Speed, Speed, Speed

[kdj]

<Quote apparently made by Mike Voigt in a class, reported to me by MVZ - now I understand>

I think a light went on today. I've been shooting for coming close to a year now. When I started, my times were really really slow and I counted the number of Mikes I had on a stage. Recently, I've graduated to counting the number of "Not-A"s and I usually have fingers left . This is not necessarily the progress I'd assumed it was.

Putting it another way, I've noticed that, in major matches (ignoring gun problems for the sake of this discussion), recently my points have been pretty good. Usually as good as the stage winner. Sometimes better. Occationally, I screw something up badly but, in general, I've been getting most of the points on most stages. But my times suck. And on average, my scores have been in the 50-60% range of decent to good GMs as match winners.

Today, at a local match, I decided to try something different. I allowed myself to go back to shooting loosely enough that I'd get some Mikes but push to be going as fast as the match winners. There were 2 GMs shooting, so I think that was a reasonable challenge.

I achieved the Mikes and the overall results were interesting. By pushing this hard, my times were generally close to the fast folk. My points were pretty poor by the standards I've been setting for myself recently and I managed 7 Mikes in a ~150 round match.

However, the thing that's interesting to me, is that my overall score was ~78% of the winning GM, despite some gun problems. Recently, it's been around 65% of the same person.

It seems that, despite what one is told, speed does count more than accuracy in most matches.

Now if I can just get the balance perfect and slow down the odd 1/10th to make those Mikes into As, I'll be getting somewhere.

Kevin

[Jake Di Vita]

Speed doesn't matter more. the equation is speed AND accuracy, you can't be lacking in either one. Yes, it is great to get a fast time, but that don't mean squat in the grand scheme of things if another guy did it as fast or a little slower than you but got all his hits.

Get to that point and you'll shoot a whole lot higher than 78% of him.

[Ron Ankeny]

When you get that M card, you will discover those 7 Mikes at GM speed will put you way below class. Go for it, I need all the help I can get.

[JFD]

I've found that accidentally pushing my speed beyond my accuracy limits only works at local matches. If there was more competition, I'd likely find it wouldn't work there either. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how to manage speed versus accuracy, which is difficult and the main thing keeping me from an A card.

Sticking to a speed where I could get good hits allowed me to salvage a bad start at my first big match (SC Sectional) and come out with the L-10 title (I was still spanked by 6 out-of-state shooters, but what the heck). Trying to speed up and improve my score would have led to a total heartbreaking disaster.

[mcoliver]

When you guys talk about speeding up, why is it always the shooting part? Do your COF's only allow you to shoot from one position?

[Jake Di Vita]

In most situations I advocate shooting slow (as slow as needed might be a better way to put it) and doing everything else fast.

I heard Max Michel talking about a 2 yard full target. He said the difference between a Master and a good GM is that the M will go at those targets as fast as they can. The GM will go at it as SLOW as he can...he understands how important points are.

[kdj]

I'm fully aware that to succeed, one needs to score most of the points but that's the relatively easy part. Any one who has shot anything other than IPSC will agree that the A zone is huge and the accuracy required in and of itself is not increadably challenging. So, why does one manage to miss the target entirely, one asks Speed would seem to be the answer.

My "mistake" to date was recently *over* emphasising points, and that's not good in the grander scheme of things. If I do the arithmetic, the difference between an A and a C was not balanced out by the time I was taking to get it when in slow mode. So now you'll tell me that the right thing to do is shoot all As (or a reasonable approx there to) as fast as possible, and we'll agree Some times I need to go to extremes to get the point across to my subconcious!

Incidentally, would any one argue the point that it's much easier for most people with reasonable skills to equal a match winner's points score than it is to match the match winner's time?

I think the point I was trying to make was that one cannot compensate for a lack of speed by scoring a few more points since almost everyone from B class on up can score all the points given enough time, right?

I wasn't advocating shooting faster than one can control, except as an interesting exercise in certain circumstances. Those of us who don't get to practice some times have to use a match for a practice exercise, and sometimes we even learn something

Kevin

[Skywalker]

kdj,

the right path is, starting from the speed at which you score 90/95% of the stage available points, to speed up just a bit, and then get proficient at that.

