What's up guys? This is Chris here, and today we're going to be talking about competition shooting and how that might help you with self-defense shooting. Now we're going to go over the pros. We're going to go over the cons and maybe a couple of things you don't know about both, but I've done a bunch of variations of competition shooting, and each one of those can help you out with different aspects of self-defense, and there's a lot of advantages to going to a competition shoot that you might not realize, especially if you're only in it for self-defense. Maybe you're a law enforcement officer or military personnel and you think competition shooting is just for douche bags or nerds or whatever. I've heard it a lot, but the reality is a lot of those guys come to competition shoots and they learn a lot of valuable skills that they wouldn't have otherwise because it focuses on a lot of specific tasks that maybe self-defense shooting ignores.
Now, it certainly isn't the end all be all, and it certainly does have some cons which we will talk about toward the end of the video, but the first part is going to be the pros. Now, certainly one of the first things that you can learn from competition shooting is stress management. Now, if you're a law enforcement officer or a military guy, you already have way more of that than you're going to get at a competition shoot. Most of the time. I've actually seen a lot of law enforcement guys fumble magazines get disqualified and have all the same issues that regular civilians have, so you can certainly learn some things depending on the person, but if you've been deployed to Afghanistan, obviously your stress is generally under control. However, most people who shoot on a local range or they shoot in an indoor range, or maybe they own a gun but they've never actually practiced with it when they go to a competition, there is an enormous amount of stress that is induced in the action that you think you're good at and it will usually expose a lot of weak points in your game that you didn't know you had before.
Whether that be in your equipment, your maintenance or your skills or your ability to perform under stress,
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It's harder to do under pressure, it's all of those things will be on the test When you go to a competition shoot and you will have to do those things under stress, you'll have to move, you'll have to reload, and you'll have to do a lot of gun handling and extreme precision shooting at speed in many cases, especially for Ipsy or U-S-P-S-A or IDPA, all of these skills are going to be rolled into one stage. It's all going to be very quick, very stressful, but there will be lots of people there to assist you and lots of people that will want you to succeed. Competition shooting is not like your average sport, it's more of a team sport than an individual sport. When you go there, especially when you're new, we are all trying to get you to the end of the stage, have fun and be safe because we all want new gun owners and new members of the competition community.
So trust me, don't get too concerned about the stress because people will help you deal with it, but it is going to be something that will help you succeed in a self-defense scenario because stress has a tendency to overwhelm people and stress management and your ability to perform tasks under stress is extremely important in everything in life, but especially in self-defense. And if you can't handle a competition shoot, you are not going to be able to handle an actual situation in real life. People don't rise to the occasion, they simply rise to the level of their training and you will train to a limit, you'll go into a competition and it will expose the things you need to train more. For example, maybe there's something in particular that you are doing in practice that you don't realize is an issue, like you keep your trigger finger in the trigger guard while you're shooting at your local range and nobody catches you When you're by yourself in the first competition you go to, you drop, put your trigger finger in the trigger guard before you have your sights on target, you immediately get disqualified and you have to get embarrassed in front of a bunch of people to learn that valuable lesson.
Now, that lesson is valuable because somewhere down the road you might shoot yourself in the dick or the knee or the foot, or you might shoot the ground inside a indoor shooting range and get kicked out of there forever and you learn a valuable lesson in your first match. That is a very common one that I see people do trigger discipline inside the trigger guard, especially when they're moving in A-U-S-P-S-A match. You have to move all over the place and it will teach you to keep that finger up on the frame of that gun if you don't want your competition day to end very quickly. A lot of other things people do are muzzling people. One of the best things you can learn in competition shooting is muzzle awareness and muzzle discipline. Being able to have multiple guns on you in some cases in a two gun or three gun match and still keep complete muzzle discipline with 50 other people around you is certainly a skill that is very useful in real life.
If you had to engage somebody in a mall or in a public space, your ability to not sweep those people and engage that perpetrator is a valuable skill just in life in general in a hunting scenario or just using guns with friends. You definitely don't want to be muzzle sweeping anybody, and again, in a competition you are alerted immediately by a dq. Another thing that you might not know how to do is reload correctly. A lot of times we do a lot of reloads on a static range and don't realize that in real life you're probably going to have to be doing that while you are crouch, ducking or moving, and that changes the dynamics of things and generally slow is fast, works well in those situations. One of the most embarrassing time I've ever had in a competition shoot was I actually took my buddies to their first shoot and I was supposed to be the expert and in one stage I was trying to reload my Glock mag into my JP five, which I don't practice.
