Transcription
This is one of my carry setups. It's a better holster with a FN reflex, which is kind of ironic, and you'll see why as this video continues.
So, when I first got into guns, everybody told me the same thing. Front sight focus. Front sight focus. You focus on that front sight. And this FN Reflex has a really, really, really bright, bright front sight. As you can see here, like I said, everything was clear front sight, clear front sight, blurry rear sight, ignore the target. Well, not ignore the target, but the target's kind of blurry.
But here's the problem. If someone's pointing a gun at you, your brain's not playing optical gymnastics trying to focus on your front sight. Your brain's screaming, "Focus on the person trying to kill me." And guess what? That's exactly what it's going to do.
I'm not knocking sight focus shooting. You should build that foundation. I did, too. But we're lying to ourselves if we think that in chaos of a real self-defense situation with adrenaline pumping and bodies moving, we're going to get a perfect sight picture like we're on a flat range. Look at the surveillance footage from any actual shooting. Most people aren't getting textbook sight alignment. Some of them probably don't even remember aiming. Yes, there are exceptions like the guy who stopped a mall shooter from 40 yards away. That's red dot territory. But most of the time, you're up close reacting under pressure.
That's why I started incorporating what I call instinctive shooting into my training. I didn't invent this term. It's been around. It just doesn't get talked about because the dogma is always focus on your sights. But here's what I started doing. I'd set a timer, hear the beep, hard focus on the target, and shoot. No sight alignment, just body mechanics and reaction. Because let's be real, in a real fight, most people aren't going to line up their sights like they're qualifying on a police range. And if you've never practiced not using your sights, how do you expect to hit anything when your body panics and does exactly that?
What you want to do is to be able to put yourself in a position where you learn the body mechanics of your presentation, right? And then you just keep going. And that's what you do. You just get your reps in. And then as that goes on, then you want to start trying to. It's weird cuz I'm saying not to a not to aim, right? You're still aiming. It's just you're not relying on getting a perfect sight picture. You're just coming out as fast as you can and you keep shooting until you hit the target essentially or the target does something you want. In this case, it's I'm hearing the ding, right? In the real world, whenever that person stops doing what it's doing, right? So, we're here. I'm just getting one rep on on on target. And then you also get to learn. And that what that does too is it teaches you your your kind of bad habits. One of my bad habits is snatching the gun back, right? I've been to courses and they told me that I'm really bad at that. I'm really bad at coming out, drawing the gun, and then pulling back. Right now, my natural tendency to do that is because I kind of want to see what's going on cuz when I have the gun out here, I have [ __ ] in front of my face, right? But remember, it's going to be ugly. It's going to be ugly, ugly, ugly. Like, sometimes you're not going to get the right grip on the gun and you're going to fumble it. Keep pushing through it. Just keep pushing through it.
Now, I'm not telling you this as an instructor. I'm just telling you this is what I do. This is based on all the courses I've taken, all the times I've practiced, and all the videos I've seen and I've watched. I've realized you kind of have to just deal with what comes to you. You can drill perfect alignment all day, but your body doesn't know what it feels like to shoot instinctively unless you've done it. And when I started practicing this way, at first I was trash. But then I started getting better, cleaner, faster, more confident. I started at 5 yards, then I moved to 10, then 15. And yeah, I was getting center mass hits on the move under pressure to a degree, all without ever seeing a front sight for the first couple of shots.
Now, don't get it twisted. I'm not saying skip the fundamentals. Learn your sights. Know what a clean sight picture looks like, but also learn what it feels like to not use them initially.
