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Nimitz's Journey To Shooting Greatness


Nimitz

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Thx!

Yup, 5,4,1,2,S

Let me first say that I don't believe there is only one right way to shoot each stage. Your current skill level and strengths and weaknesses should dictate how you shoot a stage. Doing something because "if it good enough for Max then ..." Just tells me the person has not done any real self analysis and doesn't understand their current strengths and weaknesses.

Having said that, the reasons you stated are all really good ones for that shooting order. Starting on 5 allows you to have a very aggressive draw and even though the transition from 4 to 1 takes the longest you can more than make up for it when going from 1-2 and 2-stop. Also shooting this order allows you to accelerate as you head to the stop plate which is always a very good thing. Most shooters have much more trouble decelerating and if your shooting order requires you to decelerate heading to the stop plate I think you'll have slower times then someone of your same ability who's accelerating.

One of the other things most don't do when selecting a shooting order is consider risk. Given a choice between 2 shooting orders, as long as my times are within .1 of eachother I ALWAYS select the less risky order. Giving up potentially .4 secs on a stage vice eating a penalty at 3 secs is huge! At a match where there are lots of good shooters the difference between the champion and the guy who finished 2nd is rarely over 3 secs ...

I used to shoot it 1,2, 5, 4, S and no matter what I did couldn't get under 2 secs. Since changing how I shoot it I routinely shoot 1 or more sub 2 secs strings on roundabout in a match and my current best times a 7.9

It sounds like you have Roundabout figured out .... Don't waste any more time second guessing yourself ... Spend it on training to see faster ....

Edited by Nimitz
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Thanks for the analysis. Totally agree about figuring out my own best plans that match my current strengths and weaknesses.

That's how I tried that order in the first place. Everyone else was starting on plate 1 but for me (and for the reasons you mentioned) it didn't feel right. For one thing it was feeling kind of stop/start to me. Where as 5412S feels like a nicer flow accelerating through the stage.

Thanks again for the discussion. :)

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thanks. I know this is your thread but I'll give a small update. did a little practice this weekend ahead of my big match this coming weekend. weather was pretty average (raining) so I only did about 2 hrs on Saturday and 2 on Sunday spread over 9mm (CZ shadow), open 38 super (tanfoglio V12 eric custom) and rimfire (rugger 22/45 lite). I only put 100 rounds through the shadow. I haven't shot iron sights in a looong time and it showed.

I mainly just wanted to function test the gun with a new load I was trying for steel. Same with the tanfoglio, trying a new steel load but shot about 150 rounds. Shot a fair bit more through the rimfire.

They had all 8 stages setup but I only shot:

roundabout (happy with the order we discussed)

smoke and hope (going 1 2 5 4 S - also tried 2 1 5 4 S but I prefer the first way).

Shot 5 to go (really only one way to do that for me, 1 2 3 4 S).

Shot speed option only a few times but I like going 5 4 1 3 S (sort of zig-zagging down to the square plate).

Outer limits - I spent probably my most time on this one and probably 150+ rounds of rimfire on this one alone. Like KC etc I do like starting in the back right corner of the first box (i'm right handed so starting in left box). That does seem to enable me to move faster/more confidently into the front left corner of the middle box. So I'll continue to shoot it that way. As far as order goes I was shooting it 1 2 5 4 S. I was consistently in the low 6 second range on that order with about a 1 to 1.2 first shot. I decided to try shooting it 2 1 5 4 S. I instantly gained .4 of a second on the first run. and that's settled into a consistent 0.3-0.5 better than my average times were going to plate 1 first. I'm now hitting 5.5sec regularly which as a SC noob I was fairly happy with.

