Marksmanship Simplified

George Harris has spent his life working with firearms. He co-founded the SIG Sauer Academy in 1990 and was a coach and team member of the U. S. Army Reserve Marksmanship Program, retiring to create International Firearms Consultants. Marksmanship Simplified is his newly-released book on shooting, exploring the mechanics of hitting a target and making success attainable for both novice and experienced shooters.

George addresses the mental, visual and biomechanical factors that impact shot placement and offers numerous techniques to help shooters. Some of the great points in the book was the distinction between doctrine versus objective-based outcomes toward better learning. Doctrinebased training is most common and used in most institutional settings, particularly in law enforcement and military recruit training. Instruction is given in building blocks in a one-size-fits-all manner with little flexibility.

Training courses are pre-set to fit an inflexible time frame, everyone dutifully completes the same rote instruction and predetermined path with the goal of passing some minimalist, novice-level qualification test. Instruction is dropped on a group of new students, hopefully they retain a bit of it to perform well-enough during the rote exercises and pass their test. Most often, no form of progression is even considered, meaning most personnel never progress beyond this initial, recruit level.

Contrast this to an objective-based approach, in which a desired outcome is presented with just enough detail to get started. Rather than fixed blocks of instruction, the instructor acts more as a coach and mentor to tailor a path best suited to the needs of the individual. As progress is earned, concepts are added to build upon and students are encouraged to progress as far as they can rather than stopping at some predetermined, fixed stop point.

The book details a number of contrasting points to traditional doctrine-based training to objective-based approaches. The training approach is presented with a cohesive and comprehensive series of drills to build and evaluate skill. Examples include the Wall, Bullet Hole, Shoot-The-Shape, Walk Back, Reset, and Now Drills, among others. The drills are superb and get to the how of really learning to shoot better. An entire chapter is devoted to Diagnostics and Troubleshooting.

What’s more, the book includes information about how to coach others. Even if you use this just to improve your own skills, you’re acting as your own coach. Teaching yourself is similar to teaching others and there are plenty of examples and illustrations detailing how. Speaking of illustrations, the photography and print quality is excellent; this is on par with coffee table books in presentation. More important, there is consistent attention to detail, including the photos.

For example, all the student/instructor pictures demonstrated a student doing things right and the instructor in a position to teach and observe. I’ve had a few published articles where the editor used a stock photo that didn’t match my text. This book takes its content to heart. Marksmanship Simplified can be purchased from U. S. Concealed Carry Association online at Store.USConcealedCarry.com John M. Buol Jr. AmericanGunsmith.info