Diagramming the Balance of Speed and Precision

We've been talking about the balance of speed and precision in our intuitive defensive shooting courses for almost two decades now in one way or another. Started out talking about the balance of speed and accuracy and it evolved the way we thought about accuracy as it really being a yes or no proposition. The variable is the amount of precision that's being demanded of you by any specific situation. And then of course the speed with which you shoot is determined by the amount of skill you need to apply. We've talked about it conceptually, we've tweaked the definitions, and we've got the explanations and the lectures down for our classes really well.

But a few years ago, I started using this diagram to help people understand what we mean by balancing speed and precision. And it's that balance of speed and precision that we talk about in all our books, articles, and classes. So I want you to think of a clear tube, maybe it's plexiglass, something like that. Clear piece of tubing shaped in a U. We're gonna seal it but we're gonna put some colored liquid in here.

That colored liquid is gonna fill a certain portion of it and we're gonna stick a little hose out here and we're gonna attach it to a little pump. And that pump is going to either increase or decrease the pressure on this side of our measurement device. And this is gonna be the precision side. This will be the speed side. And we're gonna go ahead and label this one through 10.

And we'll do the same thing over here, one through 10. I want you to think of a situation where you have a very high level of precision necessary. Maybe someone, a family member's been grabbed at a public space, there's a knife to his or her throat, you've got people screaming, moving all around, the bad guy may be trying to abduct that person and you're 15, 20 feet away. That's a relatively high level of skill required for the application to be able to take that headshot in that environment. So we're gonna put a lot of pressure, theoretically, in it right, pump a lot of pressure down.

And let's say it's a level eight shot with a 10 being your highest level of precision you can achieve. Well, when we go to level eight, that's gonna push this liquid down so that it comes up higher on this side and gets to a level two. In this case, this represents your balance of speed and precision. Eight points taken up on precision, you have two left over. In this model, we're gonna say that 10 is the perfect balance of speed and precision.

You only have 10 points to spend in any critical incident. Your precision level is demanded. The bad guy, the distance, the circumstances, the gun you have, how much practice you've had, whether it's one handed or two handed, all of these things, the lighting conditions, all of these things will affect how hard it's gonna be for you to get the shot. 10 is your maximum ability, 0.1 is basically just pulling the trigger relatively smoothly and pointing the gun in the general direction of the bad guy. That's the easiest shot.

That might be like a contact shot, someone who's just barely outside of two arms reach with your gun back against your body. So we've got this whole range of things you can do. You've gotta read the terrain, right? You've got a situation, it develops, and let's say that maybe it's an easier situation now. You get into a situation where it's a very low level of precision that's needed.

In fact, you're not even gonna use your sights, kinesthetic alignment, bad guy charging at you down a hallway. Your family is behind you, he starts at about, I don't know, 12 feet away and maybe by the time you've finished your string of fire, he's only eight feet away. So, that's a level three, very easy shot as he's running down the hallway towards you. Well, that means that we've created a vacuum here, we have to remove some of the pressure. So we're gonna turn our pump around, remove some of the pressure, create a vacuum.

That's gonna let this liquid come all the way up over here and it means on this side, it's gonna drop down to a level seven. So obviously we're gonna be shooting much faster because the level of precision that we need is much less. Now, that's pretty basic, that's pretty simple explanation. In classes, this resonates with most people. Real easy to draw on a white board here or on a target out on a range.

But let's think about what this really means. How else can this help us train? How else can this help us understand our capability? Well, what would it represent if you had a shot that was beyond your capability, right. What would a 13 be?

Well, maybe a 13 is there's bystanders moving around behind the bad guy, the bad guy is moving himself, he's got a knife and he's running from person to person stabbing or slashing at them, and he's inside of a crowd. You're on the other side of the room, it's not that far away, maybe 30 feet but because of all the movement and because of all the other people, it's beyond your capability to do. You're gonna have to change the circumstances before you can get this to a situation where you'll be able to shoot. Because even at your slowest, most precise level of shooting, the dynamic, chaotic nature of this environment isn't gonna let you take that shot. Another way to look at it is this.

Let's go back to our relatively low level of precision. Let's say that we had a precision level four situation but we tried to shoot it at a speed level seven. So now we've got a disconnect. We've got a precision requirement of four but we only have six points left over and you tried to shoot at a seven. Well, what happens if you try to shoot at an 11?

Well, here's what happens. If this is your high center chest box, you've got some misses. Those misses outside of that high center chest box are because you're shooting beyond your capability. You were overconfident or you were reckless. Either you didn't read the terrain right or you didn't apply the right amount of skill.

Well, let's go the other way. What if we had that very low level precision, maybe a three, and we tried to shoot it at a speed two. In other words, we're trying to control our breathing, we're really being super slow on that trigger press, we've got our eye closed, we've got one eye focused hard on that front sight, and we're taking a shot that might be a chest shot on a static target holding a gun about to shoot a friend of ours across the room, 10, 12 feet away. Relatively low level of precision but we're treating it like we're shooting a 50 yard golf ball shot, right. What's gonna happen?

Well, we're only spending five points so if we were to shoot a string of fire in that condition, well, what's our target gonna look like? All we needed to do was get those three or four shots into his chest but instead, we would be putting all of those shots, particularly in that practice environment, probably not a real environment, all into like a one inch group. Well, if we're shooting that slowly, we're under-confident or maybe we misunderstood the situation or maybe we were just nervous or hesitant. So we can use this balance of speed and precision diagram to help us think about what our performance was on the range. If we're reckless, did we misunderstand the need for precision, or did we misapply our skills?

If we have too tight a group, are we misunderstanding the need for precision or are we just being under-confident and not being assertive enough in the application of our skills? Hopefully this diagram makes sense to you. Hopefully it helps you think about the balance of speed and precision in a different way. I know a lot of our students have found it very helpful. Regardless, the balance of speed and precision is one of the most important fundamental concepts in understanding the application of defensive shooting skills, all the way from your highest level of ability to your fastest possible shooting.

Learn more all over at PersonalDefenseNetwork.com. We've got videos and articles going back over a decade talking about this concept.