Combat Focus Shooting (Paperback)

~ Rob Pincus (Author)
Key Phrases: dynamic critical incident, intuitive shooting, good firing grip, Combat Focus Shooting, Balance of Speed, Combat Accurate (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

Combat Focus Shooting by Rob Pincus (ICE Publishing Company, 2006) is subtitled Intuitive Shooting Fundamentals. And that, in a nutshell, is what this book is about. As Mr. Pincus explains in the book, his system is all about training to work with, rather than against, the human body's natural, instinctive reactions to perceived danger. Such training, he argues, is more efficient than training that goes against the body's natural reactions. Rob Pincus is the former director of Valhalla Training Center in Colorado and the founder of ICE Training Company. He has used analyses from video footage of actual dynamic critical incidents (his term) as well as research into human physiology and psychology to find out what sorts of things we do automatically when faced with danger and tailored his training methodology to act in concert with that. Mr. Pincus writes in an informal, yet educated style that neither talks down to the reader nor attempts to impress with pseudo academic language. His prose is simple, direct, and to the point. In a mere 106 pages, he outlines a complete system of combat-oriented shooting that allows even people who have never shot a gun before to , in his words, ...recognize and hit reactive and interactive targets...effectively while moving through a realistic 360 degree environment, in various lighting conditions with a lot of distraction, without using their sights after shooting less than 50 rounds EVER. This is not a course in target shooting. Mr. Pincus' focus is on Combat Accuracy which he defines as any shot that significantly affects the target's ability to present a lethal threat. By this definition, even a miss that causes an attacker to cease is combat accurate. But far from an excuse for sloppy shooting, his system focuses on putting the maximum number of effective shots on target in the least possible time. As he puts it, two hits in one second that are six inches apart on a target are infinitely better than two hits in three seconds that are in the same hole. Some of Mr. Pincus' techniques are sometimes at odds with what other instructors teach. However, he does a good job of explaining why he recommends what he recommends and the thought behind it. Through all this, he admits that there are other techniques that produce more accurate shooting, but that his techniques are the most efficient that he has found. Nothing, however is particularly oddball or exotic. In the course of the book, Mr. Pincus takes the reader through discussions of stance and movement, presentation of the firearm, grip and trigger control and on to shooting drills designed to hone your Combat Focus Shooting skills. Through it all, he stresses consistency and efficiency of movement. I highly recommend this book for any CHL holder. While this method probably won't make you an IDPA champion, it will help you to better be able to successfully manage a dynamic critical incident, should you ever be so unfortunate. I believe that the Combat Focus Shooting method is great for those people who have little time available for training, as everything is totally streamlined, cut-to-the-chase and eliminates as many variations as possible. --Byron Dickens

It was interesting, not that long ago, to see a fellow writer refer to a book as software for the brain. Quite so. No matter how good our hardware (body) is, or how competent we are with our tools, if the software is faulty then the system will fail - eventually. To Rob's credit the book starts out with two pieces that are neglected by many other experts who produce printed material, call it a book and sell it for a high price: 1) He starts out talking about Background and Overview - his own background, the background of the shooting fundamentals he's going to discuss in the book and overview of those fundamentals; 2) Warrior Experts - now I put experts in quotes above, because a great many people consider themselves expert at something - even if it's basket weaving. Rob isn't talking about the experts who offer to teach you their particular skill at a price. He's talking about how if you're going to carry a gun then YOU need to become a Warrior Expert. Simply carrying a gun does not make you capable of adequately defending yourself with it - not anymore than owning a piano makes you a musician. It's always refreshing to receive training from an instructor who starts out by telling you exactly what he's going to try to teach you. Bear in mind that training goals doesn't have to be a detailed list of minutia, the mastery of all of which are required to properly draw a handgun from concealment... or some such. In this case he cites two: Comfort and Competency. It seems to me, in other training I've had, that those same two training goals have been listed, and if you think about it, they are VERY important. Comfort is most often required before competency can be achieved. Rob goes on to make the excellent point that many of us prefer to train within our limits. That is to say that rather than pushing ourselve to be better in some way EVERY time we train, we perform a given task adequately and don't seek any progression. The problem is that - especially in a combat environment - if your skill level remains static then it's falling behind that of others who are constantly training. Bad guys traing more than most of us like to think about. Rob makes the excellent point that we should take every opportunity in our training time to learn SOMETHING. From there on Rob goes into some detail about HOW to develop your combat focus in shooting and WHY it matters in particular to you. The reality is that the training program / information outlined in this book may be general information but it's individually specific in its application. Why does that matter? A great many trainers today will happily custom tailer a training program just for you: and you'll pay one heck of a price for it. Other trainers will take a given training program and expect every student to mold themselves into the techniques being taught. The problem is that we are all different and what works perfectly for you may not work as well for me. I have my own personal best level of efficiency in shooting and that level should be maximized - but never expected to match Rob's or anyone else's. I have to admit that when I first got this book to review I looked at the page count - 112. My first thought was, How much really good information about shooting can be contained in a book only 112 pages long? An impressive amount of straight forward valuable information is contained in those 112 pages. Extraneous BS doesn't exist within. Having read the book and learned a few good things (and I've been shooting for about three decades) I can recommend it as a good informative read for any shooter who wishes to improve his skills. --Frank Borelli, Blackwater Tactical Weekly 5/28/07<br /><br />Most of you have probably seen the ads for the Valhalla Training Center over the last couple years. Valhalla features a fully realistic mock up of real fighting environme --James Yeager, Tactical Response, Inc.

