Revelation

[Kali]

On trigger control...I would agree. Most of my misses are due to my triggering vs my sighting/aiming/calling.

[motosapiens]

Steel and USPSA are apples and oranges, different worlds.

more like oranges and tangelos. Closely related, but with some subtle differences.

But whatever, back to the topic. Different for different people. Sometimes I miss due to trigger control, but often I miss due to impatience with the sights. It's good for you to be able to figure out what *your* weakness is so you can fix it.

[45 Raven]

Set up a reasonably difficult target at about 20 yards. Shoot about 10 shots at it at a moderate pace.

Now set up an identical target at an identical ranges and repeat the drill. But this time let an experienced and skilled shooter press the trigger for you while you do everything else. (Hold the pistol, align the sights, manage the recoil, etc.) Have him shoot at the same pace you did.

Now compare group sizes.

Unless you are a very skilled shooter who has already mastered trigger control, I can almost guarantee you that the second group will be smaller and better centered on the target.

This should show you that you can hold the pistol well, align the sights well, and manage recoil well. But that you have opportunities to improve your trigger management skills.

[Onepocket]

I have heard Manny B. is really good at doing that for students.

[motosapiens]

I think trigger control *at speed* is something most everyone can continue to work on, but at a moderate pace (1 shot per second or so) i don't have any trouble hitting what I'm aiming at. I think trigger control is easier than trigger control at speed or visual patience. But that's just me. Everyone should work on what *they* need to work on, not what I need to work on.

Edit: I admit one of the reasons trigger control isn't my primary problem is that I work on it a LOT, in dry fire and live fire. 20 yard plate racks and 2-inch dots for live fire. For dry fire i point at a white wall, start pressing the trigger when I hear the beep, and try to finish before the end of the beep (in double-action). Shooting single action you should probably be able to beat the beep. I get 2 beeps for 1 press by setting a par time of 3-4 seconds with my 1911 so I have time to recock and realign the sights for the second beep.

Edited February 17, 2015 by motosapiens

[Onepocket]

I practice slow and fast trigger pulls in DRYFIRE and you are right the faster ones are really hard to perfect. For me a harder grip tension makes it easier not to disturb the sights. But I have a crappy Glock trigger, I'm jealous of you guys with the CZ's and Tanfo's.

[Nimitz]

yes, Ben Stoeger did this with me during a dot drill exercise to show me my grip was fine but that my trigger press was causing the occassion errand shot. he proceeded to put 5-6 shots all within the circle as fast as he could pull the trigger ... graphic demonstration of how important trigger control is as compared to everything else ... and how easy it is to be accurate at speed if you have superior trigger control ....

Edited February 17, 2015 by Nimitz

[jroback]

I made an interesting observation on my trigger pulls. With slow speed dry fire (1 second between trigger pulls) I can keep the front sight motionless. At faster rates, there is some left-right oscillation to the front sight -- but the movement happens when I release the trigger not when I'm pulling it. This makes me think that my problem with trigger control at speed is not how I pull the trigger, but how I release it for the reset. I'm planning to try using less trigger finger extensor muscle, and let the trigger spring "reset" my finger more, to see if that helps.

[Onepocket]

Why would the reset throw off the shot? The bullet is gone.

[jroback]

I mainly posted for 3 reasons: 1) the observation was surprising to me, and I was wondering if anyone else had seen this; 2) I agree that this movement would not affect the shot just fired, but its possible that with rapid fire the sights would not have returned before the next trigger pull; and 3) even if this movement did not affect the shot in rapid fire I still feel its something in my trigger technique that needs to be cleaned up, so I wanted to propose one way to do that.

[Robco]

I also want to point out that your over confidence in shooting "A's all day long" while point shooting close targets is probably not as "Solid" as you think it is. If you shoot 100 rounds worth of 7 yard fast shooting drills using point shooting vs observing the sights I think you will be shocked at how much better the overall hit quality is when you are observing the sights. Using your sights forces you to actually aim at something, verses blasting at brown while point shooting.

I am in the middle of trying to figure all of this out for myself right now. As you know Cha-lee, I have come a long way in the past couple of years but I am still significantly slower than top GMs, and I include you in that group as of the last year Charlie. You are making big progress yourself. Kudos.

I usually take 20% more time than the op GM's sometimes only 10% more time than them, and maintain an accuracy level of between 90 and 94% of points possible. I often secure the higher accuracy at the expense of time, by taking too many additional shots. But that, and other typical screw-ups and jams aside, I still am way slower than the top guys.