Then, when you can still score 90/95% of stage available points, speed up a bit more.

Whenever you see your points dropping below 85% of available stage points, you're pushing it too much, and you have to back up.

But to do this you have to thrust your sights: there is no need to double check the alignment, but it's also detrimental to pull the trigger whenever you vaguely see the front sight on brown.

This way you'll eventually learn to shoot fast while still scoring enough points (remeber, you can't miss fast enough to win, or even come close), otherwise you'll learn how to shoot fast throwing hopers all around.

Bottom line: if you can score points, you can learn to do it fast, but if you are fast, it's very unlikely you'll learn to score points while shooting at warp speed.

[Loves2Shoot]

Anyone who still has the word fast is his mind hasn't "got it" yet in my opinion.

[chp5]

Bottom line: if you can score points, you can learn to do it fast, but if you are fast, it's very unlikely you'll learn to score points while shooting at warp speed.

I respectfully disagree with this statement. I think you need to push the envelope and learn to see more at high speed. A shooter does this by shooting/transitioning/moving at speeds outside his comfort zone.

This is not the best stategy in bigger matches where you're trying to place, but I think it's important to shoot outside your comfort zone in practice AND in matches.

It's helpful to view local matches simply as structured training and practice and not worry about final results. Have a training goal for local matches and do it.

[Dead Buff]

Anyone who still has the word fast is his mind hasn't "got it" yet in my opinion.

I agree 100%, but I still don't get it - that my prob

[Skywalker]

Bottom line: if you can score points, you can learn to do it fast, but if you are fast, it's very unlikely you'll learn to score points while shooting at warp speed.

I respectfully disagree with this statement. I think you need to push the envelope and learn to see more at high speed.

chp5,

if I understand you correctly, we're not disagreeing...

I have been suggesting

when you can still score 90/95% of stage available points, speed up a bit more. Whenever you see your points dropping below 85% of available stage points, you're pushing it too much, and you have to back up.

and you've been suggesting

to push the envelope and learn to see more at high speed.

I guess we're speaking the same words.

The point where we might be disagreeing is on what to do if pushing the envelope causes poor hits or, worse, mikes.

I'd say to back up a bit in the speed department: because going at warp speed, far beyond what you can see, doesn't help you in learning, while settling up at a speed slightly higher than what you're comfortable with might do the trick.

[Rockwell]

I'd say to back up a bit in the speed department: because going at warp speed, far beyond what you can see, doesn't help you in learning, while settling up at a speed slightly higher than what you're comfortable with might do the trick.

When you guys talk about speeding up, why is it always the shooting part? Do your COF's only allow you to shoot from one position?

I agree. Last year when I started this game, time was all that was important to me, but I am discovering that I was trying to be too quick at the wrong times. For the last few months I have been practicing reloads, draws, transitions, movement to positions, eye speed, and wasted movement just trying to become smooth in my basement and on the practice range everyday so that when I arrive quickly at the position to fire the shots needed that I can put all of my focus on watching my front sight and calling each shot. It has been interesting to me that my times are becoming much better, it feels like I am actually taking more time getting the shots off even though the timer says different. I guess what I am trying to say is that I used to gauge how a stage went by only having a few misses, but a really fast time. For the last several matches I gauge a stage by how I felt while shooting and if I called the shots or not. I am starting to realize that my times will be fast enough if I don't waste time throwing misses and having to make them up.

Now with that said, if I can just learn to see consistantly on every stage I "might" have a chance to move up and become competitive.

[Loves2Shoot]

Last year when I started this game, time was all that was important to me, but I am discovering that I was trying to be too quick at the wrong times. For the last few months I have been practicing reloads, draws, transitions, movement to positions, eye speed, and wasted movement just trying to become smooth in my basement and on the practice range everyday so that when I arrive quickly at the position to fire the shots needed that I can put all of my focus on watching my front sight and calling each shot. It has been interesting to me that my times are becoming much better, it feels like I am actually taking more time getting the shots off even though the timer says different. I guess what I am trying to say is that I used to gauge how a stage went by only having a few misses, but a really fast time. For the last several matches I gauge a stage by how I felt while shooting and if I called the shots or not. I am starting to realize that my times will be fast enough if I don't waste time throwing misses and having to make them up.

