The Everyday Marksman Matt Robertson

More than one time, John Simpson mentioned to me that you don't prepare for the test by practicing the test. It's a bit of a call out against shooters who think that the path to improvement is merely about faster times on their drill of preference. My observation is that a shooter's preferred "game" usually dictates what drills they care about. Bill Drills, classifiers, 1-5, dot torture, and many more track against defensive, competition, handgun, long gun, and other disciplines. These shooters then post their scores and compete against other enthusiasts to see who is the "best."







There's a rub, though. Being good at a particular drill does not automatically translate to being particularly good at all the related skills. It's merely a point-in-time indication to compare yourself against. Take the Bill Drill, for example. The entire drill consists of starting from the draw and firing six shots as quickly as possible at an IPSC target placed at 7 yards. It's a sort of "maximum effort" test.







I take issue with the idea that the drill teaches anything in particular. Six shots isn't enough to teach anything. Using strength lifting as an example, nearly everyone understands that you don't prepare for a one rep maximum test by only training at maximum weights for one rep at a time. I saw the same kind of thing in the military where some guys would "prepare" for their upcoming PT test by doing it once or twice every week leading up to the actual test.







You must identify and target weak points, build volume of practice addressing those weak points- often at weights far less than the maximum. With time and effort, your ability to display maximum strength improves.







Another Example







A significant portion of my day job involves developing technical certifications. Another huge part of it is developing the training programs teaching the knowledge and skills required to pass those certifications.







When we develop a certification exam, it's a all a process of compromises. We bring in a team of industry subject matter experts and have them work through a process of documenting the skills and knowledge required to be successful at the level of the test we're creating. This list usually ends up being dozens of items long, with each item having several sub components to it. We then go through another process to prioritize which items are more important than others. By the time we're done, we have a ranked order of skills and knowledge.







If the test is only 60 items long, but the team wrote 70 objectives, there isn't enough space to evaluate everything. Even at a 1:1 match, that would mean that there could only be one question per objective. One single metric is far from enough to comprehensively evaluate what someone knows. That usually means that we have to select the top 20 or so objectives deemed "most important." After that, we still probably won't evenly distribute the questions. The top five objectives might get 5 questions each, while the least important ones might get one or two. Keep in mind that the "least important" were still in the top 20 out of 60 to 70 objectives.







In the end, you end up with a certification that provides an objective standard to compare against, but it's far from a complete picture of someone's knowledge and capabilities.















Preparing for the Tests







Most people are lazy. When someone asks for help with passing the exam, they almost never want to know what skills and variations they should practice to improve- they want to know the questions ahead of time so they can study the answers.

I've been seeing a question going around forums and social media for the last week or two. The gist of it is, "What would you suggest as a solid basic armory for a serious new gun owner?" The context usually a friend or young man coming of age into the world of firearms ownership and training. I've found the answers to be both entertaining and enlightening. You see the obvious bias of the authors and their personal preferences for using firearms. Some people veer towards the outdoors and suggest hunting rifles and big bore revolvers for backwoods protection. Others went right towards the tactical realm.



So today is my personal answer to this question, and I'm couching it in terms of the Martial Marksman and Scenario-X. I'm not leaning purely on the tactical, though. Rather, my preferences for someone starting out is thinking in terms of versatility and reliability. Too many marksmen, including me at times, go needlessly deep into "optimization." By that, I mean we think of a possible situation and then work backwards to build a rifle or collection tailored to that situation.



But, as the Martial Marksman principles dictate, there is no such thing as optimum. We are, in fact, better served with a tool that does many things pretty well rather than a tool that does one thing exceptionally well at the expense of usefulness elsewhere. Sure, there's a time and a place for specialist tools once you've established your foundations- but this post is about actually building the foundation.



So let's dig in.



Amory Prioritization Tiers



Much like the "gearamid," I'm break my starter arsenal down into a series of levels. The most important and highest priority items being at the bottom, and the least important specialist items being at the top. This isn't to say there isn't a reason you might skip a level, but you should do so understanding that you're probably neglecting something important in the process.



