Jake Di Vita

For the rest of the discussion - dry fire means everything you do with a gun to improve that isn't actually sending bullets down range. I do have a question... If dry fire doesn't make you improve very much....so the people you are training are doing mostly live fire - why is it that they don't even come close to having the skills and ability of an average GM? I've done very little live fire in my life, but a whole bunch of dry fire. I really hope you don't say natural talent because that's the biggest load of horse puckey I've ever heard....my natural talent was being a fat uncoordinated kid.

Or? Get away from a speed focus and shoot to your current capabilities.

My friend...that always matters.

Mick I still disagree with you, but it's obvious that neither one of us is going to change the others mind so I'm just gonna leave it at that. badchad, That is what I did. It got to the point where that along with everything else I had to do just became too much. My body was so physically exhausted after 8 months that I literally slept for 36 hours straight through. Looking back I would have changed a lot of things. My technique evolved considerably throughout those 8 months just from the desire to improve everything as much as possible. Although I'm still a big advocate of the belief that nothing can replace hard work. My training for shooting right now has stalled for several reasons. Most of the shooting training I'm doing is limited to visualization now. I've been focusing most of my time and effort on getting in the absolute best shape as possible mentally, physically, and spiritually. What's up Adam, haven't heard from you in forever. How ya been? Yeah 4 hours a day was insane...I just really wanted it bad and that was the only way I could practice. I eventually had to make games out of it so it would keep my focus where it belonged. I do think you can improve transitions in dry fire though mainly because the most important aspect of effective transitioning is learning to snap your eyes accurately and quickly to the center of the next target and being able to stop the gun directly on that point without over or under shooting it.

Yeah absolutely, but the difference to me is that the ability to call your shots is what gives you the foundation to build everything else on.

What I'm saying is that it doesn't matter if you have TT movement skills, KC's speed, and Max's intelligence if you can't accurately call your shots.

Dineback Derral was an absolutely amazing guitarist.

Ever consider maybe they weren't dry firing correctly?

When I first started USPSA I was already an IDPA Master in 2 divisions. My first classification in Production was C for a short time and then B for something like 2 years.

I agree. Calling the shot is the absolute most important (and required) thing you can learn.

I'm not saying live fire isn't necessary (more at the GM level than anywhere else though), but saying you aren't learning as much as you think you are dry firing simply isn't true - and anyone that has some a serious amount of dry fire knows that. Your example is after 2 days....of course that's how it's going to work. It takes more than 2 days to work stuff out through dry firing. In my case I spend 8 months dry firing for 4 hours a day, 7 days a week. I did very little live fire because I couldn't afford it. I think it worked out just fine for me. There's also no way I ever would have come close to a 3 second el prez if all I had done is shot them in live fire...you simply just can't get the reps out of it that you can in dry fire. I shot the el prez maybe 20 or so times live fire. Ditto with reloading and draws. I've done hundreds of thousands of reps in dry fire - with a measurable improvement as well. Yeah in the best of both worlds I'd love to shoot 100,000 rounds a year....at the GM level you do need live fire to be competitive.....but I always recommend to my students a mix of about 80% dry fire to 20% live fire while they are improving.

What is 35 too cold for you.....Nancy?

Man if your hands are going numb after 10 minutes in 40 degree weather we are gonna have to change your forum name to Nancy instead of Nub.

Wedding Crashers should never been shown on regular TV either.

I don't know where or how you guys came up with that conclusion but you may want to rethink it.

There are some pretty amazing musicians and singers now though too.

Well I still think the idea is good but I'm done with this thread...unfortunately most of the people commenting here are doing so through emotion rather than logic. Ben, Just because it "ain't broke" doesn't mean it can't be improved. Again....this would not replace all matches - it would be for whatever match wanted to run it. I cannot believe the pissing and moaning that happens when someone offers a reasonable suggestion of how to improve the sport for some and keep it exactly the same for whoever wants nothing to do with it. I mean seriously...all you guys that hate this idea...why do you hate it? What bad could come from it? It isn't making you change, isn't increasing fees for you, isn't damaging the sport - but we have people saying that if there was a chance for a pro-caliber shooter to actually make money doing what they love and are best at - they would quit...are you kidding me? You don't even have to attend the freakin' match!!! I really thought shooters of all people were intelligent and open minded enough to deal with a topic like this rationally. Guess I was wrong. Man reading this thread ruined my day.

No one is saying you have to do it or that every match would be ran like this. If you don't want to compete as a pro - either register as a amateur or just don't come to the match. There are different levels of competition for every sport.

