Like I previously mentioned, last year I met my goal of earning a B-class classification in the USPSA Carry Optics division. I suspect it would have been an easier goal to meet if I was younger or in better shape and then perhaps not as a big deal as it was for me, but that is neither here nor there. The thing is I met my goal and it was time to set a new one. As I saw it, I had two choices. One was to aim for and get after a higher classification in the same division. The other was to try my hand at another B classification in a different division. The former would have meant sticking with the same gun, the CZ Shadow 2 which I adore, or something similar. The latter offered the opportunity of working with something different. I went with the latter because it would give me the chance to get some more trigger time on another gun that I want to get to know better, the Staccato P. At any rate, after making some adjustments to the competition rig and spending about a week dry firing with the set up, I took it for a spin at a local match which was a special “all classifier” match to figure out what my starting point was. That match experience was educational which got me thinking about automaticity, unconscious competence, and the Dunning-Kruger effect again. I think those thoughts are worth sharing if for nothing more than getting other folks thinking and talking about it while searching for better and deeper understanding of those topics.
To preface, this is just an exploration of those topics. Nothing more. Nothing less. I’m not making any claims of stumbling into some marvelous discovery regarding pistol marksmanship. I am simply sharing my observations and my thoughts as I sort through them. Take it for what it’s worth and don’t hesitate to discard it as it may or may not be of any value.
Those of you who are familiar with USPSA classifiers may want to skip the next paragraph or two. For the rest, here is a bit more context.
USPSA classifiers are prescribed stages with a detailed precise design and specific characteristics including, but not limited to, scoring method, start position, and procedure. Since these stages are run and scored virtually identically every single time and the scores are aggregated into the organizations match results database, they can be used as a rubric to objectively measure an individual’s performance against the best classifier performances in the same division. This forms the basis of USPSA’s classification system where a competitor’s classification is determined by the rolling average of classifier stage performance. More specifically, the classification is determined by the best six of the previous eight, or the best four of the first six, classifiers. An “all classifier” match is nothing more than a match where all the stages are classifiers.
All of the approved USPSA classifiers can be viewed here: https://uspsa.org/classifiers
My experience at the local match wasn’t novel. In fact, I’d argue it was predictable. To an extent, it was expected. I was going to make mistakes. These mistakes were going to come from my lack of familiarity with the Staccato P I planned on shooting in the Limited Optics division. I knew this because I experienced something similar early in my competitive career (assuming I can even call it a career) when I decided to shoot a 1911, that I was essentially unfamiliar with, in an IDPA match almost five years ago instead of the Sig P229 I had been shooting for a few months. The thing I remember most vividly is how the manual thumb safety tripped me up. Since I knew this, I spent the week prior to the match working on drawing and actuating the manual safety on the Staccato in dry fire practice. I was determined not to let the manual safety trip me up.
Guess what? The week of dry fire wasn’t enough. I still got tripped up and not just by the manual safety. I fumbled reloads. I struggled to get consistent recoil recovery. My performance on the first two or three stages was far worse than I expected. While I can attribute some of that to differences between the Shadow 2 and the Staccato, the thing that really surprised me was how much automaticity got in the way.
Automaticity? What is automaticity anyway? I’ll let you Google that. There are a number of terms that are used pretty much interchangeably by shooters to describe the things that allow us to put certain things on autopilot. These terms include automaticity, unconscious competence, muscle memory, and myelination among others. There are differences between them as I understand it, but that’s not the focus here. For our purposes here, I am focused on how surprised I was by things that went into autopilot that I hadn’t intended to go into autopilot that ended up getting in the way of me shooting the stage.
Let’s take the first stage for instance. It was a two string stage. The first string consisted of drawing the pistol, putting three hits on a tuxedo target, performing a reload, and putting three strong hand only hits on another target that was partially covered by a no shoot. The second string consisted of drawing the pistol, putting three hits on an open target, performing a reload, and re-engaging the same target with three more hits weak hand only. I did the usual visualization I normally do and placed an emphasis on actuating the manual safety after drawing the pistol since I didn’t want to get foiled by the safety. The first string started and I fumbled the reload. I struggled to break my grip sufficiently to actuate the magazine release button with my strong hand. I made a mental note to correct that on the second string before starting it. The second string started and I forgot to actuate the safety which flustered me and I ended up fumbling the second reload anyway.
What happened? I failed to visualize the reload in sufficient detail. It didn’t help that I didn’t spend any time practicing reloads with the Staccato in dry fire practice because I was consumed by actuating the thumb safety. So when it came time to reload, I simply reloaded and my strong hand automatically moved to actuate the magazine release button exactly as it would if it were holding the Shadow 2. My thumb literally pressed into the grip factions of an inch next to where the magazine button actually was. This reminded me of those times that I’m in a rental car and I go to put into gear by reaching for the lever behind the steering wheel rather than the control that’s in the center console.