Most of you have probably seen the ads for the Valhalla Training Center over the last couple years. Valhalla features a fully realistic mock up of real fighting environments: structures with rooms, furniture, 360-degree shooting, 3-D targets, sound and light effects, and so on. It has acquired a reputation as a cutting-edge close-quarter environments fighting school, where firearms skills are integrated with other close-quarter skills. A good many people from civilian, law enforcement, and military walks of life have been through the facility, and the doctrine developed as a result would seem to be well worth understanding. And indeed it is. Combat Focus Shooting is the title of the new book by Valhalla Operations Director, Rob Pincus. He wrote the book to codify the material he developed, and then refined, as a result of the student experience at Valhalla. The focus of the book is on close-distance (essentially room-distance) shooting, where almost all of the encounters we have occur. At this distance Mr. Pincus is not concerned with making you the best shooter you can be, but rather the most efficient shooter. That is, he doesn't want you to shoot the smallest group you can, but rather to place as many shots as possible as fast as possible into a combat-appropriate size group. In other words, he shows you how to shoot with you in control of your shot spread (AKA accuracy), by controlling your speed of shooting. Naturally, at these distances, threat-focus is most often called for (but not always.) This book is a valuable modern addition to the growing body of literature about close-distance, real-world shooting, in which the gap since the last works of Colonel Applegate and his colleagues is just starting to be filled. Combat Focus Shooting does an admirable job of pairing down the myriad shooting instructions we have all learned to those few instinctive essentials that really are in control of combat efficiency with a handgun. It offers the essential drills that Valhalla uses to impart these essentials to its students, and it does so in an easy to read way. The fact that the method works with so many disparate student types speaks well of it. I recommend this book to instructors and serious students. It is in the tradition of recent books by Lou Chiodo (Training for Success) and Mike Conti (Police Pistolcraft), both of which describe their experiences with instituting similar training with their respective state police agencies (and both of which are also highly recommended). We are coming into a much better understanding of the training necessary for us to win lethal encounters, and books such as these are invaluable. --Ralph Mroz, PoliceOne.com

Product Description

Praised by experts and students alike for his practical approach to intuitive shooting techniques, Pincus has brought his program into a skillfully written dialogue featuring sections including: Working with what the body does naturally, Background and Philosophy of Combat Focus Shooting, Combat (or Defensive) Accuracy, Combat Focus Range Drills, The Critical Incident Reload, Volume of Fire, and The Balance of Speed and Precision. Pincus book covers the content and underlying principles of the revolutionary Combat FocusTM Shooting Course in their entirety. Combat FocusTM Shooting is the intuitive shooting program that is designed to work with what the body and mind do naturally during a dynamic critical incident. This program helps the shooter to learn the Balance Between Speed & Precision and use either sighted or unsighted fire as appropriate to get combat-accurate hits efficiently during a lethal force encounter. Pincus' Combat Focus Shooting program has been incorporated into law enforcement and military training programs across the country and has been taught to security and police officers, military special operations personnel and instructors from around the world. In addition to these armed professionals, hundreds of self-defense students and beginner shooters are taught how to be safer through more efficient shooting in the Combat Focus courses every year, both at Valhalla Training Center and other locations.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 116 pages
• Publisher: ICE Publishing Company; 1 edition (December 15, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0979150868
• ISBN-13: 978-0979150869
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #219,917 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, December 8, 2007

By	BookLuvr39 - See all my reviews

I've been a handgun shooter for a bit over 50 years now. I had high expectations of this book after reading the reviews here on Amazon. I was sadly disappointed. It has about 100 very small pages of mostly common sense information written in 3 page chapters. An example would be his observation that:
1. When should you use the sights on a handgun? Answer: It's up to you.
2. What kind of gun is best for defensive use? Answer: It's up to you, whatever kind you like is OK.
3. In a defensive situation, 5 shots fired in 2 seconds into a 12" circle is better than 5 shots fired in 10 seconds into a 1" circle. Really......that does make some sense. 10 seconds in a gunfight is an eternity.
4. Generalizations like "practice how you expect to shoot" really goes without saying and is just basic common sense.
I just did not find ANY useful, enlightening, or significant information in this very small book. I have only returned 2 books to Amazon in my many years of buying them here. One was damaged in shipment. This one is the other one I returned. I will add, if you've never handled a gun before and are totally unexperienced with firearms, you might find a couple of useful pointers in this book.
I should edit this to add some recommendations that may offer more information along these lines. I highly recommend:
1. Stress Fire by Massad Ayoob
2. In The Gravest Extreme by Massad Ayoob
3. Guns, Bullets, and Gunfights by Jim Cirillo
4. No Second Place Winner by Bill Jordan
5. Almost any of the books on defensive handgunning by Jeff Cooper or Chuck Taylor

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great Information, Poor Proofreading, June 28, 2007

By	David C. Jones (Sacramento, CA United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book has excellent information about why Rob Pincus is an advocate for combat focus shooting in certain combat situations. My only complaint with the book is the numerous spelling and punctuation errors. I'm not talking about 3 or 4 in the short book, but many times that number. They are minor errors and relatively easy to overlook, but in a professionally published book I would expect better proofreading. (Rob, if you would like a proofreader for any of your other works, please contact me.) Other than that, the information is wonderful. I'm looking forward to getting out to Valhalla for some training!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rob Pincus Rocks!, June 15, 2009

By	Matthew Schmidt "sparky89" (IL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is very informative & concise. I have been using it along with the companion video series from the NRA, & have learned a lot about personal defense.