Jake Di Vita

Don't worry about going faster or slower in matches. Just go out there and hit the targets (A zone).

I don't find much of a difference in my draw times from surrender to hands at sides, that particular draw was around 70 I think Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't think it's impossible at all. I don't think it's an on demand thing, but limit of human function? Sure. I've seen 50 draws and I've seen 10 splits (and faster). If the individual pieces can be done, it is entirely possible to put them together. The fastest I've ever done is 1.26, but I've seen a 1.15. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Got some match video from Ohio that has an 11, few 12s and bunch of 13s. It's probably not exact since it was done with Max's app and not an actual view of the timer for obvious reasons. Real fast splits just kind of seem like something that some people kind of have and some don't. I knew 2 or 3 guys pretty well that don't shoot much anymore that could manage 10s pretty consistently. If I can ever find time to get some non match live fire in, I'd love to try and get some cool video.

If you guys haven't read The Rise of Superman (Steven Kotler), it is well worth it.

Great match, huge thanks to all the staff who worked their asses off and my squad mates. My 500 rounds of live fire over the last 2 years certainly showed in my performance but had a lot of fun and have a good indication of what I need to practice the most. Posted video of all but one stage on my YouTube channel for anyone interested in watching. Can't wait for next year. Congrats to the winners. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

As an open shooter I can tell you that sub 1 second reloads at a 10 yard target is not very difficult at all. Pretty confident I could go 10/10 on that whether it was in open or limited and I'm just a "regular gm".

A magwell exists to buffer poorly executed reloads. A perfect reload won't even touch the magwell. The reason most people like to reload around sternum level is that you tend to have greater accuracy the closer you are to your body. Some people will have you clap and say where your hands meet is approximately where you should reload. I personally don't like to drop my gun that much

It's a little harder to measure running as with hills and wind it can be difficult to make to calculations. You can measure wattage with cycling though. There isn't a magical number of horsepower that makes you fit, especially because you will generate a different amount of horsepower depending on the activity you are doing. A reasonably fit athlete can generate upwards of .5 hp doing air squats for a short amount of time, whereas the horsepower for a 1rm snatch will be significantly higher and the horsepower for a 5k run will be considerably lower. Horsepower is the measuring stick we use to compare fitness. How much horsepower makes you more fit than someone else? More than the other person generated doing the same tasks as you. Standards for what makes someone kinda fit or really fit are subjective. For me, placing in the top 150 in your region in the open is pretty fit, you can look on games.crossfit.com to see what that would be.

It's like talking to a door. I'm done. Beyond help.

I didn't say your ideas were stupid, but you posted at least one thing that was *provably* false (about marathoners not being able to jump 6"), and I would say your apparent claim that elite cyclists can't move furniture is also likely false. the data on various measures of fitness for various top athletes is readily available on the internet. Go find if you actually care. I categorically reject your claim that only *your* definition of fitness is valid. As far as how the best shooters in the world can get better, I don't know. If I were them, I would probably analyze myself (or get help) to figure out the weakest areas of my game, and work hardest on those areas, while not neglecting everything else. Probably a different answer for every shooter. But I'm quite sure they know how to do that better than I do, which is why they are already the best in the world. This: "In the meantime, I have no doubt that top shooters everywhere will be flocking to this thread to see how they can get those last few points to win a national championship." implies exactly what you think about it. Which is fine. It's easy to shit on things from your computer. Provably false? Prove me false then. My information is second hand from coaches that have personally worked with elite marathon runners, can you produce anything at all that proves that wrong? Somehow I doubt it. Believe me or don't. It really won't impact me in the slightest. I didn't say an elite cyclist can't move furniture, it was an example illustrating that people that have devoted the physical lives to endurance sports are not going to be strong outside of that sport. Not. Fitness. That is called specialization. Define what fitness is. What does that word mean and how do you measure it. How can you tell me if a swimmer is more fit than a runner or cyclist. How can you tell me if a hockey player is more fit than an NFL player, or NBA player. Crossfit's definition of fitness allows you to conclusively prove this with pretty basic calculations, work divided by time, higher score wins. The wider the range of tasks tested, the more credible the claim. You tell me to go look at numbers for various top athletes. What numbers are important? If you find someone with a super high vo2 max but low strength and power, is he more fit than an nfl running back with a lower vo2 max but more strength and power? How can you argue that the person that performs the best across a wide range of tests isn't the fittest? I know a lot of the best shooters in the country. I've competed with them, I've talked with them, I've watched and diagnosed them at least since I started shooting in 1999. I see what I would call basic movement/motor control flaws in every single one of them. As I said in my original post, this is time being left on the table.

