From completely new to hopefully GM?

[RangerTrace]

Thats where the smaller scaled targets from C&M will really help you.  They're pretty cheap too....

[Gooldylocks]

Yea I know. Unfortunately living on a graduate student stipend doesn't really allow for much freedom to change ranges not to mention winter is coming in pretty soon. I also have a very small room so not really space to set up stages on than 5' in front of me on my bedroom wall.

Print out some 1/10th size targets and stick em up, that will be good for practice at home. Even at close range

[ArrDave]

Most dryfire isn't on stages it's usually isolated on one aspect of shooting, like reloads or transitions or draw or some simple classifier type stage like El Prez. Heck if all you can do is just rip El Prez then you can make sincere gains


Sent from an iDevice. Please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors. If the post doesn't make sense or is not amusing then it is technology's fault and most certainly not operator error.

[SlvrDragon50]

Went back to the range today and met a fellow forum member there!

I spent today trying to work on shooting without trying to see the lines, and I think I did pretty well.

These two were shot at 10 yards with normal grip.

 

 

My sights are messed up because I tried to remove the front sight and it has zero white left. It's being stubborn.

I then did some alternative grips on my second target with 7 yards strong hand only at the head and 7 yards weak hand grip at the center.

I'm doing relatively well with the .22 so I think my issues with weak hand shooting are psychological. I'm getting scared of the 9mm recoil, and my hands begin to sweat a ton resulting in a weak grip. I wouldn't be surprised if I'm anticipating the recoil as well. I think I might need to just spend some ammo getting used to the recoil on the weak hand and not even worry about aim.

[BeerBaron]

definitely forget about looking for the lines in the different scoring zones. the IPSC and USPSA targets are designed on purpose so that the scoring lines are NOT visible past 5 yards. that is why they are just perforations in the cardboard not drawn on lines. in fact the lines on the targets you are using would be easier to see than those on 'real' USPSA targets and if anything are a distraction.

you need to KNOW where the A zone is (it's basically the centre of the target). you still aim for the A zone but you're not looking for lines to delineate it's position on the target. As someone mentioned it's ALWAYS in the same spot.

a new range sounds like it will help advance your training. as will some training books. look at buying some real USPSA targets too.

The final suggestion would be when you find a new range push out the distance a bit AND start working on TIMED drills. once you can put the shots where you want them you then need to add the time pressure. anyone can stand and plug the a-zone given enough time but USPSA is not a bullseye sport it's a hit factor sport. a proper understanding of hit factor is really important to progressing in USPSA.

Mostly you'll find anyone doing drills at under 7 yards are all about pushing speed as at that distance the ability to shoot A's at will is a given. 

for the recoil anticipation/flinching issue load up your mags with dummy rounds/snap caps. load up 5 mags putting the dummy at a different spot in each. then jumble up the mags so you don't know which one is which. Then do some 7 yard bill drills (6 shots as fast as you can, or in your case as fast as your range will permit). if you have something funky going on it should be very obvious when you hit that dummy round. 

[SlvrDragon50]

So I guess my next question is groupings. While I know tight groups are always great, is there a point in aiming for tight groupings for USPSA? Or do I just go for the two A hits 3" apart? I'm leaning towards the latter because if my first shot is off (but I don't know it) and I can see the hole, I'll be aiming for a C or miss without realizing it.

I think now that I've found someone who does go to USPSA shoots I might just start going even if I come in last every time.

[js1130146]

Yes. Being able to be accurate is essential. There's always lots of talk about seeing "enough" sights to hit A zone. The only way that concept works is if you actually have the ability to make those hits on demand. If you aren't accurate enough to shoot exactly where you intend during slow fire , how can you hope to do it at speed when the pressure is on? 

So unless every single shot you break goes exactly where you intend it to go, keep shooting groups until you can. 

Edited September 13, 2016 by js1130146

[RangerTrace]

2 hours ago, SlvrDragon50 said:

So I guess my next question is groupings. While I know tight groups are always great, is there a point in aiming for tight groupings for USPSA? Or do I just go for the two A hits 3" apart? I'm leaning towards the latter because if my first shot is off (but I don't know it) and I can see the hole, I'll be aiming for a C or miss without realizing it.

I think now that I've found someone who does go to USPSA shoots I might just start going even if I come in last every time.

You certainly need to have the ability to shoot tight little groups, even though most USPSA stages don't really require it.  If you're shooting a 6" group during slow fire, you are probably going to be D's and Mikes at match speed.  You need to learn visual patience, which is about not breaking the shot until your sight are right.  You will get there, it takes time, practice and match experience.