I like that order for a couple of reasons. going 1 2 I found I often hesitated on leaving the box. I'd call my shot 'good' and start to leave but then hesitate. right at that moment of hesitation I'd usually hear the 'ding' but it'd through off my exit. The other problem is if I did miss the second shot you end up half way out of the box before you call it. It's especially noticeable shooting CCI stds, not as bad using minimags as they get there appreciably quicker! Going 2 then 1 means I can be more aggressive on the first shot (yes plate is twice as far away but it's about 3 times as big so is easier to hit). That dropped my first shot which was stuck above one second down to 0.9s or lower. It also means if I do miss-call that shot and it's a miss I'll notice while taking the shot on plate 1 and can make up the shot on plate 2 without doing the jerky half exit/re-enter maneuver. So going 2 then 1 I much more often go 2 for 2 on the first part and the 0.3+ I make up on my first shot is not lost anywhere else. It has my wondering if I should go 4 5 S instead of 5 4 S as I do notice when I enter the box I need to settle for half a beat before shooting 5 but can then hit 4 and S very quickly. I think loosing that nice fast transition from 4 to S but going 5 to S might cancel out any gain made by going to plate 4 in the second box.

I didn't shoot showdown, pendulum or Accelerator.

I'm fairly comfortable with order on pendulum (though I suck at that stage). I go 1 2 4 5 S. and showdown from memory I go 1 2 4 5 S (though I'd love to hear your order on showdown).

I'd also love to hear your thoughts on accelerator, what order you shoot it and why? Pendulum and Accelerator are probably my worst 2 stages and I probably should have spend some time on them.

I think from memory last time I shot Accelerator 1 2 5 4 S.

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Got out Mon and Wed for live fire training to kick off my whole new training program. Monday's session was a combination of 5 To Go stage shooting and draw/1st shot drills. Began the session with my open gun which I haven't shot since the Penn State Championships. Just shot 11 reps in shot calling mode with an overall average of 3.99 secs and then 20 draws to the 1st plate on 5 To Go with an average of 1.55 secs.

Switched to my rimfire gun and started with 5 reps in accuracy mode and then moved into speed mode. Ave for the 10 reps was 1.86 secs and then finished up with 6 reps in shot calling mode where I averaged 2.36 secs. Also did 10 first shot, 2 plate reps with an overall average of .6 secs.

I'm going to be spending a lot more training time on my rimfire 1st shots as I believe for an 8-stage match I should be able to pick up 2-3 secs here. I know I can be a lot more aggressive here than I have been in the past ... The other thing I'm going to be tracking in my matches is the number of M/u shots I make as I also think there may be another 3 secs or more to be gained here as every m/u shot is costing me easily .4 secs. This shouldn't be too hard to do as I can look at my string times and tell if it was a clean run or not since I know what my 5/5 times are for every stage.

Wed's session was transition training using just visual goals so I didn't record any times and draw, 1st shot drills. Targets were all 10" plates set at 15 yds. I spent the entire session just doing various combinations of the 1-2-3-4-5 drill.

On tap for tomorrow is stage shooting with 5 To Go again and draw/first shot drills. My new live fire training is going to consist of selecting one stage every week and doing 2 days of stage shooting and one day of transition training.

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Beerbaron:

At my current skill level I base my shooting order on 2 things: 1) I try to keep as many of the 4 transitions after the first shot as short as possible & 2) as long as the times are basically the same, I select the least risky approach, one that I can easily duplicate under match pressure.

For Smoke & Hope I shoot it 1,2, 4,5, S. I used to shoot it the way you do but found the transition from 2-5 too long for me. 2,1,5,4, S has way too many back & forth transitions for my liking ...

I shot 5 To Go like you do

I used to shoot Speed Option like you do but KC set me straight on this one and I now shoot it 5,4,3,1, S. Again I didn't like the long transition from 4-1

For Outer Limits you have a lot of good reasoning and it seems to be working for you so I won't throw any monkey wrenches into what you are doing but I will tell you I don't shoot it the way you do

I shoot Pendulum as you do, no need to get fancy, just shoot it straight across right to left ...

For Showdown I shoot my open gun differently then my ri fire gun because of the flag placement in rimfire. I happen to be slightly more comfortable going right to left so I start out in the left box with my open gun & shoot the first 2 strings 1, 2, 4, 5, S. Again, don't get fancy here, just shoot straight across L-R. then for the R box I simply reverse the order 5,4, 2, 1, S. This means of course I'm drawing to the 25 yd target.