Now, before you finish watching this video, I want to quickly talk about the hearing protection that I'm wearing in this video. These are the AKT1 Blackout Wireless in-ear Hearing Protection with Bluetooth. I like to call them the AirPods for shooters. I say for shooters because AirPods don't protect your hearing, but these do. They are hands down my favorite in-ear hearing protection that I've ever used. And I mean ever. They have a NR 25dB auto noise blocking. They can enhance your hearing by six times. They have advanced noise cancellation, Bluetooth connectivity with high fidelity speakers so you can take phone calls and listen to music. They have a battery life of 10 hours with an additional 30 hours in a charging case and a low profile and stylish enough to fit in not only at the gun range but in your gym while you're studying, working, at school, at home, you name it. I'm in love with these things. And now they're finally available on my store at shop.mmrcolon.com or you can just click the link in the description section of this video. All the ammo used in this video was brought to you by Nosler, maker of the most innovative, most accurate, and most effective bullets and ammunition in the industry.
All right, so another thing, too, is you're not purposely avoiding looking for your front sight. What you're doing is getting on target as fast as possible and while you're shooting trying to get to your front sight. Cuz eventually after the first and second shot, you're going to start seeing your front sight and you start tracking it naturally. So if I come here, I pull the gun, bang, bang. At some point that sight's going to naturally come on target. And so at that point, of course, use your front sight. I'm not telling you to blatantly ignore it. I'm just saying that you want to practice being startled and then being target focused. You want to train your body to the oh [ __ ] moment because you don't want the first time for your oh [ __ ] moment happening in the real world because in a real world fight, you probably won't have that luxury.
And let's be real about something else. You're probably going to have to shoot one-handed. And I don't think most people, hell, I don't think anyone really trains for that. Seriously. Why? Because two-handed shooting feels good. It's stable, controlled. It makes you feel like you've got it down. But once you start shooting one-handed, especially with your non-dominant hand, oh, it gets ugly real fast. Now, try drawing your gun one-handed. Now, try drawing it one-handed with your weak hand. It's fumbly. It's awkward. Your grip's trash. But that's reality. We get too used to perfect world training. The threat approaches. You get your clean grip. Both hands on a gun. Extend. Beautiful sight picture. Breathe. Press. Nah. Real life's more like, "Oh [ __ ] pull a gun. Shoot fast. Fast."
Now, now that's why instinctive shooting and one-handed drills matter, especially for people who actually conceal carry. And so, I'm going to do this slow. And I look, do this at your own comfort level because this is this gets really tricky and can get dangerous really fast if you're not comfortable with it and you've never done this before. So essentially what you're looking at is I have something in my right hand. I still need to get to my gun. This is my weak hand. I'm a left-handed. I'm weird. So I shoot right-handed, but I write left-handed. Whatever. So essentially here is you want to get to your gun here. Pull it out. Flip it around. and get on target. So that's that's the way I go about getting to my gun left-handed. I'm sure there are other ways of doing it. That's the way I was taught. So if I'm holding something and I give startle response and I come here, right? So the interesting thing about that, you notice how slow I'm moving. I'm actually trying to move fast without shooting myself, right? because you're not going to be as fast with your right hand one-handed as you are with your left-handed because there a lot more movement involved and it's just not as comfortable especially if you're talking about two hands right so again the left-handed side I come here I break bring shirt up I roll it that's what I do and then as I get more comfortable with that then I'll start speed trying to go faster and faster with that. But I would with this I would do it slowly because and here's why. In a situation where you have to go to your weak hand because something's in your hand or your hands hurt or something like that. The speed you're going to pick up doing that trying to go even faster you're go having to go this you're kind of already [ __ ] But so you're either going to kind of be somewhere where you can kind of be behind cover and you kind of need to get to your gun here and you have some time to do it but still practice it. And if what I would do is I'll dry fire practice it. I would do it if you wanted to try it fast. All right. So gun's clear. If you wanted to try it fast, you can do it with basically a dead gun. So essentially here you're like oh ah I got shot in my arm and I'm hurt somehow. So I got to get to my gun. Roll it. Right. You can do it relatively fast especially if you practice it. But what are you seeing here? There's a lot going on, right? So, it's out of the holster. Technically, I should be here. And then I flip then present because doing it down here, there's a lot of [ __ ] that could possibly snag and we don't want no one snagging, especially down in that area, right? So, here, pull up, roll. So, you're just simulating not having your right hand. I think too many times we think we're going to be in a perfect situation, perfect conditions, all our limbs are working. It's not always going to be like that.
