Marksmanship Simplified
Review of the book by George Harris.
Marksmanship Simplified
Video instruction series featuring George Harris
George Harris has spent his entire adult life working in the world of firearms. He co-founded the SIG Sauer Academy in 1990, heading it for 21 years, and was a coach and firing team member of the U.S. Army Reserve Marksmanship Program, retiring with 40 years of continuous military service before creating International Firearms Consultants, LLC . Among his many wins in various competition shooting includes earning Distinguished Rifleman and Distinguished Pistol Shot badges in both Service Rifle and Service Pistol. George has served as a subject matter expert involving firearms and related matters on television, radio, and in legal proceedings and has been the author of numerous owner’s, armorer, and training manuals, legal reports, and numerous published articles in the role of Contributing Editor to many national publications.
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, stressing the significance of muzzle management and trigger-finger discipline, and offers numerous techniques and drills to help shooters. While there are various ways to teach marksmanship, George explains why objective-based training is most effective and demonstrates how shooters in any discipline can embrace the proven methods in the book to become a more successful shooter.
Some of the points I especially liked about this book was the distinction made between doctrine versus objective-based outcomes toward better learning. Doctrine-based 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 from 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 Drill, Bullet Hole Drill, Shoot-The-Shape Drill, Walk Back Drill, Reset Drill, Now Drill, 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 the presentation. More important, there is consistent attention to detail, including the photos. For example, all the student/instructor pics 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. It's amazing what happens when someone who really knows the subject writes a book on it!
Copies can be had from the USCCA website:
George Harris SIG Sauer Academy teaching videos:
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