QuickMick

I agree with everything you wrote. However, wouldn't you agree that the above is something that can be practiced without a gun? Moving and getting set up into position.. I ask this because 1, apparently I don't haul ass, and 2, I heard of a well known shooter who practices movement for about an hour each practice session without a gun in his holster.. Yes, one can do that and it makes a difference. In summer I did a lot of such trainings in my garden, no gun used till some point. For example, leaving a position left/right, forward and backward with inititating a reload is something very important. Also getting into a off-balance (barricade...) or knee-down position is something easiyl trained without gun. Believe me, there is a lot of time to gain....

I start with dry fire until I'm relaxed and focussed, then do some precision drills first (dot drill), then push for speed (e.g. bill drill at various distances) and at the end do some things typically encountered in matches (various starting positions, strong hand only, target transitions...). By varying the last part I always focus on one topic I have to work on and try to revisit one other I'm not struggling with (e.g. reload). Saul Kirsch in his books has a pretty nice list of skills required for practical shooting, I use that and refine my levels after each match. Personally I think it would be more beneficial to train two times a week and 500 rounds.

Just some words from my side: - enjoy shooting, have fun running through a COF and accept the challenges there - don't ever look at the outcome, pick positive things from each and every stage. Forget about the negative ones. As soon as the bullet leave the muzzle it's done. - see a match as a check-up of your training status, providing you vital inputs for your training. You will never be much better in a match as during your training session. Never! You just can perfrom -very likely- worse by not having the right mindset. - understand: by getting negative or nervous or too much tension you give anyone else an advantage. Stay cool and smart. - do a match rev up, start your lessons learned with positive things. And if that's just one good shot, write it down. - don't give up, work on yourself, succeeding or even porceedign in a sport pays off soo much in your whole life..... Last match I succeeded over my trainign buddy for the first time, he did one bad shot in the beginning and stepped right into that evil circle of pushing more....failing again....it's like motorcycle racing: forget about the last corner, think about the next one...and the next one.....

I encountered the same phenomenom months ago. Does that happen with target focus?

Till March I worked on accuracy, then more on getting faster so the time for a Bill drill dropped down to less than 3s. Match analysis show that I shoot less A (76% compared to 84%) at that speed. While results are getting better, I need to improve accuracy but keep the pace. Any idea for my training?

Bill Drill when I fully understood what it is about.....and shooting groups.

You mean right after walking on water ;-)

Trained again today, really hard stuff. What drives me crazy right now: when shooting swingers I can tell A/C/D/M, this is why I never miss on swingers. Statically shooting without pressure and calling the shots more precisely than "is a Mike or not" is a real challenge. There seems to be some more going on...to be continued.

Match performance is reflecting your skill level, or: nothing else but a match results tells your level of skills correctly. The challenge is that in a match there are so many different skills required you never think about. And you never train them. Threads like this one seem to look for snakeoil, but at the end -as I have the pleasure to train with two excellent shooters- there is none, just passion, dedication and hard work. Though, I think the mental aspect is a very important one, my result's analysis show me there is plenty of room for improvement in stage planning, accuracy and speed, WHO/SHO shooting, different start positions, moving through the COF.....some stages are at 80%, but most others well below......most important thing for me is the match day and preparation for the match, there one can do a lot of things wrong such that being a brilliant shooter doesn't help anymore. Just my 2cents....

Did a training today, focussing on acceptable sight pictures, calling shots and doing Bill Drills. I always start slow, watch the sight move, try to call shots. In that mode I'm slightly below 5s. When pushing for some more speed my perception of the gun changed completely. I think I felt the slide moving backwards, changing the direction moving forward again and locking. 3,08s. I thought about some weak loads but they are all out of the same reloading session I did weeks ago. It's annoying, don't know if that's a good sign or a bad one. Help welcome.

Important thing as I just did it for match on Sunday: do a post-match analysis. Do it! I put all figures in a spreadsheet, look at best and worst stage, view and cut my video, calculate A-rate and percentage of total score, compare with a reference shooter. It's important to be honest and critical, so I found a lot of things to improve by just watching the vid again and again. I also add some thoughts on how the stage felt. At the end there should be topics to work on, like keeping the gun in sight when moving (weakness), or -like this time- something I did surprising myself (strongess). After all I'll rework my training schedule, trying to elimante weaknesses. The spreadhseet also helps to visualise my progress, which is a non-linear fucntion over time ;-).

