Overswinging my focus and how to stop

[propeine]

Relatively straightforward question I think.  

Quick background

New USPSA shooter with 3 matches under my belt.  Pacing to be placed in C class.

Sig 229 (not optimal but works for now)

Right handed

Cross eye dominant but shoot both eyes open still with right eye.

Dry firing with Steve Anderson's book 45min to an hour 5-6 nights a week.

In transitions, I snap my eyes well ahead of the gun to the next target but it seems like when swinging the gun I almost always overshoot and have to bounce back.  On a 10 yard target I would say I overshoot my swing to a close C rather than snapping to the center of an A-zone and stopping.  Going faster makes it worse but not in a linear fashion at all.  It happens even without a gun in my hand as I sit at my office desk and use a pen for transition/vision practice.  Like my body doesn't want to decelerate as fast as it accelerates.

 

Willing to listen to suggestions even if its just "practice harder"

[motosapiens]

I think this is pretty normal for a newer shooter. One of the things that diligent dryfire does is it teaches your body  how to make the gun appear exactly where you are looking, but it does take some time.

[CHA-LEE]

Two things...........

What is your head doing during this transition scenario. You say that you are "Looking for" the next target, but does that also mean that you are turning your head to the next target? You should be able to "Look for" the next target with ONLY your eyes but keep your head forward and still. Then transition your whole upper body as a single unit to the next target. Think of a tank turret as an example.

Second, if you are performing the transition motion primarily with your arms then you will always have the "Overshoot & Back up" type of motion to the next target. As mentioned above you need keep your whole upper body locked up as a single unit and leverage your legs/knees to drive the transition movement. I can waste a lot of time trying to explain this via text or I can show you a video of it being done properly. Listed below is a very good video showing Max Michel shooting a steel challenge stage that has left to right transitions. Ignore his gun handling and shooting. Instead focus on what IS and ISN'T moving on his whole body while he transitions between targets. His whole upper body from the waist up is one stationary object being driven as a single unit by his legs/knees. Leveraging the legs for transitioning is the only way to consistently drive the gun to the next target aggressively AND stop it smoothly on target without overshooting.

I like this video because it shows him doing the whole process several times in dry fire before he actually shoots the stage. That way you can see how he is doing it both in Dry and Live fire. The huge knowledge nugget that a lot of people miss in this is how "Realistic" his dry fire times are to his live fire times. Dry firing at the same realistic pace as live fire is a free chance of "shooting" the stage. Think of it this way, he dry fired the stage 6 times before he shot it live. His first "Live Fire" run is essentially his 7th time shooting that stage. He isn't shooting that stage for the "First Time" when bullets finally come out of his gun. He is shooting it the 7th time. Think of how much of an advantage it is to be able to score your 7th time shooting a stage verses your first? This is yet another reason why the top shooters beat the tar out of the rest of everyone most of the time.

 

 

Edited September 13, 2016 by CHA-LEE

[pointerman1967]

What I am amazed by is how slow the RO is at picking up Max's routine.  Guy keeps putting the timer up and pulling it down.  Oh yeah, Max has amazing transition skills and this shows those skills in isolation.  Great video.

[johnbu]

Thanks for posting that. I shared the video link and your assessment on our scholastic action shooting team FB page. (I'm one of the coaches).

Edited September 14, 2016 by johnbu

[propeine]

16 hours ago, CHA-LEE said:

Two things...........

What is your head doing during this transition scenario. You say that you are "Looking for" the next target, but does that also mean that you are turning your head to the next target? You should be able to "Look for" the next target with ONLY your eyes but keep your head forward and still. Then transition your whole upper body as a single unit to the next target. Think of a tank turret as an example.

