5 Tips For Visualizing Threats During Range Training
Jul 24th 2019
Everyone wants a faster draw. A common belief among gun owners is the faster a shooter can draw their gun and put holes into a target, the quicker they can stop an active threat. While the mechanics of shooting are important, mastery of the physical skill of drawing isn’t the only thing that makes for an effective shot. Mental training is among the most crucial tools used by professional shooters, law enforcement, and tactical trainers to perfect their craft. Among the different forms of mental training, the most effective is visualization — the purposeful rehearsing of a skill, routine, or performance in the mind’s eye to program the body for success. Through visualization with tactical training, shooters can achieve off-range preparedness for active threat encounters, refine their shooting skills, and enhance their personal-defense abilities. To condition your brain while training on the range, Six Maritime offers the following five tips.
1. Train Your Brain
Enlisting in a gun safety course teaches gun owners how to safely and efficiently use their firearm, and range training serves as a tool for refining shooting accuracy. Mental training with tactical mindset and other types of tactical training courses can help shooters master the ability to visualize themselves properly and quickly performing the tactical training skills they’ve accumulated through on-site training. Visualization helps shooters remember how to use their firearms properly, and it also provides them with the confidence to do so. To train your brain for defensive scenarios, envision situations that are likely to occur within your environment and centralize your focus on imagining the proper defensive techniques to best handle the situation or potential threat.
2. Use All Of Your Senses
Your sight isn’t the only sense you should use while shooting — high skill with personal defense requires the use of each sense as appropriate for any given situation, including sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste. By consciously visualizing your environment, imagining potential threats, and envisioning the precise techniques used to remediate the situation, you can be better prepared for and equipped to strategically and tactically use your weapon, should a dangerous situation occur. The Six Vigilance course, taught by human behavior experts, uses visualization to promote the mastery of behavior pattern recognition, observation, rapid decision-making and predictive analysis to de-escalate potential threats.
3. Stay In Control
It can be easy to lose focus, especially while repeating an action. Sometimes your visualization will get away from you, which may result in a shot missed or a dropped firearm. Training your brain to stay in control of your body’s movement requires recurring practice. If you’re just going through the motions, your mind is likely unprepared for a situation in which you would likely have to use your weapon. Take the time to be deliberate in your actions — close your eyes, visualize a realistic threat, and imagine each step required to hit your target. Being mindful of each of your actions while on the range, and imagining the activity you’re performing can help make you better at performing that activity, including your shooting proficiency and your ability to use skills from courses, such as active shooter mitigation, to diffuse a dangerous situation.
4. Make Practice Real
Visualizing the appropriate stimulus can help increase the potency of gun training and decrease draw time in a real-life defensive encounter. Visualize your potential threat and imagine each detail of their appearance, including their height, weight, hair color, eye color, and clothing. Use your imagination to view each of their actions and to hear any sounds they might make. Your visualization goal, as a shooter, is to clearly visualize the target and respond appropriately in an efficient and effective manner. Visualization with high-detail which mirror those of potential threats in real-life can help you bring-to-life and make better use of training and practice, whether on the range, during tactical weapons training, or in the critical training laboratory.
5. Rehearse Your Run
With a proven record of success, visualization is common practice among professional athletes and shooters alike. For those who seek the most effective use of their firearm — both for potentially life-threatening situations as well as range training — mental training and visualization can help make the difference between an average run at the range and marked improvement. According to experts, visualization can help improve shooting skills more quickly than with live-fire training alone. used on a regular basis through imagination and dry fire. Before picking up your weapon, take a few minutes to close your eyes and focus your mind on the situation, the target, your intended actions, and the result of your actions. Act-out the situation with physical movements with the use of dry fire before firing your first live round. For more information about visualization or to practice visualization in one of the numerous tactical weapon, mindset, and defense courses we offer, contact Six Maritime today.
