Little bit of history...

[98Z5V]

Didn't realize this before - the origination - until I found this Pat Mac interview.  It's a pretty great interview, and worth your almost-2hrs, when you have the time.  Here's the vid description:

Patrick McNamara spent 22 years in the United States Army in a myriad of special operations units. When he worked in the premier special missions unit, he became an impeccable marksman, shooting with accurate, lethal results and tactical effectiveness.

While serving as his Unit's Marksmanship NCO, he developed his own marksmanship club with NRA, CMP, and USPSA affiliations. Mac ran monthly IPSC matches and ran semi annual military marksmanship championships to encourage marksmanship fundamentals and competitiveness throughout the Army.

He retired from the Army's premier hostage rescue unit as a Sergeant Major and is the author of T.A.P.S. (Tactical Application of Practical Shooting) and Sentinel.

Now, before we get to the video, here's how that statement above impacted me.  Around 1999 or 2000, while assigned to 1st Special Force Group (Airborne) at Fort Lewis, WA...   we received a HUGE influx of Delta guys into the unit, in senior leadership positions.  It was wild, and it impacted everything we did in every way.  Training changed, planning changed, operations changed - just due to the influence of these Senior Leaders. 

We started doing monthly shooting competitions, on our own range (Range 43) scross the street from the compound, on Fridays - once a month.  You had to "donate" $3 to the unit FRG, and they had issued weapons out there, or you could draw your own guns from the Arms Room, walk across the street to the range, and participate. 

Looking back on it, it was more like 3-Gun type stuff, without shotguns.  So 2-Gun?  Sidearm, M4A1`.  Different shooting positions, different targets at different distances with time limits and round hit limits on everything.  They broke the results up in 2 categories, Top SF Shooter and Top Support Shooter.  Winners names went on an engraved plate, that was attached to a giant trophy, that was placed in the Mess Hall.  That first one, I won Top Support Shooter for the Group.  My name is still on the first plate on that trophy, in the Mess Hall. Pissed alot of guys off, because I outshot alot of the SF shooters on that one, but that wasn't my category...     There was alot of WTF after that first match, and it just made everyone work harder, try more, get better.

At any rate, that changed how we trained on the range, in a very big way. We'd start training scenarios like that, all situational, par times, round limits, just to do better in the monthly shooting matches.

Come to find out - this was all driven by Pat Mac when he was in Delta, and it was brought out to us at Ft Lewis by that massive influx of Delta dudes into the unit at that timeframe.

And here we are - why I try to do what I do, with the annual shoots, with all of you...  It comes around full circle, in the bigger picture...

Here's the Pat Mac interview:

 

 

Edited January 15, 2023 by 98Z5V

[98Z5V]

At 1:13:53, he hits on something (paraphrasing), "Talk about fulfillment...   The folks that I have developed a relationship with...  because we'll do bi-annual meets...   It's an extremely eclectic group, skills set are all OVER the map, ..."

That's you fuqrs, to me...  

The personal shiit that he describes, before that point in the interview - That's life, and it sucks,  - and it happens. 

So many parallels.  Freaky.

Edited January 16, 2023 by 98Z5V

[98Z5V]

This is why we do what we do, boys. 

Remember the Fast Rope pistol drill?  We did that a few years ago  - the fast rope is still in a corner of a bedroom on my house.  Drag the 75ft Fast Rope back to the shooting position, it has 2 x 25lb kettlebells attached to the end of it - elevate heart rate before shooting the pistol course of fire...  It's a fake way of getting that adrenaline dump, before you have to shoot the course of fire - simulates getting caught off guard, and the adrenaline dump you'll see...

Only a few dudes wanted to do it, most bowed out, thought it was stupid.  @Matt.Cross drug that fast rope back, with 50lbs hanging off the end of it -

This is why, for what it's done.  It isn't to test stength of a certain individual - it's to add artificial stress, to make you shoot your pistol better when you're at a point that you REALLY need to be able to shoot your pistol...  

Read this quote:

How did you decide to incorporate some of the workouts and more unorthodox stuff into what you were doing?

PM: When I was in special ops units, we did a lot of that. Once I got into the civilian world, I realized, that when I put up my very first YouTube video, I was stationary as well. I was doing the same thing everybody else was, you know, all the other YouTube gun nerds. I looked at that video and really that's not me. It kind of fell flat. So I thought, well, let's see how this plays. Let's start doing stuff that I did while I was in the unit. For instance running and gunning, pushing, pulling, sweating, getting that heart rate accelerated before you go into a hard course of fire. And the response spoke for itself. Guys were like, “Yes.” So I started pumping a bunch of those out, like over the top, ridiculous, climbing rope, pushing a truck videos. I was throwing sandbags, strong hand shots from 50 yards, jumping up into the back of my truck, balancing kettlebells overhead. They were like “shot impossible” stuff.

And the results are because of the number of views I saw and the responses were mind-blowing. So I thought I needed to keep doing this because nobody else was. Now, it didn't take long before other guys started doing that too. They said, “Oh, man, this guy. I need to do this just crap too.” I also incorporate a lot of movement in my courses. Nothing brutal, because I always have a pretty broad and wide skill set disparity, physical disparity, and age disparity. So I'm careful. We don't drag kettlebells, climb ropes, and crap like that. But there's a lot of movement, a lot of kinetics, a lot of foot movement, a lot of dance steps because fighting is fighting. There's going to be movement, there's going to be kinetics. So that has to be incorporated into the training. And people freaking love it, they just love it. Well, you saw it on Sunday. All the movement stuff that we did. You won't see that kind of stuff on any other range unless people are copying what I'm doing

Here's the whole article:

https://www.thevetsproject.com/the-blog/sgm-pat-mcnamara-army-special-operations

[98Z5V]

I still want to set this one up badly.  I'll smoke this one. Might not be 61.94, but nobody is gonna beat me when we do it.

 

[sketch]

Beast mode might kill me. After I win the fight.just saying.  I like that the pistol part was definitely slower and methodic. 

[unforgiven]

Mr. McNamara is a beast 

Edited January 17, 2023 by unforgiven
Oppsi

[BrianK]

5 hours ago, unforgiven said:

Mr. McNamara is a breast 

Which one? Left or right? I hope female but one never knows today.

[unforgiven]

Hahaha beast