Jake Di Vita

Why is that? If I were you, I'd spend the next 3-4 weeks really pushing the pace in both dry and live. Then starting in June I would continue pushing hard in dry fire and use your live fire to tighten up to a consistent pace for the matches. Regardless if we're looking at this realistically, you've got about a year of work ahead of you to really see results from the change in practice.

There's your problem. If you don't focus on stretching your abilities, they don't stretch. The good part is you have a lot of practice you can fall back on in matches for shooting within your comfort zone. As you improve your speed and accuracy at 100%, your 85% will naturally become faster and more accurate as well. In my opinion, it's time for a large amount of damn near recklessly fast practice. Both dry and live. The only practice in your comfort zone that I'd want you to do is within the last week leading up to a major match just to get the feel of your comfort zone back. This is good advice in principal (especially for lower class shooters), but as you're finding out you can't shoot slowly and win against high level competition. In matches cautiously aggressive is right where I want to be. That is shooting within your comfort zone, but pushing a bit where you know you can based on your abilities. They may appear to be more aggressive than you, but I bet most of them are still shooting within their comfort zone....their comfort zone has just been expanded by likely practicing at a much more aggressive pace day in and day out. Sure. Absolutely. I have the same problems. You should see how many times I've butchered reloads and movement in some of my match video on youtube. I've shot thousands of stages in my life and the number of stages I think I shot flawlessly can be counted on one hand. Since everyone will make mistakes, the goal needs to be for your mistakes to have as minimal of an impact on your score as possible.

What's your current weekly practice schedule look like and at what pace do you normally practice? If you don't already, I'd recommend you start taking copious amounts of notes about your practice and matches. It may not be realistic to shave .07 off certain areas (such as splits on a 5 yard target) but may be very reasonable to shave .25 or more off other areas (such as entries and exits). The more notes you have that you can refer to the easier it will be to decide where to put your effort. Break down practice and match video of yourself constantly. Also something to think about after your major matches this season...If you've never practiced with a dot on your gun it can be an extremely valuable training tool. Shooting a match at 85% of your ability isn't a bad thing...that's about where I like to be as well.

Yes, .15 transitions to A's with irons are absolutely possible and repeatable at this distance. Further than 7 yards or 1 yard apart makes it a lot more difficult.

Yes, although it obviously depends on the distance we are talking about.

That seems a bit high. That's a 2 second draw with five .4 splits. I'd be more inclined to say 3.0 seconds (something like 1.5 and 5 @ .3) for iron sighted divisions and 2 - 2.5 seconds (1.25 and 5 @ .25) for open.

My pleasure. I'm happy to have helped.

It's more than just semantics. We're talking about two different skills. As I'm sure you know, you can make large mistakes shot calling even while staring at the sights the entire time. We know that having the ability to aim and look at the sights does not necessarily translate to accurate shot calling. The short time component of the window of opportunity you have to call your shot can't be simulated in dry fire. You can't depend on the results of calling your shot in dry fire to be the same as in live fire. That doesn't mean don't do it, it means when it comes to shot calling you aren't going to get much out of it. If your problem is looking away before you complete the shot, you can work on that in dry fire. The problem is there are a lot of people who are really good at looking at the sights, aiming, and pulling the trigger in dry fire but still can't call their shots for crap. If you want to become skilled at shot calling you gotta do 90% of the work in live fire.

Ultimately I contribute here because this forum has done a lot for me in the past and I love teaching enough to want to do it whether I'm being paid or not. If you're that hung up on being paid for the data you collected, good luck with that. I have shared and will continue to share all of my knowledge and experience because I love the sport and love helping people improve (edit: I'm not saying you don't, I'm just giving my reasons). I don't keep trade secrets behind some perceived paywall. Whether a small number will use it as you and I have or not is irrelevant to me. You have a right to your position, but I don't share your opinion/philosophy.

Considering that shot calling is based on where the sights lift from at the beginning of recoil, removing the recoil from the equation removes the variable that makes shot calling difficult. What makes shot calling hard is that you have about a hundredth of a second to take a mental snapshot of what the sights/target look like. It's really hard to effectively train that skill when there is no similar time component. Everything you're saying is true, but I wouldn't call that practicing shot calling. What you're talking about is more practicing how to aim. Aiming/executing the shot is not the same as shot calling.

Shot calling is on the short list of things that you can't really effectively practice in dryfire.

I'd like to see this data as well. I don't get why you have a problem with posting it for all to see.

Here is the main point where we diverge. I think how much the muzzle flips does matter. The less I allow the gun to move, the faster it will recover and the closer it will be to the point where recoil started. My grip has always been really firm, but I manage recoil much better today than I have in the past. The only thing that has changed is the mechanical aspects of my grip. I agree that if someone doesn't have strong hands they should fix that first, but afterwards there's a lot of ground to be made in looking to the other aspects of your grip beyond strength. Strength with low technical expertise isn't as valuable as strength that is productively applied. I use the same grip pressure in Open as I would shooting Limited. The comp plays a much smaller factor in Open than most people think. Thumb pressure is just an extension of wrist pressure. A thumb rest in this case also gives you a point of contact further forward on the gun to apply force on which gives you a bit better leverage. Of course you don't need to have thumb pressure to shoot, that doesn't mean it isn't useful.

