Which is Harder - Overcoming Gobbling or Making GM?

[Esther]

caspian 38 - Thanks for the feedback! You're absolutely right that I tend to chop up stages into manageable parts, whereas on a good run (I've had a few of those), everything just flows. Interesting strategy re: oscillating between shooting matches super fast and focusing on your sights and forgetting about speed. Re: female GM's, I believe Jessie Duff made GM recently.

It's been almost exactly a year since I shot my first USPSA competition. I'm still a C shooter (sigh), though I'm definitely better than I was when I started. Sometimes I see shooters who don't dry-fire as regularly, or who show up and shoot their way into B class, or who make M/GM in less than three years. Or who don't care as much, and still beat me. And I wonder, "Maybe this doesn't come naturally to me, maybe I'm not talented, or my timeline is unrealistic..."

Some things do come naturally to me. Doing well in school, taking tests... In shooting, accuracy comes very naturally. It surprises me sometimes when people can't hit the A-zone of a 35-yd target with no time limit. "You just align your sights and press the trigger straight back, what's so hard about that?" Whereas other skills - like drawing fast, hosing targets, changing mags smoothly and quickly, breaking down and programming complicated stages - don't come naturally to me at all.

I was talking to my friend Jeremy, who is a 5-time National Champion and a professional bike trials rider. He told me he wasn't a natural - for years, competitors who trained less and less hard than he did would beat him. It took him at least 3 years of training diligently and intelligently before he became competitive, and 5 before he pulled ahead. And he said he could remember the exact day it happened. He was riding on cars in a junk yard and missed a move, jumped backward, landed on a car door knob, then jumped to another car on the wiper blade stud and then to the ground without looking at all. That was when he realized that his skills had become subconscious.

After tutoring kids for 5 years, I do think that some are more naturals at certain skills than others. But I also think that if you train hard and smart and for long enough, then what you can do starts to look a lot like talent.

I'm not nearly there yet with shooting. But I want to be.

[caspian38]

Maybe your too busy climbing the mountian to stop and take a look around...Your half way up already!

You need to use your strengths to fix your problem areas. You have natural strengths, lots of them.

what's holding you back from making B class ? Nothing !

How about A class ? movement /course breakdown ? Well you can run plenty fast, so just your (hesitation) starts ,and stops are slowing you down in the movement area. Course breakdown and execution ( mental game ...one of your strengths ).

So confidence in the skills you have, and working on your mental game, and your in A class pretty easily.

Reading you diary and watching you shoot the only thing I see holding you back is confidence in you abilitys.

It's also time to get some aggressive foot wear ( it helps with confidence). Get advice on which is best. Sandals and sneakers are what C class shooters wear. A class shooters do what ever M class shooters do, and GM well they can wear sandals.

I take a half empty water bottle and try the shoes out if I can't walk/ jog in any direction without sloshing the water ,then I pass.

[Chris iliff]

I can't remember the exact quote, but it goes something like, " the overnight sensation you see before you, spent 10 years working to get there." Or, some such thing.

Your last post brought that to mind.

I have often thought what a wonderful thing, this shooting, in which to lose ourselves while mastering. Lucky us!!

Keep it up!!!

Edited April 17, 2014 by Chris iliff

[TJ1911]

E-I think you're extremely fortunate to have the talent for accuracy that you do. So many people come into this game with speed and little to no accuracy. Speed is easier to learn , IMHO than accuracy. With accuracy you have the foundation much more so than if you were naturally fast. (As for me I accepted a long time ago that I can shoot faster than I can move, and plan my stages accordingly). You've got great fundamentals to build on-you'll get there!

[Esther]

Silas - Thanks for the encouragement and advice! Cleats are on my (very) long list of shooting-related items to buy...

Chris - Thanks! I like that paraphrased quote!

Tim - Thanks!

I had a series of very helpful conversations with Bo and Andy about shooting faster up close. Accuracy at (reasonable) speed and one-handed shooting are (relative) strengths; I can implement fine trigger control when required. But I get frustrated that shooters who can't hit the broad side of a barn at 50 yds are posting .2 splits on 7-yd targets while I'm shooting... .4-.5 splits?

