IF you guys could start all over again...

[baa]

I would have picked one gun, and practiced.

+1.. If there is one thing I regret, it was getting in to the mindset that I had to go find the perfect gun up front. I wish I just stayed with my first gun and spent all that gun money on ammo and good instruction.

[hawkinpup]

I don't think I would have told my wife how much everything costs

[Fergus]

Practice with perfect technique with no compromise.

[saibot]

I don't think I would have told my wife how much everything costs

Hahah! Sorry, but that caught me off guard. Funny...true...

[MarkCO]

I've been thinking about this question for quite a while as I have a few teenagers I am helping get started and two younger boys of my own.

First, Cross-Training. I beleive that team sports and an individual sport are beneficial. As I have talked to, or tried to learn the background of some of the "older" top shooters, a large number of the top shooters in USPSA and even more in 3Gun have competed in an individual "extreme" competitive sport. Ski racing, rodeo, motorsports, etc. and many competed at a decent level in some sort of team sport in high school. The individual sport was more formational in the skills that transfer to shooting. The eye hand-control is a large part of most sports and even more so with the individual sports. Some sort of martial art would also be a benefit to a good foundation.

Second, Personal Control. This from a mental and emotional perspective. Those who can control their mental thought process and emotions tend to excel in the individual sports. Development of the skills of self motivation without beating oneself up over failures is huge! The desire to push over the edge and then learn from failure is not a "natural" trait in most people. If you don't have it, it has to be developed. A large number of the top guys have this.

Third, QUALITY instruction from an instructor who "fits." Lest face it, everyone has personality quirks and such. The people you might choose to be friends with may not possess the best set of traits to motivate you to be the best. So wrapped up within the instructor traits must be the ability to coach, teach, communicate, motivate, evaluate and adapt. There are a bunch of good trainers, but only a few that possess all the needed traits. Knowing what I know now, many of the classes I took I would not take again. If I literally started "all over again" I would seek out 10 top instructors for a 30 minute phone call and go through a scripted list of questions to select the best instructor for me. Bascially, be a smart consumer in the interviews. I'd assume some of the ones I would choose would not do the phone call. I'd pick maybe 2 or 3 that fit and then schedule an intro, maybe an hour, not at the range, to pick the final one. Once chosen, I'd spell out personal goals, constraints and limitations and work with the instructor to craft a program. Once that is done, stop controlling (choosing) and become a disciple, giving the instructor all control. Supplant emotion, keep focused on the goals and follow direction 100%. That instruction, for the most part, would be short sessions one on one in a coaching environment and include a variety of topics, some more than just shooting.

[Jadeslade]

Nothing. Getting started is the hard part. I love a quote I read of Bob Dylan's I read recently "I'm tired of actors telling me all about their characters and stuff-just get up there and act". That's it, getting up there and shooting. Of course you have to practice and that's what this forum is about, getting advice from people on some things they have learned and noticed.

[co-exprs]

Get a good coach. I learned more in one summer with my coach as I did the previous 3 years combined, trying to learn it on my own. I wasted a lot of ammo doing things wrong and then even more ammo unlearning the bad stuff. Had I just pony'd up the dough, swallowed my pride and hired a good coach I would have saved several years of development and 10x the coach cost in ammo. Don't be a dork like me. After droping a grand on your new pistol, invest in some solid coaching and you will be amazed at how fast you will learn and move up the leader board.

Oh, yeah and the big one. I wish I had sucked it up and switched to left hand shooting and my dominant eye on day one. I was stubbern and stuck with right hand shooting and cross dominance. My right eye will never see things as clearly or as fast as my left, and you simply can't shoot any faster than you can see.

[rupie]

You can progress to in the shooting sports according to the time money and effort you put it to it. If you don"t have the money but you got the time, dry fire until you puke, You need to have guns that go bang when you pull the trigger but you don't need top of the line stuff as much as you need practice.

I started in the 80's when everyone was shooting single stack 45's, and I had a lot of free ammo and free time as I was a range instructor in the marines and shot for the base shooting team. All I had to worry about was Guns and equipment, So I shot about 150 rounds a day every day trying to figure it out on my own because there wasn't any resources like this forum or the many top shooting instructors that are available now. I couldn't do much different back then because there was not the technology or resources that there is now. When I got out of the Marines and could not afford to practice and knew nothing about dry fire I got discouraged because I came out of the Marines at the top of my game and my performance steadily went down for a couple years until I quit. I took a 15 year lay off and started again.

My advice to a new shooter, find the best shooter you can find as a mentor, use other shooters success as much as you can to shorten your learning curve. Read the top shooters instruction books, videos, etc. Attend classes. Shooting is mostly a mental game, but don't try to reinvent the wheel, learn from others.