[BeerBaron]

I agree totally with my counterparts here. you should be able to shoot very decent groups during slow, measured fire. otherwise as trace points out once you crank on the speed your groups open out.

if your start point is say 1.5inch group at 10 yards off hand, then when you are at match pace it might grow to a 4 inch group which 9 out of 10 times will be 2 A's and that other 10% will be A/C. If your start point is a 3 inch group during slow fire at 5 yards it's going to balloon out at speed and become D's and M's. 

It doesn't take too long to be able to shoot reasonably accurately during slow fire. For most IPSC type shooters once they can shoot a decent group at 25 yards they will focus on other skills but most will still do some slow fire group shooting at least once every few practice sessions just to keep the eye in. 

At 5 yards you really want to be able to put 5 shots into a 1 inch circle.

There are a few things to accuracy during slow fire. visual patience is important. grip is important, possibly most important is a smooth trigger pull. doing the drill I suggested with the dummy rounds will help you determine if you are flinching or have some other funky stuff going on.

 

[ArrDave]

You may have issues with your trigger pull, but you probably don't have your grip squared away as it is incredibly nuanced to get it just so. Unfortunately you can't crank out rounds rapidly to see how your grip is working for you. If you can find a USPSA GM in the area to spend a day with at an outdoor range I really think it would do you worlds of good


Sent from an iDevice. Please forgive any grammatical or spelling errors. If the post doesn't make sense or is not amusing then it is technology's fault and most certainly not operator error.

[SlvrDragon50]

Back to the range today to take a break from grading papers.

I shot 100 rds of 9mm today. I started off pretty poorly because I was used to the Kadet, but I think I quickly corrected my shooting.

This was at 5 yards, and you can see a lot of shots are going low-left. This was from my first mag. I also did some DA practice, and the new hammer spring makes it a lot easier for me to get quick DA pulls. The grouping on the right and center is from my second mag.

I then did some practice 5 yards shooting on the head A box, and I was really quite happy with my grouping

Feeling a bit more confident, I advanced to 10 yards, and I started off pretty poorly. I had a lot of C and D hits because I didn't realize I wasn't aiming at the center until I pulled the target back to see it.

The second mag at 10 yards was a lot better with what you could argue to be only 3 C hits. 

The top of the target was some left handed shooting at 5 yards. I started off quite well with two hits in the A, but my hands began to get really sweaty, and I couldn't maintain a good grip. I put on some Pro-Grip, and I felt my grip was much better again, but I noticed I had a tight grouping low right. I think I need to figure out left handed finger placement on the trigger.

I finished off with 20 more rounds of 10 yards shooting normal grip. The low D hit I had trouble shooting because of my cross dominant eyes, and the lane next to me had a bullseye target also at 10 yards. I was seeing both my target and the other target during shooting, and I had extreme difficulty aiming at my target.

Then I spent the last 10 trying to hit the head at 10 yards with normal grip. The same issue applied from above.

Overall, I'm pretty happy. My weak hand grip is feeling better during dry fire practice that I can start to work on finger placement. My 10 yard groups are not super tight, but I'm pleasantly happy with them keeping in mind that these IPSC targets are smaller than the actual targets.

Edited September 18, 2016 by SlvrDragon50

[ArrDave]

You need to figure out a way to get an ammo press man, as much as you shoot now you could do a lot more shooting for your ammo budget at present if you could find space for a 550B or a Square Deal B.  I think you're ready for your first match man.  

[Gooldylocks]

Yep. Go shoot a match. You will do fine. And when you are at the match don't worry about your grip, or running super fast t gr ought the stage, just be safe, remember your stage plan and have fun. Just let your subconscious take care of the shooting part

Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

[SlvrDragon50]

3 hours ago, ArrDave said:

You need to figure out a way to get an ammo press man, as much as you shoot now you could do a lot more shooting for your ammo budget at present if you could find space for a 550B or a Square Deal B.  I think you're ready for your first match man.  

Haha I know! I've watched so many videos of Dillon 650s and I had no clue reloading was so simple. I always thought that you had to hand load the powder into each shell ? 

I am waiting for my holster from Red Hill Tactical, and then I'm going to go shoot a match. I'm a lot more comfortable now that I know someone else in my area shoots and is willing to help me learn the scene. 

[BeerBaron]

you may find that when shooting weak hand only you may have to employ a slightly different 'hold' on the target. it's quite common for right handed shooters shooting with their weak hand to throw shots right. so typically when shooting weak hand we hold a bit to the left of where we'd normally be aiming. 

[Jake Di Vita]

1 hour ago, BeerBaron said:

you may find that when shooting weak hand only you may have to employ a slightly different 'hold' on the target. it's quite common for right handed shooters shooting with their weak hand to throw shots right. so typically when shooting weak hand we hold a bit to the left of where we'd normally be aiming. 