I think the idea has potential - although at first I would say the entry fee should be around 200 or 250....which is just like nationals. Eventually with time it may be feasible to have high dollar entry fees and pay outs but I think the sport needs a lot more maturity before that happens....don't forget how many hundreds of years golf has been played for. Shooting is an infant in comparison in every way. I'd definitely like to see that match happen though. And the reason it becomes possible for me is that you don't have to win the match to get a decent pay out. If 10th place (or whatever) is still paying out enough money to cover your entry fee, it makes it reasonable for the lesser-tier GMs to go for it.

Learn about visualization and how it can improve your performance in any sport that you participate in. Some examples given here are in basketball. Learn more... [ Q ] Kelly, is visualization a useful addition to a training program? A: Yes, I am a big believer in visualization but I am not a big believer in over complication of the process. You don't need to do anything fancy to visualize. This means a hypnotherapist, fancy hats, music, headsets, and all that other stuff isn't necessary. Visualization Honestly, people visualize all the time if you let them. For example, take a typical teenage sport addict and take him away from his sport for 2 weeks and he'll sit around daydreaming of it. That's visualization! Football players spend the majority of the year sitting around visualizing getting out there and hitting somebody. It's not like you can go find a tackle football game every day of the year like with basketball. Is It Effective? POW Golfer: As for effectiveness, there was a good ol' boy who got shipped off to Vietnam and he was an avid golfer. He got captured, became a POW and stayed in captivity in a small cell for something like 10 years. When he was eventually saved and released, the first thing he did when he got home was go out and play a round of golf. Despite not touching a club in 10 years he played his best round of golf ever! People asked him how he did it. He replied that one way he dealt with the negatives of his situation during those 10 years was by sitting in his cell and playing the game of golf in his mind every day. He'd go through every course he ever played and play out every detail. The results became obvious when he was finally able to tee it up for real. All his body had to do was carry out what the mind already knew how to do. Free Throw Experiment: There was another experiment where 2 groups of basketball players shot free throws. At the beginning of the experiment both groups had equal free throw shooting ability. One group shot free throws something like 3 days per week for an hour and the other group did no actual shooting but were required to get together and "think" about shooting free throws three times a week for an hour. At the end of the study the group who sat around thinking about shooting free throws were able to shoot better than the ones who actually did the practice. Bottom line: Visualization works. How To Incorporate Visualization All you need to do is sit back and relax and "daydream" while you imagine yourself, in first person perspective, playing your sport or executing your moves or doing whatever it is that you do or need to improve upon. The key thing is to do everything perfectly as you play the game in your mind. Repeat this whenever you feel like it. Initially, there will be a tendency to view things from 3rd person perspective, like a movie. You want to eliminate the movie and visualize things through your own eyes. If You Can See It, You Can Do It: The benefit of visualization or mental imagery is the same learning processes that are activated when you actually play your sport are activated when you visualize yourself playing your sport so there really is no difference. If you can "see it", you can "do it". However, the more of your senses that you engage when you visualize, the deeper the process becomes implanted in your subconscious mind. The main difference between actually engaging in an activity and visualizing the activity is in the intensity of the stimulation, which is why it's important to engage multiple senses when you visualize. The key things to focus in on are: 1. Feel 2. Sight 3. Sound 4. Appearance How do things feel? What do you see? And what do you hear? Improving Bad Habits One thing that visualization can do very well is alter ingrained behaviors. Let's say you have a bad habit in your game that you want to change and you're having trouble getting around certain roadblocks. As with any repetitive pattern neural pathways are created in your brain; changing these pathways can be difficult. For example, whenever you get in your car and drive somewhere "one" time you have to pay attention. Drive the same path again and you're able to do it with greater ease until it becomes unconscious or becomes a well worn path or new habit. That's why you can often drive from point A to point b and say "Oh my god, we're here!". You've trained your subconscious on how to drive to this destination without thought. Once this is permanently engaged in your subconscious, you no longer have to give your brain the instructions - your subconscious takes it over automatically. Now, when you're trying to change bad habits or improve skills you actually have to make a new neural pathway to erase the old one - a new habit or a new way of carrying out your skills. You have to establish the new pattern. The way you do that is by creating psychological intensity and/or freshness so that you over-ride the old action in your mind (not as easy as you might think). Lots of practice would seem like a logical cure but the problem with that is two-fold. First, the mind and body both tend to get lazy when the same movements are done again and again and again in the same fashion and in the same mental and physiological states. Practicing all the time makes you automatic at your competent