From a student

[TFin04]

Originally Posted by Barry in IN

There are three or four types of people who shoot matches. With IDPA, the types seem more distinct and easier to spot than in other gun games. You can often easily and quickly tell which type a shooter is, even if it's their first time there.
There are:

1) Those who want to practice their defensive shooting skills.
2) Those who want to compete and score well, and IDPA is what's on the schedule that weekend.
3) Those who just like to shoot no matter what is going on, and IDPA is what's on the schedule that weekend.
4) Those who say one thing and do the other. Usually it's those who say they come for the first reason, but what they do is closer to the second.

The problem with offering "help" is that you have to be talking to someone who is there for the same reason you are.
Otherwise, you probably aren't helping, unless it's over safety issue.
You are probably hurting.

If the shooter is there to practice his defensive skills using his carry gun, he could probably do without someone telling him ways to shave a fraction of a second off his time at the expense of bad tactics or starting bad habits.
There used to be a guy around here who insisted on correcting people who took extra shots to fix a sloppy hit. It could be obvious the shooter was there to hone his street skills, yet this guy would just have to tell him it was bad to actually ensure he got good hits since it might add a couple tenths of a second to his time. He would actually back up the shot timer to show how much was "lost" by doing this.
Did that really help this type of shooter?

A shooter with some experience will know what advice to take and what to discard, but the new one may think that's a pretty good idea. And now we have started him off toward the bad habit of thinking "two shots, two shots, two shots..." regardless, which can be a hard habit to break. The guy was doing the right thing for his needs before he got "help", and would have been better off without any advice.
It may be help to some, but not to someone like that.

Likewise, the shooter who wants to place as high as they can on the scoresheet probably doesn't care to know that he would have been at less risk by turning left instead of right when moving to hard cover.

And the guy shooting for fun doesn't want to hear any of our silliness.

So help is fine.
If it really is help.

Otherwise, it may be pretty harmful. I think this is the root of the whole "Competition ingrains bad habits" thing. Competition itself doesn't do it; the shooter does it to himself, but bad advice is often the start of that.

Excellent post.