Posted on 06/07/2013 9:15:13 AM PDT by LibWhacker
Natural Point-of-Aim
The rifleman has to learn how to relax, as much as possible, regardless of his firing position. Unnecessary muscle strain or tension will, amongst other things, result in trembling, which is transmitted to the rifle. This increase in the apparent wobble of the sight picture will result in either misses, or slower shot times, either of which will result in you getting dead.H
In any position of course, some muscular contraction is necessary to suspend the gun, but intentional, deliberate practice achieving a natural point-of-aim (NPOA) will allow the shooter to achieve a solid, steady, durable firing position as fast as possible, and still achieve consistent first-shot hits.
Its an old platitude that, in the hands of a skilled user, a weapon becomes an extension of the users body. Thats not the who-flung-poo kung fu, New Age Zen Ninja ******** it sounds like. In weaponscraft, it means that the shooter adopts his shooting position (whatever shooting position), so that his rifle naturally points at the intended target.
While learning to shoot accurately, fast, this means that the aspiring rifleman (or pistolero, for that matter), adjusts his body position until his NPOA coincides with his desired POI, every single time he mounts his weapon, before he bothers trying to take the shot. This allows him to avoid unnecessary muscular tension in aiming his rifle. If he has to push or pull the sights onto the target, hes not using his NPOA, regardless of how small a movement is required. That means a) hes using muscular tension, leading to trembling, leading to misses, or b) hell have to adjust his sight picture, after mounting the gun, causing him to be slower than necessary.
Speed
Speed in getting your weapon into a fight is absolutely critical. Some people have erroneously pointed out, there are no timers on the battlefield. While there are certainly probably not going to be any PACT timers present, there will be a far more important timer: the bad guy who is going to be trying like a ************ to beat you. Use a timer in your training to make sure youre adequately fast, or getting closer to being adequately fast.
At the same time however, you cant miss fast enough to win a gunfight. No matter what stage of learning you are at, take the time, from the very beginning, to develop your position in each firing position, to ensure that youre shooting with the fundamentals: NPOA, solid shooting position, trigger squeeze, sight picture/sight alignment, grip, etc. Strive to acquire the tightest groups you can get. This will develop the critical accuracy that will remain, as you increase your speed, as long as you apply them consistently. In other words, mount the gun, the exact same way, every single time.
Shooting fast, close-quarters marksmanship drills is fun. Dont misunderstand me, I genuinely love to ring steel at 400 and 500 meters, but Im also as prone as the next guy to **** off and run CQM drills. Im reasonably good at them, and I love running my gun fast, just like any red-blooded, American man. If youre not willing to do the boring stuff though, and work on developing precise, tiny, shot groups, youre ******* yourself and your buddies.
You have to practice the **** you dont like if you want to becomes a great rifleman. If you cant shoot small, tight, accurate groups, from any shooting position, you havent mastered the fundamentals of marksmanship, and you dont have what it takes to produce an accurate hit on demand. If you cant do that, on demand, then you wont be able to do that, on demand (ooh .that was deep, huh?). You are NOT going to suddenly make a shot that youve never been able to make in training, just because now, its for real!
Whether its 5 meters, 50 meters, or 500 meters, when all you can see of the enemy is the edge of his head and shoulder, and the muzzle of his weapon, along the side of a boulder or building corner, youd sure as **** better be able to purchase an accurate shot, on demand.
Front Sight Focus
One of the biggest problems shooters have is ****** front sight focus, even with optics. Im as guilty as anyone and its a far more egregious sin on my part, because I genuinely know better.
At the end of any marksmanship training the HH6 and I do, here at the the SFOB, I always try and finish with some slow, aimed fire, for precision. This forces me to work on the fundamentals at a basic level, especially front sight focus.
As an example, yesterday, after an hour of pistol work and a half hour of rifle work, I sat down to shoot steel (half-scale IDPA silhouette) at 100 meters with my Glock 19 (actually, I smoked it at 200 before that, but only once out of a magazine). I can generally get anywhere from 75-90% hits when I do that. Thats a significantly smaller target, relatively speaking, than the A-zone on a full-size silhouette at 10 meters. Yet, when I start shooting for speed at 10M, I willunless I consciously focus on going only as fast as I can get a CRISP front sight picture, blow one or two rounds per magazine.
Yesterday, in fact, I ran a simple reload drill:
Draw, fire two rounds to slide lock, execute a speed reload, and fire two more rounds.
