Does Shooting For Speed Come at the Expense of Follow Through?

[kita]

I was using two great shooters from different games that can't be compared although they use like equipment. There isn't a direct comparison because the games have a different focus so the training is different. I don't speed shoot but I'm thinking of comming back this summer. It sounds like I will need accept less at the expense of follow through and some sight picture. I think if you are aware of that it will help in the transition process so you don't frustrate yourself.

I feel like you are overanalyzing this. Is there a need to break it down on such a fine detailed level? It sounds like the unending battle between speed vs. accuracy being dissected into such small parts that it no longer represents the whole.

[toothguy]

I consider Rob Leatham the greatest "instinctual" shooter on the planet with an iron-sighted pistol. Time and time again, I’ve seen him acquire and shoot targets so quickly it leaves you speechless. I questioned him on his approach. Basically, he said: Upper body (shoulders) square to the target, arms fully extended but not locked, and most importantly, once in position, the head, arms, and body move as a unit. He commented that he would not hesitate to adjust his feet while shooting if that will preserve the integrity of his Index. He also said, and I agree, "Why ‘aim’ if your position can do that for you"? This should not be taken to mean that he doesn’t aim when he needs to; it’s just that with proper technique, the gun points and shoots wherever you look. After enough practice, of course.

Brian Enos.

Conversely, it is entirely possible to shoot extremely accurate on a regular basis but have little to no shot calling ability.

When it is time for accuracy training, he does slow fire group shooting. No time limit, no nothing. He just does the slow controlled trigger press and tries to get a really nice little group.

All of that is great, but there is a big gaping hole in that training. It just doesn’t prepare you to be accurate at a USPSA event. There isn’t time get a perfect trigger press for every “accurate” shot. You need to learn to speed that process up, but me just a hair more sloppy with it. You need to develop the whole spectrum. Not just as fast and sloppy as you can pull the trigger and “take all day” speed. You need to develop the part that is in the middle, that is where the matches tend to happen.

If you want to go faster, you could try a target focus and just seeing the fiber in the center of the brown.

Using the faster aiming method, you should have a faster time. You may not have great hits. You will probably learn something.

Quit trying to visually focus on only the front sight, this is a common mistake. See everything having to do with the shot and see clearer the element most important to the quality of shot you are trying to shoot.

You do not have to see the sights clearly if you are shooting fast and or at close targets.

Remember, easy targets are only easy if you are going slow and hard targets are only hard if you are going fast.

The process of trying to always see too much clarity in the front sight will only cause you to stop aiming and not see the other elements of the sight picture.

Learning to operate the trigger fast is necessary to shoot fast (obviously), and is a highly underdeveloped skill for many.

Aiming is more important than looking at the front sight. At the beginning you may simplify the process by emphasizing one third of the items involved in, but at some point you are going to have to move on from that fixation.

You should arrive at a point as your skill develops where you see the sights but do not have to over emphasize looking for them, especially just the front. Most shooters have been relentlessly drilled to the "focus on the front sight thing" so much that they now believe it should forever be there mantra and only focal point. This will always limit your speed and accuracy.

As far as seeing and keeping in sharp focus the sights during the recoil cycle, few if anyone can do this with a gun that has much vertical movement in recoil. I mean by this that they are not able to track the sights during recoil well enough to actually keep the center of focus on the sight. Your eye doesn't move fast enough. Nor would you want it constantly being moved out of alignment with the target.

Fuzzy sights and a clear target are sometimes better. This will be hard for some to understand and for many more to accept. That's OK, many viewpoints are being expressed and mine is only one, albeit based on over thirty years of intense study and training on the subject.

One truth: Do not search for or accept as gospel a single trick to always focus on other than Skill, confidence and experience. If you do you will be missing something that you oughta be seeing or feeling and your performance will always be lacking......

I'm not so sure? I've seen no bullseye shooter, at least a good one become truly fast. Bullseye is terrible training for IPSC and IPSC shooting is the most useless skill set a bullseye shooter could ever want to develop. One requires absolute precision at the cost of any real speed and the other penalizes slowness so much that missing fast is preferable.

The concept that you can just choose not to focus on the front sight and that will result in speed is an urban legend. Shooting fast doesn't mean not seeing the sight, sights, or aiming. It just requires you to do it quickly which normally means doing as little of it as you can get by with to save time.

Focusing on the front sight, depending on what you mean does not cause a shooter to be slow. Some of this might be getting a little confusing. I apologize.