Tier 1: The Martial Marksman



As far as I'm concerned, this is the starting point. If you're at all serious about defense of self, home, and community- then this is the core of it. A beginner's top priority falls along two things: a common and reliable semi-automatic pistol, and a common reliable semi-automatic rifle in an intermediate cartridge.



I have some important additions and caveats to go along with this, as well.



The Starter Pistol



I said that a beginner Martial Marksman should have a common and reliable semi-automatic pistol. That's not terribly specific. I know a lot of readers and listeners want something more specific and concrete. The thing is, I've found that handguns are a personal preference. Once you find one that you like, or even a particular family of them, it ends to become your default suggestion going forward. You can tell when other writers go down this path by only suggesting something like a Glock 19 or 17.



I think that's a mistake, though.



So here are guidelines for a Martial Marksman's first handgun:









* Proven track record of reliability



* Compact sized (i.e. about a 15 round capacity of 9mm)



* Currently for formerly issued to police departments, government agencies, or military units



* Comfortable to hold and shoot in your hands





Reliability is #1, here. This isn't your weekend match gun that only costs you the win if it goes down. You may very well stake your life or your family's life on this gun going bang every time you pull the trigger. Don't skip this point.

I'm going to ruffle some feathers today. In fact, I'm highlighting something I've been doing poorly for years. While I was putting together the hierarchy of physical fitness for the Martial Marksman, I realized there was a need to do the same thing for firearms training and marksmanship. We tend to focus on the things we're already good at, or at least the things we most enjoy. For me, that tends to be scoped precision rifles and relatively long distances. That's fine for a general interest, of course, since fun is allowed. However, if my focus was on cultivating the Martial Marksman skill set, the priorities would look very different.







So here's the challenge: can we establish a standard set of training priorities for the average person preparing for Scenario-X? I think we can.







Setting the Boundaries







First off, my goal is less about dictating what weapon to become proficient with than it is about establishing what distances you should focus on. In some cases, the distances involved naturally lend themselves to specific weapon types. Rather than force that on you, I'm stating the range bracket and letting you decide what weapon platform makes the most sense for you and your circumstances to meet the requirement.







Second, most marksmanship training standards focus on an angular standard like 4 MOA (minutes of angle). This works ok, honestly. It's rather convenient to tell someone to always train for a 4 MOA standard, and then adjust the size of the target based on the range they have access to. At 100 yards, that's a 4 inch target. At 50 yards, it's 2 inches, and 1 inch at 25. Or if you shoot at 200 yards, the target is 8". However, when you think about the context of a Martial Marksman, targets stay the same size regardless of the distance. This is something I picked up from John Simpson's latest book, and it's an important point to consider.















Example Time







Here's an example. Let's say the target is a circle eight inches in diameter. The target is always 8" regardless of the distance. At 200 yards, that target is about 4 MOA. However, at 50 yards, the target is still 8" and is now approximately 16 MOA. Your perception is that the target is now much larger even if it's the same size it always was. What does that mean in practice? It means that your priority should be hitting the target even faster, not necessarily "more accurately."







In the Martial Marksman's world, there are not bonus points for hitting the 1" x-ring if any hit on the 8" black would have done. Taking the extra time to hit the x-ring might mean losing to the opponent who sought to be just fast enough to hit you first. In the real world, that means coming in second place during a gun fight. For our purposes, the goal is hitting a target of set dimensions at a variety of distances with as much speed as possible.







Establishing the Target







Training principle #1 for the Martial Marksman is train for the target. So what is it that we're looking to hit? I've theorized on it before, and now it's time to make it official.







The target of a Martial Marksman is a 10" circle. For practice, you could go as low tech as a common 10" paper picnic plate, but I'll get a little more specific and say that the official training target is an a href="https://www.avantlink.com/click.php?

