Black Blade
11th May 2010, 11:57 PM
Moving In Gun Fights
We have been teaching force on force now for about five years. We began with a perspective and idea of what gunfights might actually be like and sought to replicate the dynamics of those events in the training realm. Thus far we have trained over a thousand students in these methods and have had several use their skills in gunfights with great success.
What we teach differs dramatically from the normal pistol school methodology of many institutions, public, or private sector. We teach a continuum of action determined by initiative, distance, and the characteristics of the battlefield. We base our actual live fire on what the force on force field shows us and not the other way around.
We discovered movement as a defense on December 7, 2001 when we crossed paths with three armed robbers. The lessons of that encounter, that if you move you avoid getting shot, but can still shoot your adversaries, formed a basis for the current study of today and led to the development of the gun fighting system you guys learn from us.
While the entire package is very dynamic and involves doing a number of different things in unison, such as drawing, aiming/aligning, shooting, displacing to avoid the gun muzzle, etc., we will confine the discussions here to movement alone.
To understand why movement works we need to understand the OODA loop described by Col. John Boyd. I would suggest a google search of his work and a thorough reading of the concept. Stick to stuff written by Boyd himself as many of his plagiarists missed many salient points.
As it applies to us, the adversary sees you, and determines you are an enemy. What has happened, in essence, is that he has taken a mental photograph of the battlefield. He then makes a decision based on that photo and then takes action. If that battlefield changes from what his photograph documented, then his subsequent plan is no longer valid and he must change it, formulating a new plan to adapt to the change.
What you do by moving is that you destroy his current mental photograph and subsequently the plans based on it. This is what Boyd refers to as Destruction and Creation (of paradigms). Now here is where it gets tricky. The faster you are able to destroy his current paradigm, the more success you will have. There are some various components to this.
One is the athletic component. Clearly you must be able to move. If you cannot move you cannot exploit this strategy. So there is a fitness component to it. I have not done as some other instructors have done and catered to the non-physical student by watering down my program. Rather than not teach it because most gun people are out of shape, I challenge gun people to get into good condition by showing what they can do.
Point shooting course Two is the study of angles. The battlefield will determine where you go by your position in relation to his/theirs, the existence of cover, and the location of exits. All things being equal, you will gain better results by moving to the sharp forward angles as may be identified by the 1:00 or 11:00 on a clock face. This seems counter intuitive to many as you are actually closing on the adversary, but it will yield very good results for you. In any case, fighters must shed the fearful mentality inculcated in them by liability-focused trainers that create the mentality to fear the adversary and run away from him.
While we understand the validity and advantage of the forward angular drive, we do not discount the other areas of movement such as lateral and rear angular as would be described as the 3:00 and 9:00 and the 5:00 and 7:00 respectively.
Why would we bother doing these when the forward lines give us such advantages? Because the exit, or a solid piece of cover may be within a step or two to those areas. Moreover, we cannot force a technique to function in all circumstances, we can only adapt to the given fight. Thus the ability to move to any and all angles with equal drive and speed is an essential thing.
How we move also has importance. We have seen students try to keep squared up on the adversary while moving off the line of fire with poor results. As well we have seen crab walking and all manner of stylized methods of movement. The idea is to move quickly off the adversary's aim, simultaneously draw the pistol, and shoot him before he can adapt. Any movement method that interferes with this requirement, or cannot be done equally well to the various angles "on the clock" is to be discarded as unworkable.
Characteristics of good movement include;
1). The alignment of the feet, knees, hips and shoulders in the desired direction of travel.
2). Dipping the upper body away from the gun muzzle by lowering the head and shoulders in the desired direction of travel. We train this in the early stages by actually touching the ground with the finger tips in the initial "drop off line".
3). Orientation of the feet so the body can move explosively in the desired direction. One mistake seen is the feet separating excessively and reducing the "loading" of the legs.
4). A plyometric loading of the legs during the "drop offline", and a subsequent explosion off that loading in the desired direction of travel.
5). The movement must be natural and easily learned, maintained in training, and implemented in all situations, to all angles, and with all weapons forcefully and quickly.
Those are the components that we have seen work best. As you see it is not solely based on "movement off a given point", but rather movement off a gun-eye line in multiple planes and to various angles.
Additionally, while this is going on, you access the pistol from concealment, draw it, and shoot the adversary...often before he can adjust. Using these concepts, students in our classes, not Delta commandos, but common citizens, are usually able to evade an already drawn and pointed handgun, draw their own pistol and "shoot" the adversary-gunman between two to four times before he can adjust to what they've done.
