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Best drill for a newbie


Johrichal

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Hi everyone, just trying to get started in uspsa production shooting and was wondering if you guys have any suggestions for drills. I went out and tried shooting double shots at multiple targets yesterday and the results were pretty bad. Takes me way too long to get my sight picture back and accuracy of my second shot is not very good. Any advice would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks,

John

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Increase grip pressure especially with offhand to increase splits and just watch your sights. Force yourself to not shoot that second shot until the front sight settles back in the notch. Bill drill is great for this. Are you running shots on a timer? What are your splits?

Sent from my XT1635-01 using Tapatalk

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good drills (and skill set):

 

Live Fire:

group shooting (sight focus, trigger control, shot calling)

7yd Bill Drill (grip)

15yd+ Bill Drill (grip & sight tracking)

Blake Drill (target transition)

4 Aces (reloads)

 

Dry Fire:

White wall (sight focus, trigger control)

Hopkins Drill (transitions)

 

IMO you didn't provide enough information to provide any useful technique tips...so my advice is:  Before going out and practicing drills...watch YouTube videos, buy books on the subject, talk to local shooters about technique, ask local guys to critique your methods.  Practicing "bad" techniques is not going to help you in the long term.  

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Thanks for the advice ewuwpew. What other info should I have included? To clarify Im not new to shooting at all ive been shooting since I was old enough to hold a gun til this point it has just been more based on hunting and plinking which ive never seen the need to practice fast follow up shots.

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more information:  target distance, caliber, picture of your grip & stance. 

I too shot for fun & hunting for many years before entering into USPSA...i developed quite a few not so good habits that i had to break in order to gain speed.  

weak grip, poor stance, flinching, shifting eye focus, poor trigger reset, waiting for "perfect" sight picture instead of "acceptable" sight picture, etc..

 

 

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Ok target distance was somewhere around 30 ft im shooting 9mm 147gr coated lead over 3.0grs of TG at 1.140" oal. Out of a cz75 sp-01. I have watched videos on grip and stance the stance I feel Im pretty good with. The grip im still working on I love the feel of the sp-01 rubber grips but they almost feel like they are too small for me I dont feel as though the palm of my off hand has enough room to really get pressure on it which doesnt make sense to me because they are pretty beefy grips and ive never noticed a problem with my grip on my other guns although I havent really shot much else since learning a proper grip. I dont have pictures but will try to get some next time I shoot. 

Thanks again

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  • 2 months later...

I realize this is an old thread, but one thing I've found really helped my competitive shooting is lots of dry fire / sight pictures.

 

I've got older eyes (and older body!) and when I first started competing would 'lose' my sight picture during a stage, I suspect due to eye fatigue.

 

Dry firing at home every day transitioning from target to target really strengthened my ability to retain the front sight...  If you see everything perfectly this isn't an issue, but for me it made a huge difference.

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I like drills that use partial targets mixed in and concentrate on making tight shots after an easy wide open target. Shifting gears is a good skill set to develop.

Also like to drill on standards with long shots using strong and week hands include some gun manipulation skills here. Reloads, transfers etc.

 

dcalvert

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As a new shooter, I'd guess that you need to improve all of your skills. Remember that the best way to improve a skill is to break it down to the smallest part and refine that very simple action. Once you do that you can add it to another skill you have refined in the same way. The result will be a complete movement/skill that is completely subconscious.  

 

You our can do this with virtually every component of a stage or match. If you have competed in matches, you can take any of the difficulties from your most recent match and practice them until they go from weakness to strength. 

 

Suggestions on specific drills would be: 

Reloads

Trandition drills (preferably 2 shots max)

Bill Drills

Movement, into positions with gun in firing position, firing as soon as sight picture is acceptable. 

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Although technically not a "drill," my advice would be to learn what it means to call every shot on every target at any distance.

 

Or in other words, to know - at the instant the shot fired, whether or not it hit the target. (The A box or whatever the target was.)

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On 4/18/2017 at 6:06 PM, Johrichal said:

I went out and tried shooting double shots at multiple targets yesterday and the results were pretty bad.

 

First truth of USPSA: no one you're watching shoots double taps or pairs or whatever you want to call it. Not past very close distances, anyway.

 

Theyre aiming every shot. 

 

In time, you'll learn to fire 4 sighted shots a second at a 7 yard target. Until then, shoot the one shot per second that you can actually aim.

 

 

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6 hours ago, MemphisMechanic said:

 

First truth of USPSA: no one you're watching shoots double taps or pairs or whatever you want to call it. Not past very close distances, anyway.

 

Theyre aiming every shot. 

 

In time, you'll learn to fire 4 sighted shots a second at a 7 yard target. Until then, shoot the one shot per second that you can actually aim.

 

 

This^^^^.  I am almost 1 year into shooting USPSA.  In the beginning, I was told to shoot accurately and don't worry about time.  My first event I got the most points on 2 or 3 stages but I was ssslllooowww so I didn't place well.  After confirming that I needed to work on speed, I started shooting faster...which quickly lead to faster than I could see the sights....my times improved, but I dropped a lot more points...I did this for several matches blaming my mistakes on being new.  Finally, after 5 or 6 matches, I wasn't improving that much.  I then realized the error of my ways and start trying to correct bad habits.  It took a lot longer for me to get back to being consistent and improving than if I would have just focused on making seeing what I needed to see from the beginning.  Don't make the same mistakes as me.

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9 hours ago, B585 said:

  After confirming that I needed to work on speed, I started shooting faster...which quickly lead to faster than I could see the sights....

 

That brings us to point #2:

 

Shooting a few tenths too slow wasn't your problem as a novice, just like it wasn't mine. It's the multiple extra seconds you take to reload, draw, and especially move from point A to point B.

 

To bring your stage times up as a newbie, shoot your sights with patience on cruise control... then absolutely downshift and floor it like a panicked primate until you're at the next position... and ease back off the throttle as the shooting resumes.

 

Slowfastslow.

 

Not fastslowfast.

Edited by MemphisMechanic
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