Class progression: C to M & seeing what you need to see...

[gigamortis]

There was a time when I noticed my points available percentage was creeping down over the course of a few matches in the name of speed. I eventually found myself pulling the trigger when my brain said it was time to, good sight picture or not.

The best match I ever shot was when I made myself go back to the basics of seeing the sights before pulling the trigger. On that match day, I made sure I didn't squad up with any of my normal shooting buddies, so the friendly competition factor was out of my head for that match. I was determined to go back and reinforce the basics that day without any concern for what my score would be at the end of the match. My mindset was to treat that match as practice to reinforce the sight picture basics I had strayed away from.

I felt slow as a turtle, but the scores didn't lie. I ended up winning Single Stack for the match and placing 9th overall combined out of about 50 shooters. I'm normally a C class shooter, but my overall placement for that match had me nested in the standings amongst a lot of B and C Limited shooters. The Limited guys were expressing a little competitive nervousness about how a Single Stack shooter managed to "creep up on them"! Ha-ha!...every dog has his day, I guess!

This "back to the basics" match day really flipped the switch in my head about seeing the sights before sending a round on its way. I know now to concentrate on the A zone and speed will come on its own later.

Edited July 6, 2012 by gigamortis

[benos]

The best match I ever shot was when I made myself go back to the basics of seeing the sights before pulling the trigger.

Jerry Miculek once asked me, as we were waiting to shoot the centerfire pistol steel stage at The Masters, what was going to be my strategy. I gave him kind of a lng winded anwser about how I was going to smoothly shoot the center of each target. Then I asked him what his strategy was. He answered, "You ever fire shot and not remember seeing a sight picture?" "Yes," I said. To which he replied, "That's what I am going to avoid."

[KtNaff]

Very good opening post. Really helps me to understand where I am now. I started out slow but accurate, then pushed to hard and wheels and accuracy both fell off. I am trying now to do exactly what you were describing and see only what I need to see. It seems I can do that through parts of a stage, but if there is even a minor hiccup in my plan, I overcompensate by starting to shoot at one target and not seeing that target but the next one I am going to. I know I need more practice and to become more aware of what to see, and your post really helped to reinforce that. Along with the great followup discussions.

[kabutyok]

The best match I ever shot was when I made myself go back to the basics of seeing the sights before pulling the trigger.

Jerry Miculek once asked me, as we were waiting to shoot the centerfire pistol steel stage at The Masters, what was going to be my strategy. I gave him kind of a lng winded anwser about how I was going to smoothly shoot the center of each target. Then I asked him what his strategy was. He answered, "You ever fire shot and not remember seeing a sight picture?" "Yes," I said. To which he replied, "That's what I am going to avoid."

Very well said.

[DonovanM]

Very good opening post. Really helps me to understand where I am now. I started out slow but accurate, then pushed to hard and wheels and accuracy both fell off. I am trying now to do exactly what you were describing and see only what I need to see. It seems I can do that through parts of a stage, but if there is even a minor hiccup in my plan, I overcompensate by starting to shoot at one target and not seeing that target but the next one I am going to. I know I need more practice and to become more aware of what to see, and your post really helped to reinforce that. Along with the great followup discussions.

It's all part of the learning process. You just gotta roll with it. Sounds like you're on the right track

[Shawn.L]

Great post.

Perhaps all that time I seem to spend on the bottom of the warp drive chart has been useful !

I have seen the oscillations and they seem to come back and forth less deeply now. This year I joined USPSA and after sending most of my time being a "training junky" who liked to shoot an occasional local match I wanted to really dig in deep this year and see what i could do, and Ive had some great matches, but some awful ones too. I wasnt able to make a match a month like I originally intended , but Ive learned a lot and Im going to move ahead. Still waiting for my classification , and to be honest i thought for sure I just had to come in A with where I had normally placed overall (usually I finish high with the A class, always beat by M class overall but not always on all stages) but my scores have not been what i expected and my classifier scores have been just rotten.

[DonovanM]

I dug up this thread to link from in my new range diary. It's sometimes (not always) nice to go back and read about your attitudes in shooting from past years. This thread isn't quite a year old but is pretty close.

I view the thread I most recently started as somewhat of a continuation of this. Volume 2 I guess.

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=173493&hl=