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Book review: Combat Focus Shooting

A review of the book Combat Focus Shooting
By Ralph Mroz

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.

 

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.

In partnership with PoliceOne.com, POSA is offering free tactical training videos on subjects like tactical shotgun usage, crisis entry, disarming a suspect, and more. Click here to view the videos.

To learn more about POSA, visit www.posai.org

Police Officers Safety Association, Inc.
PO Box 685
Chepachet, RI 02814
Phone: 401.568.9951
Fax: 401.568.9677

David Kenik, Executive Director dkenik@posai.org
Ralph Mroz, Training Director rmroz@posai.org

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