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Improving Stage Planning


kneelingatlas

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At a match on Saturday the match director was in my squad and commented on my shooting: "I see you can shoot, you trigger work is excellent, now you just need to go faster without shooting faster".

I know my time is lost in movement from one array to another and I'm pretty sure I would move faster if I had more confidence in my stage plan, but the question is how?

The obvious answer is to simply shoot more matches, but I'm hoping someone has a more efficient suggestion. I shoot L10 with the idea more reloads will teach me to plan the stage better, but should I just load up 21 and blast through the stage just to get used to moving faster without worrying about double the reloads?

Edited by kneelingatlas
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Shooting high cap definitely puts and enfacis on finding the next target quickly vs spending time looking at your magwell.. That will definetly improve your flow.

The one advice that helped me the most was when I was told to NOT over walk a stage.

I common issue is to focus so much every detail of how you want to navigate a stage, and then be thrown off by the smallest detail being of.

The best thing you can do is to walk the stage enough to where you know how many targets there are and where the shooting positions are, then plan on shooting the targets as you seem them.

By keeping you plan as simple as posible, mostly knowing where the main shooting positions are you liberate your mind to purely shoot the targets as they become visible..

Soon you will noticed that 90% of the stages we shoot a very simple, movement wise..

And your confidence in your plans will increase.

And so will your reaction time, the time it takes from you to transition from breaking the last shot in an array to starting your next action, pushing of to get your body moving, hitting the mag release to start a reload etc..

Speed in stage planning comes from

1)knowing where everything is

2)knowing when to be explosive, vs slow and smooth on your feet.

3)cutting out all hesitation between shots.

Anyway that's what I've been putting my focus on lately :)

Edited by carlosa
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Good topic. This is what kills me in a match. I try to hard to get all my hits that subconciously i am slowing down instead of moving quicker. Admitely I could do better with stage planning but I can't seem to break away from the chains that are holding me back. Seems like I am running in first gear and can't shift to second or third.

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I have found out first hand that removing the mag changes from the equation definitely helped my stage presence. I also learned by shooting with the better shooters in the club watching how they broke down and ran a stage and asking questions. Just remember it is all about economy of motion, and switching to Limited will allow you to discover that. At that point for the most part you are reloading where the stage dictates you must, not when the mag does.

Edited by lvipscshooter
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  • 2 weeks later...

I was talking to a fellow shooter and RO (who is much better than me) at a local friday match about 2 months ago. He was telling me that I was going way to slow, and gaming the stages in a way that took more time. He said that my hits were good, but I was being to conservative. He and I started walking through the stages together, and he would ask me how I would run it, then would tell me how he would run it, and his way was faster. He told me to go as fast as I possibly could for a couple of matches. If I missed I missed, but it would show me were I could go faster, and were I needed to concentrate more time on.

I did that, and now I have gone back down to a more normal pace. I learned I was taking way to much time on steel, it was my weak spot when I started shooting, but I have gotten better at it without realizing it. I was also only shooting stages right to left, because I felt safer doing it that way. But I have been doing this long enough that shooting left to right is no longer an issue. There was one stage I did from right to left, and he pointed out how much faster I could have gone if I had done it the other way, and let me reshoot the stage, since we had to wait to move since the group ahead of us was a little slower. I took 4 seconds off my time going the other way.

I didn't feel comfertable at first, but it helped me to get out of my comfert zone for a while. Shooting the Monthly match today, I noticed a big difference in my times, and my hits.

If you are at a local match that is more relaxed, find a shooter that you get along with that is better than you, and ask to be on there squad. Pay attention to them, and ask questions. I learned a lot by being squaded with a couple of M shooters and a GM shooter. Not only ask them how they are going to run a stage, ask them why they don't do the way you want to do it. I notice that once one of the M or GM shooters does a stage, everyone after them changes there plans to be more like the way the better shooters ran it, and times tend to go down.

Edited by Tuflehundon
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I'll think on this one some and do a more detailed post but a couple of things to keep in mind.

