Psyco-Cybernetics ~ Dry Fire for your Mind ...

[digiroc]

In college so many years ago I discovered a book written by Maxwell Maltz that had a profound effect on my life at the time, and continues to do so today. I was deeply involved in competitive skydiving and training for the freefall event involved a very expensive plane ride to give mere seconds of actual training time. His book Psyco-Cybernetics put forth an intriguing method of improving performance without the expense of making an actual parachute jump.

Shooting also involves considerable expense with ammo costs today being what they are. Dry fire is an exceptional method to reduce costs to become proficient. There are also the repetitive actions needed to train "muscle memory" so that when the hippocampus, or instinctive portion, of our brain takes over in stressful situations where we are reduced to Fight, Flight, or Freezing so we can produce the instant response needed in an attack carried out by a weapon holding assailant.

Flight is easy, everyone knows how to run. Fighting is far more complex and diverse, blocking a "sucker punch" is often a matter of seeing it coming, responding to an armed attack is similar, and here situational awareness allows a more complex defense to be initiated. Draw, aim, and fire are three steps that must be undertaken and extensive practice of these three steps is the only way to imprint them into the sub conscience mind so they are available once the animal mind takes over.

Putting Dr. Maltz's method into practice involves using the mind's eye to visualize successful performance. Visualizing the draw, aim, and fire sequence can help to build the muscle memory. It's not a substitute for actual range time, but it augments dry fire practice to program one's response to being attacked. It also allows you to run different scenarios and pre-program responses to these situations so that if confronted with one of them in real life you will be able to react instantly to the multitude of possible venues of attack.

Street thugs trying to rob you, drive by shootings, active shooters, hostage takers, the range is almost limitless and infinately varied, but if you can imagine them then you can prepare to respond very quickly if you have pre-visualized this multitude of situations and programmed your sub conscience to act when it takes over, and it will in any of these cases.

Carrying a weapon is only the first step in being able to protect yourself and loved ones. Becoming proficient in it's use is the second step, but training to the level of automatic deployment and response is an ongoing effort that one must undertake to be truly ready for what the World can throw at you.

I use this all the time, walking down the street I allow my situational awareness to go beyond just being alert. I visualize an attack by passers by, especially if they are the least bit skanky. I mentally perform my draw, aim and fire, use of available cover and, if with my wife, where to shove her for a more protected position. This can actually be fun, while shopping for furniture or some such I'll often transform the mostly boring sales person into a crazed attacker, putting him down with blazing speed, ether with a smoothly exicuted draw, aim, and fire, or if within arm's length a stiff fingered stroke to the adam's apple.

Before criticizing this mental training method please use you google fu to see what Psyco-Cybernetics is and the success it has proven to have on performance in controlled tests in many areas of human endeavor.

digiroc

 

[AzShooter]

One of the best books I've every read. Has really helped me imagine my goals and to accomplish them with confidence. I reread it every couple of years.

I like the 1965 edition the best.

 

[digiroc]

Now available as an e-book ...

... I like the 1965 edition the best.

That's the original work I bought in paperback decades ago, now lost to much travel and many moves.

I've ordered the "deluxe edition" e-book to be released in December and look forward to re-reading Dr. Maltz's fine work.

digiroc

 

[Fastbolt]

I remember that one as a young man. I also remember seeing it virtually everywhere. For a while I suspected that everyone might have a copy. My copy disappeared a long time ago, in one of our earlier moves.

While visualization has long been used by a lot of folks, including people preparing for performing athletic activities, it's prudent to remember that there's a line between using visualization of properly learned skills to help reinforce and prepare for their performance, versus imagining a response that hasn't yet been grounded by a solid skillset acquired from training combined with experiential success.

Hard to imagine what you don't know, and hard to imagine what might change if your real life situation (and opponent) suddenly doesn't act the way in real life that you imagined in your scripted mental scenario, right?

When I was a young martial artist I did much the same daily visualization in public as you described, constantly reviewing and planning application of my skills based upon mentally rehearsed situations and people I saw in my everyday activities.

Naturally, after I'd invested more time in the arts I realized that my mental rehearsals had been forced to significantly change as my knowledge, understanding, skills ... and experience ... had changed over those early years.

I realized that a lot of what I'd so earnestly visualized in earlier years wasn't exactly an advantage, and had to be "unwired" as I grew in my knowledge, skills and experience.

Proper visualization really requires some context beyond the imaginary, and that comes more easily with successful repetition in real life. More training obviously helps, too.

In other words, being careful to avoid scripting elaborate scenarios, instead of short mental rehearsals of short and simple actions, successfully performed, and not necessarily depending on predicting the actions of others. Sometimes the other people upon which our mental rehearsals may be based don't know how they're supposed to cooperate.

Thanks for the info about an e-book release of the work, though. I might add it to my Kindle to see how the perspective of decades may have changed how I view it, and how it's worked for my over all those years.

 

[Ziggy2525]

...

I realized that a lot of what I'd so earnestly visualized in earlier years wasn't exactly an advantage, and had to be "unwired" as I grew in my knowledge, skills and experience.

...

In other words, being careful to avoid scripting elaborate scenarios, instead of short mental rehearsals of short and simple actions, successfully performed, and not necessarily depending on predicting the actions of others. Sometimes the other people upon which our mental rehearsals may be based don't know how they're supposed to cooperate.

...

That's an interesting perspective. From a concealed carry/self defense standpoint, what are some of the short, simple actions would you visualize now based on what you've learned?

 

[digiroc]

That's an interesting perspective. From a concealed carry/self defense standpoint, what are some of the short, simple actions would you visualize now based on what you've learned?

Fastbolt is absolutely correct about elaborate mental scenarios. They will rarely fit the experience of an actual confrontation.

Keeping your visualizations simple will help in imprinting "muscle memory" to your actions and reactions.

I visualize draw, aim, & fire as one fluid motion, imprinting the basic movements.

In my own approach, as I mentally clear the holster and bring the weapon up as the front sight comes into the body mass of the imagined attacker I'm doing a quick double tap, continuing to bring the sights into alignment for fully aimed head shot.

Of course that doesn't come close to covering every possible scenario but it does pattern the actions of bringing a weapon into play.

This is reinforced with actual draw and fire, whether dry fire or actual shooting. I connect the action of drawing the weapon and firing without hesitation into one fluid motion.

digiroc