The Shooting Range Plateau — Lessons from War Fighters

If you follow other trainers out there—people I'd consider peers—you'll notice we're always talking about mindset, mindset, mindset. Some will even venture into tactics. And then we drift down from there. When I talk skills, that's lower on the list, but still very important. The lowest of all of these things is gear.

Gear is what everybody flies to. Like bees on honey, everybody likes gear, and I get it. Gear is cool, and to a certain extent you need some gear, but that’s not what I’m talking about. You think gear is going to make the difference in your skills gap. So, you get a new gun, and then you kind of suck with the gun, and you're asking forums and following influencers about what upgrade to get to close that gap, and then you’re disappointed when you still suck after the upgrade.

The people who have walked through the fire, the people who are actually fighters, what they preach over and over is mindset, then tactics, then skills. That's the order.

The Heavy Bag Problem

If you're a gear junkie or you're moving up to range mentality where shooting fast and accurate is the litmus test, I get it. I'm always working on shooting fast and accurate. That's a great goal, and I'm chasing that rabbit right along with you.

But no matter how great you get on the flat range as a fighter, you're always going to hit a ceiling. And you will never get much further if the flat range is all you're doing.

I look at flat range work like hitting a bag. You want to hit a bag hard and fast, and you should practice that regularly. But nobody becomes a great fighter just by hitting a bag. Eventually you've got to fight somebody. War is a social affair, and so is fighting, which means our training has to be too.

Now, don't go too far and say the flat range is worthless. No. You need it. Be faster and more accurate. That's a really good thing. What I'm saying is we need a lot more than that. Just by hitting a heavy bag, nobody becomes a great fighter. It's just one piece that works on speed, on coordination, on closing distance at the right time. We want to be able to hit the bag, but that's just our flat range work.

Ultimately, the timing, the positioning, knowing what to do and when and where to do it—that's all tactics. And actually being able to pull it off when everything's on fire around you, that's mindset. That's courage. And you're not going to build that on the flat range.

You're going to look like an F-250 pickup truck with a little Fiat motor in it. Looks great, but it’s not going anywhere.

Courage Is the Missing Component

Courage is just one piece of the pot, but it is a piece that the flat range will never develop. And I've seen this play out more times than I can count.

As a young private in Ranger Battalion, everything was scary. Your fireteam leader, the E4 mafia around you, your squad leaders—everyone was scary. You shoot on the flat range, and you want to do a good job, and that's a little bit scary. Then it gets scarier when you start shooting in the shoot house. Live fire in a shoot house, close spaces, lots of booms, muzzles all around you. That can be nerve-wracking. Then force-on-force, you're hunting each other, doing it in the dark, all fogged up. Everything just keeps getting scarier and scarier.

I got through all that stuff and started gaining rank. By the time I was a fireteam leader, I'd always like to position myself as the number two man in the stack. Even as a squad leader, if I was going in, the only guy I trust to successfully fill the number two is me.

The reason is this: somebody with less seniority, less experience, could freeze in the funnel. It doesn't matter how amazing they were on the flat range. Their skills could be off the chart. But the question is, can they still do the thing when they're absolutely terrified?

Fear shuts down your ability to think clearly. You get very erratic. I've seen this a million times taking students, civilians, law enforcement, and military through the shoot house. They just can't do the thing they know they should have done.

If you're watching from home and you've never tested yourself in force-on-force, you have a picture in your mind of what you'd look like in a fight. You imagine it looking something like your best range run plus a little Jason Bourne and John Wick. I'm not trying to be ugly or shoot down your fantasy. I'm just saying that's not what happens.

So, I'd always want to be number two. That way, if somebody stalled out and freaked out going into a room, I could grab control of them, throw them through the threshold toward their point of domination, and cut in to move to my own. Because if I was number one and somebody froze behind me, I'd enter the room alone.

I've cleared hundreds, probably thousands, of real-world rooms in combat and taken down buildings on actual combat missions. And to enter a room and turn around and realize you're the only barrel in there, that you've collapsed your sector of fire, and your back and flank are exposed—that is really terrifying. And it got really old, really fast.

The point is, even when somebody's really skilled, I don't know whether they'll be courageous. That's the real difference. You can take an incredible shooter who outperforms an operator in every single drill, every single game. But at the end of the day, when the world's on fire around you and you might be about to die, the operator is probably going to be able to perform. Consistently. Moment to moment. Creatively.

The shooter is untested ground. They may rise to the occasion, but they’re still untested.

Learn From Both Camps

I have a lot of respect for the old crusty Delta operators. The young bucks may outshoot them faster and more accurately, but those Delta dudes—that's who I want beside me. They're going to fight smartly and creatively and consistently. The tried-and-tested person speaking from experience carries a lot of weight.

At the same time, let's not be snooty about what the competitive shooting community brings. I've borrowed a lot from them, and so I’m deeply indebted to both communities. I have a Special Operations background, and since becoming a civilian I've been learning as much as I can from the competitive shooting world on speed and accuracy, and I've made some real strides.

However, I still have a lot to learn from both camps, and I want you to as well.

So, don't elevate one and dismiss the other. Both are awesome. Both have something to teach. But if you measure them solely with a shot timer, you'll reach false conclusions. If you weigh only combat experience and dismiss everything else, you'll miss things too.

Context matters a lot. Be humble. Be a student.

Where This Leaves You

I teach classes all around the country, and I tell folks that I'm on a journey, that I haven't arrived. Some runs I knock it out of the park. Others I look back and think, man, I just sucked.

If you're really wanting to move forward, get to the level where you can join into force-on-force training and room-clearing courses. You can check out our catalog of classes on our website. Get the right training for your context.

Keep doing the flat range work. Get faster and more accurate. That’s super important, but remember, it's just hitting a heavy bag. You've got to constantly be looking for ways to ramp up the stress and the fear, especially once the skills are on autopilot.

Check out Warrior Poet Supply Co. for training resources that can help you take the next step.

Remember: Train Hard. Train Smart. And elevate your training to become a better protector.