Category: Real World Lessons

Pistol Access – Building Grip Minutia

This is going to be a look inside my head at the stuff that keeps me interested in shooting techniques. I’m going to describe two general schools of thought (as I understand them) about building a self-defense grip on the gun in the holster. Then will have an argument with myself, attempting to make a case for one over the other and address each point of contention. First I’ll describe the general concepts.

The Two Angles of Attack.

The first is a ‘downward draw’/Full Firing Grip made in the holster before the gun moves. This is usually characterized by making a U shape out of your hand and funneling the backstrap/beavertail into the web of your hand until it rides as high as it can go and stops, and then curling the three fingers and flagged trigger finger into position. The thumb can do a number of things. It can be flagged straight, it can wrap to the otherside of the gun and form a one handed shooting grip, or it can be used to cover the hammer or rear of the slide to facilitate building a two-handed grip later on. Once this FFG is built, the gun starts its vertical path in the presentation. You can spot this draw by seeing the gun move down just before it starts moving up. This is, in my experience, a more robust grip build. Though it is not faster.

Here is Paul Gomez demonstrating the downward/hand web index

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The second is an ‘upward draw’/’claw’ draw. Using the three little fingers to initiate building the grip and finalize the grip either simultaneously or once the gun is moving up and out of the holster. This type of draw requires very accurate finger placement and very repeatable gear setup and position. It can be spotted by looking for the gun to immediately lift once the grip is built. Usually the hand marries the gun fingers first with an upward or directly inward motion. The index point is often the distal joint of the middle finger finding a spot on the pistol frame, or the vertically flagged thumb looking for the inside edge of the rear sight.

Here is Jedi from Modern Samurai Project showing his version of the hook.

Origins of the downward draw/hand web index

I don’t know exactly who/where it came from (can someone like Karl Rehn help me out?), but here are Col. Cooper and Louis Awerbuck demonstrating pistol handling and you can see the web meet the back-strap downward every time they draw. This is a great historical video and still very informative.

Origins of the upward draw/claw/lifting index

Without a doubt, this lineage of grip has its roots in competitive shooting. You can see Rob Leatham and a host of early IPSC competitors using this in this clip. It also is where you see the ‘straight line’ presentation where the muzzle moves on an escalator from holster to eye line and stops as the shot breaks. Efficiency and complete rounding of all the corners and wasted movement. This is pure speed. A whole lot of competitive shooting technique has come over to the defensive world and that’s a really good thing.

Gear placement, Stance (Stupid Human Tricks)

If you want to go as fast as possible, the crucible of competition has shown us that this lifting or claw style draw is faster. Bar none. John Johnston of Citizens Defense Research calls these blazingly fast techniques ‘Stupid Human Tricks’ in his class Tests and Standards (which is a fun and competitive class that I found productive to attend). He shows the class some of these ‘hacks’ for more rapid gun access. It’s a non-contextual purely mechanical shooting class. Here’s a clip.

Here is a competitive shooter demonstrating his draw on the timer. Note how his feet and hips are indexed exactly towards the target so he’s not fighting his body alignment for the shot. Also note how he touch-checks the pistol just before the timer goes off to build a kinesthetic reference point so his hand knows just where to go. You often see really fast self defense guys bumping their forearm on their gun before the timer for a similar purpose. It’s a small rehearsal.

So being fast doesn’t matter? So you think competition skills are not useful for the streets?

No, I’m not saying either of those things. I use a timer literally every time I go to the range and in nearly every dry-fire session. There is a timer in every gunfight, you just don’t know when it beeps. I also love competing and working out kinks with gear and to have some time and peer pressure to increase performance anxiety. If you have the mechanical ability to shoot .15 second splits, then shooting .3 second splits will feel slow. If you can do stupid human tricks and break your first shot from concealment in .80 seconds, then taking 2 seconds will feel like an eternity. The nagging thing in my mind are the little intangibles that a downward draw affords you that a lifting draw doesn’t. Those things, though not easily quantifiable, are important enough to make me personally stick with a downward draw.

