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Critique Please - USPSA Steel Match


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Shot the steel match at Pala Range in SoCal. I came out 3/37 in production and 33/160 overall. Shot a Glock 19. I'm really striving to get better, and have been putting time doing dry firing. Although it generally only comes out to about 10-15 minutes a few times a week due to my schedule, but it's at least a concentrated 10-15 minutes lol.

 

What's really tripping me up is the disparity between me and the place above me - a difference of 36.48 seconds over 7 stages. Any suggestions where to pick up extra time is welcome. Other than stage 7 (@3:38) that took some thinking and not much time beforehand to come up with a solid stage plan I feel my shooting was fast.

 

Something I immediately noticed was sight recovery after a reload. Almost every slide lock reload I did in the video I missed the follow up shot. Additionally, my large target to small target transitions (throttle control) will need some work as well. Any critiques are welcome.

 

Complete footage

 

Third person

 

 

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Quick observation, but your misses are killing you. Then, once you've realized you had a miss, you transition back to the missed target at the speed of sloth and then miss again. Try not to see a big steel plate that you simply wing a shot off at. Realize that every shot counts, and go for the 'A' hit on the steel. I'm guessing you could have made up 1/3 of that time disparity on the plate rack stage alone if you had been clean. Call a good hit, then transition like crazy to the next target and call a good hit. Wash, rinse, repeat. Good luck, and looks like a fun match.

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53 minutes ago, JWBaldree said:

Quick observation, but your misses are killing you. Then, once you've realized you had a miss, you transition back to the missed target at the speed of sloth and then miss again. Try not to see a big steel plate that you simply wing a shot off at. Realize that every shot counts, and go for the 'A' hit on the steel. I'm guessing you could have made up 1/3 of that time disparity on the plate rack stage alone if you had been clean. Call a good hit, then transition like crazy to the next target and call a good hit. Wash, rinse, repeat. Good luck, and looks like a fun match.

 

Thanks for your help. Do you know of any good drills to work on either dry or live fire to isolate the shot calling? I have been making an effort to really track my sights and focus on them during the shot cycle. Like I said I'm starting to take it more seriously and this is my first time asking for critique because prior to this I didn't even know what to look for when reviewing match footage. 

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How do you dryfire currently, if you do have a consistent regimen?

 

Let's start there.

 

My biggest help personally... has been pulling the trigger less in dryfire. Transition sight pictures from target to target as fast as I can see. No longer as fast as I can slap.

 

Mixing close gimme targets with a large 'error zone' ... with the equivalent of 20yd plates, and not leaving until I get a sufficient sight picture to hit that particular target.

 

Edited by MemphisMechanic
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2 hours ago, MemphisMechanic said:

How do you dryfire currently, if you do have a consistent regimen?

 

Let's start there.

 

My biggest help personally... has been pulling the trigger less in dryfire. Transition sight pictures from target to target as fast as I can see. No longer as fast as I can slap.

 

Mixing close gimme targets with a large 'error zone' ... with the equivalent of 20yd plates, and not leaving until I get a sufficient sight picture to hit that particular target.

 

 

Generally I start with basic draws, "up" drills (relaxed ready position then raise to acquire sights), then start draws with trigger pulls, then to reloads.

 

A week or so prior I started to do what you described - target transitions. Mainly focusing on driving with legs instead of pivoting shoulders. Then closer to the match I worked my eye processes. I had a few targets spaced 5-10 feet apart, stood stationary eyes fixated on target, draw so sights land on target naturally without any influence or steering, fixate on next target then bring gun to where I'm looking. Then from target to target with the same eye process. 

 

Your suggestions are good for near to far target transitions as well and I'll begin to incorporate that. 

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First off, I'm just a lowly club level M class shooter, so take that into consideration along with my advice. I'll defer to the cool kids if you get any analysis from them. There are plenty of dry fire drill programs and books out there. Ben Stoeger, Mike Seeklander and Steve Anderson to name three off the top of my head. Take a look at these three and any others that you might trip over, pick one that seems philosophically aligned with the way you think and learn, and follow it. No sense reinventing the wheel. What the hell, steal some bit of knowledge from all three, and any one else you can find.

 

When I'm serious about competing and want to work accuracy and transitions, I do the following live fire and track my progress:

 

5 Bill Drills    30 rounds

5 El Prez's but with 10 foot spacing between targets     60 rounds

5 Schmidt Standards       120 rounds

Schmidt Standards is a regular fixture at the Western States Single Stack Classic. It is fixed time of 6 seconds (set clock for 5.7 sec par time), 4 strings of 6 shots each.

     String 1 is freestyle at 50 yards

     String 2 is freestyle at 25 yards, shoot 3, reload and shoot three

     String 3 is SHO at 15 yards

     String 4 is WHO at 10 yards

 

Record and track progress. The cool kids will be sub 2 second Bill Drills (all A's), 6 second El Prezs (all A's), and over 100 points on Schmidt Standards. I find Enos Factor Scoring to be useful for analyzing Bill Drills and El Prez, but still record raw time and hits. All three of those are very accuracy intensive. The good news is that you can recreate them all for dry fire using scaled targets for distance.

 

Hope that helps, good luck and have fun.

 

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16 hours ago, green_three said:

 

Thanks for your help. Do you know of any good drills to work on either dry or live fire to isolate the shot calling? I have been making an effort to really track my sights and focus on them during the shot cycle. Like I said I'm starting to take it more seriously and this is my first time asking for critique because prior to this I didn't even know what to look for when reviewing match footage. 

 

Steve Anderson's "Call It and Leave It" drill is supposed to be pretty good l, especially in live fire, although I haven't had a chance to do it myself yet.

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