At my current level, I am finding it unavoidable that I must now break out of this large speed difference if I am to be competitive. Analysis of my match videos and comparing mine to others, including yours Charlie, has allowed me to analyze the WHY of my slower performance. Yes, I am 56 and not in top shape, so my movement is perhaps only 90% as quick as top shooters, but that is not where I am losing most of my time now. Neither is gun handling as I have done in big matches, 1 second reloads and .9 second draws. And I actually read stages and figure out the most efficient way to shoot them as the top guys now, most of the time, on my own.

So, the conclusion as to what I personally need to address in order to diminish the time gap between me and the top guys, is my shooting speeds. As I said I have most of the non-shooting components and skills in good order, they are not my bottleneck at this time. The Shooting parts are.

So this leads me to analyze my transitions and splits. In match mode I usually am too conservative in my shooting, instead of being aggressive and confident. A close look at my shooting skills reveals that my typical splits on open 10 yard metric targets are around .20. I can shoot .12 splits occasionally, and .16 easily when I am aggressive. I think I need to be around .18 in match mode. So not a lot to be gained there.

Obviously, that leaves transitions. And I mean here, those transitions devoid of body movement, to isolate the time measurement to the pure eye and gun parts of the transitions.

I have long felt that what I consider the normal sight picture/aiming process, e.g., find target, aim aligned sights at target, draw eye focus back from target towards front sight and then fire the shot as soon as an acceptable sight picture occurred - was slowing down my shooting. Travis Tomasie taught me this a couple years ago and it made sense and I have learned and used it since. In actuality, this method performed properly, is NEITHER a sight or target focus. The focus point at time of releasing the shot is "about 5 feet in front of the front sight," as Travis described it. I later discussed this very briefly with Ben Stoeger between stages at the 2014 Nationals and he said "just because I am not FOCUSING on the front sight, does not mean I am not seeing it." WOW! Another light bulb for me, combined with Travis' description. I would summarize this by saying that, as Charlie stated here, you see it all! The traditional concepts of front sight focus, or target focus are probably NOT really what the top shooters are actually doing, in practice. Instead it is some hybrid, complex combination of the two. Now I was really starting to "get it," and this promises to perhaps be a clue as to how to speed up my own shooting.

So I continued marching and shooting a lot trying to reconcile all of this great info and advice, against my own experience. Finally, 50K rounds later, I think I am getting it . Just as we can analyze movement efficiency or stage craft and find minor advantages here or time wasters there in those components of our performances, so can we do this in this visual part of shooting.

First, as Brian says, we must locate the target. This requires, by definition, TARGET focus. Then, we must aim the gun at the target. Well, on easy, close, risk-free targets (No No-shoots (N/S) involved), we can all effectively engage the target consistently with 2-A hits, while maintaining a target focus the whole time. Yes, we see the sights, but never focus on them during the execution of the shots. Some say we "look thru the sights" in this type of aiming. I agree. And of course, this is our fastest transitions and splits, possible.

But with more difficult targets, say a 12 or 15 yard open metric, or a 7 yard metric with a N/S, it is different for most of us. Again, we start with a target focus when acquiring the target initially, but this time, as we aim the gun at the target, we all probably pull our eyes back towards the front sight, to one degree or another, to confirm an adequate sight picture, before releasing the shot. As will all aspects of shooting, we all have different physical abilities and skill levels and experience levels, so this shifting of the focus from target before executing the release, can be different for each shooter. Some may barely start pulling the focus back off of the target and not need any more than that instant flash confirmation, though blurry, that all is well. Others may need to come all the way back to the front sight focus, then fire. Real beginners may go back and forth between target and front and rear sights more than once!

Now which one of those scenarios do you think will be fastest? Duh. Well that is what I am now figuring out and training myself to learn to live with, for the sake of significant speed increase.

Without getting into the drill particulars, I can tell you that this is a learn-able, trainable and improvable skill which anyone can accomplish, and quickly. And I am old! I did it in two days, yesterday and today, with less than 1000 rounds total expended. Three sessions of about an hour each - and I taped and scored each run of 12 rounds per, on Practiscore too.

What I found was that I could be every bit as accurate with a target focus emphasis and pushing myself very hard, as I could being more conservative and much slower. HF was all I cared about comparing. This illustrated quickly how true the old adage can be "A fast C is better than a slow A." And this perfectly addressed my main weakness in my match performances - that I was shooting too slowly.

