I'm gonna guess that if Frank Proctor says competition translates to real life scenarios, he probably knows what he's talking about.
In May 2007 I was the Primary Instructor for Combat Marksmanship for an entire Special Forces Group and trained with dudes from other SF groups and other DOD agencies. I shot my first pistol match in May 2007 and I found out there was a whole lot I didn’t know about shooting. It was very humbling to see what those competitive shooters could do with a pistol. I was not as good as they were and I wanted to be better than I was. I’m still not as good as I want to be. I worked on it and trained and competed as often as I could. I learned a lot from shooting with those guys and competing and being under that kind of stress. I did and still do take away may lessons that make me a better shooter and made me a better Green Beret. Outside of more efficient techniques, gear and manipulations( the stuff that most shooters incorrectly focus on) a HUGE take away is seeing faster and more aggressively. What you see and process and how fast and aggressive you can do it make the biggest difference. An easy translation of me was doing CQB after competing. I am much more aggressive with my vision as a result of competing and it pays huge dividends being able to receive visual information and process it faster. I encourage every person that carries a gun of a living or for self defense to go out an compete, find out if you are a stood at shooting under stress as you want to be. If you are as good as you want to be then quit competing. I wasn’t and am still not as good as I want to be. Also worth mentioning, I find it very easy to separate tactics and shooting.
That takes me back the "seeing faster" part. I can recall when I started to "see fast". The milisecond the trigger breaks, your eyes are already lining up the next target, and you see the next target before the first bullet hits. And if you were shooting steel and waiting to hear the "clang", then you were going to be WAY behind.
I didn't realize that stuff until I read Enos "Practical Shooting Beyond the Fundamentals", where he talks about the buzzer beeping, and you just being an observer from that point on...cool stuff when you're rolling at that level. Even the slide seems to cycle slow.