I suppose that depends on who you include in the discussion for average. I have pretty high standards for calling someone fit. But I want to reiterate again, I don't believe fitness is what gives you the majority of the benefit in shooting. I believe it is being able to transfer how you learned to move heavy weight fast, or your body fast, and accurately through space. If I have 275 pounds over my head, there is only one way I'm going to set my shoulders to hold it because I'm terrified to do it any other way. This position is the best expression of how the body mechanically works and I never would have learned it had I not trained and coached in this manner. I contend that transferring those skills to a competitive shooting environment will yield small gains in everything you do. Maybe you get out of position .005 faster every time. Maybe you control recoil a little better because your arms, shoulders, and trunk are set in the best position to absorb impact (recoil). How do you decide what that is worth? Accuracy? Maybe. Speed? Maybe. I don't know for sure, but my gut tells me it will be better. The reason I feel this is worthy of further looking into is because once you learn how to move and stabilize, you can transfer it to everything that you do in the confines of a stage. All this is outside of the actual benefit you get from being in shape.

Ok, I'm now convinced I'm being trolled. Why don't you provide me with data on the fitness of a hockey player, motocross champion, or elite marathoner. You aren't understanding what I'm saying. Fitness is not measured in your ability to do one thing well, fitness is the measure of how well you can do anything and everything. If you can back squat 1000 pounds, that's real impressive, but I bet you get tired walking to your mail box. That is not fit. If you can bike 100 miles in 3 hours, damn that's impressive, I bet you can't help your friend move his refrigerator. Not fit. Fitness is NOT a measure of how good you are in your sport, it is a measure of the output of the human body in a wide range of tasks. Elite athletes? Absolutely they are. Extremely high level of fitness? No, not at all. But hey, since my ideas are stupid, how do you think the best shooters in the world can get better? I anxiously await your expert testimony.

You don't need to wonder. It's because of ignorant people that have no frame of reference to even understand what the argument is yet they still talk like they are experts. Maybe next time you should do your own homework on researching the subject before you make yourself look like a fool with your responses. I know of nfl players, including pretty much the entire roster of the New Orleans Saints, Major League Baseball players, Olympic gold medalists, at least one pro surfer, Olympic skiers, and a shit ton of other professional athletes that aren't even close to qualifying for regionals in crossfit and they have been training with crossfit for years. Yet you tell me hockey players and motocross racers with no crossfit experience would do great in crossfit? Meanwhile you talk about vo2 max like it is some awesome measure of fitness. You can't even define what fitness is. You literally have no clue whatsoever about what you speak of. I've grown weary of wasting my time responding to you. If you don't agree, fine, I really don't care. Just do yourself and everyone else a favor and keep your thoughts on this subject to yourself. When there is a subject I know nothing about, like brain surgery, I keep my damn mouth shut. I wonder how long it will take you to learn that lesson. Christ, you still don't even understand that this thread isn't even about fitness primarily. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk You are starting to sound like a cult member. You are simply defining 'fitness' as 'being good at crossfit'. That's fine, but it's a pretty narrow definition that only other cult members care about. Then instead of discussing the topic, you simply call names and make broad assertions about how ignorant other people are. That's cool, but it doesn't help make your point any more than it helps tom cruise when he talks about scientology. I think we can agree that being in shape is good for your health and well being and quality of life. Beyond that, you'll have to come up with some actual data to convince me. I get that you believe in crossfit and probably make money from it but this whole thread sounds more like an advertisement for your professional 'coaching' services than anything else. Ah the famous old cliche cult assertion of crossfit. Go look up how Websters defines a cult, and get back to me. Funny how you berate me for calling names when you start your post out with an insult. What a joke. By the way, since definitions appear to be difficult for you, ignorance is the state of not knowing something, it isn't an insult. No. My definition of fitness falls in line with Crossfit's, which as I stated earlier in this thread, is work capacity across broad time and modal domains. If you don't understand what that means, it is your average power output measured in horsepower across a wide range of activities and time durations. VO2 max has literally nothing to do with it. Elite marathon runners have great vo2 max, most also can't jump more than 6 inches off the ground. You going to tell me they are fit? They are amazing at what they do, which is run long distances. They aren't very good at anything else physical. I don't make any money from crossfit whatsoever, and I'm not currently offering any coaching services, go back to your troll cave with your wild accusations. What are you even asking for data on? I'm not trying to prove anything, I wrote a post about a way to possibly make the best shooters in the world better, and you used it as your personal soapbox to attack crossfit, which is not something I even mentioned in the original post. It's obvious you like so many others out there have an agenda against it, and you know what? I don't really care, just take it somewhere else. I've read peer reviewed literature from the NSCA that "proved" that hamstrings aren't involved in squatting. If one of the most respected associations in strength and conditioning can get away with publishing bunk like that, I'm going to take anything else they say with a grain of salt. If you think that sitting in on a couple studies and thesis defenses, an L1 seminar, and grad school gives you a solid understanding of crossfit, you greatly underestimate the amount of material and complexity there actually is to it. I've attended 6 L1's, 4 of them working as an intern, an L2 before it was called the L2, mobility, 4 years of coaching in an affiliate ran by a senior seminar staff member, and 10 years before that coaching and researching on my own, and I still learn things daily. I don't think you're lying, I think you don't have nearly enough experience in methodology that is for the most part not taught in schools.