I see a lot of shooters that will over think a stage trying to game it out. I see a lot of shooters that will come up with dumb plans to avoid a reload. I see a number of shooters that come up with overly complicated stage plans which invariably fail and then they have no confidence or get upset because "after the buzzer goes off I forget the plan"

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I beleive the key element to good stage planning is visualization. Most non-super sqaud shooters don't visualize enough before shooting a stage. It is very seductive to look at a 'material solution' to solve our shooting issues but usually a change in technique is what is really needed. I do not believe changing divisions so you can reload less (or more ) will have any real effect.

If when it is your turn to shoot you can not close your eyes and run through the entire stage in your mind, at speed, including every position you will get into & every target you will shoot, you are simply not prepared to shoot. Shooting MUST be subconscious to be 'fast'.

I don't appear to be very social on my squad during a match since I spend all my time before its my turn visualizing. I'm off to the side with my eyes closed rehearsing every element of the stage. I participate in stage resetting like everyone else but once there are only 3 shooters in front of me I go into 'full isolation' mode until I shoot. After I'm done & I've prepped my mags I'll then takeover score keeping or otherwise help.

Our club is famous for long, complicated field courses with targets appearing in multiple locations and hidden targets here and there. I had no choice but to learn to visualize. I attended my first level 2 match last month & even though I had been warned that our stages are usually among the toughest I'd see, I was still amazed at how easy it was for me to do stage planning due to my strong visualizaion ethic.

This shooting skill is as important as any gun technique you'll ever work on to improve your match results. In his training classes my shooting coach always asks the following question: how many times do you think the 'super sqad' guys visualize a stage before they shoot in a big match? the answer: continually until it's their turn to shoot ...

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Ben's new book has excellent sections on stage planning. I'm not going to give the contents of his book away, but I'll just say that I was shocked at the number of times he recommends "visualizing" a stage before shooting it. I'll be trying that next match. I know there won't be nearly as much time for goofing around in between shooting.

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Ben's new book has excellent sections on stage planning. I'm not going to give the contents of his book away, but I'll just say that I was shocked at the number of times he recommends "visualizing" a stage before shooting it. I'll be trying that next match. I know there won't be nearly as much time for goofing around in between shooting.

Who is Ben?

I looked through Brian's book section, but didn't see any books by someone named Ben... Sounds like it might be a book worth reading...

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Thanks, guys! I did some Googling and found that Ben also has a very helpful, informative web site... Ordered his book today... should be here in a few days... Thanks.

I've been shooting competitively for a year and found Brian's book to be very helpful... Hope to enjoy Ben's just as much...

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Thanks, guys! I did some Googling and found that Ben also has a very helpful, informative web site... Ordered his book today... should be here in a few days... Thanks.

I've been shooting competitively for a year and found Brian's book to be very helpful... Hope to enjoy Ben's just as much...

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Edited by Ben Stoeger
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Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Ben, I've read some of your stage breakdowns and watch the videos; thank you for posting them, they're very helpful.

I find there are way too many reloads in his plans.....

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Ben, I've read some of your stage breakdowns and watch the videos; thank you for posting them, they're very helpful.

I find there are way too many reloads in his plans.....

Really? You shoot Open 10 right?

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Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Ben, I've read some of your stage breakdowns and watch the videos; thank you for posting them, they're very helpful.

I find there are way too many reloads in his plans.....

Speak of the devil and he shall appear.

Ben, I've read some of your stage breakdowns and watch the videos; thank you for posting them, they're very helpful.

I find there are way too many reloads in his plans.....

Really? You shoot Open 10 right?

See, he's so used to doing extra things he quoted me twice :D

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thanks, guys! I did some Googling and found that Ben also has a very helpful, informative web site... Ordered his book today...

Cool. Which one? LOL because he's got three of them. ;)

I got all 3 from Amazon, Kindle edition. Love his no-nonsense style.

Sorry for the off-top.

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Thanks, guys! I did some Googling and found that Ben also has a very helpful, informative web site... Ordered his book today...

Cool. Which one? LOL because he's got three of them. ;)

I got all 3 from Amazon, Kindle edition. Love his no-nonsense style.

Sorry for the off-top.

I ordered all three from Amazon, too... but I bought the actual books... I'm reading "Practical Pistol" first... Good book...

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