On Swimming and Shooting

[Steven Cline]

"OK. You've convinced me. Competitive shooting only improves trigger control, indexing, accuracy, safe weapon handling, target acquisition, transitions, recoil control, shooting on the move, shooting moving targets, shooting in different positions, drawing from a holster, shooting one handed, shooting targets of varying size, difficulty, and distance, and doing those things under the pressure of the clock. Clearly those are skills that are of little importance in self defense or tactical shooting. "  -The post which went ignored and unaddressed."

Steven, I agree with the above, however they are skill developement, no problem with that, but it does not include strategy, most of us are beyond new skill sets, but heavy on strategy. When I began, there were no rules other than our own, weak hand reloading, drawing weak hand, shooting over walls, swinging off ropes, and more, Things you would pay big money to learn now, We ran a hot range, every body was loaded as soon as they came in, never had an accident.  I am glad I got to do it, all of our scenarios were base on real life, set your watch to go off every hr or so and just look at were you were, make a stage based on that.

You probably won't like my next post, though I could be wrong.  We just met and I don't know you at all. But I have a rather low opinion of strategy and tactics.  I don't want to tip my hand to that just yet.

By the way, I am an NROI, chief range officer, my USPSA # A903 one of the 1st thousand.

Nice to meet, you.

I tried to verify the A903, the USPSA classifier look-up returned A903 could not be found... is your membership long expired?

[Solus]

This exactly the kind of post I was hoping the thread would generate.

Am I correct in summarizing then that you are saying that there going to be situations that no diving, synchronized swimming, playing in the pool or lap swimming will prepare you for?  Situations where only specific instruction will save you?

How would the total inability to swim play into this?  How would not being as good of a swimmer hinder?

Please recall that the analogy is that we must all have to swim at some point... it's about swimming/shooting. 

Falling into the water and letting the life-vest keep one afloat is more like letting the police come do the shooting for you- save you when you jumped into the deep end not knowing how to swim.

Or, did I miss your point entirely?

Don't worry about my point, you are missing the point of this thread. 

I don't think anyone is saying that the skills you learn in a shooting game are not valuable, just that the artificial construct of the game can leave the participants with ingrained training and a mindset that could put them at risk in a real life encounter.

In my example, I equate water polo with a shooting sports game and swimming in rough water as a actual self defense shooting experience. 

If someone has trained on how to deal with swimming in rough water they will do better than a game trained swimmer who will react within the parameters of the game rather than the parameters of how to deal with the rough water situation because they just don't have the knowledge of what to expect. Even though the game trained swimmer maybe able to out swim the other in any race in a  pool, they will be at a severe in the rough water situation.  Knowledge of what to expect is the key.  You do not get that playing water polo.

[m25operator]

''Nice to meet, you.

I tried to verify the A903, the USPSA classifier look-up returned A903 could not be found... is your membership long expired? ''

Yes Steven, long expired, USPSA and I had a personal falling out, I have agreed not to discuss it on this forum out of respect for the good and decent shooters out there, and to not hinder any shooting sports.