If anyone is interested in the drill layout and process, PM me and I will write something up and post it. Nothing complicated, five paper and two 8 inch plates on a rack. 4 full metric targets were 8 feet apart, at distances of 8 to 12 yards. The 5th paper was at 16 yards, 90 degrees left transition from the other 4 paper. The plate rack plates were at 16 yards 8 feet to the right of the 5th paper. I drew to the right most of the 4 paper, then moved left thru the other 3, then wide transition left to the 5th paper, then ended on the 2 plates. Two shots per paper as usual.

Even though there is some effect due to familiarity with the array and drill, successively re-shooting it many times, but what I was SEEING and FEELING was a big change, and the results reflect that too. I essentially shaved off about 26% of the time for each run, consistently, and that has not faded in the subsequent sessions at all. And despite the raw points shot decreasing with the reduction in speed, the HF more than made up for it! That is my quest. The HFs increase by about 25% as a result!

I never had a strict sight focus on any of these shots fired. And when I missed a plate, at 16 yards, my makeup hit was usually only .21 seconds! This was proven out time and time again. The target focus on the plates, took me approx .43 seconds avg transition. And I missed a plate perhaps once every three runs. Usually, a sight focus aiming method on these same plate transitions would take me .75 seconds. So the target focus method saved me a full .22 per plate hit, and every 6th plate I had to add a .21 makeup. This is WAY faster shooting. (I shot the 2013 Area 2 with Nils, and upon video analysis post match, saw he had as many as 6 additional shots on many stages, and was still 5 seconds faster than me on the stage - this is why = .21 makeups on top of way faster transitions throughout). He took the risk, of an occasional miss by going way faster at all times, and very fast makeups when needed, to be significantly faster on the clock than if he shot for no misses, conservatively.

Hopefully this gives some food for thought on the whole Sight vs Target focus discussion and how it affects the speed of shooting.

Below is one Practiscore results from my first part of three training sessions, yesterday and today.

For Practiscore, I made each run a separate stage, but all 15 are identical stage setups.

Edited February 20, 2015 by Robco

[Robco]

I made an interesting observation on my trigger pulls. With slow speed dry fire (1 second between trigger pulls) I can keep the front sight motionless. At faster rates, there is some left-right oscillation to the front sight -- but the movement happens when I release the trigger not when I'm pulling it. This makes me think that my problem with trigger control at speed is not how I pull the trigger, but how I release it for the reset. I'm planning to try using less trigger finger extensor muscle, and let the trigger spring "reset" my finger more, to see if that helps.

One thing to consider is, that every time you fire a shot, you subconsciously grip down tighter on the gun, due to expectation of the recoil, etc. The other side of that reality, is that after each shot is fired, you subconsciously loosen your grip in a natural relaxation response to the prior stress of gripping harder. Both hands are involved.

We can define good trigger control as releasing a shot without disturbing the sight picture (Saul Kirsch). A related subject is trigger prep. For years I thought that the point of prepping a trigger before the adequate sight picture occurs, was merely to save time - having already taken up any pre-travel and part of the required trigger weight pressure in advance. But, while that is true and effective, the more significant reason for prepping a trigger is to pre-re-obtain your strong hand grip, BEFORE the sight picture occurs, so that when you pull the trigger the other three fingers do not also move as they have to do when re-obtaining a tight grip. Try this to prove it to yourself. Hold your empty strong hand out as if holding a pistol. Then move your trigger finger quickly without the other three fingers moving too. This movement of those three grip fingers disturbs your sight picture if not performed BEFORE triggering. Manny taught me to immediately fly my trigger finger off of the trigger in reset and then right back on during recoil for just this reason.

Things are not always as they appear, and what may be good advice, may be misunderstood or actually work for not so apparent reasons!

[Onepocket]

I also want to point out that your over confidence in shooting "A's all day long" while point shooting close targets is probably not as "Solid" as you think it is. If you shoot 100 rounds worth of 7 yard fast shooting drills using point shooting vs observing the sights I think you will be shocked at how much better the overall hit quality is when you are observing the sights. Using your sights forces you to actually aim at something, verses blasting at brown while point shooting.

I am in the middle of trying to figure all of this out for myself right now. As you know Cha-lee, I have come a long way in the past couple of years but I am still significantly slower than top GMs, and I include you in that group as of the last year Charlie. You are making big progress yourself. Kudos.

I usually take 20% more time than the op GM's sometimes only 10% more time than them, and maintain an accuracy level of between 90 and 94% of points possible. I often secure the higher accuracy at the expense of time, by taking too many additional shots. But that, and other typical screw-ups and jams aside, I still am way slower than the top guys.