Not sure how calling shots and developing a reliable index plays into all this yet. That would make an interesting discussion of it's own!

The things I wrote have little to do with the experience level of the shooter. They have to do with skill level. Any shooter will have to perform the balancing act of speed versus accuracy in the correct ratios to be good as an IPSC shooter. Or a Bianchi shooter. Or a bullseye shooter. Or cowboy fast draw shooter, etc. The balance point must be achieved but is not fixed.

Mental focus and mistakes are regularly blamed for failure where lack of skill should be. What is working as a mental focus point may vary, but the physical skills are pretty well defined and somewhat inflexible. They are finite and easy to identify. Just hard to do!! Moral of the story; get better and it gets easier!!

In my experience, only a couple shooters who started out as and became good precision shooters ever figured out how to let go of conscience control to the degree that they ever become good speed shooters. Brian is the only one that became top level, who I know.

The same is true in reverse. I've known few shooters who came up shooting the fast disciplines that became very good precision shooters. Doug Koenig is one of them.

I consider the Bianchi cup to be in the middle. It is a curious event as it is too fast for the precision guys and too accurate for the speed guys, as a rule. The nearest discipline to it is PPC. Many of those shooters cross over successfully. Interesting is that Phil Hemphill was a PPC national champion, did very well at Bianchi and is a National champion in bullseye now. IPSC is a little out of his wheelhouse but he has the other side covered pretty well from middle over.

As speed shooters crossing over go, I definitely came from the shoot fast and hope for the best side of things and decided to develop enough precision to be effective at the Bianchi Cup. Bullseye, although I am trying, is a long ways out of my wheelhouse. And my scores show that. This has little to do with aiming or looking at the sights. I have found it to be more of an issue of patience and trying to solve a problem in a manner that can't be achieved with the tools applied. I come from the side of the tracks that solves problems to a large degree by application of speed. This can't solve my bullseye dilemma. And it isn't directly about slowing down. But that's another discussion.

So, the thoughts I previously posted are still accurate as far as I can tell. Then again, someone will disagree.

I'm a lot off subject here, but when I gets to ramblin' I just can't stop!!

Again, do not limit your focus to a single item, it ain't that simple. If it was then everyone would be better by doing that. All good shots are good aimers but not all good aimers are good shots. I love that kind of stuff.

While I understand what you are saying, please understand I have little or no follow through. In the context of speed shooting, I certainly have no forced or conscious effort put towards having follow through. In fact, I train hard to not have excess follow through to the degree that I hope I have none. This is one of the reason's I struggle with Bullseye. Once the bullet has left the barrel I no longer control it. Any further effort at that time should be in preparation for the next event. You will not force follow through when you learn to get the shot off as soon as alignment occurs. When you are very good you will shoot without causing the gun to go out of alignment. Trying to create too much follow through will only make you slow.

As far as visual patience, I focus on making the gun motionless, but only to the degree that I see the sight picture well enough to insure the shot will hit in the area desired. I am working and area, not a specific spot on the target in most instances. The size of this area is what determines the accuracy needed for the shot. At Bianchi I have a relatively small area to hit, in IPSC it is larger, which allows me to be faster.

Coming from Bullseye and Bianchi, you will struggle with how little you need to see and hesitate to be fast. Most describe this as out of control. It is that level of control that a shooter attains that separates the scores. Slow and accurate to the extent that the clock times aren't relative is no better than fast with misses. The factor is the factor. While most would not agree it should not be this way, it often is! I personally wish missing was a bigger penalty. Others wish it were less.

This is why you must understand the scoring system well enough to know when going fast at the sake of points is preferable to slow and accurate.

As I said before, it ain't lack of aiming that causes speed to occur. Quite the opposite actually. We often focus on a single thing as our mantra to keep ourselves in control. That doesn't mean you will score well as control is a curious subject when it comes to score. At Bianchi and for sure bullseye you can consciously think through every detail most of the time and still do well. For IPSC there's just too much going on too quickly to try and control all elements that way.

I suggest we all get rid of the notion that we must have large amounts of follow through. By nature we tend to overdue anything we emphasize. This is what causes excess hesitation to occur after a shot. You may witness the sights moving from a shot, but to see them well enough before the next shot is generally under stressed.

May be some semantics in this, but I wanted to be clear.

TGO

Edited March 22, 2013 by toothguy