knows what hes talking about but that doesn't mean his advice is not going to lead to a violation of common sense.

For those who say "shoot what you are comfortable with, caliber isnt important" I applaud you; I just hope that this advice is given impartially and not to defend the practicality of a low capacity weapon over a higher capacity weapon because you believe a few rounds are going to do the trick.  7-8 rounds is nice; 15-20 is better.  If you then want to talk about accuracy and how you should be able to do it in single digits, I would suspect a lack of experience in actual uses of force and either no access to the internet or no knowledge that www.google.com exists.  There is mountains of data to the contrary and while every gunfight is going to be unique, there are commonalities.

Contrary to some opinions, im not actually promoting any one caliber over another.  I like the 9mm; which in no way can be understood as me saying "you should carry a 9mm" unless you pulled a bender last night drinking paint thinner and cayenne pepper.  What I am suggesting as loudly as I can is to actually put in an hour or so to read up on the topic from reputable sources.  I believe that every shooter has a responsibility to be factually knowledgeable about the performance of their ammunition and that information should be based on credible research not shooting milk jugs.  Knowledge of handgun ammunition performance in general can go far towards changing assumptions and helping personal planning on magazine capacity, number of mags carried and paying greater attention to shot placement.

Since for some owning a gun is almost the same as being an expert in all things gun (it is, right?) and the same may have a very emotional investment in all their choices, this argument/debate is going to rage until we are arguing whether or not the 40 Watt plasma rifle is a good choice for home defense over the EM-1 Rail gun.  Arnold preferred both so im waiting on the FBI to release some impartial research on their performance.

just for the TL; DR crowd

AAR Pace Performance: Performance Pistol One (Beard Driven Fighting Extraordinaire)

This past weekend (Oct 4-5) I was in New Jersey with Paul Van Dunk Jr of Pace Performance for a collaborative handgun course.  I've known Paul for a while and despite the fact that he is a much more attractive man than me, we decided to get together and offer students something they dont get very often from instructors.  Paul could have simply hosted me, or I could have hosted him down in Atlanta but it made sense to us to offer students two different approaches to the same level of training.  The saying goes (or at least they saying I use with students) is dont get all your training under one roof.  Paul and I kept it organic, we didn't organize our blocks of instruction to compliment each other or discuss any differences in instruction points.  We just ran our respective classes as we normally would run them and both thought this would give everyone attending a great training experience.

Day one we ran my Defensive Handgun Fundamentals course and New Jersey gave zero fucks with plenty of rain most of the morning that, while not on the biblical level i'm used to in Georgia, was enough to complicate things and force students to learn while approaching the miserable feeling.  I'm convinced the weather in New jersey is at the very least bi-polar, at worst very anti-gun.  With 13 on the line including the glorious beards of Kevin Markland and Rob Brotzman, my work was cut out for me.  Cops down from the NYPD, some local Jersey LEOs, everyday self-defense minded citizens and enough Sage Alumni to keep the inside jokes going, we fought through the weather and ran a great class. Paul was on the line participating as one of the students and got twice the malfunction training of anyone else do to some inconsistent ammo.  The class ran seamlessly despite nature not helping things and by the end of the day much learning had occurred.  I was glad to have made the trip up.  From first setting the class date I looked forward to my course, but I had been looking forward to Paul's much more.

This beard presented without comment

Day two was cold, but Paul was granted the better weather.  Overcast and little in the way of wind, no rain.  Since I had flown up and not thought to ship ammo ahead of time, I only had a few hundred rounds to participate and despite offers from everyone in the class shooting my caliber to share their ammo, I refused so they wouldn't lose out on a single training round.  Within the first five minutes of Paul's Performance Pistol One course, I knew he was a solid instructor.

also, this happened....

We share a like mind on many things, which is why we talk.  We discuss a lot of technical and self-defense oriented skills and those conversations led to this class taking place.  I never had any reservations about teaching with him and if I did, those first five minutes would have dug a shallow grave, shot them in the head, had a slice and forgot about it.  We dont have the same teaching style, perhaps we could be described as "diametrically different" in our approach but one thing is clear, we are both student-focused.  Just within the first thirty minutes, solid learning was occurring and it was obvious that shooting performance on the line was being looked at in a new way.  Paul wasn't giving out magic, he was buckling down the basics in a simplified way that focused strictly on the gun.  His explanation on handgun grip alone; from the draw to presentation, is worthy of careful attention and makes so much sense it might as well be written in stone.  We ran drills I had never experienced and a few personal favorites including the "pass your gun to the right" which lets shooters experience a different weapon (hard to do in a class of mostly Glocks) and realize its more them than gun or accessories.

Many of the fundamentals were talked about, some were simply addressed because Paul, like me, knows that certain things dont need fixing or are so natural that trying to change them is detrimental to the shooter.  I was working from appendix on the line, a carry position I dont prefer but do run occasionally to remain proficient so I can teach it.  Using Paul's method of the draw stroke, I was easily able to iron out some inefficiency and get the gun to the bad guy faster.  Just that alone was worth my time.  Paul's teaching method is personable, like hes having a one-on-one conversation with everyone on the line, its not as "formal" but it is highly effective.  The students responded to small changes in certain topics that I had covered the day before, I watched more than a few of them going back and forth with my instruction and Paul's, seeing which one worked better for them.  That was the whole point and it looked pretty damn successful.

I am a self-defense focused instructor.  Paul says he isn't, which he honestly believes but I did not see a single bit of instruction given that did not apply to self-defense shooting.  The drills were common sense and realistic, the time constrains, movement, physical involvement and stress were more self-defense focused to me than a competition general skills class.  Paul pushes the physical movement envelope a little harder than I do at that level, with drills that get the heart rate up but don't last long enough to cause long term fatigue.  Students are pushed towards their performance max but not dangerously close and mistakes are addressed from word one with a plan to fix them.  Paul does not go into the physiology or psychology of the fight and he doesn't have to,  he is helping students blueprint their skills as he puts it, and by the middle of the day I noticed further improvement in many of the students I had watched improve the day before when they went though my class.   

As firearms instructors, as teachers, Paul and I have "lanes" we are supposed to stay in, at least that's the word on the street.  I agree with this to an extent, we are indeed responsible for teaching only what we are capable of teaching and shouldn't make attempts to gimmick or sell snake oil to students just to be unique.  Paul says he doesn't teach self-defense because it isn't his lane.  Well, he may not realize it but he is driving in that lane because what hes teaching applies very well to self-defense shooting and practice without needing to wear that hat.  There are many different ways to do things and many different ways to approach teaching how to do them.  Adults learn in different ways and that requires different approaches.  Without solid and interrupted one-on-one training, some things may not be as well understood by a student.  With two different methods covering the fundamentals of the handgun, I think that each student walked away with a much greater understanding of new skills and how to improve their existing skills; I know I did.

what I lack in beard I make up for in RBF.

Im still not going to grow a beard, but I will take any class Paul Van Dunk offers.