Foundations of Fast Shooting

Leatham & Pincus discuss the foundation and the first steps in learning how to shoot rapidly. That first step is keeping your arms and upper body rigid while shooting rapidly. According to Leatham & Pincus the foundation of fast shooting has nothing to do with the slow easy trigger pull commonly taught by many gun schools.

But it has everything to do with pulling the trigger quickly and controlling that recoil. We do this by maintaining that strong structure when holding the pistol. There is no need to be meticulous with the trigger pull and looking concentrating on the front sights.

Theres a time and place for everything that you learn in marksmanship. The slow trigger squeeze to be accurate and the quick trigger pull when you’re under real life threatening situation. Practice both.

Video Transcription
[Shooting]

Pincus: Wow that looks really good. Every time I teach somebody how to shoot quickly, you already know how to do this, but they don’t, I wanna show them what the fundamental starting point is- what I call the foundation- for being able to shoot fast. Go ahead and unload, I need you empty. Most people’s dry-fire drill is a ball-and-dummy drill (clear) is a ball and- (stay striker-back though) So aim at the target, Rob, what i always teach ’em to do is listen, you have to hold the gun in a manner that I don’t move you. So this is pretty good right there. Any time I wanna move the gun, I want their body to move, not wrist. Wrist and joints, that’s bad, shouldn’t bend. Now the next part of it is, we teach people, ‘focus on the front sights, squeeze the trigger’, but in a real shooting environment, you realize you don’t have time to play that game. So you have to learn to pull that trigger. I can look at the target and tell you Rob can do this right. Finger on the trigger, when I say ‘now’, dryfire. Standby, ready, now! [Click] Standby, ready, now! [Click] Standby, ready, Now [Click] Ready, now [Click] So what you’ll notice on someone when they’re learning is that almost always we have that stupid jerk that controls recoil, right? So if people would quit trying to control recoil, and learn how to pull the trigger quickly, then the recoil wouldn’t become a factor. Let me explain why.

So you’re aimed in on the target, you’re ready to go. You’ve decided to shoot -remember, all the work’s done now.

Rob: Right.

Pincus: At this point, I don’t even care where your focal distance is, target, sights, as long as you see a good enough representation. Finger on the trigger, ready to fire, pull the trigger. Now! [Click] So the trick is to be able to pull the trigger rapidly. Now at any point did you see the sight move off the target?

Rob: Yes.

Pincus: Now! [click] Did it ever move off of the part?

Rob: No.

Pincus: So we don’t need any better trigger pull than that. But we think we need this fine-tuned- ‘touch the trigger, we need you to squeeeze it real careful-like, like this. [click]’ -Look how long that takes! It takes me three seconds -put your finger on- if I told you to just ‘squeeze the trigger’ I’ll start now. [Click] That’s a second! Do you know what happens in a second?!

Rob: Absolutely.

Pincus: In the competition world, I lose the match. That one second cost me the whole match. In a real environment? Something way worse happens in a second. You realize even a big guy like me, what’s the distance, I can move seven yards in a second?

Rob: Absolutely. Yeah, you know, this to me is so important, right? Now I know my fundamentals could stand to improve dramatically-

Pincus: Naw your fundamentals are good.

Rob: You’re one of the best coaches in the world, that’s what you do, I know you do it really well, but I think it’s important that people hear that the best coach in the world, when it comes to competition shooting, if he’s telling you to do that three-second trigger press in the environment of defensive shooting, probably something’s wrong.

Pincus: It can’t work! It can’t work. The whole thing- you know what’s gonna happen in three seconds? You’re not gonna be involved in the game. It’s gonna be all over and you’re gonna be a loser.

Rob: So, good enough, not perfect.

Pincus: Correct.

Rob: That’s the foundation of fast shooting.

Pincus: That’s it.

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