Is this really Practice?

Actually Training/Practicing, or just plinking?

There’s a pervasive misunderstanding in the firearms community, particularly among newer shooters, that any time spent at the range equals “training.” This confusion leads to wasted reps, ingrained inefficiencies, and false confidence. 

Training: Instructor-Led Skill Acquisition

Training is a structured learning event conducted under the direct supervision of a qualified instructor. It involves the introduction, demonstration, diagnosis and correction of technique, and is built around progressive standards. True training does not occur in a vacuum, it’s externally guided, evaluated, and designed to install or refine core competencies.

In a legitimate training environment, you should expect:

• Real-time corrections from an experienced instructor

• Defined performance objective

• Drill progressions tailored to skill development

• Accountability through metrics (hit zones, timers, scoring)

• Diagnostic feedback based on what needs to improve, not just what looks good

If no one is coaching you, assessing your mechanics, or holding you to measurable standards, you are not training.

Practice: Skill Reinforcement Through Repetition

Practice is what follows training. It’s the shooter’s responsibility to take previously taught skills and refine them through structured repetition. Effective practice is deliberate, not recreational. It’s goal-oriented and demands the same standards applied during instruction, without the instructor present.

Quality practice includes:

•A clear objective for each session (e.g., draw efficiency, recoil control, precision at distance)

• Use of objective tools: shot timers, performance logs, scaled targets

• Repetition with purpose, not just round count

• Post-practice analysis/diagnosis and adjustment

Without guidance from prior training, most practice sessions turn into shooting. You can’t reinforce correct technique if you were never corrected to begin with.

Shooting: Casual or Recreational Firearm Use

Shooting is simply the act of firing a gun. There’s no structure, no performance metrics, no diagnosis, no intentional correction, just pressing the trigger and sending rounds downrange. It may be entertaining, but it does little to develop skill beyond basic familiarity with recoil and noise.

Examples include:

• Plinking

• Mag-dumps with no performance goal

• Static paper shooting without accountability

• Group outings with no defined purpose

This is what most people are doing when they say they’re “training” especially if they’re wearing plate carriers at an indoor range, burning through ammo with zero idea where their rounds are landing. No standards. No evaluation. No diagnosis and correction, just noise.

Why the Distinction Matters

Mislabeling casual shooting as “training” leads to a false sense of proficiency. It masks the gaps in skill and slows development. You can spend years “train train training” without ever improving if no one is guiding your technique or holding you accountable.

If you’ve never had your grip rebuilt, your draw efficiency assessed, or your visual processing measured, if no one has ever forced you to justify why you do something a certain way, you’re probably not trained, so much as you are experienced at shooting the way "you’ve always shot.”

Another way to sum this up, which you may hear in & out of this class, are the “3 P’s”.

• Purposeful - Going to the range with a purpose and/or plan
• Progression - Making the drills a little harder/or less slow to push your limits
• Perfection - Repeating correct technique perfectly to create a Neural Highway out of a Neural Pathway ( muscle memory).