“You win battles with timing.” - Miyamoto Musashi

There is timing to all things. Simply being fast is no guarantee of victory in a fight. We can develop blinding speed on the flat range or in the gym, and all other things being equal faster is better than slower, but raw speed is not the same as timing. And timing cannot be developed alone.

There is a cooperative timing to team tactics. A rhythm to working together in cqb that can only be polished through countless repetition until you develop a feel for your teammates’ movement and intent. And there is an adversarial timing to fighting. In this respect, gunfighting is no different than any other fight. Learning to capture your opponent’s timing and exploit it through broken rhythm is no less an aspect of strategy in gunfighting than it is in the octagon. How then do we learn this short of a real gunfight?

A fighter learns timing through hours of practice against uncooperative opponents. We have force-on-force training with firearms, and that is exactly what’s needed, but with a stipulation. Force-on-force is commonly scripted, with the admonition to fight through being “shot” in order to avoid a training scar. The theory behind this is that stopping because you are shot will carry over to an actual gunfight and cause a potentially disastrous hesitation if wounded.

For scenario based training, I agree. Reps should be done that instill that desire to stay in the fight. But scenario based training, as valuable as it is, doesn’t lend itself well to learning how to truly fight. It is far more valuable for command and control considerations as well as polishing team tactics under added stress. Fights though, real fights, are unscripted.

To learn to fight, there has to be an element of uncooperative conflict. Sparring. No different than a boxer, or a UFC fighter. When I ran the training for my SWAT team we would periodically have one cell enter the shoot house through one breach point, and another cell through the other. The cells would then fight it out in the shoot house, unscripted. They would spar in force on force. The lessons learned carried over to the real world, and have been used by my teammates in gunfights since with success.

Working against a determined adversary is the only way to understand the timing of conflict. Seek out opportunities to do so. If unscripted force on force training isn’t an option, seek out other martial training. Learning to fight in any context can carry over to self defense, armed as well as unarmed. And if your job involves high risk entries in any context, make no mistake. CQB is fighting. It’s team based, and has its own particular constraints, but it’s very much a fight. Learn the timing of it, learn to capture your opponent’s timing and use it against him. Battles are won with timing.