The measure of confidence

[rolsby]

Episode request!

How important is confidence?  Not only confidence in marksmanship but also on the street.

What are some other "soft skills" that are important for shooting?

[Matt G]

I will let the experts answer this question but for me, confidence is paramount. Confidence in your equipment, confidence in you skills, confidence in your judgment, and confidence in yourself all roll up and if you were ever to be put into a sensitive/stressful situation where you had to use lethal force, I believe would save you precious time.  And in an engagement that would possible last seconds, thats paramount.  Thats the reason we train, train, and train some more, IMO. 

Matt G

[Daeglan]

Well I know confidence on the street will often cause a criminal to move on to an easier target. Criminals size people up before they attack. Kinda like wolves pick out the week one in a herd. You don't want to be the weak one in the herd.

[flop-shank]

Well founded confidence is a life saver, so stick to your training. Delusions of granduer, however, will get you in trouble. Just look at the president. 

[Daeglan]

Well founded confidence is a life saver, so stick to your training. Delusions of granduer, however, will get you in trouble. Just look at the president. 

Hey delusions of granduer worked for Luke Skywalker...although I guess Obama had them too....

[rolsby]

How quickly we politicize and get off topic....  

The military and police academies have a good deal of time to teach skills and increase ability in those skills.  However, the consensus is that shooting is a perishable skill.  So for a civilian sheepdog who must sort through infrequent, and (generally) expensive training, can we agree that confidence is the next best thing?

How would you teach confidence?  Must it be given by someone else or can it be self-taught?

Is there value taking someone down a notch?  I feel some organizations do.  "Make all your mistakes in training" type mentality.  I have only seen this at the beginning, not as part of an in-service.

I'll see if I can find some in-service knife survival video I saw on VHS a long while ago.

[Chris]

I believe confidence comes through achievement. I think it was Babe Ruth who said "It ain't braggin' if you can do it". An individual who has attempted endeavors and succeeded in executing them properly will develop confidence in their ability to do so in the future. This is the basic premise of advanced military training. They don't train until they can get it right. They trained until they can't get it wrong.
I see this frequently in IDPA. A new shooter shows up apprehensive at first, but over time & repitition their skills improve, as does their confidence.
One has to be careful of false confidence... which can be acquired through poor training habits that may not reflect the reality of the situation being faced.
But, it's very difficult to do something well that you have never done before, or be confident that you could do it.
Chris Christian

[glock23cc]

+1 Chris
As I was able to secure more ammo and shoot more often I found my skills increasing rapidly. 
Shoot properly and consistently as often as possible to ingrain the proper skills.  Thats what worked for me at least.

[rolsby]

Apparently the video I wanted to post was deleted.  The video was essentially this: Joint Readiness Training Center, Fort Polk.  We give them their worst day(s) here so they are ready for what is going to happen there.  Essentially letting them fail in a "safe" ("non-deadly") environment would be better.  Basically, they go from one bad experience to the next.  I imagine it's a real confidence challenge.

Plus, I'm also reminded of Best Ranger Competition.  During one interview, the guy said (to paraphrase): These guys are used to being the best and winning.  It's hard to lose.

I was able to find the old school VHS showing "in service" training.  It was called "Surviving Edged Weapons" and shows a man sitting in a small room.  I can only guess the officers are told "suspicious person" and are investigating.  All are in full uniform, no pads.  Apparently, the man is trained martial artist with a small, concealed knife.  As soon the officers enter the room, or attempt to obtain ID, the man draws the knife and attacks.  It is meant to demonstrate the 21 ft. rule for the video.  However, all the officers (from different precincts) are taken completely by surprise.

Perhaps my original question should have been, does anyone use failure as much as they use success to train people?

[Chris]

Rolsby
Failure is useful if it clearly demonstrates where you screwed up. Failure for the sake of invoking failure is a poor training technique. If the individual (military, LEO, or civilian) is given a problem to solve... but without a solvable solution... you have just IMHO... wasted everybody's time. All you have done is told that individual that they are gonna die.
Any training should be geared to allowing the student to FIND THE WAY to achieve. Achievement builds confidence. If you've done it once, you can do it again. Training programs that do not provide a survivable solution are IMHO, useless.
The example you gave about martial artist with knife is an excellent example of not training properly. Smart money puts one LEO as the one who moves forward to engage/interrogate, while his partner maintains a cover position. Without this basic fact explained in advance the officers get screwed. Yup, they just learned how to die. Advance instruction would have allowed them to use two man technique to mitigate the damages.
I have seen this type of "negative" training in the past. The opperative theory behind it (at least as I underatnd it) is that the officers will learn from their mistakes. That only works if they know what their mistakes were before they made them.
Proper training before hand mitigates many mistakes.
As a ten-year military instructor (with some private contractor work tossed in during later years) I would ather start from the positive, and then review the negetives, so that they don't happen again.
Show them the right way first.... let them work with that... and then correct mistakes. Don't set them up with a negitive scenario from the start.
Chris Christian