__________________
Gabe Suarez
We have been teaching force on force now for about five years. We began with a perspective and idea of what gunfights might actually be like and sought to replicate the dynamics of those events in the training realm. Thus far we have trained over a thousand students in these methods and have had several use their skills in gunfights with great success.
What we teach differs dramatically from the normal pistol school methodology of many institutions, public, or private sector. We teach a continuum of action determined by initiative, distance, and the characteristics of the battlefield. We base our actual live fire on what the force on force field shows us and not the other way around.
We discovered movement as a defense on December 7, 2001 when we crossed paths with three armed robbers. The lessons of that encounter, that if you move you avoid getting shot, but can still shoot your adversaries, formed a basis for the current study of today and led to the development of the gun fighting system you guys learn from us.
While the entire package is very dynamic and involves doing a number of different things in unison, such as drawing, aiming/aligning, shooting, displacing to avoid the gun muzzle, etc., we will confine the discussions here to movement alone.
To understand why movement works we need to understand the OODA loop described by Col. John Boyd. I would suggest a google search of his work and a thorough reading of the concept. Stick to stuff written by Boyd himself as many of his plagiarists missed many salient points.
As it applies to us, the adversary sees you, and determines you are an enemy. What has happened, in essence, is that he has taken a mental photograph of the battlefield. He then makes a decision based on that photo and then takes action. If that battlefield changes from what his photograph documented, then his subsequent plan is no longer valid and he must change it, formulating a new plan to adapt to the change.
What you do by moving is that you destroy his current mental photograph and subsequently the plans based on it. This is what Boyd refers to as Destruction and Creation (of paradigms). Now here is where it gets tricky. The faster you are able to destroy his current paradigm, the more success you will have. There are some various components to this.
One is the athletic component. Clearly you must be able to move. If you cannot move you cannot exploit this strategy. So there is a fitness component to it. I have not done as some other instructors have done and catered to the non-physical student by watering down my program. Rather than not teach it because most gun people are out of shape, I challenge gun people to get into good condition by showing what they can do.
Point shooting course Two is the study of angles. The battlefield will determine where you go by your position in relation to his/theirs, the existence of cover, and the location of exits. All things being equal, you will gain better results by moving to the sharp forward angles as may be identified by the 1:00 or 11:00 on a clock face. This seems counter intuitive to many as you are actually closing on the adversary, but it will yield very good results for you. In any case, fighters must shed the fearful mentality inculcated in them by liability-focused trainers that create the mentality to fear the adversary and run away from him.
While we understand the validity and advantage of the forward angular drive, we do not discount the other areas of movement such as lateral and rear angular as would be described as the 3:00 and 9:00 and the 5:00 and 7:00 respectively.
Why would we bother doing these when the forward lines give us such advantages? Because the exit, or a solid piece of cover may be within a step or two to those areas. Moreover, we cannot force a technique to function in all circumstances, we can only adapt to the given fight. Thus the ability to move to any and all angles with equal drive and speed is an essential thing.
How we move also has importance. We have seen students try to keep squared up on the adversary while moving off the line of fire with poor results. As well we have seen crab walking and all manner of stylized methods of movement. The idea is to move quickly off the adversary's aim, simultaneously draw the pistol, and shoot him before he can adapt. Any movement method that interferes with this requirement, or cannot be done equally well to the various angles "on the clock" is to be discarded as unworkable.
Characteristics of good movement include;
1). The alignment of the feet, knees, hips and shoulders in the desired direction of travel.
2). Dipping the upper body away from the gun muzzle by lowering the head and shoulders in the desired direction of travel. We train this in the early stages by actually touching the ground with the finger tips in the initial "drop off line".
3). Orientation of the feet so the body can move explosively in the desired direction. One mistake seen is the feet separating excessively and reducing the "loading" of the legs.
4). A plyometric loading of the legs during the "drop offline", and a subsequent explosion off that loading in the desired direction of travel.
5). The movement must be natural and easily learned, maintained in training, and implemented in all situations, to all angles, and with all weapons forcefully and quickly.
Those are the components that we have seen work best. As you see it is not solely based on "movement off a given point", but rather movement off a gun-eye line in multiple planes and to various angles.
Additionally, while this is going on, you access the pistol from concealment, draw it, and shoot the adversary...often before he can adjust. Using these concepts, students in our classes, not Delta commandos, but common citizens, are usually able to evade an already drawn and pointed handgun, draw their own pistol and "shoot" the adversary-gunman between two to four times before he can adjust to what they've done.
__________________
Gabe Suarez