Now with that said, if I can just learn to see consistantly on every stage I "might" have a chance to move up and become competitive.

A great example. You go faster when you don't waste time, not when you try to go fast, that is why "going fast" is the killer of going fast.

[Flexmoney]

Accuracy doesn't win matches.

Speed doesn't win matches.

And, when you pit the two against each other...you don't win matches.

Accuracy and speed need to exist together...not in conflict.

[Flexmoney]

Kevin...btw, congratulations on opening a new door.

[SRT Driver]

The hardest aspect for me is the balance between what I need to see and the amount of time seeing it. Shifting gears is my problem.

This makes more sense now but at first the concept was, and honestly still is, very difficult.

[JFD]

When you guys talk about speeding up, why is it always the shooting part?  Do your COF's only allow you to shoot from one position?

Speaking for myself, at the time of the sectional match, it was a major achievement for me and my brand new B card to NOT speed up the shooting part; crashing and burning in the process. I tend to focus on this since it's my #1 stupid thing to do. Shooting a plate rack at 25 yards repeatedly shows me I can't miss fast enough to win, and has been a big help in convincing my brain to call the shots.

It took way too long to see how slow I was in terms of non-shooting movement. My practice sessions actually accidentally reinforced this slowness. Arthritis pain in my knees and remaining "real" hip makes a lot of movement in practice stages a hard thing to force myself to do. Picking up my brass is hard enough some days. The pain is greatly reduced in cooler weather, so I need to address movement speed starting this weekend.

I've "seen the light" when it comes to non-shooting movement ( I know how fast I can move while shooting), but sometimes that light can be pretty dim. Shooting too fast and moving too slow are my main problems, but it takes a thread like this one to remind me I must target my practice sessions toward addressing these two problems. I've been practicing not shooting too fast, but ignoring moving too slow. I've damn near fallen into the trap of only practicing what I'm good at.

Tonight I'm going to design a new practice stage, throw out the old ones, and reread Brian's book.

[dv8]

What Skywalker said makes the most sense to me. I don't follow this specific strategy he described - it just happens that way. Once in a while I feel comfortable and confident enough to push myself forward. To me that means speed - maybe because I am generally not a fast shooter. Going faster causes poor hits, so now I need to work on my points while maintaining the speed. Eventually I will improve my hits at this new speed and feel comfortable enough for a new push.

I also agree that "shoot slow and do everything else fast" concept makes a whole lot of sense, but in my reality it doesn't work quite that way. When I push myself, it affects everything - movements, transitions, sights registration, draw... If I push too far and my hits go down while my time goes up - it simply sets up a new horizon for me. Now I need to identify particular skills that need improvement to shave that time difference between my comfort zone and the speeding zone. The choice of a skill to improve usually comes to identification of a biggest defficiency in my performance.

I suppose there might be different approaches to training - whatever works. If I absolutely had to say what is more important - speed or accuracy, I'd say accuracy.

[kdj]

If I absolutely had to say what is more important - speed or accuracy, I'd say accuracy.

I'd like to explore that thought a little further since I would have said the same a little while ago and I'm not sure that I would now.

Here's why: After a certain threshold, there is no incremental gain in improving your accuracy. That threshold is easily defined. It's being able to hit the highest scoring region of the most difficult target ever placed in an IPSC match.

Now, while I certainly agree that one needs to be accurate to do that, it's not the level of accuracy required to shoot, say, Olymic Free Pistol. So, there is a clear upper bound (ignoring the fact that having a bigger margin allows error when going faster, etc. for the sake of this discussion). There's also a point of diminishing returns. When one can hit the A zone of targets in somewhere between 90 - 99.99% of all matches, the incremental improvement may well not be worth the effort in needs to achieve it.