After a week of learning my gun's reset in dry-fire and dry-firing with barely releasing my trigger finger before bouncing it back into the frame, and a 200-round live-fire session of bill drills at 5 and 7 yds (it was nice to discover that I can hold the sights in the A zone shooting .18 splits, though... I could also see dollar bills flying downrange ), I can tell that my transitions have gotten sharper and crisper.

Short reset trigger =

Here is a video from yesterday's match:

[caspian38]

That looked like a solid run ,and a sweet transition from T1 to T2 ...good job ! I'm going to go work on my transitions and splits...hope you don't mind if I ask for advice.

[alma]

Hello from Springfield!

I will have to catch up on the rest of the thread but I wanted to mention that it looks like you are initially coming up too high on your draw are your hands are meeting closer to your body than they need to.

It's hard to tell for sure from this angle but it looks like your left hand is going further towards your holster than it needs to. Although I index my left hand on my chest it meets my gun hand about 10 inches from it.

Also, how is the tension on your holster? You have a definite pause from the time when your strong hand hits the gun to when you have it out of the holster as if it was tensioned in too tight or you didn't get the grip you were looking for.

When you draw you need to ensure that as soon as your muzzle clears the hoster you are moving it to the point where you want it to be using the most direct path. I definitely see the gun going to high and it makes for a staggered two-stage looking draw out of the hoster versus one smooth motion.

Not saying this is perfect but here is mine. YouTube has a .25% speed setting that really helps for analyzing things like this.

[Esther]

Silas - Thanks! One thing that I think really helped was barely letting off the dead trigger in dry-fire and bouncing it back into the frame as fast as I can. Dry-firing transitions feels really different now (I'd gotten into the bad habit of doing a DA press on every single dry-fire "shot") - much more aggressive, as if I'm racing my trigger finger to get my sights on the next A zone.

Alma - Thanks for the feedback and the video! Yeah... my draws and reloads can definitely be much better, which is embarrassing considering how 95% of my practice happens in dry-fire! I know I pause too long between when my hand hits the gun and when it comes out of the holster. I think it's time getting a good grip not excessive tension in the holster. When I try to snatch the gun out of the holster without pausing, I often end up with a less than ideal grip, which of course screws with my sight tracking until I do my first reload and fix it. Suggestions?

By two-stage looking draw, do you mean stage 1 = getting hand on gun, 2 = clearing holster to target, or 1 = gun moving up (too high) from holster, and 2 = gun going towards target? Thanks for the video and for telling me about the 25% speed setting on YouTube!

Edited April 28, 2014 by Esther

[alma]

I think I establish my grip with more of a subtle push down into the grip tang while it is in the holster. This settles my hand into the correct location while I wrap it around the grip for the draw.

Take the "two stage" comment with a grain of salt because it's hard to see exactly what you are doing but from the back something doesn't look quite right.

At first I though you were scooping a bit on the draw. That is where the motion of your gun dips and then comes up during your draw. The opposite of that is called fishing, where you bring the gun up too high (often with the muzzle in the air) and then bring it down align your sights.

After looking again it didn't look as dramatic as any of those examples but it did look a bit like from you holster your gun might be going up to your chest and then out as opposed to clearing the holster just enough and then driving the gun directly to the spot you want it with the least amount of divergence from that path. Please don't take my word for it as its hard to see everything from your video but do try to video your self for your own analysis from the side during dry fire practice.

It's good to see that you are shooting video at matches. Try to do more of that. Time on the clock while shooting a stage has always been deceptive. For me, it's only through reviewing match video that I get a good understanding of were I was fast or slow during a match. Sometimes it's a pain to get someone to film but of you are lucky you can find a friend who doesn't mind filling you if you then film him or her.

[Esther]

Alma - Thanks, I agree that video is a great tool!

From today's match:

Takeaways from today's match:

1) Mag changes are getting smoother. Other than the first stage, they were all pretty smooth and subconscious.

2) Hosing is getting faster.

2a) I need to remember that not all targets are hoser targets. Need to practice long-range splits and transitions.

3) When shifting slightly to hit another target or array, cross-step instead of shuffle/hop (which is what I typically do - you can see it in second 21!)

4) Remember to load all my mags with 10 rounds! OMG, I half-filled a mag last week and then again this week!