At my current level, I am finding it unavoidable that I must now break out of this large speed difference if I am to be competitive. Analysis of my match videos and comparing mine to others, including yours Charlie, has allowed me to analyze the WHY of my slower performance. Yes, I am 56 and not in top shape, so my movement is perhaps only 90% as quick as top shooters, but that is not where I am losing most of my time now. Neither is gun handling as I have done in big matches, 1 second reloads and .9 second draws. And I actually read stages and figure out the most efficient way to shoot them as the top guys now, most of the time, on my own.

So, the conclusion as to what I personally need to address in order to diminish the time gap between me and the top guys, is my shooting speeds. As I said I have most of the non-shooting components and skills in good order, they are not my bottleneck at this time. The Shooting parts are.

So this leads me to analyze my transitions and splits. In match mode I usually am too conservative in my shooting, instead of being aggressive and confident. A close look at my shooting skills reveals that my typical splits on open 10 yard metric targets are around .20. I can shoot .12 splits occasionally, and .16 easily when I am aggressive. I think I need to be around .18 in match mode. So not a lot to be gained there.

Obviously, that leaves transitions. And I mean here, those transitions devoid of body movement, to isolate the time measurement to the pure eye and gun parts of the transitions.

I have long felt that what I consider the normal sight picture/aiming process, e.g., find target, aim aligned sights at target, draw eye focus back from target towards front sight and then fire the shot as soon as an acceptable sight picture occurred - was slowing down my shooting. Travis Tomasie taught me this a couple years ago and it made sense and I have learned and used it since. In actuality, this method performed properly, is NEITHER a sight or target focus. The focus point at time of releasing the shot is "about 5 feet in front of the front sight," as Travis described it. I later discussed this very briefly with Ben Stoeger between stages at the 2014 Nationals and he said "just because I am not FOCUSING on the front sight, does not mean I am not seeing it." WOW! Another light bulb for me, combined with Travis' description. I would summarize this by saying that, as Charlie stated here, you see it all! The traditional concepts of front sight focus, or target focus are probably NOT really what the top shooters are actually doing, in practice. Instead it is some hybrid, complex combination of the two. Now I was really starting to "get it," and this promises to perhaps be a clue as to how to speed up my own shooting.

So I continued marching and shooting a lot trying to reconcile all of this great info and advice, against my own experience. Finally, 50K rounds later, I think I am getting it . Just as we can analyze movement efficiency or stage craft and find minor advantages here or time wasters there in those components of our performances, so can we do this in this visual part of shooting.

First, as Brian says, we must locate the target. This requires, by definition, TARGET focus. Then, we must aim the gun at the target. Well, on easy, close, risk-free targets (No No-shoots (N/S) involved), we can all effectively engage the target consistently with 2-A hits, while maintaining a target focus the whole time. Yes, we see the sights, but never focus on them during the execution of the shots. Some say we "look thru the sights" in this type of aiming. I agree. And of course, this is our fastest transitions and splits, possible.

But with more difficult targets, say a 12 or 15 yard open metric, or a 7 yard metric with a N/S, it is different for most of us. Again, we start with a target focus when acquiring the target initially, but this time, as we aim the gun at the target, we all probably pull our eyes back towards the front sight, to one degree or another, to confirm an adequate sight picture, before releasing the shot. As will all aspects of shooting, we all have different physical abilities and skill levels and experience levels, so this shifting of the focus from target before executing the release, can be different for each shooter. Some may barely start pulling the focus back off of the target and not need any more than that instant flash confirmation, though blurry, that all is well. Others may need to come all the way back to the front sight focus, then fire. Real beginners may go back and forth between target and front and rear sights more than once!

Now which one of those scenarios do you think will be fastest? Duh. Well that is what I am now figuring out and training myself to learn to live with, for the sake of significant speed increase.

Without getting into the drill particulars, I can tell you that this is a learn-able, trainable and improvable skill which anyone can accomplish, and quickly. And I am old! I did it in two days, yesterday and today, with less than 1000 rounds total expended. Three sessions of about an hour each - and I taped and scored each run of 12 rounds per, on Practiscore too.

What I found was that I could be every bit as accurate with a target focus emphasis and pushing myself very hard, as I could being more conservative and much slower. HF was all I cared about comparing. This illustrated quickly how true the old adage can be "A fast C is better than a slow A." And this perfectly addressed my main weakness in my match performances - that I was shooting too slowly.

