He impressed me by saying early on that real world gun fights had almost nothing in common with competitive shooting.
In the real world gun fights people miss because they don't have the fundamentals embedded in their brain.
Competitive shooting is all about fundamentals, you have to have them, you have to practice them, you have to embed them in your brain.
Both competitive and tactical (for lack of a better word) requires marksmanship fundamentals.
In combat, you don't think about fundamentals, you are scared poo less and are only concerned with survival.
However, if you have the fundamental in grained in you subconscious, its gonna kick in whether you know it or not. You always revert to your training, if you don't have the training, or don't practice, then you miss. If you've developed good habits of marksmanship fundamentals then your habits, and training, and practice are gonna kick it. Habits come from practice.
So I would say he's totally wrong, Completive shooting and Tactical shooting are the same. Habits kick in during both......IF YOU DEVELOP THOSE HABITS.
As for his ideal of Weaver stance etc, I can only comment that no two people are the same, what works for one may or may not work for another.
A good coach or trainer will work the position (if you will) to the shooter, not the other way around. To say one size fits all is one of the first things that would cause me to walk out of a training session.
Lets move back to competition for an example. Sitting Rapid Fire has three basic positions. No one is better then the other, some people can't set cross legged so you have them cross ankle, some people cant set cross ankle or cross legged, so you have the open leg position. Some people cant do either so you combine two or three types for a position that works for the shooter. The same goes with shooting the pistol. You can't say one position is better then another, you have to find what fits the shooter. Comfort in any position makes for better shooting.
Now a lot of people are down on Completive shooting such as bullseye. One handed shooting. Think about it, how about you are getting in a car and only have one hand available, what if you are pushing your wife or child away and only have one hand on the pistol/revolver. THINK A BIT. There are probably more scenarios where you would be shooting with one hand then you think.
If you don't think competitive shooting is fast enough try ISU Rapid Fire Pistol. You have 5 targets. you start with the pistol pointed 45 degrees down. The first stage is firing at 5 targets at 25 yards in 7 seconds, then the same in 5 seconds, then in 3, and I'm not talking about hitting a man size target, but you need a small circle in the target, you need to stay in the ten - X ring to win.
I will end this by adding my favorite quote to those who condemn completive shooting.
"Many practical users of pistols and revolvers are fond of making fun of target shooting, and of the advice given on how to learn this branch of the sport. Such an attitude is well understood by the psychologist. It is founded in the unconscious jealousy and feeling of inferiority that the poor shot feels when he sees a well trained marksman making scores out of his power to equal. Unconsciously he try to belittle that accomplishment that he does not possess, so that he will seem to his audience to be just as important and well equipped as the good marksman whom he ridicules." MG Jullan S. Hatcher TEXTBOOK OF PISTOLS AND REVOLVERS.