skills, however, physiologically it isn't he same when you're in a competitive situation, so you're really not duplicating the intensity of the neural pathways that you use when you compete. If you always make the same mistakes or do the same things in a competitive situation regardless of how much you practice, you've just identified your default status for that particular set of skills. To change them requires something else. What I just described is why someone like Shaq can consistently hit 19 out of 20 in practice but can't hit the broad side of a barn during the game. Try To Duplicate Competitive Situations: One thing you can do to improve skills or change bad habits would be practicing the skills under the same physiological and mental conditions as in a game. I used to know a basketball coach who utilized what he called "pressure" basketball. He'd stand behind his players with a big thick wooden paddle and one by one he'd have his players go up to the line and shoot 3 free throws. They'd have to make 2 out of 3 or they'd get a very hard swat on the rear. If they only made 1 out of 3 that was 2 hard swats on the rear. The swats were hard enough to leave bruises and hurt enough to bring people to tears. I'm sure there are better alternatives than that, but I guarantee you it was more effective than running laps or whatever flavor of the month drill is popular nowadays. This is because the pressure of the situation creates the same physiological conditions (sweaty palms, rapid heart rate etc.) as game type conditions. The threat of running laps or doing pushups does piss people off but it's more boring then anything and doesn't invoke the same stress response. Same Old Boring Drag: Before I talk about another alternative, the second reason why simply "practicing" isn't enough is because when most people do the same old thing day in and day out, not only is the "intensity" too low to over-ride the ingrained neural patterns, but they inherently feed themselves too much negative self talk. Some examples of negative self talk include, "I always do that." "Oh, I messed up." "Oh, I missed again." "Don't do this, don't do that." etc. etc. etc... When you get away from traditional sporting practice for a while and focus more on visualization you're able to remove many of the negative messages sent to your brain and you don't have these negative affirmations competing in your mind. After a period of "refreshment", you come back and say "Oh, this is fun again!" Chocolate cake probably wouldn't taste too good if you ate it every single day but every once in a while it tastes excellent. Same principles here. The more excited you are to acquire skills the better your results will be when you do. The more excited you are mentally when you get out to practice, the more likely you will pick up skills that you can take with you. If it's just the same old boring drag you're wasting your time. Remember, the body picks up skills better whenever the mind is stimulated. Taper The Physical & Up The Mental So in short, if you're bored with your primary activity and not making the skill improvements that you'd like, lower the volume of your actual practice and replace some of it with visualization for a period of time. Back when I was a teen I used to practice basketball an average of 4-6 hours per day most of the year. Despite all those hours on the court, there were plenty of times where I'd regress over the months instead of improve over the months. The interesting thing is that every summer I'd have to take a 2 week vacation during which I had no access to basketball. Being unable to play; I'd sit around and daydream about playing basketball all the time. Lo and behold at the end of those 2 weeks I'd get home and immediately get on the court. It would take a couple of hours to shake off the rust, but every single time I'd find that my skills had actually improved and I'd always pick up several new skills that I didn't have before. Hopefully I've explained why. Real World Examples Now let me give a real world example on how I'd incorporate visualization into a skill building routine. Let's take 2 groups of people. One group practices their sport every day for 2 hours 7 days per week for 7 weeks straight. The other group practices every day for 2 hours for 3 weeks straight, then takes an entire week off in which visualization is focused on, followed by another 3 weeks of 2 hours practice. Group I * 2 hours practice per day, 7 weeks straight. Group II * 2 hours practice per day, 3 weeks straight. * 1 week: 2x per week, very brief actual practice; 3x per week, one hour visualization. * 2 hours per day, 3 weeks straight. Group II will blow away group I when it comes to performance and skill acquisition because not only will their bodies and minds be "fresh" and receptive, they'll have given their brain new instructions during the tapering period which they can then implement when they go back to practicing hard core. Conclusion Just remember to kick back and play your sport in your mind, using the actual feelings, sights, and sounds. There is no right or wrong way to do it but the more you do it the better you get. Link (w/fs)

Did those first two sets of pullups in Lynne dead hang didn't ya.

The only other thing that kind of glares at me is your speed getting the next mag in your hand. It looks very smooth right now which is great. Now all you have to do is speed it up a bit then refine. Do that over and over and your gonna have a pretty badass load.

I think that where you hold the gun during the load is forcing your weak hand to bend in an unnatural way to insert the mag. You might try letting the muzzle drift to your left just before insertion because that will be more approximate to the orientation your hand and wrist are gonna naturally want to take after you grab a fresh mag.

At the height of my dry fire obsession I was spending well over 40 hours a week doing shooting related things.

Your technique will tend to refine itself over time.