If anyone is interested in the drill layout and process, PM me and I will write something up and post it. Nothing complicated, five paper and two 8 inch plates on a rack. 4 full metric targets were 8 feet apart, at distances of 8 to 12 yards. The 5th paper was at 16 yards, 90 degrees left transition from the other 4 paper. The plate rack plates were at 16 yards 8 feet to the right of the 5th paper. I drew to the right most of the 4 paper, then moved left thru the other 3, then wide transition left to the 5th paper, then ended on the 2 plates. Two shots per paper as usual.

Even though there is some effect due to familiarity with the array and drill, successively re-shooting it many times, but what I was SEEING and FEELING was a big change, and the results reflect that too. I essentially shaved off about 26% of the time for each run, consistently, and that has not faded in the subsequent sessions at all. And despite the raw points shot decreasing with the reduction in speed, the HF more than made up for it! That is my quest. The HFs increase by about 25% as a result!

I never had a strict sight focus on any of these shots fired. And when I missed a plate, at 16 yards, my makeup hit was usually only .21 seconds! This was proven out time and time again. The target focus on the plates, took me approx .43 seconds avg transition. And I missed a plate perhaps once every three runs. Usually, a sight focus aiming method on these same plate transitions would take me .75 seconds. So the target focus method saved me a full .22 per plate hit, and every 6th plate I had to add a .21 makeup. This is WAY faster shooting. (I shot the 2013 Area 2 with Nils, and upon video analysis post match, saw he had as many as 6 additional shots on many stages, and was still 5 seconds faster than me on the stage - this is why = .21 makeups on top of way faster transitions throughout). He took the risk, of an occasional miss by going way faster at all times, and very fast makeups when needed, to be significantly faster on the clock than if he shot for no misses, conservatively.

Hopefully this gives some food for thought on the whole Sight vs Target focus discussion and how it affects the speed of shooting.

Below is one Practiscore results from my first part of three training sessions, yesterday and today.

For Practiscore, I made each run a separate stage, but all 15 are identical stage setups.

Capture 2.JPG

[Onepocket]

Great Post!!!

[Ultimo-Hombre]

Robco,

An excellent post.

By all means, please post the specifics/set up of your drill.

[Robco]

Robco,

An excellent post.

By all means, please post the specifics/set up of your drill.

Alright then. Here is my Target Focus Speed drill layout attached below.

Nothing magical about the layout, it just provided/required the actions/skills I was trying to train on, including a wide transition and the more difficult plate shots. Manny Bragg taught me that it is alright to train for speed, as long as you have some hard targets in the drill too.

It is a drill intended to force a shooter to "let go" of the crutch of "front sight focus" and learn how much that has been holding them back in speed. You will be surprised at how accurately you can shoot without a front sight focus, and also how FAST you can shoot accurately enough, using a Target focus.

As Steve Anderson so well put it in his EXCELLENT new book Get To Work, our sport is about "Points per Second." Which is the best definition of Hit Factor (HF) I have ever heard.

Shooters get stuck in an impossible turmoil of confusion when trying to reconcile, and then actually execute on, the competing/conflicting directives of "front sight focus" and "calling shots" and "Double taps are bad." The actual practice of top shooters (many of whom do NOT even understand HOW they do what they do), is somewhere in between all of these concepts. And of course, target dependent. Target focus for most shooters will be reserved for easier and less risky targets, but note that perhaps 75% of most stages is composed of these easier type targets. For a C class shooter, an "easy" target might be a full IPSC paper out to 7 yards. Where an M class might be able to extend that to 15 yards or beyond, as in my drill here. A "risky" target is one with Hard Cover or a No-Shoot, and either of these adds yet another layer to the difficulty of the target which must be taken into consideration.

So, my goal, as a second year M class Limited shooter, is to be able to successfully engage full open IPSC paper targets with a TARGET FOCUS out to 20 yards, for now. Full targets beyond 20 yards, and any partials or risky targets might only be out to 5 yards for me with target focus. See the difference there?

And the whole point is that Target focus is just plain faster. My drill will help you discover this for yourself. Comparing the HF for each run is the way to do it, as a much faster time with less accurate hits, will usually still have a higher HF. The more you practice shooting with a Target Focus, the more accurately and fast you will be able to execute. So give it some time. And then learn when to use Target focus or not, just as you should learn when to engage any target on the move or not. All targets are not created equal, and a big failure of many beginner shooters is to try to engage a particular target in the wrong manner. E.g., shooting an open IPSC on the move at 15 yards when you are moving TOWARDS it is totally different than trying to engage a 7 yard IPSC with a N/S, at 7 yards when you are moving parallel to the target. I would do the 15 yard scenario on the move, but never the 7 yard scenario, at my skill level.

