How many skills should you train in one live fire session?

[Nimitz]

For those of you who maintain a regular weekly live fire schedule (2-3 times/wk), how many skills do you work on during a single training session? I'm currently training 3 times a week before work so I only have one hr at the range for each session. I've started to set my plan for the summer and am wondering if I should only be focusing on 1 skill each session?

For the past 6 months I have been doing the following weekly schedule:

Day 1: fundamentals

Day 2: movement

Day 3: speciality skills

Repeat

My match results overwhelmingly indicate I need to work on transitions and movement so I'm thinking I should just focus on those 2 skill sets for the next few months and see how I do.

I'm also wondering if I maybe should do a few less drills in a session and more reps. I had been doing 3-4 drills/ session and I'm thinking that if I'm going to focus on just 2 major aspects that I could go to just 2 drills per session and increase the reps. This would still enable me to incorporate 4-5 different drills for both movement and transitions over a week which should give me enough variety not to get bored as well as work different micro aspects of both transitions and movement.

So, brilliant plan or stop thinking so much and just shoot?

[juan]

I have limited # of rnds for practice. its much better for me to pick a skill and run it over and over.

then to only do a couple reps and on to the next drill.

im trying to get certain things into the sub concious, dont think I can if I only do it once or twice.

[kosh79]

I practice once a week with live fire with maybe about 100-150 rounds. Components are scarce for me so I generally work on just my double taps from draw on 2-3 targets at different spacing and distances.

Everything else I dryfire practice at home.

[old506]

I do it until I can't get it wrong and can go just about as fast as I can go. Sometimes I will do the same drill 2-3 times a week for 2 weeks.

When I think I have hit my ceiling, I will just hose the drill without really looking at my sights and then will get back on my sights and try to "catch" that time.

I don't know if it is right for you (it works for me) but I thought that trying to do everything was leading me down the road of not being good at anything.

[gearguywb]

I always start a practice session with standards/accuracy work. Then go into working on the specific aspect of my shooting that I am not comfortable with. Keep working on it until you are satisfied. End the practice with some fast fun stuff.

[Nimitz]

I do start every session with a slow fire group shooting drill which also serves as a 'warm-up' and gun function/ammo check ...

5 rds of headshots at 13 yds freestyle

5 rds to lower A zone at 10 yds strong hand

5 rds to lower A zone at 7 yds weak hand

I'm beginning to believe it would be better to just only do 2-3 drills in a session which focus on only on specific skill. That would still enable me to do 6-8 different drills a week which should cover the various different aspects of the macro skills I need to work on.

Since I need to work on movement & transitions I can easily come up with 3-4 transition drills & 3-4 movement drills in one week & then repeat

[TerryT]

According to a number of studies and the book "The Talent Code", you should be working on fewer skills each session. Essentially the 3 rules to deliberate practice is:

1. Chunk it up

2. Repeat it

3. Learn to feel it

and the process is:

1. Pick a target

2. Reach for it

3. Evaluate the gap between the target and reach

4. Return to step 1

I don't see how you do this and make the fastest progress practicing a whole bunch of different skills in one session.

[Nimitz]

I agree. I think I'll see begtter improvement focusing on one thing at a time. As a new shooter there are so many things to work on that I put together a program to work on all of them. i will now break that up into much smaller pieces and focus on them in a serial fashion rather than everything in parallel ...

[onebadeye]

I try to practice the areas I don't shoot well in. And when shooting good in practice I shoot as long as I can, and when shooting bad I go home.

[Nimitz]

not really an option for me; I have 1 hr M,W & F morning before going to work to train so whatever I do must fit into that time schedule. In the past I was just trying to make sure I got everything done I hasd planned for the session which included several skills & 3-4 drills.

I tried a new approach for this morning's training session where I only planned to work on transitions and I selected just 2 transition drills to focus on for the training session.