Dear God not this. If you are crunching the poo out of shots weak hand, the answer is not to adjust your windage. The answer is to practice and get better at shooting weakhand.

The last thing in the world you want is to aim in a place where if you execute the shot correctly, you will be penalized for it.

Edited September 19, 2016 by Jake Di Vita

[SlvrDragon50]

I haven't tried to shoot weak hand only though my two handed grip is almost weak hand only because my strong hand gets so sweaty!

I'm seeing improvement though so I'm not too worried about it. I used to shoot all over the place with my weak hand. At least now my errors are consistent

[BeerBaron]

22 minutes ago, Jake Di Vita said:

Dear God not this. If you are crunching the poo out of shots weak hand, the answer is not to adjust your windage. The answer is to practice and get better at shooting weakhand.

The last thing in the world you want is to aim in a place where if you execute the shot correctly, you will be penalized for it.

lol. I think that probably depends how much and how good people are going to get at shooting weak hand... it makes up a very, very small percentage of shots in USPSA matches (apart from classifiers). 

consistently throwing shots 2-3 inches right at 20 yards is something I've observed with a fair degree of consistency in guys I shoot with (who are right handed). knowing how and where your shots group SHO and WHO is important.

could shitloads of dry fire, live fire, coaching and perhaps hand strength improvement fix this? maybe. is that a skill that's worthy of devoting so much training time for a D/C/B or A grade shooter? Personally I don't think so. there is plenty of other low hanging fruit to work on that will yield better results at matches and in classifiers too if the grade is the goal.

If they can shoot well enough to shoot a repeatable group but that group is not centered at their aim point what would you propose is the solution?

working with a friend just yesterday who is a C grade shooter. shooting rows of poppers at about 23 yards WHO. taking 2-3 shots per popper. got him to shoot a few WHO groups at paper. sure enough reasonable group size but off to the right. he tried holding a bit left of centre on the steel and was going 1 for 1 at pace in no time. 

now shots going right can also be due to the difference in vision between peoples eyes which means no amount of form work will fix it. or it could be too much trigger finger in there, or 'crunching the poo out of it' but whatever the cause if there's an easy fix to result (which is shots not hitting the target) I'd take it. Will I work on the from to improve things? sure. but in the meantime if I can do something to improve my hits that's where I want to go.

now if we were talking about shooting freestyle and we had a typical right handed shooter going low left consistently would I say "just hold up in the top right corner of the target"? No way. that's a fundamental issue in trigger control and possibly flinching in a shooting mode that accounts for 95%+ of the type of shooting we do on stages. that is something that needs correcting not masking.

[Jake Di Vita]

11 hours ago, BeerBaron said:

lol. I think that probably depends how much and how good people are going to get at shooting weak hand... it makes up a very, very small percentage of shots in USPSA matches (apart from classifiers). 

That isn't the point. The point is to become as good at shooting as possible. How many GMs do you think are aiming off target when shooting weakhand? My guess would be 0. You also might sing a different tune if your lack of ability to shoot weakhand cost you the win at an Area match or nationals.

11 hours ago, BeerBaron said:

consistently throwing shots 2-3 inches right at 20 yards is something I've observed with a fair degree of consistency in guys I shoot with (who are right handed). knowing how and where your shots group SHO and WHO is important.

If your friends are crunching shots, they are not executing the shots correctly. A "fair degree of consistency" simply isn't good enough to take to matches you are trying to win that actually have good competition.

11 hours ago, BeerBaron said:

could shitloads of dry fire, live fire, coaching and perhaps hand strength improvement fix this? maybe. is that a skill that's worthy of devoting so much training time for a D/C/B or A grade shooter? Personally I don't think so. there is plenty of other low hanging fruit to work on that will yield better results at matches and in classifiers too if the grade is the goal.

It's not like you need to devote the lion's share of your practice to weakhand to get better at it. Consistently devoting 10 minutes a day to weakhand only shooting is likely enough by itself to make you better at it. If you have poor ability to shoot weakhand, that IS low hanging fruit. "Grade" is not my goal. Winning is my goal. You won't be able to win with gaping holes in your game. Not being able to execute shots correctly with only one hand is a gaping hole in your gun handling ability.

11 hours ago, BeerBaron said:

If they can shoot well enough to shoot a repeatable group but that group is not centered at their aim point what would you propose is the solution?

Well it's extremely unlikely they are going to be able to do that the same 10 times in a row. It's even more unlikely they will execute the same way under the pressure of a match. I'd tell them to devote some time to shoring it up. If a right handed shooter is shooting weak hand only on a target with a no shoot on the left side, you are proposing aiming at the no shoot to hit the target. I think that is absolute madness and it's 100% going to bite them in the ass eventually.