Same type decision and judgement should be applied to what type of aiming and focus you should use. And only through intelligent experimentation, training and practice can you learn you own database of limitations and capabilities, with which to make a good decision on match day. And as they say, if you cannot successfully do something 5 times in a row, then do NOT try that in a match.

Target Focus Speed Drill - Rob Cook - 2-18-15.pdf

Edited February 20, 2015 by Robco

[CHA-LEE]

Robco> Great Observations!!! If you can produce good quality hits with .20 on target splits, that is fast enough on target shooting for 99% of the shots we make in a stage. For you to get from where you are at now to where you want to go, you need to start focusing on improving your target to target transitions. A big aspect of improving your transitions is calling your shots as you can't do the "Next" thing until you know that your current shot is good, marginal, or bad. You can usually tell if people are effectively calling their shots if the make up shot splits are artificially faster than the normal splits for the given target. This happens when the shot calling processes is being driven by your subconscious mind.

Beyond calling your shots, the next aspect of transitioning effectively and aggressively comes down to the mechanics of physically driving the gun from one target to the next. Most shooters try to drive the lateral transition of the gun using their arms or waist. Doing that is a lot less effective than keeping your upper body solid and driving the transition movement with your legs. The start and travel movement aggressiveness is the same using Arms, Waist, or Legs, but how consistently and solidly you stop the gun on the next target varies dramatically depending on which muscle group you are using. Using your legs produces the most consistent and solid stopping of the gun on the next target. The challenge with this is that depending on how a stage is laid out and what positions it forces you to shoot from, some times you can't use your legs to transition and are forced to use your waist or arms. But if I have the choice of picking which muscle group to drive the transitions I will always default to using my legs.

There are several top iron sight shooters who rarely have on target splits below a .20, but beat the tar out of everyone in their transitions. Good examples of this are Manny Bragg, Todd Jerrett, and Nils. The few top shooters who aggressively push ultra fast splits are Blake Miguez and Taran Butler. But those guys usually walk the knife edge of fast stage times because they are shooting super fast, verses dropping a crap ton of on target points which brings their HF back down to the slower shooting guys. The train wreck factor is a lot higher when you are pushing hard for ultra fast splits. I know from first hand experience how bad this can negatively impact a match performance as I usually don't have a problem with unloading lead in a hurry. The last time I did some training with Manny Bragg he gave me this sage advice...... "You can't go fast until you start slowing down the shooting". This sounds like conflicting advice, but it makes sense in taking the focus OFF of the shooting speed and putting more focus ON doing everything else sooner. Its taken me a year to start to "Get It" but now I am starting to see marked improvement in my overall stage performance especially in consistency.

[cnote]

two great posts, keep the discussion going when you find the time, and thanks for the stage set up

[Supermoto]

. "You can't go fast until you start slowing down the shooting".

This is great advice. And I don't think it is always physically slowing down the shooting. The biggest issue I struggle with is transitioning off the target before I finish my second shot. My eyes and brain and therefore hands are already moving to the next target. So for me, slowing down my shooting is actually having visual patience

[Robco]

Robco> Great Observations!!! If you can produce good quality hits with .20 on target splits, that is fast enough on target shooting for 99% of the shots we make in a stage. For you to get from where you are at now to where you want to go, you need to start focusing on improving your target to target transitions. A big aspect of improving your transitions is calling your shots as you can't do the "Next" thing until you know that your current shot is good, marginal, or bad. You can usually tell if people are effectively calling their shots if the make up shot splits are artificially faster than the normal splits for the given target. This happens when the shot calling processes is being driven by your subconscious mind.

Beyond calling your shots, the next aspect of transitioning effectively and aggressively comes down to the mechanics of physically driving the gun from one target to the next. Most shooters try to drive the lateral transition of the gun using their arms or waist. Doing that is a lot less effective than keeping your upper body solid and driving the transition movement with your legs. The start and travel movement aggressiveness is the same using Arms, Waist, or Legs, but how consistently and solidly you stop the gun on the next target varies dramatically depending on which muscle group you are using. Using your legs produces the most consistent and solid stopping of the gun on the next target. The challenge with this is that depending on how a stage is laid out and what positions it forces you to shoot from, some times you can't use your legs to transition and are forced to use your waist or arms. But if I have the choice of picking which muscle group to drive the transitions I will always default to using my legs.