The Intangibles

  • Training time and skill maintenance. I’d bet that all of the guys who advocate the hook/lifting draw would also tell you it takes a lot of upkeep to maintain their ability to do it quickly and without bobbles. All of those folks LOVE shooting and as a result they do it a lot. I don’t LOVE shooting. I shoot because I know it’s a skill that I need to have. I treat it like taking medicine. Shooting is only one of several skill sets I’m pursuing simultaneously. I don’t have time to keep shooting as sharp as I’d wish it. Given the smaller amount of time I have, I am forced to lean away from speed, and more towards foolproof. I believe the downward grip is more foolproof.
  • Gear shifts around. The draw’s reference points might move around by over an inch depending on whether you’re standing, running, sitting, driving, etc. I’d argue that it’s easier to miss your claw’s reference point (rear of slide or under trigger guard) with a lifting draw. If, conversely, you make a funnel out of your thumb and trigger finger, that wide V can find the backstrap and slide high behind the slide and the other fingers are now indexed to wrap the front strap. I find this more repeatable under pressure.
  • The downward draw works on basically all pistol sizes, shapes, and mode of carry. My carry gun changes depending on what I’m doing. Some days it’s a clipdraw J-frame in some gym shorts. Another day it’s a Beretta in some jeans. It also might be an LCP in a fanny pack. The wildly varying grip size and shape differences create an issue for reliable access if I try to hook it out. You’ll also notice that the people who advocate the lifting draw usually carry bigger (G19 and up) sized guns and have very rigid holster/belt setups. That’s not an option for everyone. For my modes of carry, I find downward to be pistol universal.
  • Finalizing the FFG once the gun is moving increases the chance of a bobble and makes it harder to recover. I would like to see more high speed video, but I’d wager that some of the super fast guys are simultaneously finalizing the grip and moving the gun. If you miss a downward draw, you can fish around with your hand funnel and find the backstrap. I’ve seen video of competitors slinging their guns out of their holsters at the beginning of a stage, and I believe there’s a larger chance of this in a lifting/claw grip. So the trade off seems to be speed for probability of success. Though we’re talking small degrees of each.
  • The entangled problem. Having watched and participated in a whole lot of force-on-force with T-guns, I’ve seen a whole lot of guns dropped or the drawstroke fouled as the gun was being drawn. Usually this is the result of a panicked draw and failing to acquire a FFG before the gun starts to move out of the holster. The gun can be easily stripped by the wearer’s T-Shirt if the grip isn’t fully built. Again, I prefer robustness over speed, even if the differences are marginal.

I think the allure of the timer and having numbers is very important for tracking progress and meeting standards. I also think that choosing techniques on time alone might be missing some of the picture. Defensive gun uses are almost always task loaded events. That is, your attention and processing power are divided among many tasks simultaneously. Therefore, I feel obligated to choose the method I feel has the highest probability of success over the greatest range of circumstances. I don’t have the time to refine a drawstroke for every circumstance and frankly I don’t think I could decide quickly enough in the moment. I’m just not that good.

How do I practice?

The same way as the fast guys, just on a different technique. I use par timers, shot timers, or sometimes no timer. Sometimes I go as fast as I can until the wheels fall off and I bobble, then I work on reliably learning to draw in that time. Other timers I work for perfect reps with no timer. I work from a variety of positions and postures, with my hands in several places (in pockets, at waist, surrender position, in the ‘fence’). Sometimes I just get a grip, other times I draw to a shot, other times I draw to a low ready. I spend about 5 minutes a day in dry-fire and I concentrate on draw in most of those sessions. I just accept that my draw will never get faster than it would be if I did a deep dive on mastering the claw/lifting draw. Then I get on with my life.

If you made it this far, congrats. You’re a nerd too. Thank you for coming to my TED talk. How do you do it?

Some of my fast fast friends and people I know.

