Jump to content
Brian Enos's Forums... Maku mozo!

Nimitz's Journey To Shooting Greatness


Nimitz

Recommended Posts

Contrary to what a lot of people think, there is no 'right way' to shoot each stage. There are many factors that go into what is best for you ... I do not shoot any of the stages the same way I did when I first started out ... The timer is the only thing that matters.

Edited by Nimitz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Replies 877
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

Top Posters In This Topic

Posted Images

Mon was an Outer Limits training session. Started out with my normal cold stage run (video is up on my YouTube channel) and then spent the rest of the time doing micro transition drills. I worked on 1st shot, 1st shot + 1, then the 2-4 transition. Ave times for 1st shot were .73 secs, 1st shot +1 were 1.14 secs & the 2-4 transition averaged 2.4 secs. Finished the session with a couple of complete runs at 4.34, 4.2 & 4.04 secs. Tomorrow will be more Outer limits transition work now that I have a baseline to work from.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did a shortened live fire session this morning .... cold stage run on pendulum was 11.24. Then worked on micro transition 2-4 & 1st shot drills. Also did a Outer Limits dry fire session after getting home. worked mostly on the 1-4 transition. Starting with the gun pointed on target 1 I'd fire one shot then move to the center box & shot target 4. Pushed that transition down to 1.5 secs but 1.7 is a comfortable match pace I think for now. Also did some stage par time runs at 3.5 secs

At the moment I can't really see moving to the center box much faster than that 1.5 sec transition. there were some people complaining at Nationals that the 1.5 sec penalty per string for no movement on Outer Limits was too much but I'm here to tell you it looked pretty good to me .... maybe the super squad folks can do that transition in under 1.5 secs without missing on command but for the rank & file I doubt it ...

Edited by Nimitz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

just returned from the monthly SC match which I'm MD for ...

Finished with a 72.51 for the 7-stage match which included Outer Limits. Very solid performance for my first match back in 60 days ... looks like my renewed focus on mental management is starting to pay off .... 1st stage of the match was Accelerator & I posted a time only .4 secs off my personal best. My Outer Limits time was also only .5 secs off my personal best & was immediately after my 'worst' stage (5 To Go). Only had one string of the 34 for the match over 3 secs (3.11 on 5 To Go). I was very relaxed throughout the day & was just shooting, not really thinking about anything. I've started to bring my Ipod & plug it into my ear muffs so I can listen to music & just tune everything out between stages & that seems to be working as well ...

I'll be continuing with focused training on just Outer Limits for the rest of the month with my next 8-stage match on 22 May at Volusia ... my goal is to get my live fire times at or near my current dry fire times of 3.5 secs ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

Continued with Outer Limits live fire training this morning after being out of town all last week. Had some trouble on the cold stage run; could only manage times of 4.32, 4.99 with a miss, 6.13 & 5.09 for a stage time of 15.54. I'll post the video later today once my camera recharges ...

the rest of the session actually went well after that. Started with 1st shot + 1 drill and averaged right at 1 sec. I'm at .8 secs for this drill in dry fire. Was also doing consistent .9 sec runs after completing about 10 reps. Then switched to the 1-4 micro transition drill which in dry fire I am doing at 1.6 secs. Initially I couldn't manage any better than 2 secs but eventually i worked that down to a consistent 1.85 secs. The last transition drill I did was 2-1-4 which works on combining the first shot with movement between boxes. Average for all reps was 2.65 secs with best of 2.55. I then finished up the session running the full stage a few times and averaged 3.65 secs for the 5 runs. This is closer to where I need to be but I need to be able to do this 'on command' and not just after putting 150 rds down range ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So over the week end I was thinking it was probably time to do a no kidding 'big picture' progress check on how I was doing at matches since that's all that really matters. I put together a spreadsheet of all my match results since my very first Steel Challenge match in 2013 with no caveats, excuses or alibis ... just the final score at every match, broken out into 6,7 & 8 stage matches so the data could be compared. The attached spreadsheet are those results ..... certainly things continue to go in the right direction but cutting out the next 10-15 secs of overall time will probably be as much or more of a challenge than the 1st 2.5 years ...