So the session went like this:

warm-up: grp shooting ( 5 head shots @ 13 yds; 5 lower A zone shots strong hand @ 10 yds & 5 lower A zone shots weak hand @ 7 yds)

transition drill 1 70 rds

transition drill 2 70 rds

finish with something fun: 10 yd plate racks (18 rds)

I seemed to be much more focused on paying attention to and executing the small details of the skill correctly since I wasn't worrying about a lot of different drills or skill sets. Since the 2 areas I need to work on are transitions & movement I plan to alternate training sessions bewteen these two skills for the next 8 weeks or so and re evaluate to see where I am.

I have about 6 different drills I can do for each skill area which work different aspects of each so hopefully after 2 months I'll know where further refinement is necessary since I expect it will take a lot longer than 2 months to master those areas ...

[Blujay291]

Six drills care to share some of them?

[Blujay291]

I'm looking for new live fire training methods

[Nimitz]

Well, after a lengthy discussion with Ben Stoeger & Beltjones (see thread "Number of drill sets to perform on a regular basis" in Ben Stoeger's subforum) it became obvious I was on the wrong track so I threw out what I was doing and put together a different approach.

I'll let you read the entire thread (80 posts) but the readers digest version is that I needed to go back & learn the fundamentals of USPSA shooting: namely, the ability to shoot accurately at speed. I can shoot accurately (93.5% points shot on day 1 of AREA 6 this April), and I can go fast but I couldn't do both.

Beltjones & Ben reminded me of what Ben said in his book: you can't ever hope to be able to move & shoot accurately at speed unless you can first master standing & shooting accurately at speed. Think classifiers here. If you currently shoot classifiers poorly then guess what your problem is?.

So, I went back to Ben's first book where he outlined the "10 drills to master". These are all fundamental USPSA shooting skills with the movement purposely left out. Are there others? Sure, & I use them to, specifically Mike Seeklander's X drills.

So what am I currently doing? Simple. My 3x/week live fire routine is executing those 10 drills until I can master them according to Ben's criteria. For dry fire I'm also doing his dry-fire program concentrating on the non movement aspects & techniques. I do 2 drills per session, focusing on a specific skill & then repeat about every 2 weeks. I usually end every session with 20 & 25 yd plate racks since we see those a lot in my local matches & it's great conformation whether you have sound fundamentals (8" plate at 25 yds ...). Hope this helps.

[kylehb]

I try to go until I know I'm losing focus. Some days I go for hours and shoot close to 1000 rounds, and others I go through a couple hundred rounds and I'm done. I do know that for any motor development, especially fine motor skills, the ability to retain more efficient movements is compromised at the first onset of fatigue - and that goes for both muscular and neurological fatigue, so I have found it best to let my body/mind dictate what I cover in any given training session.

[lknbigfish]

Well, after a lengthy discussion with Ben Stoeger & Beltjones (see thread "Number of drill sets to perform on a regular basis" in Ben Stoeger's subforum) it became obvious I was on the wrong track so I threw out what I was doing and put together a different approach.

I'll let you read the entire thread (80 posts) but the readers digest version is that I needed to go back & learn the fundamentals of USPSA shooting: namely, the ability to shoot accurately at speed. I can shoot accurately (93.5% points shot on day 1 of AREA 6 this April), and I can go fast but I couldn't do both.

Beltjones & Ben reminded me of what Ben said in his book: you can't ever hope to be able to move & shoot accurately at speed unless you can first master standing & shooting accurately at speed. Think classifiers here. If you currently shoot classifiers poorly then guess what your problem is?.

So, I went back to Ben's first book where he outlined the "10 drills to master". These are all fundamental USPSA shooting skills with the movement purposely left out. Are there others? Sure, & I use them to, specifically Mike Seeklander's X drills.

So what am I currently doing? Simple. My 3x/week live fire routine is executing those 10 drills until I can master them according to Ben's criteria. For dry fire I'm also doing his dry-fire program concentrating on the non movement aspects & techniques. I do 2 drills per session, focusing on a specific skill & then repeat about every 2 weeks. I usually end every session with 20 & 25 yd plate racks since we see those a lot in my local matches & it's great conformation whether you have sound fundamentals (8" plate at 25 yds ...). Hope this helps.

great post