AAR: Pepper Spray for Non-Cops, Instructor Cert. by Agile Training

I recently attended a new offering from Chuck Haggard of Agile Training and Consulting. It’s his new 1 Day OC (pepper spray) instructor course for non-LEOs. I have been carrying pepper spray daily for about 6 years now, and wanted to be credentialed to pass on what I’ve learned. I jumped at the chance and don’t regret my decision to attend.

Safety

A note on force on force safety. The owners of The Complete Combatant, the hosts of the class, have a very robust and meticulous safety protocol to assure no live weapons make it onto the training area. It includes a group chat, and a group disarming, followed by securing live unloaded weapons in a box to be stored in another location, and a final pat down from the instructors and your neighbors in line. It’s these overlapping safety features that help keep force on force training safe. There’s a reason the book Training At The Speed of Life exists. There’s a lot of training accidents, and we have to be diligent about securing our training area.

History Lessons

Chuck is a career lawman and has unique experiences with testing and real-world use of less lethal technologies. As a result, and for context, the class opens with less lethal options, and an overview of less lethal chemicals that have been used over the years. Chuck’s reasoning for favoring OC over all the other available options is well reasoned and convincing. He frames the course in a civilian context, and his conclusions based of the civilian ‘mission’ make a lot of sense, and OC is very effective at the tasks it’s needed for.

He does an overview of the chemicals involved, the immediate effects of OC on the body, the lasting effects, the solvents used to carry the OC, as well as the propellant gases that companies can use.

Eyejab In A Can

The unregulated nature of the OC business requires that we know what to look for in a product before we trust it. The only quantitative measure we can currently trust is the MCC (Major Capsenoid Content) of the spray. If this isn’t listed, then you can’t trust it to be sufficiently hot. There’s even some companies that seem to overestimate their product. Chuck recommends anywhere from 0.7-2.0% MCC. Bear spray is 2.0%MCC and regulated by the EPA, while ‘human grade’ is not under such scrutiny. Apparently there’s lots of weak sauce formulas. So go off of the MCC and brand when possible.

This portion of the lecture was very valuable for me. Chuck gives an overview of spray patterns (Spray, Fog, Cone, Gel/Foam) and the best uses for each style of spray. We talked about best care practices for assuring the can worked when you need it, and how to not accidentally contaminate your car on a hot summer day. Shot distance capability, target zones, time to take effect, as well as the shortcomings of each.

He ends the lecture segment with decontamination protocols, which mostly amount to washing the face with baby shampoo under cool water in a well ventilated area and just waiting for the suck to end.

Force on Force Exercises

I’m at the point where I believe any quality training program should include some manner of force on force. Chuck didn’t disappoint me and the latter half of the day was exercises that built in complexity and layered the use of OC into the existing Shivworks MUC/PUC (Managing Unknown Contacts) style pre-assault strategy.

Chuck using the author to illustrate the ‘Default Cover’ arm position

While the time was compressed, I feel the students were able to grasp the basic idea of MUC with movement, vebalization, and a high/compressed ‘fence’ hand posture to preserve and make space and time. Failing that, the default cover position was taught. If you’re not familiar, this is a non-diagnostic defensive posture constructed of a lowered center of gravity in base, and a helmet formed around your head with your arms. This allows you to weather an unexpected attack without needing the attributes of a fighter to stay upright and conscious.

Photo Cred: TCC

After the students had reps, the OC was plugged in. We were able to try various inert training units of various sizes and spray patterns. We also were taught ‘failure drills’ where the OC didn’t take effect and we had to transition to a secondary force option. We also got some ideas on using a flashlight and OC in conjunction. Overall it was a great amount of force on force for such a compressed time frame.

I think this is a great class and I’m looking forward to doing some coaching on the use of OC at my home MMA gym here in Lawrenceville, GA. I recommend training with Chuck whenever you can.

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You Can’t Teach Heart…. Right?