Training times1.pdf

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Continued working on Outer Limits exclusively in both dry fire & live fire. Last night's dry fire session I was able to push my stage times down to 3.0 secs with the occasional questionable sight picture & solid 3.2 sec runs otherwise. "First shot + 1" times for consistent acceptable sight picture were .8 secs with push runs down to .6. My 1-4 micro transition times were 1.6 - 1.4 secs. I was looking forward to my live fire session yesterday morning but arrived at the range to find the shoot box area for Outer Limits sitting in 1" of mud from our downpour the night before. As expected, my times were a good .5 secs then I'm capable of due to the slower moving from the 2 boxes as the footing was pretty treacherous. String times for the cold stage run were: 4.24, 4.32, 4.42 & 3.92. If I can figure out how get download video off my new POV camera I'll post the runs. Don't know if tomorrow's AM session will be any better since it's since been raining in the area on & off all day ... at least I'm getting some good training in for poor conditions w/Outer Limits. May come in handy on Sun as I have an 8-stage match at the site of the Nationals & the Outer Limits bay also has mud issues when it rains (like it did for Nationals this year) ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well with no rain overnight I was hoping the bay where I setup Outer Limits would have dried enough to provide better footing .... while the shooting box area was drier the mud was still present & the going was still somewhat slippery ....

Cold stage run was 4.17, 3.81, 4.60 & 4.07 for a respectable 12.05 stage run. Unfortunately with the footing being what it was I couldn't manage to average any better 1-4 micro transition times than 2.1 secs. Had a few sub 2 sec runs but also runs in the 2.3 sec time as well. Toward the end of the session I decided to move each shooting box forward about 2 ft to try & get away from the big ruts which had developed and the worst of the mud. I then ran a final stage run to finish the session: 3.93, 3.56, 4.08, 3.72 for a time of 11.21. After looking at the difference between my cold run & the 'end of session' run I've decided to incorporate an 'end of session' run for each training session so I can track the difference for what represents a match time vs a training time to be able to work towards closing the gap.

So my first data point for OL is a difference of .84 secs of 7%

I'll be tracking both the actual stage time & gap over time and be looking for both a steady drop in the cold stage run time as well as a drop in the gap between the runs .... we'll see if this provides anything useful ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Looks like my focus on micro transitions is beginning to pay off ... today's cold stage run for Outer Limits was a 12.2 which is .4 secs faster than my current match personal best. Strings were 3.99, 4.07, 4.66 & 4.14 in that order. It was really nice to see a sub 4 sec run right out of the box .... my end of training stage run was an 11.25 with runs of 3.62, 3.77, 3.92, 3.86. That may be my 1st stage run in training with all sub 4 sec runs .... the difference in times was 7.8%. I'm thinking that anything within 10% is probably good at this point for my cold stage runs ... for the 1st shot +1 drill I'm still at around .95 - 1.00 secs for 100% accuracy & I was able to get the 1-4 transition down into the mid 1.8 sec range with most still hovering right at 1.95-2.05 secs. In dryfire my 1st shot +1 drill is still at .8 secs and my 1-4 transition is at 1.6. Par time runs come in at 3.2 secs with 100% good sight pictures & the percentage starts to drop has I push to 3.0 sec run time range. We'll see what this translates to for my 2 matches this month on Outer Limits & then it will be time to move on to 5 To Go & Pendulum which are still relatively speaking, lagging far behind in time as compared to the other stages .... always plenty of work to do ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

finally got my video cameras sorted out and now I'm able to produce dual camera synced videos. The first of these is now on my Youtube channel and is my OL cold stage run from Wed ... POV & 3rd person synced video side by side of the stage ....

Link to comment
Share on other sites

After 1 month of just working on Outer Limits it's time to return to a more balanced training schedule. I learned quite a few major technique changes that I'm looking forward to resulting in getting my times down comparable to the other 7 stages. using the new PSTs that will most likely end up being the ones for the new classification system, Outer Limits is the only stage I'm shooting below the 95% level (~87%) so obviously that's where teh most improvement can come from in the near term ...

Shot Pendulum this morning: cold stage run was only an 11.39, mostly due to a 3.18 sec 2nd string. End of session stage run was a 10.09 for a difference of 11.5% which is outside of my self imposed 10% difference limit ... for the 1st shot+1 drill I was shooting .67-.81 sec 1st shots & the 1-2-4 transition times were coming in at around 1.65 secs. The 1st shot times are within .1 of my dryfire times which is good but the 1-2-4 times were a good .3 secs slower so I'll need to more emphasis on this. Switching to Open I shot a 14.74 cold stage run with my draw coming in at 1.4-1.5 secs. In dryfire my draw is 1.2 secs so the gap is starting to narrow .... speaking of my draw ....