I do a lot of reloads on rifles, but on PCCs I don't practice that, and the magazine well was so small I just flubbed it and threw it into a pile of barrels and there it was for over a minute looking for the only mag I had because the second mistake I made stacking mistakes is that I didn't have a spare glock mag on my belt. I only had 2011 mags for my pistol and Glock mags for my car beam, so I had to look for that thing in front of a crowd of people for a good long while and that'll teach you to practice some reloads. Now, another thing competition shooting can teach you is that you are either too slow or too accurate, and usually it's one of the two. In my case, I was more accurate than fast and I needed to speed things up.
In a lot of people's case, they're too fast and not accurate enough and the target never lies. Neither does the timer or the score sheet at the end of the match, and that is a good judge of where you need to improve. You need to speed things up and you need to start working with a timer and you need to do a lot more transitions or whatever it might be. It's always good to be good at stuff, but you definitely need to work on your weaknesses. Now, another thing that competition shooting teaches you is drawing from a holster and drawing from a holster quickly and safely. One of the biggest things that you can be good at in a self-defense scenario is getting the gun out in the first place and at many indoor ranges or even outdoor ranges, they don't allow draws, so you can do a couple of dry fire draws, but it's nothing like the real thing, and if you go to an Ipsy IDP or U-S-P-S-A match, you can actually wear your carry gun in the way that you carry it for the most part, U-S-P-S-A.
You can appendix carry now like I carry and you can run your carry gun in a very stressful live setting and see how you do. Now, another thing that competition shooting can teach you is really good gun handling. There isn't a good competition shooter that isn't good at gun handling because that's the majority of what you do. You do draws, you do reloads, you do malfunction clearing drills, you do more reloads, you do more draws over and over and over again until it's second nature because you're going to have to not focus on that and you're going to have to focus on stage planning and actually hitting the targets in the order that you need to in order to be the fastest possible shooter you can. In order to do that, those skills have to be second nature and focus on the situation just like real life.
Now while we're on the topic, critical thinking decision-making and stage planning is another big part of self-defense. Knowing when to do something and knowing how in what order to do something is extremely important and when you go to U-S-P-S-A match or an IDPA match or anything like that, the stage is just going to be there for you to do as you wish and you can copy people and that's what I would suggest you do right when you start. If you go to your first match, I would definitely find a guy that has M or GM next to him and I would just do what he does if you can to start off, but eventually you're going to have to play to your own strengths and run the stage the way you see it, and that will allow your world to open up a little bit and work on that critical thinking that you will definitely need because every self-defense situation you will ever be in is going to be unique to you and the area that you are in and the person you are dealing with and that critical thinking and stage planning will come in handy.
Now, the next thing that you're going to get is communication, and that is something almost nobody does when they practice with a firearm, and that's something that you are almost always going to need in a self-defense situation. Communication is super important, especially with other people that you might be working with or getting out of the way and in a stage you are going to have to communicate with people, you're going to have to make sure people are out of your way and you're ready to go on the stage. You're going to have to use all that gun handling and gun safety and critical thinking, and along with that you're going to have to communicate under stress, which is a good skill to have and it's a good, easy, safe way to learn all these things. That's another really important thing is that you can fail 10 stages and still walk away.
If you fail one self-defense encounter, you may not. Now, another thing is joining a community of like-minded individuals is always helpful. Let's say you have a bunch of questions on certain firearms techniques or maybe how to strip and clean your gun. Well, there will be somebody at a match that will know how to do that. They're all gun nerds and they're all in it for the two way community and most of those guys are very open and nice and they will answer all your questions. You can have long awesome conversations with them about anything that you want along with that you can find like-minded people you might be able to have lasting relationships with like I have. That's just a cool thing to do to find people that are also very good at your favorite hobby is pretty sweet. I want to give a shout out to a person that has helped me out a lot with my competition shooting and that's going to be Tim Fisher.