There’s a common saying in combat sports (and other high risk endeavors) that goes, “You Can’t Teach Heart”. As in, either you’re born with the gameness to fight, to push yourself beyond your comfort zone, run into the burning building, and continue to fight in the face of adversity and possible injury… or you’re not.

This phrase has one of two effects on the observer. One, the person gets fired up and feels they’re part of a special class who is willing to fight with heart and overcome adversity. Two, a person who sees someone exhibit great Heart and can’t fathom themselves ever being able to keep up and they subsequently never start.

I would like to propose that ‘Heart’ is a skill like any other that can be built through years of dedicated work, working towards a meaningful goal, a willingness to be uncomfortable in the pursuit of that goal, and the discipline to keep showing up. I will agree that there are people who seem to be naturally fearless and talented at maintaining a winner’s outlook. There are those who were born with the attributes that allow them to excel quickly. I’m not writing this for them. Those of us who question if we have what it takes are not lost. There is hope for us and ample room for growth.

My path to cultivating Heart has been through Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. So I’ll be talking about heart through that lens. Why BJJ? Because improving at Jiu Jitsu requires:

  • Discipline to keep showing up.
  • Repeated and Demoralizing defeats (Ego calibration)
  • Collecting and assimilating techniques (motor learning)
  • Discovering your personal strengths and many weaknesses (self-reflection)
  • Developing your athleticism (multidisciplinary pursuit)
  • Mental toughness (Heart)

There’s lots of ways to show Heart in BJJ. Lots of ways to stretch what you can tolerate and develop grit. I’ve been at it almost 8 years,  my BJJ honeymoon has been over for a while, so I feel I can speak about this a bit objectively and with enough experience to be useful.

Cultivate Heart

If there is a genetic component to heart, I feel like I probably was given a minimal share. I am full of fear, low confidence, self-doubt, and generally don’t care for competition. I’d rather go with the flow and fly under the radar. I’m the kind of person who you probably wouldn’t expect to love a combat sport. Here are my observations for what it takes to improve your Heart. To turn from an easy-quitter to someone who is likely to see it through.

  • Maintain an internal focus. Try to learn to be completely present and to understand and accept yourself. Make it less about winning, and more about improving yourself an incremental amount day to day. Strive to say, “If I had to fight last week’s version of me, I’d win”.
  • Keep showing up. Even if you feel the majority of your workouts are placeholder workouts, just keep going. Suppress the negative self talk and say to that voice, “you shut-up until we get this work in” and just go. If you are resolved to your ultimate goals, you’ll be able to see past bad workouts and demoralizing defeats. It seems heart is developed at the edge of your willingness to continue being uncomfortable. At your quitting line. So the more time you spend with opportunities to suffer, the quicker you will develop heart.
  • Don’t allow yourself to be the biggest fish in the pond. If you’re no longer challenged, you need to expand your group of training partners or your goals to continue your personal growth. Luckily this has never been an issue for me, but I can see it in others.
  • Maintain a growth mindset. If you come to view shortcomings as obstacles to overcome, rather than excuses to quit, you will continue down the correct path. If you believe that Heart is a skill to build, and you work at it, you will find you are able to do things that take more Heart than you thought you had.
  • Understand that having Heart ultimately is about Love. Love of the game, love of your people, love of the journey. You might start your martial arts journey because you’re fearful or angry, but if you don’t grow to love the journey itself, you’ll burn out. The people who are dominant through anger or hatred eventually get beaten and crumble mentally. If you’re coming from a place of love, even failure is motivating. Be love.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I can’t think of many higher pursuits than self-improvement and self-understanding. I will continue on this path as long as my body and mind lets me. I hope you got something useful from this one.

 

If you want to read more on this topic, check out A Fighters Heart.
Regards,

Mark

Memento Mori : Negative Visualization Practice

Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff… and It’s All Small Stuff

Here’s another non-firearm related post on this firearms blog. I’ve been going through some hard times and this stuff is on my mind. I’m writing it out to share what has worked for me, and I’m hoping if you work through this post, you might come out more joyful.