I decided to get some video of my draw to see where I was and what I saw did not make me happy .... I still have a very pronounced "hitch" or hesitation when I grab the gun to remove it from the holster. Although I haven't measured the time yet to get an exact number I'm sure it's costing me at least .2 secs. My camera died before I got and livefire video but I suspect it's even more pronounced in livefire ...tomorrow I'll get some livefire to confirm but I'm pretty sure I know what I'll see. This problem has been compounded by the fact that my perception is that I'm not doing this and can produce a 1 sec surrender draw without too much difficulty. I started out the video session doing draws at about 65% speed and for those I have a nice smooth, continuous motion with no hitch in the draw stroke. I've run video of my draw & some video of Ben that I took during a class side-by-side and the technique flaw is much more obvious there.

So, for the next several weeks, or as long as it takes to correct, I'll be spending major amount of my open training time on my draw. I have to get this corrected once & for all if I have any expect ion to catch up in open to where I am in RFPO ... time ti hit the dry fire tonight & get back to basics ... and a lot of video ...

Edited by Nimitz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Finally able to put this flu behind me and start training again .... it arrived with a vengeance the night before my monthly match & I still hadn't gotten over it by last weekend so i missed both matches in Jun ...

got it a little dryfire Tues night & then my first live fire session in about 10 days. Continued to work on 5 To Go. Cold stage run was a 10.6 which was good since I had a miss on my first string. I then worked on micro transitions with the first being the 3-4 transition. I averaged .58 secs for all runs with first shot at .19 secs & around .37 secs for the actual transition from 3-4. I then added in the stop plate & did some 3-4-5 transitions. First shot ave was .18, 3-4 was .38 & 4-5 was .36 secs. I then finished off was a few more full stage runs, averaging 2.28 secs for them.

Switching to Open my ave for the first 5 runs was 3.63 secs. Followed with some draw reps coming in at around 1.5 secs to start & ending around 1.25 secs. Went to draw + 1 reps and averaged around 1.75 secs. Finished with some 3-4-5 micro transitions which averaged .19/.36/.38 for the transitions.

Couple of important things came out of this session. First was a reminder about trigger finger placement. I've gotten a little lack over the last few weeks about it and it is a major contributor to some of my inconsistency. After focusing on just that for a few reps I got back into a 'never miss' rythem. That combined with relaxing my shoulders & just shooting with my hands makes all the difference in the world. It always comes down to just executing the fundamentals perfectly. The other thing was that my transition times between the 2 guns are pretty close to being the same. That is conformation of something I already knew, namely that my draw is really the only thing holding me back in Open. I'm reminded of something Brian Enos said in his book about the first time he attended the Steel Challenge Championships. One of the well known, top shooters of that time came up to him and said: "boy, you're pretty fast with that thing once you get it out of the holster but your draw sucks." That pretty much describes me at the moment so my draw will continue to be my main training focus in Open.

In dry fire I pretty much have a fairly comfortable 1 sec draw to every stage first target but that is without a trigger pull. When I add in that my times jump to 1.2 secs pretty quickly. Moving to live fire, where everything is a little slower I very quickly end up with this 1.5 sec draw ... so hand speed is not my problem, it's taking way too long breaking the shot when I have an acceptable sight picture. So I'm going to be working on some pure speed drills to see if I can break out of this "waiting too long" issue

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This morning's session was transition and draw/first shot drills ... I'm currently on a 2 days of drills and 1 day of stage shooting as my weekly live fire training regiment. Dry fire I still do stage par time work and drills every session. For my open draw drills I was doing a 12" plate at 15 yds and manged to average in the low 1.4s. I actually had quite a few in the 1.2s and even some in the sub 1.2 so I may be finally turning the corner on my draws. Still a ways to go to get the consistent 1 sec times but we're headed in the right direction.

For rimfire I was averaging in the mid to low .6 sec range for the same first shot and a few sub .6 runs as well. All my transition drills have visual goals not time goals so I don't record any times and one of the drills is designed not to be repeatable so time doesn't matter on that one. Good session all in all. I may have to start pushing out the distances for these drills shortly as 15 yds is not really challenging me to much. I'll probably move to 18 yd 12" plates and then move to 18 yd 10" plates as well ...