But it is possible to get slow by going to fast... Slow and intentional builds the base for speed. As soon as I screw up a reload in dry fire I slow everything down to where I know I can do it perfectly and work to rebuild muscle memory at a slower speed. Execute the reloads perfectly at a slower speed and then gradually build back up again until I screw up again. I'm not talking about wildly flinging your magazine at the gun. Yeah, of course you need the basic movement pattern down, but threshold training is going to give you the best of both worlds. The idea behind threshold training is that you perform the reload at the speed you can do it perfectly for maybe 5 reps. Then you go a little faster every 5 reloads until you start to mess them up. Most people as you stated would slow down here, the key is to be able to know what the problem is and to continue doing it at the same speed forcing yourself to fix the error at speed. If I can compare it with typing, I want you to type fast enough that you miss some of the keys, then I want you to stop missing the keys. At least, that's what has worked well for me.

You don't need to wonder. It's because of ignorant people that have no frame of reference to even understand what the argument is yet they still talk like they are experts. Maybe next time you should do your own homework on researching the subject before you make yourself look like a fool with your responses. I know of nfl players, including pretty much the entire roster of the New Orleans Saints, Major League Baseball players, Olympic gold medalists, at least one pro surfer, Olympic skiers, and a shit ton of other professional athletes that aren't even close to qualifying for regionals in crossfit and they have been training with crossfit for years. Yet you tell me hockey players and motocross racers with no crossfit experience would do great in crossfit? Meanwhile you talk about vo2 max like it is some awesome measure of fitness. You can't even define what fitness is. You literally have no clue whatsoever about what you speak of. I've grown weary of wasting my time responding to you. If you don't agree, fine, I really don't care. Just do yourself and everyone else a favor and keep your thoughts on this subject to yourself. When there is a subject I know nothing about, like brain surgery, I keep my damn mouth shut. I wonder how long it will take you to learn that lesson. Christ, you still don't even understand that this thread isn't even about fitness primarily. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Use whatever measuring stick you like. VO2 max is fine. I'm sure you can design some sport-specific measure that will make any desired sport appear to score higher. bottom line is that the top athletes in any real sport are at an elite fitness level, whether it's football, basketball, track, soccer, cycling, mx, xc skiing or whatever. Shooting and golfing, not so much. I'm sure the finest cross-fit 'athlete' would be quickly exhausted by the demands of either sport. I'm also quite sure that nhl hockey players and pro mx-ers would measure extremely fit on your cross-fit specific tests. You are very wrong about literally everything in your post, but nothing I can say will convince you of that, so I won't even try. Think what you want.

