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Should I speed up?


SlvrDragon50

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When you write "should I speed up" there's a presumption there. That it refers to shooting faster.

 

Yes, you should speed up. But not the shooting. Speed up everything else.

 

1. Listen to how long it takes the best shooters to transition from target to target. There are times it takes you nearly a second when it should be more like 0.3 sec. Target transitions are huge time wasters for new shooters.

 

2. In production you can't be too fast on reloads. This is my own current weak link. The faster you can feed the gun a new mag, the faster you will run from A to B during the load. A double win.

 

3. Plan for more efficient use of time. On the left, draw to the wide open paper. Your draw time is over 2 seconds to the plate and you still Mike it in run 2. Instead draw to the easy target next door and get the gun out like your hands are on fire. When you get better it won't matter much if you draw to popper or paper, so an A or M will shoot it from L to R starting on steel. This is a case where you should experiment with NOT emulating the better shooters.

 

In the second array - consider taking the steel first. Then you can check off one static paper while the swinger is hidden, instead of waiting without shooting anything for two full seconds for it to come back. Hit factor is points per second: minimize downtime, so avoid spending any time without shooting that you don't absolutely have to. Find a plan that lets you shoot something instead of waiting on a swinger.

Edited by MemphisMechanic
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Yea, I went with the steel first because my DA sucks so I figured go for the steel rather than missing on the cardboard target. I don't really know how to speed up transitions at this point since my practice range is indoors with lots of restrictions on shooting. I also noticed that when I was shooting, I never really had any hard focus. I thought I got a lot of C hits, but a lot of them turned out to be A hits. Not sure if this lack of focus is normal or if it's another thing I need to work on.

 

I guess next week I'll go for speed and see how my score changes. 

Edited by SlvrDragon50
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you have speed in the wrong places. your 'double taps' were fast and it showed with the mikes on the more challenging targets. to me a lot of your second shots are what I'd call "hopers" as in "I hope this hits the target", basically one sight picture, 2 quick trigger pulls which will work mostly on close open targets but is not a reliable technique. 

 

I suggest don't go into next week thinking "I'll just shoot faster" I can just about promise what will happen is you'll speed up your split times to the point your second shot becomes a bigger gamble as to whether or not it finds the target and most likely transitions will still be slow.

 

transitions is one of the things you can improve in dry fire.

 

as MM pointed out you want to speed up the non-shooting stuff. reduce the time spent not shooting which gives you more time to shoot more accurately. you A % is great but the mikes not so much.

 

get on to some dry fire transition drills and do some draw and reload dry fire. 

 

otherwise it's a great start for your 3rd ever shoot. :)

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You already heard it above, but focus on picking up speed with the non-shooting aspects of your run.  Your comment about your DA trigger pull being weak so you go to the popper first makes no sense to me, the open paper target is bigger and closer (ergo easier); are you depending on the feedback of the popper to let you know you made the shot?  If so you need to read up on shot calling.

 

One easy area for improvement is your reloads, at least once in the video I saw your muzzle, don't move around so much, just keep the gun up on target, drop the mag, tilt the grip to the left and insert the new mag.

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7 hours ago, SlvrDragon50 said:

I don't really know how to speed up transitions at this point since my practice range is indoors with lots of restrictions on shooting.

 

I guess next week I'll go for speed and see how my score changes. 

You can speed up your transitions significantly in Dryfire without ever firing a live round. The very first thing I noticed the first time I practiced transitions in dryfire (the first time I really did a drill in dryfire other than a draw or a reload) was how useful dryfire really is and it changed the way I looked at dryfire. it sort of clicked for me and made me realize "oh this is what they mean by dryfire" 

 

Get a sight picture on a target and transition to the next and get another sight picture.  Work on getting that transition as fast and consistent as you can. You can quickly improve the time it will take to do this and not have to waste rounds speeding up your transitions. Let your practice be in dryfire, work with a timer to track performance, and confirm you can do it with live rounds at the range. If you havent bought Ben Stoegers dryfire book, do so and read it. That book will explain how to become a better shooter in dryfire surely better than I can do. Hope this helps.

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I gotta agree with everything above. I'm in roughly the same boat, it's not my shooting duration that is killing time, it's transitions & first shots on position entry.

 

As Shmella noted, dryfire is your best friend for learning transitions. But you have to be honest with the sight picture, don't fool youself into thinking you saw a good sight picture. Make sure you see one. Stoeger and Anderson have some really good books for dry fire. Buy one or both, pick a practice schedule then stick to it.

 

edit to add - Make sure you're seeing the sights on every target & every shot. Visual patience will yield much better points.  Assume the same time & a clean score then rolling out with of position one with 31 points in your approximate 9 seconds is a 3.4hf, Assuming 29 points (I don't know actual run score) in 10 second, taking time to clean up the sight picture is 2.9hf.  It is a speed vs. points game yes, but you've gotta shoot as many A's as possible and eliminate the Mikes

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I guess my struggle is that I'm seeing sight picture when I practice transitions at home, but it seems to all disappear when I get to the range. The big challenge for me is that I've never shot quickly before (always 1s between shots) until I started USPSA, and I think it's the follow up shot that is really slowing me down. 

 

I will try and modify my reloads though. I didn't realize that I was moving the gun too much, but it makes sense since my first shot at the new position always seemed to take a while. Another problem with my training is lack of space to practice moving reloads. I decided to go with the steel target because I wouldn't have to worry about the location of the hit since I thought I could easily hit the popper whereas there was a decent chance of me hitting a C or D zone hit on the target. I keep practicing my DA pulls, but I'm still struggling with not jerking the trigger.

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For transitioning, Brian's advice in his book helped me a lot. To shoot a target, you have to see it. To shoot fast you need to see fast. Once you are done with a target, get your eyes on the next one quickly. The gun will follow. You can practice seeing fast even without a gun. Just pick some objects, look at the first one, find the next one and focus on it, find the next one and focus on it, etc. Just make sure you see well whatever you are looking at. Rushing past it doesn't count.

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