"The bottom line is a skilled shooter can shoot anything. Those who try to buy skill can not."

Then why sell training Mr. jljones?

How else do you think you get skill? Training. You are buying the software that you have to put the physical work into, not the hardware, and the software is the most important part.

The point of the thread is those who try to forgo the work, and buy their way into a skill set by buying a higher priced gadget

quote:

Originally posted by ACP1:
Then why sell training Mr. jljones?

Good question.

I can’t answer for him, but it’s true that when we expend money and time for training and practice, we’re attempting to “buy” skill just as much as the guy who upgrades his trigger or makes other modifications to a gun with that goal in mind.

The difference is of course that there’s a general assumption that training and practice will always improve our skills and therefore our performance—even though it may be no more true than upgrading from a Hi Point to a P210 because some training and practice is literally worse than useless.

But the original theme of this thread was about attempting to improve one’s skills through equipment alone, not about buying training.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:

quote:

Originally posted by ACP1:
Then why sell training Mr. jljones?

Good question.

I can’t answer for him, but it’s true that when we expend money and time for training and practice, we’re attempting to “buy” skill just as much as the guy who upgrades his trigger or makes other modifications to a gun with that goal in mind.

The difference is of course that there’s a general assumption that training and practice will always improve our skills and therefore our performance—even though it may be no more true than upgrading from a Hi Point to a P210 because some training and practice is literally worse than useless.

But the original theme of this thread was about attempting to improve one’s skills through equipment alone, not about buying training.

Either way, when you take training, you are buying a concept, not skill. If you were buying skill, you'd simply get the same results from watching a DVD of a shooting course, not taking a shooting course. In 2-3 days, you can grasp concepts, and how to train, but it is on you to train and master the skill. You can get better at a class, but unless you continue to train after the class, and burn in the concepts, you'll gather nothing.


A good test of this is to examine those that shoot stuff for a living, whether it be people or targets for trophies/money. If buying a more expensive Glock or going to a two, three or five day class were buying skill, they wouldn't waste all of that time, effort and money into dry firing two hours per day, six days per week. Or pinning the skill in by constantly training live fire for hours on end. Or adding four or five classes to the dry fire and live fire training they already do. They would simply go to a couple of classes and they would be good. Or just buy a $6,000 Glock instead of a $3,000 one. But, this isn't how it works. If that were the case the top level shooters would just buy more expensive stuff, and spend their time doing other things. Guess what? They have the same 24 hours in a day that the rest of us have. The same 24 hours a day that the ones complaining about family, and work getting in the way. The exact same 24 hours. Don't you think they'd rather spend their time doing stuff other than work? And, that isn't even bringing the physical aspect into shooting.

Some people go to classes with the intent of being "trained". You can go to classes and get concepts, but even in some of the organized practice classes you still can't get the repetitions to make something permanent. You can get close in a couple of classes, but even though they may be sold as finished product assignments, they really fill the bill as "how to", and that is the bulk of what the student gets out of it.

Bottom line, if this didn't work, if there were truly gifted people out there, there would be people that would not touch a gun between matches. Or operations. They would simply buy really expensive guns and go win the nationals. Or go to far away lands and kill smelly bearded men like a champion. But, the ones that do it for a living train hard and train a lot.

Yeah, and you are dead on. There is a lot of really bad stuff out there masquerading as training.

I guess all the folks who think it's 100% software and hardware is irrelevant are carrying Hi-points and WWB ammo. Anything else would be a waste of money and an attempt to buy skill...

When I was young I had great eyesight and reflexes. But no money.

Now I have money but poor eyesight and reflexes. Please humor me on my love of great firearms, even if I shoot worse than ever.