147grs ALSA, 3.6grs S15/LOVEX, 28.6mm

This is just some things I'd like to note as I went through the last year of shooting. I started with having a gun for self defense, also as my wife did feel rather insecure as times are getting tougher. Owning a gun is depreciated where I live, you might be called a dumb ass although you have to pass a psychological test and background check. Starting with bull's eye shooting with some military background as airborne I pretty soon felt bored, competitions are so.......boring. Accidentially I got in touch with IPSC, loving it. Digged more and more into it, also encouraged by a brillant shooter. Starting with training and competing seriously here are some things working for me: understand and know your gun and ammo. Perfectly know where it shoots to, improve it through asking experts by changing springs, tests, notes, comparing. Never ever blame your gun for missing a target. I think that a lot of shooters do not understand why a spring changes their groups, or different loads do it. plan your training, don't stupidly run through drills. Work on your weaknesses, try to understand your groups/hits/misses. Why do you shoot left? Or low? Work experimentally towards accuracy and speed. Dare to fail during practice, accept Ms and Ds as a way of learning. Currently I do 1000 rounds a week, but there's also time planned for no shooting at all. Take your time working on techniques and fundamentals and expect them to change, stance and grip, sight picture and all that stuff must be settled before pushing for speed. Be prepared: if you have awareness and focus in Brian's sense you will never ever finish that. And for me that's what shooting makes so fascinating. It keeps me curious. Speed does not come for free, work on becoming faster, push yourself. PUSH! Use drills for verifying your speed and get a feeling for "match speed". Get references on standard drills, I'm proud of cutting a Bill Drill from 8s to 3.5s in three months. But do not forget the importance of accuracy, make that part of every practice. So I start with a Bill Drill rather slow without timer, watching the sights, one shot per second, take it easy. After three or four runs I start pushing. At the end I go for precision, chill out. Most important: the mental game. Find rituals for entering a stage, celeberate them (ever seen Valentino Rossi leaving the pit lane?). Control your thoughts, stay in the present. I used to get distracted during training sessions by my job, step back, think about the sun, the wind, something in the present tense - why do I wear these shoes? Even more important at matches, relax, don't try to be faster as your skills allow ( I learned that the hard way during motorcycle racing ;-). Again, this shall serve as a summary for myself, I'm not a brillant shooter at all and will never be. What I like is to understand how something works, getting those "aha" moments. I'll update this thread whenever there is progress in my learning curve, though some of you might disagree I'm happy to receive your comments. As learning never ends......to be continued.....

OK, gonna try two shots in my next practice, sounds logical that the second shot is harder to call.......makes sense ;-)

Thank you, folks. I know that I have to work on calling my shots, any idea how to work on that? What I do is place three targets at 15m, draw and give each one a shot. Then -before looking at the targets- I mark the hits on a sheet of paper. I verify that with the hits on the targets. Although that's quite boring and not really funny ...right approach? What I do not understand why calling shots works so often for really hard targets like swingers, I'm even totally sure that plates will fall at 15m before pulling the trigger, but those easy ones....

From time to time I face what I call in the meantime a "mystic mike": it happens on 100% targets on distances beyond 5m that I sometimes miss such "easy" targets whereas the first shot on that target is an A. Last Saturday it happened two times (whereas the mike on the double swinger is ok for me) - three IPSC targets overlapping, 10m distance, 5 clean As, one mike. The RO couldn't understand it either, but no discussion on "hole in hole". Happened on another stage again where I shot 6 As on swingers, but missed one shot on a 100% target being closer. I'm sure the sight picture was okay, one of these mikes is on vid, couldn't see anything like moving too early to the next target or so....any ideas? It's not so much about the scoring but I'd like to have an explanation on that phenomenom......worth to note - that never happens during practice.....

I've been working (and will keep on doing that) on my grip for the last three months. Lot of advice was given to me, at the end I ended up screwed. Start all over. The mission is to have a grip and stance that brings the gun back to its original point after recoil. I was surprised how stance and tension of the upper body and arms works for me, so by now I focus on the positions of my hands, not too much force, no pushing-pulling. Works good for me (CZ 75 Shadow). I think when the gun is a polymer one (e.g. Glock) Vogel's approach is working even better. Main thing - shoulder, ellbows.

One thing, don't laugh: when working on your computer or smartphone/tablet use your left hand - also grip and stance were a lot of work for me.

8 cm (3.14") at 8 meters is not a good group for 6 shots. I would recommend working on your trigger control first. The dot drill is good for working on trigger control: draw, 6 shots within a 2 in (5cm) dia circle within 5 seconds from 7 yards/meters. I know that this is not a good group at all, but I can hold that until 25m. The interesting thing is that it moved from being left from the center when shooting slow to centered when pushing.

Some update - could reproduce that by standing not properly, means my left foot ahead of the right one. Also I observed that the gun was before my right eye. Obviously this forces my right and dominant eye to take over when given enough time. In the mean time I worked a lot on my stance and grip so that phenomenom disapperaed until I provoke it. Quite interesting as I started reading BEs book this week which in some sense seems to confirm my findings.

38.0.1 - Win 7

Just observed something which gives me a lot of question marks in my head: I do a lot of dry fire now and two times a week live fire. Currently I'm focussing on the fundamentals, means: grip, stance, sight picture, transitions. No matches. What I'm struggling with is the target focus as I was using sight focus until I started shooting IPSC. So let's train ... I started with the very slow version of the Bill Drill at 8meters/yards today, looking at sights lifting, proper grip....one shot per second. Tight group (8cm diameter), but shifted left from the A-zone. Tried once more, same result. Tried at 10m - still the same. Even slower - looked worse. Problem with the gun? Closed my left eye, hard sight focus - centered, small group. Pretty good. So it's not the trigger, or the gun.... Then I pushed for more speed, ~2 shots per second - an hey: small group, centered. So it looks like that when I take my time something with my sight picture happens (dominant eye?), but when I try to be "fast" not. Any ideas what's wrong? I've a clue but perhaps someone can confirm it......and give me an idea how to overcome that....thanks!

same for me - Firefox @Windows

I reckon your shooting on the move caused a lot of mikes, also for far distance targets you seem to make no difference in aiming wrt close distance targets. Perhaps also some thoughts on stage planning might help, looks pretty chaotic.

Works good for me, too, instead of cleaning them in a tumbler before reloading.....