I was reflecting on something Lanny Bassham wrote in his book, With Winning in Mind. It's something that I reference a lot, and definitely suggest giving it a read. When discussing selecting the right goal, Lanny says that you should pick something that you're willing to trade your life for. He doesn't mean that in the literal sense of dying for your goal. Rather, it's a figurative statement about giving up the life you lead now for the attainment of that goal. If it's not powerful enough, then you won't do it.



In the last episode, we talked about the Martial Marksman mindset, I had an aside about homeostasis. The context was that driving change in your life means introducing some stress. That stress could be physical, mental, or something else. The point was that introducing sufficient stress signals to your mind and body that something must change in order to make the stress less impactful the next time.



While writing all of that post, I had a very long aside about how difficult this actually is. Eventually, I decided to break it off into its own article- which I'm sharing with you today.



I don't want to undersell just how difficult it is to make this process happen. Part of it is that change happens slowly. You will not get the kind of improvements you want to see after just a handful of exposure to the right kind of stress. It takes hundreds, if not thousands, of exposures over time to make this happen. Eventually, and probably a lot sooner rather than later, pursuing this kind of change runs into the homeostasis problem.



The Homeostasis Problem



If you recall, homeostasis is the tendency towards stable equilibrium between interdependent elements. When it comes to driving change, you might think of this as a "status quo bias." We tend to want to keep things as they are because it's familiar and comfortable.



This all makes sense when you're thinking about introducing stress by lifting a weight, or building a habit for dry practice.



But here's where the problem comes in: usually, the "interdependent elements" part of the equation include more than yourself. Humans are social creatures, and we tend to surround ourselves with people "like us." Your lifestyle, as it exists today, is probably organized in a way to best support the current status quo.



For example, let's say you get back from a long day at work to have dinner with the family. After the kid(s) go to bed, you and your wife have a ritual of talking for a while then watching something on Netflix for a bit. After that, you scroll social media and trade a few posts, then go to bed. Both of you probably view this as "together time." So what happens if you decide that you want to spend 30 minutes per day practicing rifle drills by yourself, and the only time available is when you would be watching Netflix together?



That's the challenge. When you introduce stress to drive a change, you're not just pushing against your own willpower. You're pushing against your entire lifestyle and social circle, elements that have little to no reason to challenge the status quo.



If you aren't aware of this problem, then it's easy to abandon the new habit and any change you were hoping to develop out of it. It's easy because everything else in your life is literally organized against you.



Working the Problem



Going back to the "together time" example. At first, you probably won't think this is an issue. You feel good about doing something more productive with your time, and you start picking up little wins and showing progress against the clock. Not long later, though, your wife starts getting upset that you never spend time with her anymore. She misses hanging out with you and watching shows together.

When I re-launched the Everyday Marksman site in 2018, I thought it was important to have a core topic area around Mindset. Inspired by the work of Lanny Bassham and others, it's important that I kept at least some focus on the idea of training the mind to perform just as much as practicing marksmanship and buying gear. Over time, many of the interviews I've done and books I've read also referenced the importance of mindset.















I've gone as far as making sure that "mindset" is one of the primary corners within the pyramid of performance. It's every bit as important as physical capability as well as technique when it comes to success.







But, to date, I've yet to actually dig in and provide a thorough definition of what I mean when I talk about mindset. Today I'd like to rectify that oversight and plant a flag in the ground of what I mean when I start talking about the mindset question.







Before I begin, I'll point out that I'm keeping my scope narrow. There is a lot of fantastic work out there regarding things like growth mindset, habit formation, and other important aspects of a healthy mental state. These are all great concepts, and I encourage you to look into them. For simplicity sake, I am focusing down to only the aspects that most impact performance of a given task. That's not to say that those other aspects don't impact performance, they do, but those effects are tangential compared to the ones I actually want you to focus on.







All good? Sweet, let's get going.







It Starts With Three Circles







I recommend reading Lanny Bassham's, With Winning in Mind. It's a book that changed my perception of training and development. One of the core tenants is this interlinking of three circles: the conscious mind, the unconscious mind, and the self-image.