Now for rimfire since there is only one flag placed in the center of the array your gun is actually pointing just to the outside (left) of the #1 plate in the right box and to the right of the # 5 plate in the left box. therefore, I simply shoot the closest plate to my low ready aim point & then move either R-L or L-R depending on which box I'm in. At Mississippi, using this order I had 2 sub 2 sec strings out of 4, including a 1.76 sec run.

I struggled with Showdown for a very long time, unable to break 9 sec stage times until someone pulled me aside and showed me how to shoot this stage

I shoot Accelerator 1, 2, 5, 4, S. This is the one stage where I go against my rule of shooting the least risky approach since shooting 4 just before the stop plate means if you called a close shot good & you're wrong you're eating a penalty. That' why earlier this year I changed to shooting it 5,4, 1,2, S which allowed me to pickup 4 on the way back if I missed it originally. Unfortunately I was consistently .3 secs slower shooting it this way no matter what I did so I went back to how I originally was doing it. I then spent a lot of time working on the transition from 5-4 to make sure I never miss it.

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when I got to the range this morning most of the bays had stages in them for this weekend's IDPA & 2-gun matches at our club so I headed to bay 7 and shot Roundabout. Began with my open gun & shot 5 strings in Accuracy Mode; stage time was 12.83. I then ran 5 speed mode runs, average time was 2.65 secs. This included 2 4/5 runs and a 2.42 sec 5/5 run. the important part of that run was I only had a 1.3 sec draw & still managed a 2.42 sec run. I switched to shot calling mode where the ave for all those runs was 2.87 secs.

switched to my rimfire gun & my stage time in accuracy mode was 7.5 secs. Ave first shot was .59 secs. Switching to speed mode my ave time for the 10 runs was 1.63 secs. Three runs were 4/5 & three runs (in a row) were 5/5 including a 1.51 sec run. Ave 1st shot time was .49 secs. finished the session with 10 reps of the first shot 2-shot drill; ave time was .49 secs

I've also started to experiment with a different finger position then what I have been using the last few months. instead of having my finger inside the trigger guard & off the trigger I now place the tip of the finger on the outside of the trigger guard. the reason for switching is that I found I was not always getting my trigger finger in the proper position. Although I'm currently a little slower with this new placement on stages like Roundabout & Smoke & Hope I'm getting a more consistent finger placement. Hopefully I can just train my way to the point where I have the same 1st shot speed as before ...

Edited by Nimitz
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Thanks for taking the time to talk that out for me. Much appreciated. I did some training on Thursday ahead of the 3 day match. Damien Curtis was there training so I shot a little with him but mostly left him alone to do his thing. I was feeling good about my solid mid 5 second outer limits runs till he steps up and starts cranking out the mid 3 second runs. Lol it takes me 3 second from shot 2 to shot 3!!

The other problem was the heat. It was 45 degrees Celsius. I was about a second slower on every string while he was still cranking 1.7s on showdown (rimfire of course). I couldn't even shoot centre Fire much as the brass was burning me picking it up.

Some issue with my open and iron sight guns mean I'm not doing all 3 guns.

Just going to shoot rimfire tomorrow (which is my only purpose built steel gun) but will hopefully make it count.

Thanks again for the tips. You have certainly achieved that gm tag you set out for. :)

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Thanks. Had an up and down match. The elevation adjudtment on my cmore is broken and I didn't have time to send it off before the match. In practice I was ok holding off the plates at distance (it's hitting high) but in the match id default to regular mode and have misses.

Started on 5 to go and had multiple levels light strikes. Wtf!?! Have never had that with this gun. I'd just opened a new brick of cci std so after 5 to go put them away and went to my mini mags. But that was an awful start to the match and on multiple string I had more that one malf. Nearly 30 second stage time. :(

Next was show down. Nothing great there. Was still a bit rattled and struggled a bit.

