QuickMick Posted July 1, 2015 Share Posted July 1, 2015 This is just some things I'd like to note as I went through the last year of shooting. I started with having a gun for self defense, also as my wife did feel rather insecure as times are getting tougher. Owning a gun is depreciated where I live, you might be called a dumb ass although you have to pass a psychological test and background check. Starting with bull's eye shooting with some military background as airborne I pretty soon felt bored, competitions are so.......boring. Accidentially I got in touch with IPSC, loving it. Digged more and more into it, also encouraged by a brillant shooter. Starting with training and competing seriously here are some things working for me: understand and know your gun and ammo. Perfectly know where it shoots to, improve it through asking experts by changing springs, tests, notes, comparing. Never ever blame your gun for missing a target. I think that a lot of shooters do not understand why a spring changes their groups, or different loads do it. plan your training, don't stupidly run through drills. Work on your weaknesses, try to understand your groups/hits/misses. Why do you shoot left? Or low? Work experimentally towards accuracy and speed. Dare to fail during practice, accept Ms and Ds as a way of learning. Currently I do 1000 rounds a week, but there's also time planned for no shooting at all. Take your time working on techniques and fundamentals and expect them to change, stance and grip, sight picture and all that stuff must be settled before pushing for speed. Be prepared: if you have awareness and focus in Brian's sense you will never ever finish that. And for me that's what shooting makes so fascinating. It keeps me curious. Speed does not come for free, work on becoming faster, push yourself. PUSH! Use drills for verifying your speed and get a feeling for "match speed". Get references on standard drills, I'm proud of cutting a Bill Drill from 8s to 3.5s in three months. But do not forget the importance of accuracy, make that part of every practice. So I start with a Bill Drill rather slow without timer, watching the sights, one shot per second, take it easy. After three or four runs I start pushing. At the end I go for precision, chill out. Most important: the mental game. Find rituals for entering a stage, celeberate them (ever seen Valentino Rossi leaving the pit lane?). Control your thoughts, stay in the present. I used to get distracted during training sessions by my job, step back, think about the sun, the wind, something in the present tense - why do I wear these shoes? Even more important at matches, relax, don't try to be faster as your skills allow ( I learned that the hard way during motorcycle racing ;-). Again, this shall serve as a summary for myself, I'm not a brillant shooter at all and will never be. What I like is to understand how something works, getting those "aha" moments. I'll update this thread whenever there is progress in my learning curve, though some of you might disagree I'm happy to receive your comments. As learning never ends......to be continued..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QuickMick Posted July 6, 2015 Author Share Posted July 6, 2015 Important thing as I just did it for match on Sunday: do a post-match analysis. Do it! I put all figures in a spreadsheet, look at best and worst stage, view and cut my video, calculate A-rate and percentage of total score, compare with a reference shooter. It's important to be honest and critical, so I found a lot of things to improve by just watching the vid again and again. I also add some thoughts on how the stage felt. At the end there should be topics to work on, like keeping the gun in sight when moving (weakness), or -like this time- something I did surprising myself (strongess). After all I'll rework my training schedule, trying to elimante weaknesses. The spreadhseet also helps to visualise my progress, which is a non-linear fucntion over time ;-). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QuickMick Posted October 30, 2015 Author Share Posted October 30, 2015 (edited) Some things after some matches and preparing for the national championships: - the spreadsheet works for me, in conjunction with the post match analysis and video capture I was able to eliminate some weaknesses. - split each range session in three parts: technique (grip, sight picture, trigger), special things like popper ore swingers (weakness part), WHO, ...and combination of all (focus types, distances to target, target types as well as start conditions). - split range training in two session per week, maximum 300 rounds instead of one 500 round session. - do dry fire in the morning - started doing calcs for the stage factor in the matches. hard lesson after a SHO/WHO full-house stage killing 3rd place...... Edited October 30, 2015 by QuickMick Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
QuickMick Posted March 22, 2016 Author Share Posted March 22, 2016 Learnings of the last 5 months: - get perfect on the "big three": grip, sight picture, trigger. Important for that is high-quality dry fire, including timer and par-times. - focus on precision, and sell it off for speed. - vary speed in training sessions, from 100% As to "chaos mode". - vary start conditions in training sessions, from loaded & holstered to whatever-you-can-think-about. - clearly separate training for technique(s) from training for matches, vary the ratio depending on the overall planning. - Having a skill list for trainign and a plan is crucial to improve, train your weaknesses. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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