The first three iterations of that drill that I ran, I blew the first round coming off my reload. Every-single-*******-time. Now, by miss, I mean I was less than an inch outside of the A-zone, but thats still a miss in my standards.
It happened, because I was fast as ****, knew it, and wanted to go faster. My reload was seated before my spent mag hit the ground. Thats pretty ********** fast but if I ******* blow my shot, being fast is pointless. It would be easy enough for me to blow it off. It was just training, I was trying to push myself, blah, blah, blah, blah .
Heres the secret though if you actually see that your front sight (or reticle) is on target, at the moment your finger breaks the shot, its a mechanical impossibility to miss the shot (***uming your weapon is zeroed, etc). If you miss, its because your sights were not, in fact, on the target at the exact moment you broke the shot (yes, this covers jerking the trigger think about it ).
Under the stress of a fight, with all the **** your brain will be trying to accepttrying to watch what the target is doing, looking for other bad guys, keeping track of where your buddies are, trying to fit your fat *** behind the little bitty pebble that is available for cover, and accepting that some ************ actually wants to kill youit can be really easy to miss seeing that one critical element. You have to glue your vision to your front sight at the instant you are actually making the shot, regardless of distractions. If you cant do that when no one is shooting at you, do you really think youre going to be able to do it when they are?
Tying it together
I love working on my drawstroke and rifle presentations. Its fast, its fun, its important, its simple, and it doesnt require much effort or ammunition. Unfortunately, its too often misunderstood. Yes, its absolutely critical to shoot the other dude before he shoots you; thats a given. A fast presentation however, as in the sheer speed of moving the gun isnt what matters. A fast first shot is only a small portion of what makes a good, fast, presentation. Two things are important in your presentation, whether with rifle or pistol: a fast first hit and equally fast follow-on hits.
In order to achieve that fast first hit, your final position of your presentation must have the gun on target, without having to make adjustments to your position. This is why, when beginning how to do this **** the right way, we go slow. Take the time, every time you mount your weapon, to check and see if youve attained a NPOA (see the end of this article). The old mantra of slow is smooth, and smooth is fast, has become an over-used, misunderstood cliche. SGM Lamb has even taken the step of saying, smooth is fast, but slow is just frickin slow. Hes got a valid point, of course, but too many keyboard commandoes and internet insurgents have managed to misunderstand that one as well (that whole frame-of-reference thing is a ************, aint it?).
At an applied level, in a fight, youd ****** sure better be able to put accurate fire on target in a ********* hurry. In order to learn to do so however, you need to go slow enough to ensure that youre doing **** the right way. Dialing in your presentation until its perfect means you should be able to fire the micro-second that your weapon stops moving. Fast follow-on hits will only be possible if your presentation ended in a position that will allow you to shoot multiple shots without magnifying the position due to recoil.
Theres no effective way to stop recoil. Its simple physics, and absent divine intervention with the laws of nature and science on your behalf (and lets face it, G-d really doesnt love you that much), its physically impossible to stop recoil from happening. All we can do is recover from the recoil as precisely and consistently as we can, as fast as possible. This is accomplished by utilizing a solid, square firing position, with as much relaxation as possible in those muscles that are not actively suspending the gun. The most important goal of a good presentation, synergistic with natural point-of-aim and front sight focus, is that it puts the sight directly onto the target, and provides adequate, consistent muzzle control so that, at the end of the recoil cycle, the sights end up in the exact same spot they were in when the shot broke. It doesnt matter how much the gun jumps from recoil, as long as it comes back to the exact same spot every single time (on the same hand though, a lesser recoiling gun will move less, meaning it will return to that same spot in a shorter time).
To shoot accurately, fast, dont hold the gun. Its got to be an extension of your body. Theres no tension in the muscles beyond supporting the weapon in position. Youre not muscling the sights onto the target, because youre utilizing your natural point-of-aim. Lean into the gun and let the gun keep you from falling forward. At the same time, your support hand should be grabbing as much of the gun as possible, and holding it in position, to keep it from getting launched forward, off your shoulder.
That is the secret of shooting accurately, fast. Timing is not a specific rhythm of cadence. Its not a certain number of shots per second. Trying to time your shots in this manner, instead of letting your vision time your shots, WILL NOT WORK. In order to shoot at the speed required when being slower than multiple bad guys means you being dead, we cannot rely on the slow, deliberate trigger squeeze we learn in traditional, competition target shooting. At the same time however, we cant trap the trigger, trying to force the shot to break at a given time. That results, invariably, with jerking the trigger, which would result in your sights NOT being on target at the moment the shot breaks. The actual break of the trigger needs to become almost subconscious. Through proper, slow, deliberate training, it becomes tied to what the eye sees.
