AGILITY AND ACCURACY
One of our shooters sent me a video link to an organization that is doing some advanced training. The title of the short video is “Instructor agility and accuracy training”. At first I thought it was a joke of some kind but then I realized it was for real. It appears that their idea of advanced techniques is to add gymnastics to their shooting. The video is broken down into two segments and consists of two gentlemen (one at a time) standing, drawing and firing one round then doing a summersault and firing another round at a paper plate. It looks like they are somewhere warm, maybe Florida and the first segment is with the paper plate attached to a tree and the second is with two plates on the side of a mound/hill.
Let me make this VERY CLEAR – I am not ridiculing or making fun of these gentlemen in any way. I don’t know them or anything about them. I’m just expressing my thoughts and observations of the video clip.
As I watched, a couple of things became apparent to me aside from how dangerous this is. First, it seemed like it was taking a long time to draw and fire their first round. My second observation was it didn’t look like they were hitting the paper plate that much. I will admit they definitely have the agility part down but the accuracy? Playing the video over and over again I paid close attention to where their bullets were hitting and if my calculations are correct, they missed 84.3% of the time. Now in all fairness to them, most misses weren’t by that much and if it was a human size target they probably would have hit it. So I guess they have the accuracy also but as we’ve seen with our targets, the human body does not give you a lot of leeway.
What did trouble me was how long it took to draw and get their first shot off. Using a stopwatch I timed five different sequences for both participants and for the first shooter the average time was 2.04 seconds and for the second it was 1.93. Both shooters were not carrying concealed so they had no cover garment to contend with that could add time. Most experts stress one second or less. I know when we train with Chuck Taylor he’ll let us stretch it to 1.5 with concealment but as a rule it’s one second!
I guess everyone has his or her own opinion of what an advanced technique is and you can make your own decision. With my agility days behind me, drawing and getting an accurate hit in a second or less to end the fight is an advanced technique to me. Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SsO6BqBvFJw&feature=related
See you on the range,