Dave Spaulding
During the 1950's and 60's American
manufacturing employed Ergonomic Engineers to conduct human motion studies.
What they were looking for was the best ways for humans to move as they built
America's products. It was before automation when assembly lines of humans
built products by hand, performing the same motion(s) thousands of times a day.
By looking for ways to eliminate unnecessary motion they speeded up the
manufacturing process and eliminated ergonomic waste.
My Grandfather
was involved in these studies and he told me what we now call "muscle
memory" was known as "familiar task transference" or the ability
to move without conscious thought. I have tried to incorporate the lessons
learned from these motion studies into my training programs. What was known as
"physiological efficiency" in the 1970's is now called
"biomechanical efficiency" but its basically the same thing and it
comes down to this...if you want to go fast, move less! Unfortunately, this
flies in the face of many of the tacti-cool looking techniques currently
taught...
I’m sure we’ve all seen the videos of instructors shooting an
AR-15 extremely fast at three stationary targets in the 1,2,3,4,5 sequence, and
it looks pretty impressive. As cool as it looks and sounds, I find a few
issues with some of the videos I’ve seen in the past. The first issue
being, the drill has everything to do with speed and not accuracy. Speed
can be a good thing at times, but if you’re shooting a million rounds a second
and don’t hit what you intend to hit, what is the point. The second falls
in line with the first issue. Just simply hitting the IPSC target should
not satisfy the shooter. Sure, you did it extremely fast, but the hits on paper
were nothing more than a “flesh wound”.
Having both speed and accuracy is a great tool to have in your
toolbox, but it takes lots of time and practice. The good thing is
that you don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on ammo! Getting a skill
like this comes with hours and hours of DRY FIRE! Dry fire isn’t the
coolest thing in the world, and nothing to write home about, but it does and
will pay off in the long run, I guarantee it. Dry fire does a lot for us, one
of the most beneficial things that I have come to find is muscle memory.
If you’re ever on the range and you find yourself “looking for the
sights”, you need to dry fire. What I mean by “looking for the sights” is
taking that split second or half a second to adjust your head, move your head
to align the sights, etc. Once you raise your rifle, pistol or shotgun,
your sights should “naturally” fall into place at what you intend on shooting
with no searching whatsoever.
Take the time with all of your weapon systems and dry fire them
starting from a no threat stance. Place a target 10 feet away on a door or
wall. Once you raise the weapon, take note of where the sights lay, without
having to adjust your head, the weapon and sights should come to you, not the
other way around. Continuing the repetition correctly until it is burned
into your mind and becomes muscle memory is the end goal. Once it is
burned into your mind, continue to do it until your brain explodes! It is
a perishable skill.
Nick Irving is a former U.S. Army Ranger with multiple combat deployments to both Iraq and Afghanistan. During his service within the 75th Ranger Regiment, Nicholas served as an Assaulter, Heavy and Light Machine Gunner, and Designated Marksman.
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