Learning the Combat Focus Shooting Method, Part 2: The Balance of Speed and Precision

I began this series of posts by recalling a Facebook post and comments about Rob Pincus and his Combat Focus Shooting method, and I want to return to it in this post.

Recall that one commentator posted a sarcastic meme (is that redundant?) combining a picture of Clint Smith of Gunsite and Thunder Ranch fame pointing at the rear sights on a pistol with the text “See these? They are sights. You should use them.”

I was surprised, therefore, when I got to the Combat Focus Shooting Instructor Conference last month and found that Rob Pincus not only knows that guns have sights, but he advocates using them.

Indeed, I noted this in particular when I test fired a prototype Avidity Arms PD-10, which Pincus has been involved in developing. It had a bright Ameriglo front sight on it.

To be sure, Pincus has a particular view of when and how sights should be used which differs from every other training class I have taken or observed. And it is connected with the other issue which was scrutinized in the aforementioned Facebook discussion: the balance of speed and precision.

My first Combat Focus Shooting target, reflecting an imbalance of speed and precision. September 2017.

Disclaimer: As noted in my previous post, I am not a “subject matter expert” and have no basis for evaluating the quality of Pincus’s approach relative to others. I can only report on my experience of learning the CFS technique and the understanding that resulted. RT =/= endorsement. I.e., Don’t kill the messenger.

The Balance of Speed and Precision

At short distances, I take the key to Combat Focus Shooting to be getting the gun into a naturally (“kinesthetically”) aligned position pointing at the target and to make a good trigger press. This is “intuitive unsighted fire.” The goal is defensive accuracy: enough accuracy to stop the threat. This does not require traditional sighted fire in which one extends the gun, acquires the sights, achieves a good sight picture, and presses the trigger. When I shoot the 8 inch boxes on the CFS target from 12 to 15 feet, I don’t have to worry about the sights to achieve defensive accuracy.

I also don’t have worry about shooting a small group inside the 8 inch box. Any hit inside the 8 inch box is taken to be accurate. In this sense, accuracy is binary: you are either accurate (inside box) or not (outside box).

The CFS target also has a 3 inch triangle in the head of the humanoid image representing the brow to the top lip just below the tip of the nose, as well as six colored and numbered 3 inch circles outside the humanoid image. When I shoot these smaller targets, I am instructed to employ “intuitive sighted fire.” Intuitive here does not mean instinctive but rather that it works with the body’s natural functioning. In the case of sighted or aimed fire, I am told to close my right eye (being left-handed) either partially or fully to make achieving a good sight picture for a precise shot easier. (This definitely went against everything I had been taught previously, which was always to shoot with both eyes open.)

In a typical exercise, I draw from the holster while moving laterally and then shoot either the 8 inch square or one of the 3 inch circles depending on what target was called. When I sh0ot the 8 inch square, I use unsighted fire, and when I shoot the 3 inch circle, I use sighted fire. I wondered, though, if I could get so good at intuitive unsighted fire that I could hit the 3 inch circle without using my sights, at least from close range.

Although Barret Kendrick and Mandy Autrey were my primary instructors, Pincus did join me for a bit on the range. So I took the opportunity to ask him, When should I be using my sights? His answer: “When you need to.” More fully, when you need to use them to get acceptable hits on target, which is largely dictated by distance. At a long enough distance, therefore, even a defensively accurate hit on the 8 inch square requires sighted fire.

Here the issue of sighted and unsighted fire in the CFS system starts to dovetail with the balance of speed and precision. Remember the target — the shotgun riddled, Fat Albert on the see-saw with Kate Moss balanced target (pictured below) — that started this whole discussion?

In my mini-CFS course, I was taught that you can’t be too accurate (since you are either accurate or not), but you can be too precise. On the one hand, if you are shooting small groups in the larger target areas, you may be sacrificing too much speed for precision. In that case, shooting faster, as long as you remain accurate, is better.

On the other hand, if you are not getting accurate hits, you are going too fast and need to slow down to achieve more precision.

Hence, the balance of speed and precision.

As I was shooting during my mini-CFS course on Saturday, and with the instructors collectively on Sunday, I challenged myself to go as fast as possible while remaining precise enough. Sometimes I got going too fast and had to slow myself down. Sometimes I went for too much precision and had to speed myself up.

Pincus says the balance of speed and precision is a pacing issue not a skill issue. One still needs to apply the proper technique to get defensively accurate hits while negotiating the balance of speed and precision (and the other cognitive loads applied in the training).

In the beginning, as I discussed in my first post about shooting the CFS course, I was not only out of balance regarding speed and precision, but my skills also broke down. Consequently, my first target (shown above) ended up looking a bit like the one ridiculed on Facebook.

Over the course of the weekend, my shooting improved, because practicing allowed me to apply the skill of shooting better, to manage the cognitive load better, and to negotiate the balance speed and precision better.

My last Combat Focus Shooting target, reflecting a better balance of speed and precision. September 2017

Of course, this all assumes that there is a trade-off between speed and precision. It therefore begs the question: What if you can shoot very fast with excellent precision?

I never asked that question to Pincus, but I wonder whether he in return would ask incredulously: If you can do that already, why are you in this class?

The Fundamentals of Combat Focus Shooting course seems designed for the novice shooter who is unlikely to take advanced training courses. That is, it is designed for Karl Rehn’s 99%. With some hyperbole, Pincus at one point during the CFS Instructors Conference suggested he would gladly give up the 1% for the 1,000 people they are trying to reach.

I also found Pincus to be very open about aspects of his previous teaching that were wrong and needed to be changed. For example, he told his instructors, “For novice shooters, all techniques we teach are a ‘yes.’ But shame on me for advocating that experienced shooters change techniques.”

This was not the only time I heard Pincus issue a mea culpa during the conference. Regarding a small terminological point, he declared, “For 15 years I thought I was making things better, then I realize I fucked up.” And he recounted an earlier episode that ended similarly: “When I am trying to explain this to an instructor and I realize we have been completely wrong, we have to correct it for consistency and integrity. Understand this is an evolution.”

This was refreshing because in my work and life, I don’t often hear people saying “I was wrong.” Of course, the more often we are wrong, the more opportunities we have for mea culpas.

 

My second of three Combat Focus Shooting targets, on which Barret Kendrick indicated (unintentionally, of course) that I shot like a dick. September. 2017