This ties, synergistically (imagine THAT ****, huh?), and directly, to everything weve discussed thus far in regards to the fundamentals of marksmanship and natural point-of-aim, solid presentations, and getting solid, accurate hits in a hurry. Look at the specific aiming point on the target (Aim small, miss small. As much as I hate quoting cinema for training mantras, that is one of my two favorites. The other one, completely unrelated to this article, is from the excerpted scenes from Shooter with Mark Wahlberg .Camouflage is what you do when you get there.), mount the gun, and if youve practiced all of your fundamentals properly, youll see that your front sightor reticleis exactly where it should be, as your finger breaks the shot.
Cool, Bad-*** Ninja Killer Training Tip
To accomplish NPOA in training, every time you acquire a good, solid firing position (regardless of whether its prone, rice paddy prone, seated, kneeling, standing, or some jack*** position), stop for a moment and close your eyes. Breathe through a couple of natural respiratory cycles, then re-open your eyes and see where your sights are located in relation to your intended POI. Instead of pushing the sights to the aiming point, adjust your entire body position/stance, to re-align the sights. Repeat this process until youve achieved a solid NPOA and make a mental note of how it feels.
Repeat this drill, every-single-time-you-mount-your-weapon, regardless of firing position. Youll quickly find that it doesnt take any time at all, because youll discover that youre naturally assuming a position that takes advantage of NPOA, every time, the first time. This single drill, if practiced religiously, will go further, faster, towards getting you solid, accurate shots, fast, than all the up drills you can do.
Epilogue: Jack*** Shooting Positions
(Okay, its technically not really an epilogue, but Ive always wanted to write an epilogue, so **** off!)
There is a lot of emphasis placed, in a lot of tactical shooting videos and courses on what Colonel Cooper called jack*** positions. These are variations of the basic positions, or alternative positions. Theres nothing wrong with learning some alternative positions like the SBU prone and and the urban prone, etc.
Heres the rub though, based on my experience, and the experience of pretty much every other dude with experience that Ive discussed the subject with
If you cant get solid, accurate hits, fast, from the prone, squatting, kneeling, and standing, youre not going to get solid, accurate hits, fast, from any of the jack*** positions. On the same hand, if you CAN get solid, accurate hits, fast, from the fundamental positions, youre going to be able to get solid, accurate hits, fast, from the jack*** positions when you need them. Ive shot from some pretty ****** up positions, none of which Id previously practiced, and I generally got hits from them. If I didnt, it wouldnt have mattered what position I was shooting from, Id have missed.
If you want to practice some high-speed, cool guy **** you saw on a video somewhere, whether from a major trainer, or on YouTube, more power to you, but recognize that, if you cant get hits from the prone, youre not going to get hits from the jack*** positions, so you probably ought to focus on the fundamentals first.
DOL,
John Mosby
SFOB-Riflemans Ridge
If you have an opportunity to take John Mosby’s classes, I highly recommend it. I’ve taken 2 so far, Small Unit Tactics, and Small Unit Tactics 2 / Patrolling.
Mosby’s the real deal.
Bfl
I didn’t see any heresy at all. False advertising if you ask me.
Word. I’d love to take some of his classes. Maybe next year.
Mark for Later (and for the NSA).
Since you have taken the classes, how does the instruction address the use of rail-mounted advanced sighting systems that incorporate some degree of magnification (like the Advanced Combat Optic seen on most US M16s/M4s in Iraq and Afganistan)?
Basically, if you can see it, you can hit it. Mosby is a large proponent of optics over iron sights...preferably red dot sights, and if you have a magnification optic for your red dot to extend your reach, that’s good too. He likes the ACOG’s too but doesn’t run one on his weapon. He uses an EOTech.
The majority of the class was focused on engagements within 200 meters where enemy contact would be made.
From personal experience, you don’t want to use a scope for his class. I was using a Nikon M-223 scope for the first class. Getting a sight picture in various positions and while on the run was difficult to obtain quickly. Night fire exercises rendered them practically useless.
For the 2nd class I used a red dot sight. It made all the difference.
Could someone post a link to Part One? Thanks.
Thanks much, LibWhacker. One can always count on a Freeper to come through.
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