Edited by Nimitz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just finished shooting my first match in 7 weeks with overall good results. In Open I set a new 8-stage match personal best of 120.36 which is 4 secs better than my previous best. I had personal best stage times in Showdown, Smoke & Hope & Roundabout. In RFPO I was on pace to have a sub 80 sec match ... arriving at the final stage I was sitting at 69.84 for the 7 stages with Accelerator remaining. Unfortunately I ended up with some match-ending ammo disaster issues and got to take two 30 sec string times, giving me a final stage score of 46.5 secs ... nice. Other than that it was good to get back to shooting matches. This week I'll be working on Speed Option, 5 To Go & Outer Limits in preparation for my match on the 2nd.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Shot the monthly match that I'm the MD for yesterday .... 75.95 for the 7-stages in rimfire and a 115.01 for Open. While certainly not my best performance it wasn't too bad. looking back at the stages I shot well vs the ones I struggled with a bit I decided to go do some data mining and look at individual stage performance over time & not just match performance. i did this to ensure my training is focused on the right things and what I discovered surprised me a little so I'm glad I did it. I compared my ave stage times for 2015 vs 2016 to see if I'm improving on each stage & by how much. As you can see for the chart below, for the most part things are going in the right direction ... however ...

I was a little surprised by 5 To Go as I thought I was making progress there but obviously I'm not .... Accelerator was another one that I thought I was making faster progress than I obviously am. The last 3 months I've been steadily decreasing times here which probably accounted for my perception being somewhat off but overall I still need to work on this. When I look at classification percentage I also see that for me, 5 To Go & Accelerator are my lowest classification scores relative to my others ... more conformation of what I need to work on. So, as soon as the FL State is over my training priorities over the next 2 months are going to be: 1) 5 To Go; 2) Pendulum; 3) Accelerator. While I've been trying to put a lot less emphasis on detailed data analysis and not get bogged down with details that don't mean anything, I think looking a 'big picture' data across a year at a time is valuable.

The other big takeaway from yesterday's match is something that I had under control for a while but it has started to surface again .... trying too hard at matches. Lately, instead of just shooting at a match, I'm thinking about how fast I SHOULD be going based on training times & even more recently, my classification times. The first couple of stages bit me with this again & then after stage 3 when I realized what I was doing I physically forced myself to just go stand in the box & shoot - of course that's when I started putting down stage times within 5-10% of my personal best. Lesson learned here is that I can't get complacent & need to be continually aware & fight this. One of the top shooters once said that right after making GM their match performance suffered for quite some time as they let their perception ("I'm a GM so I should be a great shooter) start clouding their mental performance .... I may be started down this path already and need to by hyper aware of it .... and fight it.

One other thing which has happened over the last 3 matches is that in every case, my first run of the day on the first stage has been damn near a personal best each time. I then usually follow that up with good & bad runs. While certainly a good way to start I need to put together a great first stage, not just first string. Not really sure at the moment what's causing me to be able to smoke the very first run & then not follow through on that stage. I'm clearly just letting my subconscious takeover like a should initially but then my conscious mind breaks through for the subsequent runs. I need to look at this more closely to address this.

Lastly, 2nd installment of my 5-6 part series on becoming a better steel challenge shooter will appear in the next issue of Front Sight. Installment #3 has also been written & I'm putting the final touches on it since it's due to the editor on 10 Jul ...

post-32005-0-40154500-1467556282_thumb.j

Link to comment
Share on other sites

that chart is just for RFPO ... I don't have much Open data to really see any trends. I plan to come to the range Sat afternoon to check in as I'll be coming straight from another local match that morning

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well the new Steel Challenge classification system went live today so I guess it's official ... I'll need to change the title of my range diary as I'm no longer on a journey to make GM ....

