When I finally began to compete in action shooting sports, after literally over a decade of urging from some fellow soldiers and policemen who competed, I did so with a certain unconscious arrogance. After all, when I shot with my peers in Special Forces, I was always among the best, the fastest, the most accurate. Apart from some tricks of gamesmanship, how much of a disadvantage could I possibly have? Don’t get me wrong, I knew how good the legends of practical shooting were, thanks to their exposure in the special operations community. But I didn’t understand how good the weekend warriors at club matches could be.

At first, at least part of my preconceived notion seemed correct. My initial classification was A, and I made Master very quickly. I was able to do this because of all the work I had put in on “stand and shoot” drills through the years. But I was regularly losing at matches to competitors classified below me. To add insult to injury, I very quickly hit a plateau. For well over a year my performance didn’t improve. I realized that the very things that enabled me to come in to competition at a relatively high level were now impeding my progress. I began a long laborious process, still not complete, of reconstructing my shooting from the most basic elements up. Changing grip, stance, and weapons manipulations to make them more efficient.

I also began to study competition style movement so that I could improve my performance in matches. At first, I did this purely for the sport, and my competitive nature. I didn’t think this would help me on the tactical side of shooting at all. How could it? USPSA matches are hardly tactical, and I had been training and operating in that other world for decades. What I found to actually be true was a shock to me. I found a huge carryover from my training for and competing in matches to my CQB. A carryover that was unidirectional. No amount of CQB would make match performance better, but shooting in and training for USPSA movement definitely helped my CQB.

The reason was efficiency. Training for an athletic event where winning or losing comes down to hundredths of a second means that you examine every nuance of movement in fine detail with an eye to maximizing efficiency. And the need to shoot accurately and quickly means that frenetic or hasty body movement is counterproductive since it interferes with the desired end result of shooting accurately as soon as possible. That is the key to USPSA movement. Raw speed matters, but not as much as efficiency and control. You have to be in place to shoot accurately sooner, not faster.

And that is the lesson learned. Normal CQB movement is not as fast as competitive, with some situational exceptions, but if you learn to maximize efficiency you can greatly improve your ability to prevail. Be in the right position, addressing your responsibilities, sooner not faster. Efficiently. Study movement and position for CQB so that lag times are minimized and wasted movement is eliminated. If you are ready to engage a threat effectively sooner than he is ready to engage you, without hasty or frantic movements, then you maximize your effectiveness. This concept fundamentally changed my understanding of tactical movement forever. Sooner not faster.