One more thing I want to add because I don't think I'm being totally clear. You can be really fit and still have dog shit motor control. The primary benefit that training gives us shooters after a sufficient level of fitness has been attained is knowing the most efficient way to move and stabilize your body. This is something that is far more complex than it sounds. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Max and JJ both appear to be in excellent shape to me. Ben, not so much. I'm only calling ben out because he has admitted as much, online and in person. Looking at the top 10 of 2014 nats in all 4 divisions, I can find plenty of folks that are carrying significant amounts of extra weight. That doesn't mean they're not 'athletic', in the same way that golfers are athletic, but I wouldn't consider them incredibly agile or strong.OTOH, if you look at the roster of the last world cup champions, or the last stanley cup winners, or the top 10 overall in motocross, there are exactly zero people who aren't at an elite fitness level. You can't even get started in those 'sports' without being in excellent shape. For golfers and shooters, being in shape never hurts, but clearly it's not a requirement to compete at the national or world level. There's a certain minimum level of physical athleticism necessary to be competitive, but I'd say it's on the level of beer-league softball players, and slightly above the level of folks who power-walk in the evening while carrying a golf club. First you need to define what fitness is. In crossfit we define fitness as your work capacity across broad time and modal domains. Your example of Stanley cup winners and motocross champions proves my point. Are those people great athletes in their sport? Absolutely. Would I consider most of them fit? Most likely not. Fitness and sport specific athleticism are vastly different things. I can make a champion cyclist wind almost instantly by making him shovel gravel.JJ is the only person shooting at an elite level that I can think of that I would consider reasonably fit. We are once again getting far afield from my original post. Fitness beyond a certain point is not going to aid you in shooting, it is learning how to move and stabilize your body that will make the biggest difference to proficient shooters. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I never should have made a crossfit reference. My bad. However, I've previously participated in Xfit. I have helped conduct university studies looking at crossfit. And I have sat in on multiple thesis defenses of Xfit studies. I think I have a pretty solid understanding. However, if there is some salacious piece of info that I missed in grad school, the crossfit cert, or in the peer reviewed articles I've read about Xfit please enlighten me. There's no "salacious" piece of info or peer reviewed material that I can give you that will give you an understanding like 14 years of coaching thousands of classes and people will. The vast majority of literature and people that bad mouth it don't understand what they are talking about, usually because of poor exposure from a baby sitter or cheerleader that calls himself a coach. Perhaps I'm mistaken, but from reading your responses it seems like you have some misconceptions, but this isn't the place for me to go on a tirade about the general publics misconceptions of crossfit. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

that's an interesting opinion. I personally think a gym is a silly place to teach you how to move your body, but a good place to build some general strength, especially in the muscles that may be underworked in your primary activity, or that are particularly important in your primary activity (obviously for me, hanging around a gym is NOT my primary activity). I think a soccer field, or a hockey rink, or on top of an off-road motorcycle, or on a USPSA stage, or on a ski hill is an outstanding place to teach you how to move your body, and it's much less stinky and way more fun. As a serious cyclist and now hockey player, I use the gym to do upper-body and ab work that those sports mostly neglect, but for sure I would be in crappy shape if I had to rely on lifting only. I think I'm not the only one that finds lifting and gym work to be boring and stultifying and something to be avoided. It's much easier to stay in shape if you find some exercise you LIKE to do. All the more so if that exercise is a competitive venture. Then the grim work of going to the gym now and then can be at least seen as benefitting the fun and interesting activity. Hooray for the outdoors! I think we are talking past each other a little bit. For me the gym includes powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, gymnastics, running, throwing, etc all while under the experienced and trained eye of a coach that knows what he's looking at.Part of the reason why the gym is the best place to learn how to move is because in order for me as a coach to make you better, I need to fix you at the point you break down. For example, I've seen plenty of people able to deadlift very well when fresh. If I tell the same people to run an 800 first and then deadlift, I will more accurately see the real athlete. If you are a great deadlifter usually, but fall apart when you get to 405 for reps, that is where I need to fix you, and I can't do that during a soccer game or a uspsa stage or on a ski hill. In the gym I can control the stimulus and make immediate correction based on what I see....I can't really do that anywhere else nearly as well. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So, how do you fix flat feet in minutes?It's hard to explain via text, but it is a matter of motor control. The reason people have flat feet is because they don't understand how to stabilize their ankle. I didn't say I can fix flat feet in minutes, I said I can get them to create an arch in minutes. In reality if that person wants to fix their flat feet they will have to spend a likely large amount of time making the correct motor control a habit.The easiest way to explain it is for you to stand with your feet hip width, toes pointing straight forward, then try to spin both of your feet (toes) outward but don't actually let them move. When done correctly, this generates torque in your ankles in the form of external rotation, which causes you to have an arch. If you happen to be at the Ohio state match this weekend, I'd be happy to show you in person, it will make much more sense. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Swanny, I don't think you understand crossfit as well as you think you do. Sometimes improving something has affects that go beyond what you were trying to improve. You can't say if I have x strength I can run that field course in y....it doesn't work like that. A 230 Fran does not by itself make you a better shooter than someone with a 330 Fran, that is missing the point entirely. Once again, I clearly stated in the original post that shooting ability will always have the largest impact to your score, what I am primarily talking about is the small amount of time or control you waste doing every action that is less than ideal. There is no better place to teach you how to move your body than the gym. And yes, people of all ages can learn how to move better. Weightlifting is the most formal expression of human engineering. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks man, I might do that. I don't know what you're trying to say here. People get more athletic when they continuously practice compound multi-joint movements and try to apply what they learn in the gym to real life or sport. There are plenty of ways to measure this. That's why I wrote the first paragraph. This is geared towards making the best shooters even better, although everyone can garner something that will help them. There is more energy expended at a match than only when you are shooting. Being on your feet all day, in possibly adverse weather conditions, resetting stages all day, travel, etc. There are plenty of people that feel tired as hell at the end of a match. When you happen to find a match that is 4 days long that has you on the range for 12 hours a day, that fatigue can add up. This applies even more to 3 gunners. Even though it's a bit of an outlier match, I shot the MGM Ironman once many years ago...that was pretty tiring.