Although I guess since I didn't specify a division it's still valid as I'm now pursuing GM in the Open division ... long way to go from my current 76% point but we'll just keep plugging along as always ...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Did a shortened live fire session this morning .... cold stage run on pendulum was 11.24. Then worked on micro transition 2-4 & 1st shot drills. Also did a Outer Limits dry fire session after getting home. worked mostly on the 1-4 transition. Starting with the gun pointed on target 1 I'd fire one shot then move to the center box & shot target 4. Pushed that transition down to 1.5 secs but 1.7 is a comfortable match pace I think for now. Also did some stage par time runs at 3.5 secs

At the moment I can't really see moving to the center box much faster than that 1.5 sec transition. there were some people complaining at Nationals that the 1.5 sec penalty per string for no movement on Outer Limits was too much but I'm here to tell you it looked pretty good to me .... maybe the super squad folks can do that transition in under 1.5 secs without missing on command but for the rank & file I doubt it ...

it seems this could encourage some negative strategy. I'm sure plenty of good stand and shoot type shooters could shoot the distance of OL really well but get hurt on a slow transition from box to box. Those guys could probably put in some 2.5 sec times and eat the 1.5 penalty for a 4 flat. doesn't seem like enough of a penalty to me if it's only really any slower than the top few guys. 1.5 sec to exit the box, take a few steps, hard entry, settle on target and fire the next shot is damn good pace!

Congrats on making GM in SC with your RFPO. You are certainly up there in the rarefied air now. :)

One thing I remember is in the beginning you wanted to get to GM in USPSA production. Have you given away the IPSC/practical shooting now in favour of SC or do you think you'll get back to it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I agree completely and expressed this very same concern to Zack. Luckily the new rules state that the competitor must have some physical limitation which prevents them from being able to move (ie wheelchair bound). A competitor can not simple elect to stand in the center box and 'take the penalty' claiming they are too old, too fat or too ugly to move. I don't remember the exact wording in the new rule book ... maybe Zack can weigh in. Ultimately it's up to the match director to make the call.

If that hadn't gotten in the rule book I was going to elect to 'stand & shoot' Outer Limits in the very first sanctioned match I shot after the rules became official to make a political statement ... :). At Tier 1 matches this year my OL stage time ave is 13.6 secs for 7 matches. That's a 4.56 sec ave run time. A 1.5 sec penalty meant I'd only have to shoot faster than 3.06 sec standing still and if the penalty is only 1 sec I'd only need 3.5 sec runs. I've done a few standing OL runs & I'm considerably faster then that .... :)

Honestly I doubt I'll go back to shooting irons seriously .... once you get caught up in Open & can do well, going back to irons doesn't seem all that interesting. Having said that, I plan to shoot my first USPSA match since Jan 2014 at my Club's monthly match in August - in Open-minor. I need to shoot a fun match which I don't care about & can experiment ... One thing I've always known, but only started to put into practice when I switched to SC full-time is that you can be good at many things but only truly great at one thing. I really don't have much interest in being "good' at anything ..... (I'm sure just shooting 2 different open guns is slowing down my progress in either, at least from an absolute stand point but I'm committed to being successful in Open as well as RFPO ....)

Edited by Nimitz
Link to comment
Share on other sites

that makes more sense. You are certainly a top teir SC shooter now and simply the fact that you're avoiding risk by electing to stand and shoot OL would be worth it. Sure once or twice in 5 runs a GM might make the 2nd-3rd shot transition in under 1.5s but I'm sure many times would be over and if there's any kind of stumble or problem acquiring the sight picture etc there's potential for it to blow out quickly. Stand and shoot is much lower risk and I'm certain you could blaze some sub 3s shooting it that way. hopefully that rule clarification will work. It wouldn't be too hard for the odd cynic to pic up a 'sprained ankle' along with a doctors note before a match. Since OL is the only stage requiring movement they'd be ok for everything else.

I can understand the reluctance to go back to prod. Prod is my favourite division really as it really tests the gun handling and shooting with 'real' guns (not the comp specific space guns we shoot in open). However my horrible (and deteriorating) stigmatism meant open somewhat leveled the playing field for me. having now shot IPSC open for over a year I've found I enjoy shooting it a lot more. in some ways it's a tougher division as the speed is intense. I have found shooting open improved my production shooting too (the odd times that I shot it). I still wish I had the eyesight for prod, but open is lots of fun. :)

I can understand why someone with a competitive mindset would want to focus on one type of shooting. I guess I was surprised that it started out being USPSA but somewhere along the way you moved on to SC. I thought perhaps it was a diversion on the way to the USPSA gm card. :)

Even the multi-gun thing can be a distraction but in SC you really do need to be able to shoot the 3 guns (metallic auto, open auto, open rimfire) if you want to be 'complete'. :) just like open vs production in ipsc, rimfire open in sc is just too much fun!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now



×
×
  • Create New...