Edited May 4, 2014 by Esther

[alma]

Regarding #4, one method is just making it a habit to never put a half full magazine in your magazine pouches. Stick them in a pocket after your stages until you have a chance clean them (if necessary) and top off.

[alma]

Is that a CZ that you are shooting now? If so then let me know it you ever need any minor gunsmithing done to it.

I think I saw you shooting a M&P or something previously?

How are your double action to single action transitions going. I see just a little bit of a lean on that very first shot like you were hoping the gun would go off a bit sooner.

Nice reload!

Edited May 4, 2014 by alma

[TGO]

Can you watch these videos and tell where you are losing time? If not then you must have another of a faster shooter to reference against. It appears to me that you are executing portions of the stage as though you are dry firing them. You are not nearly aggressive enough. Some things you need to do fast, others smoothly. you appear to be trying very hard to just be smooth.

Without getting into every detail, you need to be faster in nearly every element of your movement. Do not make hesitations once moving. Commit and go. Think fast. The shooting appears ok, but you are looking at targets for a long time after you have finished shooting them. You appear to be at a point in your development where you would benefit from a training partner. One who is better than you ideally and can beat you at everything, every time.

This is the system. Observe what you do, identify weakness, formulate change that addresses a very specific technique, consciously commit to make change and follow through with it regardless of consequences. You will need to get out of the safe, smooth, comfortable zone to make improvement.

Do not view the whole stage as an entity. They are a combination of many small things. Time to stop trying so hard to be smooth. Time to be fast. If that tuns out to be to be smooth, then ok. Some of these skills require violent, sharp, powerful actions by you. learn to punch, not push....

Edited May 10, 2014 by TGO

[beltjones]

^^^With regard to the above, I highly recommend you don't take the advice of anyone with fewer than 1000 posts here on Enos. How else can you be sure they are sufficiently experienced?

[alma]

My name almost touched TGOs in Front Sight one year. That has pretty much been the highlight of my shooting career.

What an honor to have him offering advice on your journey even though he only has 300+ posts.

[TGO]

^^^With regard to the above, I highly recommend you don't take the advice of anyone with fewer than 1000 posts here on Enos. How else can you be sure they are sufficiently experienced?

My name almost touched TGOs in Front Sight one year. That has pretty much been the highlight of my shooting career.

What an honor to have him offering advice on your journey even though he only has 300+ posts.

Ya, you guys are right. What was I thinking?? I retract all that crap I said earlier, i just thought it sounded cool.... I'm sorry :-)

[Esther]

Alma - Thanks for the offer! I may take you up on it. Before, I was shooting an XDm.

Rob - Thanks!! Can you elaborate on what you mean by being faster and more aggressive in every element of my movement? (I know you don't just mean drawing and reloading, which I know I need to do faster.) I definitely need to stop looking at targets once I've called a hit! I don't try to be smooth; I think that way of moving feels natural to me. It's the violent, sharp, explosive movements that feel funny - and that I need to master.

Re: training partners - David Starr, you need to come to Virginia and kick my ass in practice again!!

Re: the system - what do you mean by "commit to make a change and follow through with it regardless of consequences?"

I forget who said that "if you think you are humble, you probably are not." Every time I think I've gotten my ego out of the way (getting over my dislike of seeing pictures of myself and posting video online, for example), I get someone like Rob Leatham telling me I am not nearly aggressive enough and look like I am dry-firing when shooting! (Andy's pretty good at spotting everything I do wrong, too. ) Awesome. Thanks so much for the critique - I appreciate it a LOT!

[spanky]

Rob - Thanks!! Can you elaborate on what you mean by being faster and more aggressive in every element of my movement

Think of the targets on the stage as adversaries. Attack them. Quickly and accurately and proficiently but attack them.

Also, I have well over 1,000 posts so obviously I know what I'm talking about.

Edited May 11, 2014 by spanky

[TGO]

Alma - Thanks for the offer! I may take you up on it. Before, I was shooting an XDm.

Rob - Thanks!! Can you elaborate on what you mean by being faster and more aggressive in every element of my movement? (I know you don't just mean drawing and reloading, which I know I need to do faster.) I definitely need to stop looking at targets once I've called a hit! I don't try to be smooth; I think that way of moving feels natural to me. It's the violent, sharp, explosive movements that feel funny - and that I need to master.