12 hours ago, BeerBaron said:

working with a friend just yesterday who is a C grade shooter. shooting rows of poppers at about 23 yards WHO. taking 2-3 shots per popper. got him to shoot a few WHO groups at paper. sure enough reasonable group size but off to the right. he tried holding a bit left of centre on the steel and was going 1 for 1 at pace in no time. 

That doesn't mean anything when it comes to doing it when it counts on demand. The guy is C class because that is what his level of ability is. He is clearly having issues with keeping the gun on target as the shot fires. The solution you have suggested is like putting a bandaid on a broken leg. You are treating the symptom, I am treating the cause.

12 hours ago, BeerBaron said:

now shots going right can also be due to the difference in vision between peoples eyes which means no amount of form work will fix it. or it could be too much trigger finger in there, or 'crunching the poo out of it' but whatever the cause if there's an easy fix to result (which is shots not hitting the target) I'd take it. Will I work on the from to improve things? sure. but in the meantime if I can do something to improve my hits that's where I want to go.

What? A difference in vision is not what is moving the gun off the target. I don't even know where you are pulling that out of. Are you trying to tell me that people with certain kinds of vision can't hit point of aim? I refuse to subscribe to such an idea. In regards to "if there's an easy fix", I'll spoil it for you. There isn't. There's no pill you can take, there's nothing you can buy, it just requires consistent hard work. If you don't want to put that work in, that's totally cool, you'll just be stuck at a plateau until you change your approach.

12 hours ago, BeerBaron said:

now if we were talking about shooting freestyle and we had a typical right handed shooter going low left consistently would I say "just hold up in the top right corner of the target"? No way. that's a fundamental issue in trigger control and possibly flinching in a shooting mode that accounts for 95%+ of the type of shooting we do on stages. that is something that needs correcting not masking.

That "fundamental issue in trigger control" you are speaking of is exactly the problem. The difference is, you feel like that only matters when shooting freestyle, I think it matters in all aspects of shooting. If your goal is to be the best shooter you can be, ALL fundamental problems need to be addressed. I tend to waste people on stages that have SHO or WHO shooting because I practice it and most people like yourself don't want to. I encourage all my competition to use the line of thinking you are using.

[SlvrDragon50]

Spent a lot of time today with the Kadet with the new FO sight. My sight is too tall, and I need a shorter sight I think.

All targets are at 10 yards except for the top right which is at 20 yards. I think I've been stretching my arms out too far. When I bring the gun a bit closer to my chest, I think my hands are more steady so tight groups are easier.

[SlvrDragon50]

Fitted my new Kadet sight in, and it appears to be dead on.

Middle target is at 5 yards. Bottom two targets at 10 yards. Top left target shooting weak hand at 5 yards. Top right target strong hand only. I think my 10 yard targets I am struggling to really see the center. Note, I shot today with no fiber optic.

[GunBugBit]

On 9/18/2016 at 9:14 PM, BeerBaron said:

consistently throwing shots 2-3 inches right at 20 yards is something I've observed with a fair degree of consistency in guys I shoot with (who are right handed). knowing how and where your shots group SHO and WHO is important.

I was throwing shots to the right at yesterday's match on a stage ending with WHO; there was a cluster of 3 metric targets on top of each other and the hits were landing on the next target to the right -- my misses were more like 6 inches than 2-3.  This ticked me off because I had been practicing WHO in dry fire and thought I was getting pretty good control over weak hand shooting.  Luckily I saw the hits and did some makeup shots so I wouldn't get mikes.  The stage ended well, no penalties and no horrific time price paid for the makeup shots.

Maku mozo, let us not be deluded about where our shots will go in a match situation!

[Hi-Power Jack]

Shooting WHO teaches the fundamental of trigger control - is a BIG help in

shooting with both hands, quickly.   

[Jake Di Vita]

I like the advice of pulling the trigger much harder than needed in dry fire and forcing yourself to keep the gun in the right position with less than perfect trigger control. Pulling the trigger harder closer simulates what you'll be doing in the match.

[SlvrDragon50]

That's a good idea Jake. I will try that!

I spent today working on mostly DA because I'm pretty comfortable shooting SA (comfortable enough to compete), but I have little confidence in my DA shot. I'm working on getting a faster trigger pull, and it seems to be doing better. 

All targets were at 5 yards.

I still have a tendency to shoot low fliers when I pull the trigger quickly.

First mag of 10. They're all A hits, but the grouping is mediocre.

30 shots DA in the middle. It looks like my group is great, but it really wasn't. I was aiming above the A.

20 shots SA at the head shooting from ready. My shots seem to consistently be low.