What is good shooting training?

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"How can you recognize good shooting training?" This question was asked by an audience member during a lecture at the Helmut Schmidt University of the Bundeswehr in Hamburg. This post is an attempt at an answer by Henning Hoffmann, shooting instructor with his AKADEMIE 0/500 and author of "Feuerkampf und Taktik."

If you bend a piece of paper and create a fold in it, that fold will always be visible. It will never go away. Not through counterfolding and not through ironing. The responsibility of a shooting instructor is to make that fold in the right place for his students right at the first training session. What you learn on the first day of shooting training is the most important: safety training, stress-resistant handling, and stable foundations for shooting technique. From the fold on the first day of training, further folds create a three-dimensional object up to the fully trained weapon user.

Safety Training

Good shooting training is primarily recognized by its adherence to Jeff Cooper's 4 safety rules. It is not enough to know these rules and be able to recite them. The four safety rules must also be lived by. These safety rules are like fundamental rights: they apply always, everywhere, and for everyone. The safety protocol should take into account the fact that according to safety rule #1, all weapons are always loaded. In particular, instructors with a (shooting) sports background often follow a safety protocol where every weapon is unloaded. A fatal mistake. Shooting accidents are inevitable.

Conceptual Demand

Good shooting training should also be generic and enable a systematic development of the shooter's skills. Without contradicting itself in weapon handling, shooting technique, and tactics. It is said that the training concept should be simple, independent, coherent, doctrinal-free, and robust. Good shooting training is therefore neither complex nor complicated. It can be explained to every participant with a pen, paper, and a few lines. The Triangle of Shooting Training, for example, as developed in Switzerland, is a way to depict a complete concept. The pilot issue of Waffenkultur from September 2011 provides a detailed explanation of the structure of this triangle.

Basic Skills and Shooting Technique

The four basic shooting skills, along with safety training and conceptual demand, are another fundamental building block of good shooting training. Sight picture, aiming point, trigger control, and follow-through should be applied with every shot, regardless of the environment or weapon system. Basic skills enable hitting the target. A rifle course should also include technical elements, such as using reference points between the shooter and the weapon. In addition, standard shooting positions such as kneeling and prone should be discussed and practiced in such detail that each participant is able to establish a stable shooting platform without any aids, such as bipods or sandbags. In short: the participant is enabled to hit the target, to make the weapon system function, and to keep it functioning. Loading, unloading, and malfunction clearing fall under the category of handling. Good shooting training relies on a modular system in which as many weapon manipulations as possible can be performed with the same or a very similar movement sequence. Also, teaching a method for efficiently zeroing a long gun falls under the "handling" category and should be part of good shooting training.

The Instructor

In addition to the course content, the instructor should also be questioned. Who has the instructor trained with? What references does he have? What does he teach? Where was he trained as an instructor? An instructor must be able to answer these questions.

If the response is only surprised looks or the dismissive statement: "It doesn't matter. It's all about hitting the target," then it would be advisable to refrain from attending the course. If the instructor has no other references than a few won shooting sports competitions, then there is not much to be said for a universally applicable system of weapon handling. At most, specific competition tips can be expected, which should be of no relevance to the majority of end users. "He was in a special forces unit!" mainly means that he can run long distances with a heavy backpack and is relatively insensitive to pain, cold, and hunger. But it says nothing about his shooting skills. Certainly not about his abilities as a shooting instructor. Former membership in Special Forces Unit XYZ is no guarantee of good shooting training. This personnel usually lack references or individual further training measures. Moreover, shooting in special forces is basic and sometimes not even a directly mission-relevant skill. Members of special forces have other important things to train: such as languages, communication, medic, tactics, night operations, and increasingly the role of a risk manager or adviser.

References and Further Education

References from course participants are a good indication but not the be-all and end-all. What references does the instructor receive from other instructors? Does he have any? Personal development must be a top priority for every instructor. Visits to other training institutions should be done regularly. This means at least twice a year. A course participant should not hesitate to ask about this information as well. Being a shooting instructor is not a goal, but a journey.

The contribution by Henning Hoffmann was first published in WAFFENKULTUR 12/2013. The open-source magazine for weapon users can be downloaded HERE or read online. Henning Hoffmann himself has been featured on SPARTANAT in an interview: HERE for reference. Also, please note his course offerings below (click to enlarge):