This post is the result of watching my social media feeds, and constantly being in awe at the lack of perspective that I see people have regarding what real problems are. My ‘real problems’ scale is pretty well adjusted, and it’s one of the gifts that having cancer gave me at an early age. I understand pretty well what real problems are, and day to day life struggles don’t trouble me too much.

That lesson is irrelevant to you unless I can help you put your things in perspective to calibrate your ‘real problems’ scale without giving you a life-threatening disease or injury. I’m going to attempt that with this post.

I’m hoping this post will help you understand a few things for yourself:

  1. Things aren’t that bad
  2. It can always get worse (but it’s currently not)
  3. Create a distilled understanding of what makes you, you.

We throw around terms like ‘first world problems’ when we talk about our Wi-Fi dropping while we’re watching a movie or Starbucks being closed when we’re looking for a cappuccino. The issue I see is that people generally have so few real issues, that they confuse their day to day hiccups as real problems, and don’t realize how well things are actually going (even when some things are going a bit bad). So let’s work a two step process and we can calibrate ourselves.

Distilling down your identity

This is a useful thought experiment that Dr. William Aprill discussed with me when I was beating myself up while I was having trouble walking and using my hands from Chemo-induced neuropathy. I was feeling sorry for myself because I was sure I wouldn’t be able to shoot guns again and certainly wouldn’t return to being athletic by any definition of the word. He asked me to figure out what, “makes Mark, Mark.” So I did what he suggested and thought through what, at minimum, I am. What would I have to lose before I would no longer identify as Mark. Here’s how that thought experiment looked.

Am I still me if I lose…:

  • my 500 lb deadlift?
  • my successful career?
  • a flush bank account and investments?
  • my ability to train in combat sports?
  • my family?
  • my ability to stand up for more than 30 minutes before I hurt too much?
  • my ability to consistently remember where I left my keys?
  • my ability to breath without mechanical assistance?
  • my functioning organs?
  • my ability to remember my families faces/names?
  • …

You get the idea. I ultimately identified my line in the sand. Your homework is to think through a list of things you generally self-identify with, and pick out the line past which you will no longer be yourself. This is not easy, and might be uncomfortable. Spend a minute to do that now.

You now have the lowest rung in your ladder defined. You have looked past the walls your ego puts up to define yourself and dug down to what you actually are. What makes you, you. If you’re going through some trouble in life, as long as you haven’t been pushed past that line, you still have your identity. You can still be you.

Negative Visualization

The second part of this post will take a page from the Stoics. The technique is called Negative Visualization. It’s the practice of spending a small block of time imagining scenarios where you undergo profound loss of things you value most. The goal is to put yourself in your nightmare scenario for a short time (3-10 minutes), then when your meditation time is over you may realize that everything in our lives is ‘on loan’ and worth cherishing. Even the mundane things. It will brighten your heart. It will also teach you that things could definitely get worse, but they aren’t at the moment. That’s another thing to celebrate.

If things are currently going rough for you, spend your mediation time thinking about how it could be worse. You’ll find you can always imagine a way to make it worse, and you’ll be thankful that it’s not that bad yet. Our constant adaptation to our circumstances can trick us. This exercise will force perspective in a powerful way.

Here’s some examples:

  • Loss of a job
  • Loss of a house
  • Loss of a child
  • Major health crisis
  • Major health crisis of a loved one
  • Loss of bodily function
  • Breakup of a family
  • Your own death

The only thing you have absolute control over is how you think about your circumstances. Everything else includes an element of chance outside of your control, and letting that ruin your mood is wasted energy. This is, of course, easier said than done. It’s a constant process of course correction.

Everything, up to and including our ability to breath, is a fleeting magical gift from infinity. If something is taken from you, be thankful that you had the opportunity to enjoy it. We’re going to be OK.

Thanks,

Mark

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