[Daeglan]

Rolsby
Failure is useful if it clearly demonstrates where you screwed up. Failure for the sake of invoking failure is a poor training technique. If the individual (military, LEO, or civilian) is given a problem to solve... but without a solvable solution... you have just IMHO... wasted everybody's time. All you have done is told that individual that they are gonna die.
Any training should be geared to allowing the student to FIND THE WAY to achieve. Achievement builds confidence. If you've done it once, you can do it again. Training programs that do not provide a survivable solution are IMHO, useless.
The example you gave about martial artist with knife is an excellent example of not training properly. Smart money puts one LEO as the one who moves forward to engage/interrogate, while his partner maintains a cover position. Without this basic fact explained in advance the officers get screwed. Yup, they just learned how to die. Advance instruction would have allowed them to use two man technique to mitigate the damages.
I have seen this type of "negative" training in the past. The opperative theory behind it (at least as I underatnd it) is that the officers will learn from their mistakes. That only works if they know what their mistakes were before they made them.
Proper training before hand mitigates many mistakes.
As a ten-year military instructor (with some private contractor work tossed in during later years) I would ather start from the positive, and then review the negetives, so that they don't happen again.
Show them the right way first.... let them work with that... and then correct mistakes. Don't set them up with a negitive scenario from the start.
Chris Christian

Chris what about the Top Gun method. From what I understand The idea behind Top Gun was that in fighter combat if you survive 5 combat missions you usually do fine after that. So the thinking was to have those 5 combats happen among friends instead of with the enemy. As I understand it it has been a very successful method.
I guess that is kinda what IDPA does.

[Chris]

Daeglan,
I wasn't a fighter pilot. But I do know that the Navy Top Gun program was designed to teach advanced aerial dog fighting tactics. I also know that they didn't send those pilots up (in expensive aircraft) without some basic POSITIVE tactics. The pilots were then able to attempt to execute those tactics against our skilled pilots flying "enemy aircraft" (my understanding is that the Op For used the A-4 Skyhawk plane because it mimicked the capabilities of the MIG 15, 17 and 19 that our pilots would be flying against).
It was a "one on one" test... but not a "negative" exercise. The pilots were given basic tactics and had the opportunity to apply them against other skilled pilots. That's good. They always had a POSITIVE SOLUTION to the problem.
That's good training ( and kill rates in Vietnam showed it to be EXCELLENT training).
It is different from what I refer to as "negative training" where the student has no realistic solution to the problem and just dies in every exercise. That teaches nothing... other than how to die gloriously.
Man on man is good training.... but each man has to have the opportunity to win. Some "negative/failure" training programs don't provide that.

Chris Christian

[rolsby]

I've been looking for trainers who give folks the chance to succeed (as previously discussed) but ultimately show how bad a gun fight can be.  So far I've only found this.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/Vpkldtiq-BA&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/Vpkldtiq-BA&rel=0</a>

[pax]

How would you teach confidence?

Competence breeds confidence. That's what I was taught and what I believe.

Another thing that breeds confidence is having delusions of competence. But those delusions get in the way of real learning, and misplaced confidence can easily get you killed. Getting rid of delusions clears the way for real competence.

Unfortunately, students almost never come to an instructor for competence. They come to you for confidence. (Mas says that in one of his videos. The more experience I get as an instructor, the more clearly I see what he meant by it.) If your training methods cause your students to lose confidence in themselves, they will not come back to finish their training even if their lost confidence results from improved competence. They will not come back to learn more even if their lost confidence comes from a newly-accurate assessment of their own current skills, if that assessment is negative; instead they will simply quit. You have to build their confidence at every step of the way, or at least avoid tearing it down while you are replacing their delusions with the real thing. A little failure is a good thing for getting rid of delusions, but too much of it without a concomitant bit of confidence-building is a bad thing because once their eyes are opened to their own levels of incompetence, most students simply won't come back to become more competent. They'll quit because of the lost confidence.

So you encourage students to be the best they can be, and praise them for every little improvement, and challenge them to learn more while cramming as much possible learning into your time together, and pray that it will be enough if they're ever in the dark places.

And that's about all you can do.

pax