08/04/2020
Bubba Myth #9
“Focus on using gross motor skills because fine motor skills degrade under stress”
Like any good myth there is truth to it. The truth is, fine motor skills do degrade under stress but it has little to do with the trained shooter. My opinion, which is based off of 20+ years of training, teaching and experience is that we shouldn’t even bring up the “fine vs gross motor skills” topic in firearms training.
Start with what these motor skills actually are. Fine motor skills have to do with finger, hand, and wrist dexterity along with hand eye coordination. Gross motor skills use large muscle groups like legs, torso, arms to do things like standing, walking, running and jumping.
Shooting and running a gun are fine motor skills. Aligning the sights, pressing the trigger, pressing the magazine release, using the slide lock/release, inserting a magazine or using a speed loader, manipulating a charging handle on an AR15, manipulating any safety, opening a cylinder on a revolver, manipulating the slide on a semiauto... You get the idea.
The shooter needs to train so they develop “motor programs”. In a nutshell, motor programs are movements, fine or gross that we can complete with level of proficiency/accuracy with little to no thought. To build a motor program it will take time and effort to learn, maintain proficiency and to improve. Fine motor skills are not programs, they are simply things that our body should be able to accomplish under normal circumstances. The motor program can be completed under a variety of circumstances.
Research shows that fine motor skills degrade when a heart rate reaches 115 beats per minute. I have worn monitors during training and real incidents and recorded my heart rate spiking over 115 beats per a minute just because of stress. These real incidents included building clearing, vehicle pursuits, grappling and handcuffing. Despite my heart rate going well above 115 bpm I still functioned at a proficient level. I did not fall apart, crash a car or struggle to manipulate items that require fine motor skills such as weapons, handcuffs, keys, radios and so on. The difference is I developed motor programs for these skills and tested them under stress before I had to contend with the real deal.