There are several top iron sight shooters who rarely have on target splits below a .20, but beat the tar out of everyone in their transitions. Good examples of this are Manny Bragg, Todd Jerrett, and Nils. The few top shooters who aggressively push ultra fast splits are Blake Miguez and Taran Butler. But those guys usually walk the knife edge of fast stage times because they are shooting super fast, verses dropping a crap ton of on target points which brings their HF back down to the slower shooting guys. The train wreck factor is a lot higher when you are pushing hard for ultra fast splits. I know from first hand experience how bad this can negatively impact a match performance as I usually don't have a problem with unloading lead in a hurry. The last time I did some training with Manny Bragg he gave me this sage advice...... "You can't go fast until you start slowing down the shooting". This sounds like conflicting advice, but it makes sense in taking the focus OFF of the shooting speed and putting more focus ON doing everything else sooner. Its taken me a year to start to "Get It" but now I am starting to see marked improvement in my overall stage performance especially in consistency.

Excellent advice Chah-Lee! As I said, your performance has been dramatically improved in the last year. I have been stalking you! (as you know).

I think you were with Manny a week after I spent 4 days with him in Oct 2013. He said you were coming. He is terrific isn't he, Manny Bragg.

Calling shots - Absolutely key to moving to the next level. I have been working on it for a couple years, mostly in the last 4 months. Shot over 20K rounds since Dec 1 and in much more productive type practice since Nils and others taught me how to practice. But at my 4th year "rookie" level, I have so many things I am working on all at the same period of time it is mind bending. After watching Travis' old You tube Video on calling shots, perhaps 20 times over the past 4 years, I only first actually began DOING the drill in late late November 2014! I did it with my wife, 27 year old son and 45 year old business partner too, and it was amazing how well we all advanced in shot calling, within an hour of training. Also used the Manny method of covering their sight of the target with another target swung down over their gun immediately after the shot was released, so the shooter could NOT see holes in the paper! So, at this juncture, with at least 4K rounds specifically expended at training myself to call shots, I report the following:

A) In the drill environment, I could call 75% of my shots to within 4 inches at 15 yards. Not bad, but real.

In match competition environment, I INTUITIVELY call my shots, meaning I do not consciously comprehend how far off a shot was, but I KNOW it was WRONG - and whether it was left, right, high or low. I then IMMEDIATELY send a makeup shot with perhaps a .24 split regardless of the target difficulty.

C) I believe the first level of shot calling is just actively watching EVERYTHING as we shoot (Awareness as Enos puts it). This is harder than one would think, and is a "letting go" process too, getting out of our own way and simply observing. And eventually, you start seeing everything as it happens. Of course you cannot see the actual sights as they lift, but you see them lift! A subtle difference there, which frustrated me to death trying till I figured this out. (you keep your eyes on the target when in recoil, not the sight as it rises, but you see the sight peripherally you might say).

D) The next level of shot calling, is knowing SOMETHING was not good about the shot, although not necessarily knowing what. This is huge. And illustrates that shot calling is not ONLY visual or sight related. It also involves feel to some extent, such as KNOWING you jumped on the trigger, or had a delayed release for whatever reason. That too, is part of shot calling.

E) I am perhaps now at 50% capability on shot calling, which is a lot better than none, but still causes me to makeup a lot of C hits which does not pay.

F) Manny taught us that, to create the discipline of shot calling, he once had to "punish" himself for not calling a shot, by immediately firing a makeup. Not because he called it bad, but because he did not know. And the additional shot requirement cost him a lot of points in time wasted, eventually curing his lack of calling each shot.

G) I am now at the point in my skill level and experience where I am literally opening up my whole visual awareness. And this will result in major improvements in every aspect of my shooting, especially shot calling.

Transitions = dead on brother. I am acutely aware of that being my main weakness, and opportunity. And this includes all the body movement efficiency aspects, gun movement too, as well as visual skills of "sight picture" acquisition. I am getting to where I do not even like using the term "sight picture" because it now means so much more to me than mere sight alignment combined with target aim point! See, that is how I am progressing with the VISUAL. I went to Manny in 2013 to specifically SLOW DOWN MY SPLITS! In other words, to stop double tapping as it turned out, and be more patient for a "sight picture" before releasing the split, or ANY shot. I shot 5 foot full targets for hundreds of rounds before I was able to consistently get all A hits with .18 splits. Thanks Manny!