People can make anything work well for them if they put enough time into it, even techniques that don't necessarily follow the general biomechanical rules of the body. The question to me isn't what technique can you make work for yourself...the answer to that question is just about anything. What I want to know is what technique would work the best if you could put 10,000 hours into each of them? I'm a performance whore...I have no qualms about making a massive year long change in my technique for a 1% gain in ability. There are loads of shooters out there that perform extremely well with a support wrist that is locked at end range of motion. However I don't think a shooter will ever max out their potential by locking their wrist at end range. Excluding few exceptions, our bodies all operate mechanically in the same fashion. There is a best-fit position for the body to be in for any task. There of course are variances to this best-fit position from person to person, but to me those variances should be more based off things like anthropometry rather than wholesale differences in approach. When we talk about the locked approach, to me the primary advantage lies in the vector that you're applying the force. The wrist isn't "locked" so to speak...your musculature is holding the wrist in that position. It seems logical to me to apply force in the same manner with a wrist that is closer to neutral. The primary disadvantages of locking the support wrist is a diminished capacity to apply force and a limited ability to produce torque towards the barrel axis. With the correct approach, I can gain the advantage of productively applying force in the proper direction while avoiding the disadvantages of the locked wrist.

The hand position doesn't look bad. I'd consider straightening your arms a bit more. I obviously can't judge the force your applying or the direction you're applying it which makes up a large portion of the quality of your grip. Your wrist doesn't look out of position here. What I don't want to see is a straight line from forearm to tip of thumb.

I'll try and get a decent picture tomorrow. Bob's thumb position is exactly what I'm talking about. There are a couple differences between what we do. His wrist is certainly closer to end range of motion than mine. We both apply inward pressure towards the top of the gun, but he applies this inward pressure from the shoulder where as I apply the inward pressure from the wrist. The reason for the difference is because I think it's important to keep the shoulder externally rotated while in flexion. His shoulder is clearly internally rotated which I can tell because his left elbow position is high and outside. A properly externally rotated shoulder would mean the elbow is going to be more down and inside. I love the thumb rest for two big reasons. The first is it makes applying pressure towards the target easier since I have another firm point of contact. The second is it's an additional reference point that helps me keep my grip consistent from rep to rep.

Without the thumb rest my support hand wrist is applying force in the same direction as it would if I were camming my wrist all the way forward. Camming the wrist all the way forward puts you at end range of motion though and I don't find this to be a stable/strong position to operate from. My support hand thumb is not like yours in the picture at all, it's down tight to my other fingers. I also wrap my support hand a bit different than you. The first knuckle of the index finger on my support hand is more on the right side of the trigger guard. This gives me significantly more friction in my grip and I'm able to use it as an anchor point to crush the meat of my thumbs inwards towards the top of the gun. I find this to be the most efficient setup to transfer as much force into holding the gun still as possible. The only job my weak hand fingers have is to make sure the rest of my weak hand doesn't move. From the wrist I'm applying force both high inward towards the barrel axis and muzzle forward towards the target.

The force has to be applied primarily through the support hand wrist. The hardest part of this is training your grip to the point where it doesn't budge. I'm not sure what you define as a true opposable grip. Perhaps it isn't the same strictly, but the force applied isn't too far off from what it would be using a thumb rest.

Yeah, without a thumb rest more of the work falls on the wrist. With a thumb rest you have that much more hand meat working on the gun.

I don't think humans operate very well with any joints locked at end range. I haven't read the article, but it sounds like I'd agree with it. In general I think it is better to have a normal wrist angle and apply constant pressure forward towards the target. I think this action manages recoil very well and simultaneously allows me to use less than perfect trigger control. My experience is that applying a large amount of force into the gun and then driving the gun to point where I want, the relatively tiny amount of force you apply imperfectly on the trigger doesn't cause nearly as much muzzle movement as it would under more relaxed conditions. I think most people just kind of put the gun up in front of their face and expect it to stay there. My goal is to decisively hold the gun and drive it on every shot. This method of grip is certainly easier to do with a thumb rest. If I don't have a thumb rest, my support side thumb ends up gripping down into my weak hand index finger as that's the general direction I need to apply force with my grip in order to drive the muzzle towards the target. In my opinion keeping thumbs "welded to the frame" is overrated. By focusing on holding the gun in place it returns to place from recoil much easier and consistently than if I were to just let the gun do whatever it wanted.

Ehhh maybe a little bit. I love deadlifts, but as far as developing explosive power goes you can't beat oly lifting.

That sucks. I probably should have known that because it's not like him to shoot multiple mikes on a stage. Yeah, I agree. I do think the gap will close between pcc and open in the future, but as of right now I don't think it's even very close. It probably depends on the way the match is setup more than anything else. I think there will probably be some impressive leaps forward in pcc technical ability in the future.

It depends on what the goal is. If your goal is to take it seriously and really improve, then the vast majority of the time you should do it even when you don't feel like it. Discipline is 100 times more valuable than motivation. If this is just a hobby and you don't want to take it seriously, then yeah for sure just do it when you feel like it.

This is all certainly true. That being said, I've shot a lot of matches in my life and I haven't seen very many where it was acceptable to shoot fewer than 90% of the points. This appears to be more true as the class you're competing in gets higher. Division is also a consideration. You can get away with a lot of stuff in the iron sight divisions that you can't get away with shooting Open. While there may be outliers where it's acceptable to shoot fewer than 90%, most of the time 90-95% of points is a pretty reasonable approximation.

That's a great performance from Max. The scary thing is from what I saw on the video he's still got a lot of room to grow. When he irons out his small mistakes it's really possible he could rule this division for a few years. Makes PCC look fun.