'Serious sport is war minus the shooting." - George Orwell

As of the time I write this, I just finished shooting IDPA nationals. It was a fun and challenging match with a great squad, many of whom I’ve shot major matches with before. I shot and moved well, but absolutely destroyed my placement by incurring procedural errors. My friend Caleb Giddings and I were talking about this immediately following the match, as well as on an episode of my podcast filmed a few days after we shot.

This conversation crystalized a thought I’ve been having a lot lately. Competition is invaluable to our development as shooters, and if you start to view it as your sport, there is absolutely nothing wrong with chasing that dragon. But if your primary focus is defensive pistolcraft and you’re using competition as training to develop you’re shooting skills for self defense, there’s some decisions you need to make to ensure you’re focusing on the right things.

Make no mistake defensive pistolcraft is very much a martial art. And action shooting is very much a sport. Every competitive sport created from a martial art makes compromises in the rules. These could be for safety, or scoring purposes, or simply the logistics of managing a competitive endeavor. 

You can see the effects of this in so many places. Modern sport jujitsu’s rule set can encourage tactics that would usually be poor choices in a fight, like pulling guard. Kyokushinkai tournaments don’t allow punches to the head, which encourages staying in the pocket during a match. Judo doesn’t allow throws that include joint locks for obvious safety reasons.

Does that mean there’s no value in competing in these sports to improve our ability to defend ourselves? Of course not. Pressure testing against a noncooperative opponent is crucial for developing fighting ability. We just have to understand the difference between a bout and a life or death fight.

All of the action shooting sports disciplines are different than a gunfight. Once you put a course of fire on a timer, it’s no longer “tactical.” Does that mean competing will get you “killed in the street?” Of course not. The ability to shoot fast and accurately is absolutely vital and that is what’s being measured in these sports. 

None of my procedural errors at this match would have had an effect on the outcome of a gunfight. Does that mean competing was somehow detrimental for me? Not as long as I recognize that the sport is different than the application. I learn lessons every time I compete that do apply in the real world. If I take those to heart, without taking the outcome of the match too seriously, then I get the maximum training benefit from competition. 

That is the key I think. Sparring isn’t a real fight, and neither is the stage in a match. Unless the sport is your focus, use them as tools for development without attachment to “winning” the stage or sparring round. My friend Bryce Frank, former pro kickboxer, said it this way. “I got paid to fight. No one ever paid me for winning a sparring session. Sparring was about learning for me.”

I certainly am not immune to the temptation. I’ve placed too much importance on competitive outcomes many times in my life. But I’ve come to realize that is counterproductive to optimal development of skill. Use competition as a training tool without attachment to winning, be mindful of the lessons learned and incorporate them into your training, and you will improve faster and you’ll enjoy the journey more.