He's a masterclass shooter out of Iowa. He has given me an enormous amount of self-defense and competition shooting advice and I appreciate that along with my boy Elliot, who is also excellent, and then my boy Elliot who runs Mr. Guns and Waterloo. He has a lot of matches there that are very cool. We've done two gun matches, night matches and it's allowed me to work on a lot of things that I couldn't have otherwise, so it's pretty cool to be a part of a community that you like. Now, obviously working through all this stuff, you're going to get an enormous amount of stress management like we talked about, and one of the benefits of managing stress is going to be confidence in your abilities, confidence in yourself and confidence in your gear. You'll just have a better peace of mind knowing that all your stuff works instead of hoping it works and that's nice to have.
Now, it's not all sunshines and rainbows like we always talk about. There certainly are some cons to competition shooting, don't get me wrong, but I feel the pros certainly outweigh the cons, just throwing that out there ahead of time. Now, some of the cons are obviously it's not the end all be all. It doesn't include grappling, it doesn't include diffusing the situation. It doesn't include avoidance and it doesn't include a lot of other things that you might have in self-defense. However, it does work on some of those things and then you can work on other things like grappling or striking in different classes. It certainly doesn't simulate the stress levels of a real fight or a real gunfight or anything like that, but it will get you much closer than being on a flat range just shooting by yourself with no timer and no stress.
It can also build bad habits if you're not careful. There certainly are things you will do in a match that you wouldn't do in self-defense. Now, one of those things can certainly be shooting stance. You see a lot of weird shooting stances depending on your competition shooting environment, like if you're at Bullseye for example, you're going to see probably unrealistic self-defense stances. Now, if you're in U-S-P-S-A or something like that, generally you have to be very low center of gravity is very good. You're a little bit lean forward and that's usually pretty good for an actual fight as well, so it does depend a little bit on what competition you're doing because if it involves movement and a little bit of activity and physical endurance, it's probably a good thing. Now, another con, and this is a big con, is it has a tendency to be expensive but only expensive if you want to win, and don't worry if you're going to your first match, you're not going to win.
No one does. You're not going to be able to beat Michael your first game and you're not going to be able to beat any of those grand masters the first time you go out. No matter how many times you practice, you're not going to beat Tarn Butler. It's not going to happen. That being said, you are going to learn an awful lot and that takes a lot of stress off because you don't need to worry about winning. You can literally go there with your carry gun, a couple of spare magazines, ask a bunch of questions, shoot your first match and feel good that you actually achieve something and that will take the stress off of winning and eventually you can work on that, but the con of expensive is true if you are trying to win. If you are trying to win, you are going to have to pay some money.
At the very least, you're going to have to have somewhere between a $702,000 gun. You're going to have to have six to 10 magazines. You're going to have to have a lot of ammunition and certainly a lot of trigger time to beat some of those guys that are really good and there's no way to slice it. You're going to have to spend money on ammo just the way it is. Again, though, that is a con, but it's also a pro because you get more training time in and you get more reps, and that's a good thing too. Now, that's about all the cons I can think of, but I'm sure there are a lot more, and I'm sure there'll be a few in the comment section. If you could think of negatives of competition shooting, let me know in the comment section below. I don't think they are as serious as a lot of people say, especially in the tactical community.
There has a tendency in this firearms community to have clicks and a lot of those clicks don't agree with each other even though we're all working on the same thing, and I think it's amusing a lot of times when I see tactical guys shit on the competition guys or competition guys shit. On the tactical guys, I do believe we should always get along and I do believe there are certainly skills you can learn from everything if you are trying to learn how to shoot accurately and quickly. In my opinion, there are no better people to learn from than competition shooters. There's no Navy seal alive that can shoot faster than Max Michel or Jerry Mitchell. That being said, if you are trying to learn tactics, if you are trying to learn teamwork, if you're trying to learn communication, if you are trying to learn strategy, a tactical class is a great way to go.
If you were trying to learn martial arts skills, a martial arts class is a great way to go. I recommend doing some grappling and doing some striking involved with your competition shooting because in most cases, in self-defense, a gun is not required. As a matter of fact, you can get yourself arrested by using one when it wasn't required, so I would definitely recommend some hands-on skills, and I definitely would recommend some tactical skills to learn the tactics and strategy of self-defense, and then I would also recommend at least a couple of matches. That way you can work on some stress management, some gun handling, some teamwork, communication, all that stuff, and you can have some fun as well. The nice thing about all this stuff is it's fun to do so get out and enjoy yourself and be a good steward of concealed carry and self-defense. Please like and subscribe. Please supply Oklahoma shelters and our Air River cycle. I'll check you later.
Credit: Honest Outlaw