Jake Di Vita

I dunno about vast majority. I think he's losing about equal time between moving and his speed pulling the trigger.

Have you ever ran as fast as you could from one shooting position to another in dry fire?

I only watched the first stage, but the elephant in the room is you need to practice your transitions and you need to actually run between positions. You can make instant improvements without drills by just trying to get from place to place as fast as possible. You don't need special drills. What I did when I was new is watch every video I could of myself and compared how I moved with every video I could find of top shooters. Then I tried to move like them in practice.

It's hard to tell where you are losing time without video or more information. Saying you have .26 splits literally means nothing to me as a coach, it's too vague. I'm not prepared to say you aren't losing significant time shooting. Regardless, the answer is to practice going faster. The secret to leaving position efficiently is calling your last shot and then exploding without hesitation. For entering position efficiently, the goal is to shoot at the earliest moment possible.

You might want to get that elbow/shoulder checked out, because that isn't normal. You should be able to dry fire and not lose strength in your arms (this coming from someone that dry fires with enough intensity to be sweating buckets by the end). The vast majority of the time injuries happen because of neglecting to maintain the body. Poor posture, poor shoulder/elbow position, poor integration of the torso, poor soft tissue quality all tend to lead to problems.

Started using a race holster ~13 years ago, have probably done more draws than everyone in this thread put together, never had a problem. Race holsters are no less safe than Kydex if you practice.

What I'm saying is getting better at pulling the trigger is only like 25% or less of the benefit you get from dry fire. Off the top of my head, here are some things that you can practice in dry fire without pulling the trigger: Draw from any start position, presentation, transitions, reloads, shooting on the move, and entering/exiting positions. In my training I really take to heart the concept of trying to do the common uncommonly well. I want to be as precise, economic, and consistent as I possibly can doing absolutely anything with the gun. Looking at dry fire in that way, there is something you can work on no matter what the condition of your gun. By all means fix it and get back to pulling the trigger in dry fire, just don't feel like you need to stop training while you wait to replace a spring. And, as Trace said above, you're gonna have to find a range that doesn't have a rounds per second restriction.

Blasphemy. You don't have to be dropping a hammer to get something out of dry fire.

I agree with my fellow Open shooter that it isn't that hard to make GM. People that are legit in the running to win nationals are effectively a class above the normal cohort of GM.

I think you're crazy but I wish you the best.

Keeps my support hand away from bumping the mag release.

I put a big gob of JB Weld underneath my extended mag release and have never had a problem with it. Got the idea from Tomasie years ago.

Lol. That experiment was put to rest long ago. I'm pretty sure the video is still on my youtube channel.

Hoooold on a second.....You only eat one meal a day and it only has 10 oz of protein and some vegetables? If that is actually all you eat, that's really not good. I've never met someone that operates well at that level of intake. Dear God man....I know 70 pound 12 year old girls that eat more than you do.

Yeah absolutely. I think the best way of illustrating this is a full target at varying distances. A skilled shooter may be able to fall out of the position on a 15 yard open target, while a lesser skilled shooter may experience adverse effects falling out of position on anything further than 7 yards. As far as partials go, I'm rarely going to fall out of position on that if it's further away than 5 yards or so. As with everything it depends on the target you are shooting. I think that's good stuff. A way this applies to our shooting that isn't talked about in the article is heavy leans around a barrier where your center of mass is very clearly on the opposite side of where you want to go. In this case a drop step is about the only way of getting gravity working in your favor for good acceleration. In this case, the target difficulty isn't the deciding factor....the difficulty of the shooting position is.

Well in my case I've put the timer on both ways and I'm consistently and obviously faster by drop stepping (and the harder the lean, the more the advantage).....perhaps he is faster with just kicking off. Everyone really needs to try everything for themselves on the timer to see what works best for them. Eric leaving that first position is mostly easy exit I think. I don't think he would have started leaning early if that last target was a partial, but who knows with him. It's hard for me to use Eric as an example of what to do in the same way that you can't tell a basketball player to just do it like Michael Jordan. Eric has certainly found what works best for him, most of what he does would not work for me the same way.

I'd like to hear his reasons for believing that. Doesn't make much sense to me that it's an efficient way to move left or right after a hard shot but not forward. What does he recommend doing instead of that for moving forward after a shot that requires a good amount of precision?

I use the same methods for forward movement. Why are your trying to get rid of the dropstep for forward movement? Sure there are certainly other time savers, but not any that I can think of that are universally applicable. A big part of being efficient is recognizing what you can get away with on each range surface.

My pleasure. I use falling out of position as my easy target exit and I use the back leg dropstep as my hard target exit.

Yep. All goes back to see what you need to see for each shot.

For hard entry, the way I've always taught it (Which I originally learned from Max and Travis) is the following steps if I'm moving right to left into a shooting box: 1- Right foot turns toward the target and sets down just BEFORE the box. 2- Left foot goes to the far side of the box and ends up in final position all while extending gun to target and getting on the sights. 3- As sight picture improves I pick up right foot to place into box (only a 6 inch lateral movement or so) trying to keep the rest of my body still. If executed well you can fire a very precise shot the instant you set your right foot down. If executed perfectly you can fire a very precise shot the instant you pick your right foot up.

I think there are a lot of possible reasons for this. Comfort in dry fire, mental block of moving full speed with a loaded gun, could be a little sloppy in dry fire, just not enough reps yet, etc. Perhaps something to try is having a dry fire session in the middle of your live fire session.

Semantics. It doesn't matter if what I do includes a "sight picture" or not as long as I can call my hits on target. The bottom line is for most targets 5 yards and in all I need to do to shoot alphas and KNOW I'm shooting alphas is square my shoulders and hips to the target. I've hit many .7 draws to targets like these in matches, and I usually don't even wait for the gun to hit full extension before I'm pulling the trigger. The only way I can successfully do that over and over is by intimately knowing where the gun is pointing through the amount of training I've put in my index.

Yep, no doubt. I've rebuilt my grip at least a half dozen times. We all have to find the best way to accentuate our ability and take advantage of our strengths.

It does take time to visually recognize an acceptable sight picture and make alterations if necessary. The time just decreases the better you are at it. Squaring my shooting platform to a 2 yard target so that the gun is pointed at the A zone doesn't require me seeing the sights and allows me to fire the instant that I finish squaring my hips/shoulders to it. Whoa whoa whoa, I never advocated blasting uncalled shots. Calling your shot is just knowing where the round will impact before it gets there. The sights are the most precise way of doing this. At 2 yards (even a bit further out) I don't need that level of precision to call 2 alpha 10 times in a row. It's not like I'm dropping C's when I'm doing this. I routinely shoot 92-95% of the points (I think I was 94% of possible points for the YEAR of 2015), and most of the matches I shoot have tons of partial targets. I don't hope my hits are there. Most of the time I can call my score on targets at unload show clear. Once again, all that is required to call a shot is to know where the gun is pointed the instant the bullet leaves the barrel. The sights are a very precise and very reliable way of doing this, but not the only way. So did I. That's why I was an IDPA Master and my first USPSA classification was C. I agree that consistency is key, that's why I don't rely on index for all targets. I gather whatever information I need to shoot each target. Some targets require more information than others to successfully engage.