Recently, my student took me to a shooting range. I’ve only shot a couple of times in my life, and I want to become proficient in shooting.

There’s an old Russian joke. “Who can beat a master of sport in Sambo?”….

“A master of sport in shooting.”

The instructor taught me in the same way that I interact with new students. In a lighthearted manner, and throwing some jokes in there to both connect and build a rapport as well as have the student (which was me, in this case) remember the lesson.

He taught me the fundamentals, but let me do my thing.

Something quite funny happened however. After I had decent success shooting at a target. The instructor goes, “ok, I know you want to. So yea, turn the gun sideways like you see in the movies and give it a go.”

To both of our surprise, I actually shot slightly better this way. The instructor joked that I completely ruined his experiment and that wasn’t supposed to happen. He said usually when people turn it sideways, they stop aiming and focusing and just let it rip.. causing the bullets to fly all over the place. Whereas I actually concentrated even more, since I thought it would be more difficult.

The lesson is the age old lesson of absolutes. Never say never, and there will always be exceptions to rules. As instructors, we should explain the rules and principles but after that it’s out of our hands. The students’ journey is theirs.

Oh, and also, that shooting 45s in rap videos and in poorly directed action movies is actually realistic… just kidding, right?