Re: training partners - David Starr, you need to come to Virginia and kick my ass in practice again!!

Re: the system - what do you mean by "commit to make a change and follow through with it regardless of consequences?"

I forget who said that "if you think you are humble, you probably are not." Every time I think I've gotten my ego out of the way (getting over my dislike of seeing pictures of myself and posting video online, for example), I get someone like Rob Leatham telling me I am not nearly aggressive enough and look like I am dry-firing when shooting! (Andy's pretty good at spotting everything I do wrong, too. ) Awesome. Thanks so much for the critique - I appreciate it a LOT!

It's simple. Many shooters know what they need to do to improve but are not willing to take the gamble and miss to find out where the edge REALLY is. If you want to go faster, go faster. Can't turn this into a training session, but you can hit the targets much faster than you are, but I'm willing to hazard a guess that you fear missing or even dropping points. Someone has told you that your performance looked smooth and under control I bet. And that is what you are trying to then cause to happen. Your perception of what is smooth or in control, is what is causing you to be no faster. I don't care if you LOOK any particular way except fast.

When I am working with a student who is struggling to speed up, I ask myself why. I think, you think too much about this. Especially while shooting. I think you oughta take some chances and miss more often. Then I think you ought to figure out why you missed, if you even did. I'll bet you don't but may drop more points and you will not like that. Or someone else won't. If you work out the factors on a stage you have shot, it will become obvious what change will effect your score more severely, being faster or being more accurate. Then figure out which has greater room for improvement, speed or accuracy. I already know the answer but you must find out for yourself.

If you hit an a/c on each paper target on that stage you shot, you would drop 16 points. That would be 74 points divided by the 18.5ish time equals a 4 hit factor. Very point heavy. So it makes you wanna be careful. But if you shot 2 c's on each target, to match that 4 you would have to shoot it in 14.5. Much faster. But, if you split the difference and dropped a/c on half and 2 c's on half you'd score 66. To get that 4 factor you would have to shoot a 16.5. My bet is you'd shoot close to the same amount of points shooting 2-3 seconds faster than you did in that video. Where you are wasting time is in thinking. That shows up on the clock, not on the targets. remove the cumbersome restriction of shooting super accurate and just shoot for c's, then run fast to the next position. Quit scoring targets because whether you hit or not, you need to go! That's the commit and go I mentioned earlier. Quit calling every shot. That whole thing is waaaay over emphasized. Commit to shoot, shoot and move on.

You are leaving several seconds on the stage from being careful and thinking. Another couple from shooting. Your points will not be greatly affected if you were to be more aggressive. Your time will be. If you shoot that same stage, with a miss, and everything else an a/c in 14.5, you'll still factor a 4.

I tell my students this. Being accurate is great, but if you do not shoot fast enough, the points become irrelevant. You have got to do it fast enough so that the accuracy matters. This may not apply to you yet. It is a skill, trust and confidence issue. If you are always hitting the targets, speed is your most logical direction to improvement.

[TGO]

A critical part of this rant/rave I didn't explain is that all testing and development that will help your growth will happen in live fire practice. You are past the point where dry firing is going to help you gain anything except familiarity and comfort. Don't get me wrong, you need to handle the gun frequently to maintain a feel for it to allow your mind to focus elsewhere, but you will have to fire live ammo for you to gain speed shooting.

This isn't always possible and dry firing will not show you where you need to focus your efforts.

Punch instead of Push Esther, it's where your future lies.....

Edited May 12, 2014 by TGO

[Esther]

spanky - I like that. And, since you have over 1,000 posts, you obviously use correct range commands, yes?

Rob - Very interesting what you said about "calling every shot [being] waaaay over emphasized."

I tried to implement your advice in yesterday's match (appropriately, a "hose fest"), and, perhaps not surprisingly though still to my chagrin, had my worst performance of the year so far. I miked a wide open target at 4 yds, tensed up "trying" to go fast, and focused so much on going fast that I didn't realize until after the second stage that I didn't remember looking at or through my sights at all. I might as well have been shooting as fast as I could into the berm.

I 100% agree with you about live-fire being essential to my progress at this point. I need to shoot faster AND see the whole time AND commit to move ASAP.