The second mistake was the mental correction I made between strings. The mental note was “don’t mess up the reload”. That note kept repeating over and over in my head until I couldn’t get the gun to go bang after the go signal. Then I did what I told myself not to do when it was time to reload. I did the same familiar Shadow 2 reload motion. Things may have gone better if the mental correction was more specific and phrased in a way that detailed what I needed to do instead of what I shouldn’t do, but even then the manual safety would have tripped me up.
Stages got better as the match progressed. I even ended up with a few classifier performances that were flirting with B class scores. I got there by making adjustments to other parts of my game. I put more conscious effort into my stage planning and visualization. Every change I got, I stepped over to the safe table and did a few correct dry repetitions of the gun handling motions that were giving me trouble. I also took note of the things I would need to work on in future practice sessions.
So now that we know what happened, the next most glaring question in my opinion is: why did it happen? The simple answer is: lack of familiarity. Not just with the pistol operation and specific manipulations, but also with using that pistol and those manipulations in a USPSA Limited Optics context. Add on a bit of match pressure, a dash of classifier pressure, and dab of peer pressure, the result is a poor match performance and a learning experience.
Peeling off a layer of that onion brings me back to the Dunning-Kruger effect, which I will refer to as the DK effect for short from here on out. I’ve covered the DK effect in some detail many moons ago so I won’t get deep into what it is here, but we can summarize it as the cognitive bias in which incompetent folks tend to consider themselves as skilled. It’s the source of a false sense of confidence that folks tend to have when they know just enough of something to think they know about it when in reality they are unaware that there are things about it that they don’t know. In other words, it’s confidence that stems from unconscious incompetence.
The funny thing about the DK effect is that it is often applied, or arguably misapplied, in broad strokes when it’s usually more applicable in very specific contexts. I would also argue that gauging where one is along the DK effect spectrum is more difficult to speculate about when considering a combination of specific contexts. This might seem a little esoteric and I suppose it is, but bear with me for a bit longer. In a broad context, I think it’s safe for me to assess that I have a fair bit of expertise with practical pistol marksmanship. I wouldn’t say I’m a master, but wouldn’t say I’m an amateur either. I’d also say the same thing in regards to competitive USPSA pistol shooting. Now if I were to split that into division specific contexts, I would say that I’m better skilled in Carry Optics than I am in Limited Optics. I would say the same thing in regards to my skill level with the Shadow 2 in comparison to my skill with the Staccato and their respective platforms (DA/SA vs 2011 SAO). Things get really murky when I consider where I am at when it comes to dry fire with a 2011 SAO pistol in preparation for a USPSA match or when it comes to stage visualization with similar constraints. As a result, the more I think critically about why automaticity got in my way the more I’m convinced that it is because I was overconfident about very specific things that I didn’t know what I didn’t know.
Don’t worry if this seems confusing. I’m still sorting through it myself.
Another related thing that I’ve been thinking about comes from the fact that pistol marksmanship is a perishable skill. Movement through the stages of competence isn’t unidirectional. I suspect that confidence doesn’t diminish at the same rate that a perishable skill does. This suspicion is based on what I have experienced when I focus on developing skills with a specific pistol for a specific context in lieu of maintaining skills with another pistol for another context. For example, there were times I performed worse than I expected in a USPSA match with the Shadow 2 after having worked with the VP9 for extended periods of time in preparation for passing a qualification needed for an instructor certification. Another example was how confident I felt going into a defensive pistol oriented pistol course with the VP9 only finding myself struggling with it on the first day because I had spent far more time working the Shadow 2 for a major match that took place only weeks before the course.
I don’t know if this is a bad thing or a huge problem, since achieving prior proficiency is easier to do than achieving a level of proficiency not previously attained. My experience has been that the more times one develops competence in closely related contexts the easier it is to become conscious of incompetence and achieve competence in a related context. It doesn’t take much effort or a lot of time to workout the kinks, but kinks do form and we may not be aware of them. I suppose it’s just something to be aware of.
All in all, automaticity is good. It’s also a requirement in order to push performance to the limit of human performance. I won’t deny or argue any of that. I currently think it’s worth being aware that it can sometimes get in the way when one is making changes. In my experience, it manifests itself as a brief brain fart that one has to work through. The cost of that brain fart depends on the context it occurs in and whatever is at stake at that moment. Therefore making voluntary changes when the stakes are high is probably not the best time to make changes. Again, take that for whatever it’s worth as it’s nothing more than observations I made so far as I’ve decided to make the change from Carry Optics with the Shadow 2 to Limited Optics with the Staccato P.