And then there's combat accuracy, or really, let's call it what it is, self-defense accuracy. Because combat makes it sound like you're storming a beach. You're not. You're just trying to live. Self-defense accuracy isn't about tight little groups. Teeny little groups take time. Time you ain't got when someone is actively trying to kill you. What matters in a self-defense shooting is fast, effective hits. Hits that stop the threat, not impress your Instagram followers. And honestly, it's kind of comforting to know that you don't have to be perfect with your accuracy to protect yourself because speed kills. Speed is the name of the game. The faster you can get rounds on target, the better. Not precise little clusters. Just get hits that matter fast. Because if the other person gets shots off and hits you before you can react, those tiny little groups you train for don't mean a damn thing. The goal isn't to kill. The goal is to stop. If you can stop someone without killing them, that's awesome. Do that. But in that moment, you don't control the outcome. You only control your actions. So your job is to put rounds where they need to be to stop the threat and protect the people you care about. That's the only reason you're even pulling the trigger in the first place.
All right. So the whole concept of combat accuracy versus accurate accuracy, I guess, whatever. So like I'll come out here and um just to show just to demonstrate what I mean by combat accuracy versus accuracy accuracy. Right? So if I come out here, let the clock wind come out. Right? So you want to take a look. You see here I kind of took my time. Kind of got a little group here. So you can see all kind of nice and pretty. Right? Depending on who you ask. But now I want to show you what combat accuracy looks like. So for me to shoot those five shots was 4.6 4.16 seconds. Right? So now I'm going to do the same thing, but I'm just going to get accurate combat hits. And when I mean by combat, I mean self-defense. These are self-defense accuracy versus accuracy. Accuracy. I can't think of a name for it. Subie. Right. So I'm here waiting. Right. So, that was 2.1 seconds. The other one was 4.1 seconds or something like that. Now, my group spread. Right now, I was aiming here. Technically, they tell you to aim center mass, but I was aiming here. So, if you take this, superimpose it here, that's what you're looking at. So, you got this here. It's a lot wider, right? But there still hits on target. It's still hitting them. So, but and I was able to do it two seconds faster. And in a self-defense situation, 2 seconds is a [ __ ] eternity. That's the difference between self-defense accuracy versus accuracy. Accuracy. Still train that. Be accurate. Try to get small, tight little groups because that'll build up your mechanicals. But also practice just being fast enough, being getting a good enough hits as fast as possible.
Now, I know not everyone can train like this. A lot of indoor rangers won't let you draw from a holster or shoot on the move, but you can still work the fundamentals. Set your gun on the table, pick it up, and start shooting fast. Don't wait for a perfect sight picture. Just feel it. Let your body learn the mechanics. Build that muscle memory. It's not about replacing fundamentals. It's about building layers. Because if your only layer is perfect grip, both hands, clean, front sight, you're setting yourself up to fail when the fight doesn't go by the book. And I promise you, the fight really hardly ever goes by the book. It's start slow, start close, 5 yards, draw, present, press, no sight picture, just smooth movements, then build up, add speed, add movement. Eventually, you'll surprise yourself with how accurate and fast you can get.
So, should you train to shoot instinctively? Absolutely. Just don't start there. Build the base, then add this layer. Because when the moment hits and everything goes sideways, you won't rise to the level of your fantasy. You'll fall to the level of your training. And if you train instinctively with one hand, under stress without perfect form, you'll be as ready as you could be. Roll it. Right. Sit. Oh, right. Right. Right, right, right, right. This kind of training doesn't just make you faster, it makes you more prepared. So, next time you hit the range, just try it. Start small. No sights, no perfect stance, just you, the target, and raw instinctive shooting.
So, what do you think? Is instinctive shooting something you train for? Drop a comment in the comment section and let me know. And as always, stay dangerous. That's why you got a wasp on your camera, man. Don't come.