Second, if you are performing the transition motion primarily with your arms then you will always have the "Overshoot & Back up" type of motion to the next target. As mentioned above you need keep your whole upper body locked up as a single unit and leverage your legs/knees to drive the transition movement. I can waste a lot of time trying to explain this via text or I can show you a video of it being done properly. Listed below is a very good video showing Max Michel shooting a steel challenge stage that has left to right transitions. Ignore his gun handling and shooting. Instead focus on what IS and ISN'T moving on his whole body while he transitions between targets. His whole upper body from the waist up is one stationary object being driven as a single unit by his legs/knees. Leveraging the legs for transitioning is the only way to consistently drive the gun to the next target aggressively AND stop it smoothly on target without overshooting.

I like this video because it shows him doing the whole process several times in dry fire before he actually shoots the stage. That way you can see how he is doing it both in Dry and Live fire. The huge knowledge nugget that a lot of people miss in this is how "Realistic" his dry fire times are to his live fire times. Dry firing at the same realistic pace as live fire is a free chance of "shooting" the stage. Think of it this way, he dry fired the stage 6 times before he shot it live. His first "Live Fire" run is essentially his 7th time shooting that stage. He isn't shooting that stage for the "First Time" when bullets finally come out of his gun. He is shooting it the 7th time. Think of how much of an advantage it is to be able to score your 7th time shooting a stage verses your first? This is yet another reason why the top shooters beat the tar out of the rest of everyone most of the time.

 

First, thank you!  That describes me quite well and explains what I'm not doing.

 

In order...

I think I am/was turning my head in addition to my eyes.  The turn and draw along with comments about head snap that I've read lead me to moving my head in addition to my eyes.  That was the first problem.  

The second is even more spot on though.  On my turn and draw, because my hips are automatically forced to be engaged, I index EXACTLY where my focus is.  My turn and draw par time is at 1.4s right now during dry fire practice.  Surrender and relaxed draw are within 2/10ths of my turn and draw.  Yet my "transitions" are shit and this video perfectly illustrates why.  I keep my isosceles and rotate most of my upper body but there is no engagement of my hips and knees at all.  I tried some 90°+ transitions at 5 yards last night to force myself to engage my lower body.  Still some bounce but lets call it A-zone bounce vs close C.  I'm also REALLY driving the gun since it is practice.  It surprisingly reminds me of golfing with getting the hips involved.  It also forces me to keep my knees more bent.

To be honest about the dry firing portions of his run, I didn't even realize that was an option at LAMR and especially afterwards.  Walkthroughs, airgunning and visualization prior to stepping to the line was it as far as I knew.

Sunday is the next match for me so plenty of time to spend getting transition body mechanics kind of grooved in for starters at least.  I most certainly need to devote more of my practice time to transitions and movement.  

 

"Seeing faster" will be the next limiting factor I'm sure as even last night, changing focus to be able to call my shot takes almost as long as moving the gun.  Thank you again!

[MemphisMechanic]

I like to tell new people "transition with your legs, keep the upper body static whenever you can."

Really drives home the basic premise of what we're trying to do, although it's an oversimplification.

Shooting USPSA should strain your thighs uncomfortably, unless you spend a lot of time lifting weights.

Most people have thighs four times the size of their arms. It only makes sense to use the strongest part of your body (hips and legs) to do the work when you can.

Additionally, I believe that shooting from a "slightly uncomfortably" bent leg stance with feet spread wide will always allow you to transition more aggressively. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, so trying to snap your upper body hard to the right is going to twist your legs to the left. Your wide base and the feet anchoring you to the earth are what stop than from happening. Spreading your feet out and getting low will allow you to explode aggressively during transitions without any wobble or overswing.

Think of a tripod with a heavy camera on it. The wider the legs are spread, the more the operator can crank the camera around on top of it aggressively without things on top of it starting to rock due to instability.

Edited October 18, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[jroback]

I think the best part of that video starts at 1:25 when he begins a run that has several misses and make-up shots.  You can really see how his upper body is absolutely fixed as he oscillates back and forth to hit all the make-ups.  Very cool video for learning!

[joerenew]

Great video. I need to reply work on my transitions, testing today I caught myself looking for targets then moving the gun which added a few precious seconds when I focused in on moving everything at once I could tell a big difference. Now I just need to make it automatic