A recent email exchange with a shooter who has taken one of my classes prompted this post. He was taking an online shooting class that talked about different training ideas and he asked my opinion on the material. I did not take the class, and we did not go into detail about it, so it is possible the instructor covered some of these issues.
The basic premise was that skill training needs to alternate with practical application. This can take many forms and again, may have been covered in the class. The idea is that teaching discrete skills by themselves, without any hands on context, does not do as good a job as when students are taught skills that are then needed in some sort of practical application. An example of this is force on force training or maybe video simulators that require problem solving, not just mechanical shooting practice.
This idea is not new, and has been a staple of much of my professional training for the past 3 decades. It is a basically good idea, and can lead to better material retention when done well. It is rarely done well, or maybe I require more than it can give. Please note that we are not talking about interleaving, which is a different way to improve learning speed. The two can certainly be used together, but the class referred to internal training and external training. Internal in their example was handgun skills and external was dealing with a threat. I am no doubt simplifying the teaching. The point of internal and external is to provide context and build “automaticity”.
There is only one problem that I see, and it may only be relevant to some of us. No high level shooters, not one, has gotten that way from following that model.
That model is based around having a short time to impart basic skills. Think police academies, or possibly a 1-5 day civilian self-defense class. The assumption in these cases is that the student knows nothing (usually true) and will not continue to train at any meaningful level when the class is done. This certainly describes most civilian gun toters (who may get a day of decent training at some point) as well as most cops and military types.
About 20 years ago, someone (who’s name slips my mind at this moment) flipped the script and instead of teaching gun skills, then testing them in a scenario, decided to start with the scenario and then teach some skills afterwards. The premise was faster learning and better retention for very basic skills, for people who had only a day or two to train. I don’t really know how well it worked out, but as far as I know, that model has not resurfaced since. I do think it has some merit.
The internal/external model is a very useful way to impart basic self defense skills in a fixed time frame. For those of us who want to pursue shooting excellence, it is not the way to go. That does not reflect negatively on it, but rather points to the fact that different desired outcomes require different approaches.
Getting back to acquiring high level skill with a gun, the only proven way at this time, is to train, train, train. There are no shortcuts, and no one gets really good without intense amounts of long term effort. Good is relative. If you want to be a national champion, you will put in an inordinate amount of work. If you want to be better than the vast majority, a fair bit less work is needed, though still more than most are willing to participate in.
So, what is your goal? If you want to spend minimal time training but be reasonably capable of defending yourself, the internal/external model may be the way to go for you. If you want to be as good as possible, find a good coach, and put in the work. Pistol-Training.com has always been interested in self defense as a core aspect of what we do. However, we do not teach “self-defense”. We teach excellence with a gun. It is up to you to apply it as you see fit. Someone will always be better, but once you get really good, the difference is actually pretty small. You just have to do the work.
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