Two Types of Training

This weekend, I added a new target to my dry fire target array: a 2 inch dot drawn in Sharpie on a piece of tape, to mimic the exact kind of precision shot I found myself having difficulty with at the range this weekend. My competition gun, an M&P 9mm Pro with an aftermarket KKM barrel, is a very accurate gun on paper, but I found an odd tendency to hit low when shooting precise targets like dots, instead of the middle of a great big piece of cardboard like in IDPA.

So I added that dot target to my dryfire array as a part of the second type of training, reactive training. We’ll talk more about that in a minute, but to start let’s discuss the other kind of training.

Proactive Training

This type of competition training, not to be confused with any kind of tactical or self-defense training, is based on practicing the most common or constant elements of the rules of your chosen game. For example, this includes practicing not only conventional draws, but starting with your gun on the table or your wrists above your shoulders in a “surrender” position, both of which are somewhat common in both IDPA and USPSA.

The advantage of this type of training is that, if done correctly you can avoid a host of problems before they ever impact your scores. To do that, though, you should practice somewhat regularly to avoid complacency (“oh, my draws and reloads are fine, don’t worry”) and practice the right thing. You should practice the most commonly encountered challenges, and not something you saw one time on YouTube from the Wisconsin State IDPA Match or whatever.

The downside to this type of training is that it can lead to spending too much time working on your strengths and not enough time training your weaknesses. I can’t tell you where the fine line is between keeping your skills sharp and practicing at the far right of the diminishing returns curve, but my general rule is to try not to spend more than about five minutes per dry fire session on any one thing that I’m already fairly confident in. To be honest, I imagine that this type of judgement about how to practice most efficiently is something that comes with experience and is a defining feature of the top shooters in the world.

Reactive Training

The other kind of training is in reaction to something, usually a bad match, bad stage, bad practice session, or even one bad shot. With reactive training, you add an element to your bedrock of proactive training drills for a while until you make significant improvement on it. At that point, you should retire it to make room in the training schedule for what you’ve discovered your new weaknesses to be. This isn’t to say you will always be bad at shooting, but by the nature of the sport you will always be weaker at some things than others. Often times, a bad stage or match will reveal what they are to you, and usually they will be things you wouldn’t or didn’t think about because otherwise you would have been practicing them!

The advantage of reactive training is that, fundamentally, practical pistol is a blend of shooting fast, shooting accurately, and movement. Every stage, and even every array or every target can be a different blend, but fundamentally training any one of those things will help your overall performance. While I don’t expect to be shooting 2-inch dots at 10 yards in a match any time soon, the challenge is pretty darn close to shooting mini-poppers at 40 yards, which was part of the field course at Sir Walter’s USPSA match this month and will be included in the upcoming USPSA NC Section match.

The downside to this type of training is that when it’s done right, you feel like you’re always bad at something. This is where having some kind of training journal can be helpful, because you should be able to see some kind of overall progress or improvement on your times on drills to prove to yourself that you actually are getting better. This game is 90% mental, and maintaining confidence and the drive to improve is critical to long-term success.