Then speed option. Brought things back a notch and nothing super but improving.

Then outer limits. I'd been running this consistently under 5.5 and regularly hitting 5.2. In the match extra make ups meant I ran 6s and 7s. Had a malf on a run too. :(

Accerator. Again ok. Nothing great but not horrible.

Pendulum. This was a cluster fck. I'd spent a few runs in practice and had my hold over point which was off the plates at about 7 o'clock. Well first 2 plates I'd hit fine then would have misses on plates 4 and 5. Missing straight over 1 o'clock. On the first attempt I ran dry! 10 rounds. Had to mag change to hit the stop plate. I rained it in better for the remaining strings but it was still horrible. I'll never shoot a match with half arsed equipment again. While I could aim dead centre and hit plate at 10 yards at 15 plus it was way off.

Roundabout. Shot this well. Given it was straight after my worst stage shooting wise I shook that off and ran my plan. Consistent mid to high 2s were a bit off practice pace but I still finished 11.13 for roundabout.

Last was smoke and hope. Had some good runs but again not great. I had to eat a low 3 but all the others were low 2s. Finished 10.35 on that.

So on the 3 stages were the funky sights were not an issue (5tg, roundabout, s+h) one was riddled with malfs but the other 2 I feel I shot at my ability for my second ever match. And only 2 days of sc practice in my life!

I'll keep at it. :)

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Having gun issues is no fun ... Particularily in SC. Consistency is the real secret to Steel Challenge ... Anyone can put together 1 or 2 good runs per stage but the champions consistently do 4 ... For every stage

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This week turned out to be a very good week in the learning dept as I fixed a few technique issues that should finally get me 'unstuck' on progressing on a couple of stages. I also experienced what shooting totally relaxed can do for me. Monday I worked on Accelerator and managed to get my open gun shot calling mode ave time down to 3.33 secs, still with only a 1.38-1.43 ave draw time. On the rimfire side I got my speed mode ave time to 2.00 secs with 4 of the 5 runs being clean 5/5 for a 7.83 stage time. Normally in speed mode I'm pushing pretty hard & not very relaxed but for some reason this time I was & the results were quite eye opening ... when I reverted back to shot calling mode I ended up with a 2.17 sec ave over 10 runs with 8/10 being clean 5/5. First shot ave for the session was .59 secs. I need to make being "relaxed' one of my major training points from now on given the results I achieved ...

Wed was generic transition work with no time goals. However, I did note that with my open gun I was slightly faster r-l then l-r but the opposite was true with my rim fire gun. I'll have to keep an eye out on this over the next several weeks to see if someone is going on.

Friday I shot 5 To Go and after my speed mode runs I started noticing I was always missing right, even on the 10 & 12 yd targets which is something I never do. I then took a single shot at the 18 yd plate to see if I had a sight issue & sure enough the round struck about 4-5" center right. That's when I noticed that the elevation set screw was missing on my C-more .. again! Decided to put the gun away & just work with my open gun. Cold stage run was 14.76 with only an ave draw time of 1.70 secs. In speed mode I managed to get the runs down to 2.74 secs with an ave draw at 1.48 secs. I then did 50 single shot draws and 20 2-shot draws with an overall ave time of 1.38 secs

This week in dry fire I'm going to start doing a lot of draw micro drills to see if I can isolate & start improving on where my slow hand speed is coming from. I'm pretty sure it's in the first part of the draw, not after I grab the gun with my strong hand. This is because with no practice at all I was able to easily execute 1.15 - 1.2 sec 'hands relaxed at sides' draws the very first time I tried them so I'm figuring most of my slowness has to be in getting my hands from the surrender position to the gun. I need to break out the video camera as well.

Speaking of which, my Sony AZ1VR mini action cam arrived a couple of days ago so hopefully I'll start to have a lot of POV video from my matches. I've got it mounted on the bill of my visor and now need to try shooting wearing the liveRemote wristband to see if it will interfere with my shooting. If not that will be preferable to having to reach up & turn the camera on blindly which will be a pain ...