Re: gobbling, the hardest thing to do is to forgive myself, over and over and over again after I screw up. This morning, I mega gobbled. After forgiving myself and moving on, I mega gobbled again at 3pm. It's hard for me to express, sometimes, when I'm not in that state, how much anger and frustration and tendency to self-loathing I feel in those moments. How pointless all of the effort and previous attempts to forgive myself feel. How I want to - and sometimes do - recruit all of my skills of imagination and words to tell myself in lurid detail exactly how horrible and undisciplined and undeserving of good things to happen I am.

Mastering myself is 1000% harder than anything else I've ever done or can imagine doing.

My best friend told me that the only answer to feeling discouraged and frustrated is hard work - to keep going, push harder, persevere. It's more frustrating when the obstacles are inside instead of outside you (or maybe I only think so because almost all of mine are). On the other hand, the ones inside are the ones you can more readily something about. Habits (which I think addictions are, in the Aristotelian sense) are things we become and can un-become.

Along those lines, from Dunnington's excellent Addiction and Virtue:

We might mean one of two things by calling something more or less voluntary. On the one hand, we might think of the ultimate in voluntarity as being that which is most expressive of an agent's character. Or, on the other hand, we might think of the ultimate in voluntarity as being that which is most susceptible to an agent's immediate control, in other words, as being that which an agent is most arbitrarily free to do or leave undone. If we take voluntarity in the first sense, habitual actions are indeed the most voluntary of our actions because they spring, not just from some fleeting deliberative process, but rather from the source of who we are, our character.

I suppose there is nothing to do but to press on until to eat healthily and when I am hungry, to write beautifully, to shoot fast, accurately, and move at the earliest possible moment - all spring from who I am.

[TGO]

You can't implement concepts or advice in a match. If you tried that at a match because of my input, I apologize. I would never have let you do that were you my student. This, the way we we are attempting change can't work. It can't be done this way, only talked about. It's why we get so cerebral in these discussions, because we can't actually do anything!! All changes have to occur in an environment where the results do not matter. You must test without having to worry about the score. That's the commit without regard to consequences thing. Should have made that more clear.

Going into a stage with the goal to shoot as fast as you can almost always requires you to consciously give up focusing on something you normally would. Like aiming. Sadly, this is almost always the case but if you are able to devote time to changing, you will learn to do things you never would believe you could, but it won't happen the first time. Or second, or ever if it is always at an event where failure is more important than learning.

I would ask you to try this. Next time you practice, try making 1 change. That being firing the gun as fast as you can at a target repeatedly 7 yards away. Keep doing this, without reloads or draws or anything, and see how fast you can get your splits while still hitting c zone. Then shoot at a pace where you always get a zones and see if it isn't a big difference. It will be. Notice I never said to shoot the gun towards the target as fast as you can. Now try to figure what you need to see to do to repeat the c zone pace without slowing down.

Start with this and let us know results. I don't think what you do at matches matters right now. only practice. good luck.

Edited May 13, 2014 by TGO

[TGO]

May as well give you some answers. Grip gun MUCH tighter, release/reset trigger MUCH faster, do not shoot until you see gun stop moving. Do not start aiming when you see it stop, shoot. Jerk trigger, and learn how to do it properly.

[alma]

I saw some videos from that match and you are correct, it was a hoser match.

It seems like out here I see far fewer hoser stages and much more emphasis of accuracy than what I experienced at clubs in the West.

Don't get down on yourself about performance at this match because my guess is that it likely required a very different set of skills than what you have been focusing on thus far.

Still, you finished in the top quarter of 50 Production shooters in a match with a Production GM and Multiple Masters. You beat each and every C class and D class shooter and you were shooting on par with the Bs. As long as you walked away learning or observing something new then this match was a success.

[TGO]

Be ready to accept something I have had to almost continuously for 30 years; that the changes I need to make to be competitive are not necessarily what I want to work on. Most likely the improvement will not come from defining concepts and finding a way to be comfortable. I can tell you that I am more likely to miss shots that should be fast than those I define as accurate. I have had to accept that I am not fast enough nor accurate enough. I must improve everything, constantly.

If you are not good at "hosing", then doing that will take you out of your comfort zone. Do that more often. When you become comfortable being uncomfortable, you will be learning the things that will ultimately take you to a place that seems inaccessible now.