The Conscious







Per Lanny's definition, the conscious mind encompasses everything that you are thinking about while performing the task. For beginners and novices, their minds are busy considering every aspect of the action they're performing. It's all new to them, and nothing is automatic. The novice focuses on making sure they grab the magazine correctly, inserting it into the well without missing or getting hung up, and must look down to find and actuate the release controls. When aiming, they mentally think about every step of the firing cycle including breathing, sight picture, trigger control, and position. Step-by-step, they think about everything they were taught they had to do to succeed.







The long-term goal is reaching a point where the conscious mind is silent and focused only on the outcome (i.e. "hit the x ring").







The Subconscious







The subconscious mind encompasses what you might call, "muscle memory." It's the stored motor pathway within the brain that recognizes the pattern and requirements, and executes the task without any further consideration. Lanny says that you build the subconscious mind through repetition, practice, and visualization. This is important: it means practicing a task the exact same way every time to build consistency.















After all, consistency is accuracy.







Like a champion power lifter or Olympic weight lifter, every repetition looks exactly the same. Regardless of the weight, the setup is the same, the approach to the bar is the same, grip is identical, and the mechanics of the movement are all exactly the same every time. This is the result of thousands of hours of practice doing the same thing over an...

In the last episode, I discussed the Martial Marksman ideal and how it relates to the various topics I talk about here. One of the challenges that anyone going down this path quickly runs into is the fact that there is a lot of "stuff" to learn and practice. It's one thing for a professional soldier to do these things, but it's a very different beast for Everyday Marksmen like you and I.



Military members have the benefit of government pockets paying for training, equipment, travel, and the like. In a perfect world, professional military members make their living pursuing the Martial Marksman ideals, and don't have to worry about competing day jobs and other obligations. Of course, I know that it's not realistic, given the number of "additional duties" and superfluous other stuff they have to do. That's besides the point.











So the non-professional aspiring Martial Marksman must play within a different set of boundaries. It's not that they can't have it all, because they can achieve everything we're setting out to do. But they cannot have it all right now.



Chasing every scenario and capability at the same time is a bottomless pit of spending money, stress, and neglect of our day-to-day lives.







Today I'm introducing the Martial Marksman's training philosophy. These are not so much laws as they are guiding principles to help us stay within the bounds of budgetary, time, and training restraints. As we explore more aspects of the Martial Marksman's capability set in the future, I'll refer back to these principles over and over.







So let's dig in.





The Big Picture Training Principles





I've spent a lot of time writing and talking about different ways to approach Marksmen problems. What I have thus far failed to do is tie them all together into a repeatable methodology. Today I'm changing that. Here are my five training principles from here on in. I'll break each one down a little further as we go.







* Train for the target



* There is no such thing as optimum



* Embrace simplicity



* It's training, not entertainment



* Play the long game







If you've been a long time reader and listener, then I bet you'll recognize a few of these themes. They've showed up again and again throughout my writing. Each one might be worth it's own article or podcast episode on its own.





Training for the Target





A good training program is intentional, not arbitrary. In practice, this means that the training objective is based on something real and tangible rather than something that sounds good in theory. This came into focus for me the last time I talked to John Simpson when he released his book on patrol rifle marksmanship.



To illustrate a marksmanship example, if you ask most people what their personal rifle accuracy standard is, I bet 8 out of 10 will tell you that it's 1 Minute of Angle (MOA), or about 1" spread for every 100 yards of distance. If you follow up with, "ok...but, why?" then you'll get some variation of, "because that's what everyone says."











While we hope not to do it, a Martial Marksman is prepared to fight against human adversaries who wish to do harm. At 300 yards, the outside edge specified by Trainfire, a human is not 3" tall or wide. Since a human is roughly 19" wide (shoulder to shoulder) and 10" deep (sternum to spine), the actual accuracy standard is closer to 3.3 MOA at the minimum.