Leg recruitment for transitions is a tremendous element as you said. Right on! Keeping the upper body relationships intact, whenever possible is a big accuracy and time saving method. I do this pretty well, although often subconsciously, as it is basically an athletic action to me. What I have learned relatively recently, at least started really executing on it finally, is keeping the gun up at all times except when full out running. I watched you at Florida open shoot Stage 3 (the one back in the jungle), and was immediately impressed at how well you did that when transitioning from Location 1 to location 2. Awesome. I planned on doing it just like you, but did not as it turned out watching my video. Not bad, but not like you. Of course your orangutan arms and legs made it a few steps less than I needed! This is an example of how I use post match video analysis to study and learn.

Easy drills for practicing leg recruitment for wide transitions. Two steel plates set wide enough apart to require at a 90 degree transition one to the other, and shoot it back and forth, one round each. Not wider as the 90% permits maintaining an extended gun presentment, which I would not do in wider transitions. Also, of course, trains one to land the gun on the next target more precisely. i.e., when to decelerate - like on the first edge of the target so it slides in and stops on target, not swinging past it and having to correct it. All skills which can be developed. And I again had to reteach myself to move my eyes first to the next target and the gun trailing just behind the eyes. It amazed me that even 4 months ago, I was often moving my eyes and the gun TOGETHER, which is extremely slow and inaccurate - did not permit a dead on stop/landing of the gun. We can accurately point the gun where we are LOOKING. This is a huge fundamental that, obviously with myself, even M class shooters can forget.

I appreciate the coaching Chah-Lee.

Here is link to my Florida Open Match video.

Edited February 20, 2015 by Robco

[sfinney]

How wold you know at match speed if you had a bad trigger pull if you weren't observing your sights? When it's scored? To late.

Call it point shooting or whatever you want you have to see SOMETHING each shot. What you need to see will vary per target.

[Robco]

How wold you know at match speed if you had a bad trigger pull if you weren't observing your sights? When it's scored? To late.

Call it point shooting or whatever you want you have to see SOMETHING each shot. What you need to see will vary per target.

sfinney, I agree. Let me expand on my statement to perhaps shed some more light on it all.

Especially in match speed and during competition, my awareness is always at peak level. ANY discrepancy between what I intended to execute, such as trigger control, and what occurred, is OBVIOUS to me in a millisecond. Literally. Whether it is a full out trigger freeze, or just a coordination hang-fire = where the release is a millisecond before or after I expected it to occur, and/or what I SAW when the shot did actually release, such as a big dip associated with jumping on and jerking the trigger, and NOT getting away with it for whatever reason (bad weak hand grip usually), or shooting over the top due to a premature release coming out of recoil = again fully SEEN while it happened.

And finally, to reiterate ( I have written 12 posts in the last 20 hours so not sure which thread I mentioned it in ) as Ben Stoeger told me, just because I do not FOCUS on the front SIGHT does NOT mean I did not SEE the sight. When I shoot, if I do not fail to do so, I see EVERYTHING in front of my face, including the target, the front and rear sight, any obstacles or props (ports and walls, etc) and my shot calling is good. I have trained myself to take a visual snapshot of everything I see at the time the shot is released. So I know within 1 or 2 hundredths of a second after release, if something was not right, and usually will send a .21 split follow up immediately if anything is off, or if I just failed to see what I needed to see.

To summarize, I ALWAYS know instantly, on every shot, if my trigger pull was good or not. Because that is my primary focus, deciding, albeit subconsciously and quickly, WHEN to release the shot. In IPSC, we tell our guns when to go off (Angus Hobdell). None of this "surprise release" BS like precision shooting permits. I have already reset and prepped the trigger at end of a transition, or while in recoil for splits, for the next shot, so it takes only .01 ?? seconds decision time to actually release the shot once the sight picture occurs. In contrast, I do NOT get sight picture, and THEN begin trigger pull - that is how bad hits usually occur - by the time the shot is released, the hold was lost and no longer on target.

I do not shoot with any external cadence or rhythm imposed. Any "cadence" is simply 100% residual of my visual based decision of when to release each shot. Shooting when we THINK we should, is a big novice trap, and the root of double taps and swung past transitions, etc. We should only shoot as soon as the total visual picture says to.

Edited February 20, 2015 by Robco

[Ultimo-Hombre]

Rob,

Did you shoot area one last year at tri cities?

[Robco]

Yes Ultimo-Hombre. Tough match for me.

[Ultimo-Hombre]

I thought you did just fine amigo, recognized you in your vid. I was squadded with you.

Getting a lot from your posts here, thank you.

Will look you up this year in idaho falls.