Through various podcasts and discussions I've had and read over the years, the consensus is that being in shape is beneficial in only a small way for us competitive shooters. Now obviously it's true that you can be in terrible condition and still be a phenomenal shooter. Shooting ability will always trump anything else as far as impact to your results. I'd like to touch on a couple reasons why being fit is beneficial that might not be apparent to most people. For years I've trained some amazing athletes, and I've been fortunate enough to have dialogue with some of the best coaches in the world on this subject. I've developed a love and a passion for elite human performance in any discipline, and the significant challenge that coaches face is how to make the best in the world even better. We live in a sport where hundredths of a second can be the difference between winning and losing. Nothing can be afforded to be left on the table. This is mainly geared towards that end, but shooters of all levels can benefit from it. Does strength matter? A little bit, I think the weaker you are the more of a problem it can be and there are fast diminishing returns on being stronger past a certain point. We shooters benefit most from strong hands, strong shoulders, and explosive legs. The majority of the advantage from being fit does not come from strength in my opinion. Having the durability for long hot (or cold or rainy) match days is absolutely a huge bonus. If you feel like you're dragging ass by the end of the match, you probably need to pay more attention to your fitness. Having the benefit of being conditioned to strenuous activity in the same weather conditions as the match will absolutely make you more durable as well. A friend of mine always tells his legion of followers that your training stimulus must exceed whatever you could potentially see on game day. Being mentally on point is critical to executing to your best ability, as your body fatigues it becomes more difficult to keep your head right in my experience. Prone, low ports, or other weird obstacles can also present problems for shooters that find it difficult to get into that position. A normal human should be able to put their feet anywhere from together to outside of shoulder width and be able to squat all the way down keeping their balance over the center of their foot with an upright torso and not feel like they have to work being in this position. 5% of the people at best reading this will be able to do that. The reason for this is that the human body is an amazingly adaptable organism. In the same way that the body responds to training stimulus by getting better, the body responds to lack of stimulus by getting worse. For another example that isn't specific to shooting, if you don't consistently put your arms above your head in a fully flexed shoulder position with straight arms you will eventually lose the ability to do so. If you tell your body you don't need a position by not ever using it, your body will do what you tell it. Generating stability to me is where the greatest advantage to training is. This is also a little bit of a difficult subject because learning this for most people can't happen accidentally. The vast majority of people that work out have no concept of this. At this point, we know how the human body is mechanically designed to function. We know this to the degree that it is in no way up to debate. The way that the human body generates stability in many joints is through torsion which sets the joint in it's best position and compacts it with the capsule (imagine putting your fist in your shirt and twisting your shirt around it). For example, we know that the mechanical best fit position of the hip in flexion (a squat) is external rotation (driving the knees out away from each other). We know that a drop of the navicular bone (flat footed) is due to the ankle being in a collapsed position which is internally rotated usually with your foot pointing out (this has all sorts of impact for injury, but that is another discussion). I've met a lot of people with flat feet. I've never found someone I couldn't coach to have an arch in minutes. The shoulder is incredibly similar in design to the hip. The stable position of the shoulder in all ranges of flexion is also external rotation. The question is why does any of this matter? Your stance and your grip are your foundation of shooting. If there is a break anywhere in that kinetic chain, it translates to a loss in performance. If I shoot with a crappy ankle, hip, or shoulder position I am not controlling recoil as well as I could be, I am not able to generate maximum force in minimum time when I need to leave a position, I am not as stable when I shoot on the move, and the list goes on and on. The primary benefit of fitness in shooting is that under the right conditions where you are instructed by someone knowledgeable in this field (which is harder to find than you might think), it is the best way to teach how your body is designed to move. You'll learn more about hip and ankle stability by squatting, cleaning, and snatching than you will doing anything else in this world. You'll learn more about shoulder and trunk stability by pressing, doing handstand work, and jerking than doing anything else in this world. For the best shooters in the world, this is time on the table that's being given away in small amounts with every less than ideal action you take in a stage. I'm in the process of revamping a significant portion of my technique with this in mind. My gut says this will matter even more in 3 gun, but I don't have enough experience to say that conclusively. Put this together kind of quick, hope its useful and that it clarifies a thing or two for some. Any questions, let me know.