There is no absolute threshold for speed. If you complete the stage faster, you always get a better score (ignoring the occational fixed time stage since this is getting convoluted enough). It's also not clear to me that there's a point of diminishing returns since faster *always* scores better given the same number of points.

So, it is possible to max out on the accuracy axis. It is not possible to max out on the speed access. Conversely, it is possible to reach a zero point on the accuracy axis but not on the speed access.

So, my claim for the sake of this discussion would be that there's a cross over point. Below a certain threshold, accuracy is more important (i.e. missing every shot is guarenteed worse case). Above that threshold (and we could argue as to whether that's at 50% of the points, 95% or 100%), improving speed becomes more important than accuracy.

This is a hypothetical discussion for me since I'm not above the accuracy threshold and spend quite a bit of time practicing accuracy, but the reasoning seems solid to me.

I guess the only question is "Where is the threshold" and is it realistic to expect that one would achieve it while there's still some room for choice to be made.

Kevin

[Nik Habicht]

Kevin,

I've said this before in other threads but I'll try to expand on it some more. When I'm in the groove I strive to shoot efficiently. To me that means constantly moving toward my final position on a stage, either shooting or reloading on the move as much as possible. At the Nats I reveled in Stage 23 because it was set to permit my preferred style. It's no coincidence that it was my highest percentage stage. I let the sights dictate how rapidly or slowly I shot, I shot on the move a bit, and I don't remember a standing reload.

That said I used to have slow times on stages coupled with near perfect hits. I've improved my match performance in the last two years with two realizations: The first came from Brian who suggested, and I'm paraphrasing here, that one should really use the entire A-zone, i.e. if it takes you twice as long to put two holes right next to each other as it takes you to put two holes at opposite corners, then put two holes at opposite corners, as long as they'll both still be Alphas. The second realization came when I figured out that on short, relatively low point stages I need to move faster --- to push myself and to potentially be willing to risk a couple of Charlies. Stages like 21, with the two dropdown ports with only 80 close points and to a lesser degree 24 --- which only had 105 points available but had farther targets come to mind. I dropped to many points on 21 for that to have been a good run --- but if I'd turned my vision on it could have been.

Other stages in the match were sheer survival stages for me --- and on those it was important to maximize the points, because there was no way I could shoot them fast enough. Thinking about what the stage requires may help to determine your approach as well....

[dv8]

...

So, it is possible to max out on the accuracy axis. It is not possible to max out on the speed access. Conversely, it is possible to reach a zero point on the accuracy axis but not on the speed access.

...

Kevin

Kevin,

I would have to agree with you if I did not perceive the speed/accuracy equasion a little differently.

In an ideal example, accuracy can be a constant while the speed is also a constant. And yes, accuracy can max out. But if speed is continuously leading up, then accuracy will be going down. So my view is that if I let my speed go up for 5%, then my accuracy is down, hence there is always room for improvement. In other words, accuracy can only max out while the speed is a constant. If speed is increasing, the accuracy will always be falling.

Having said that, I realize that our views on this are not as different as they might seem. It's just a matter of terms, perhaps.

Vlad

[mcoliver]

Assuming one cannot get the hits even if given all the time in the world, then it's a no-brainer that accuracy must be worked on.

However, for any decent shooter, accuracy and speed (of shooting) becomes intertwined and cannot be thought of as separate. Once you start speeding up, accuracy seems to fall off. So if you want to retain that speed, you have to work on being accurate at that speed.

I'd go as far as saying that trigger finger speed is what limits our ability to shoot fast. And I strongly believe we can always work on our accuracy regardless of what speed we're going.

Just my 2 pesos...

[ErikW]

You have to hear the rest of the story about Voigt saying "Diligentia Vis Celeritas is Latin for Speed, Speed, and Speed!"

Basically, he said that shooting most of the available points is a given starting point. From there, it's C^3.

[Skywalker]

What Skywalker said makes the most sense to me. I don't follow this specific strategy he described - it just happens that way.

That's not a strategy for me too.

It's simple observation of how I tend to progress in the shooting.

Now, looking at it from backwards, it may look as a strategy, but "it simply happened" for me too.