I also ordered my Christmas present on Wed .... a pair of Extreme SportEars. AxilPro was having a $1,000 off Black-Friday sale so now was the time to pull the trigger .....This Friday I have an appointment to have the ear impressions made & then it takes about 3 weeks to have the devices made. I'm really looking forward to not only getting back a lot of my hearing (so is my wife) but also discarding hearing muffs for good !

Edited by Nimitz
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great times mate.

Quick question. on your runs in speed mode and shot calling mode etc you mention times and then number of runs that were 5/5. does that mean the non 5/5 runs you didn't make up the shots? ie you fire 5 shots each run. if those are all hits then it's recorded the time and 5/5. if you have a miss time is recorded and 4/5 or do you make up the shots?

I've been wondering a bit about doing this in training. ie pushing the speed and just fire 5 shots. but I think you also need to practice 'match' type runs where there's no way you're leaving misses on the table so you need to get the handle on fast makeups as even the top guys seem to get a makeup or 2 every few strings.

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For any drill where I have times goals I always train in 3 different modes: first is accuracy mode where the only things you are concerned about is seeing what a perfectly accurate shot looks like. The timer is used as a start signal and nothing more, you don't look at your time. I then switch to speed mode where I no longer care about accuracy , only speed. So for those reps if I took makeup shots I'd be focusing on accuracy again which is not the point. So yes, one shot at each plate, no m/u shots. Lastly I switch to shot calling mode where I simply call every shot ... If you haven't yet developed your ability to call your shots you can think of this as match mode where you're only shooting as fast as you can see ...

Developing the ability to call your shots is a mandatory skill if you expect to really progress in SC. You'll never be able to execute sub 2 sec rimfire runs if you're looking for a visual cue that you hit the target or worse, listening for a ding ... You need to know the instant you break the shot that is was good or bad and that requires shot calling. It's not some super human hand speed that allows the big boys to put up the times they do, it's their ability to call their shots that separate them from everyone else .... And some regular training doesn't hurt either .... :)

Edited by Nimitz
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Thanks for the explanation. I'm guessing when you started am times were super slow. Sm times were fast but with misses and scm times were in the middle. As you progress they get closer to each other?

I agree on the shot calling thing. It's important. I can and do do it but not all the time yet.

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In general yes. Can't tell you what my times in am were because I literally never look at the timer. But what you should see if you're training correctly is the following:

Pick a stage and run it in match mode ... The pace you'd shoot if it were at an actual match ... Assume you've just stepped up to the first stage at the WSSC. Now record the run times. Then switch to SM and run a bunch of reps really pushing yourself out of your comfort zone and record the times. Finally switch to sc mode (not match mode) and run some reps, what you should see are immediate reductions in your stage times with the same level of accuracy you had in match mode ....which means you are learning how to see faster ... Which is the key to everything ...

As your skills progress your SM times should start to plateau and your accuracy increase at the same time and eventually your SM and sc modes times should converge

Edited by Nimitz
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shot the first of my 2 regular monthly local SC matches this saturday. Ended up with a 69.84 sec time for the 7-stage match which represnts a new personal match best for me. Had a total of 12 make-up shots for the 175 rd match but only 6 were from strings that I used for score .. This represents a shooting efficiency of 96.6% which is right where I should be. I've also started tracking a new metric:

# of strings shot < 2 secs; # < 2.10 secs; # < 2.5 secs; # < 3 secs. For this match, of the 28 strings I was 5, 5, 3, 13; leaving 2 strings above 3 secs.

Overall I was pretty happy with my performance. The one issue I had was on the very first stage, and that was mostly due to MD issues than anything else ... 4 of the 6 Nooks we were using decided not to allow you to record shooter scores on them which didn't get discovred until the squads started shooting so instead of getting ready to shoot I was trying to fix this issue. Ended up having to go to paper for 4 squads so when I got to my 1st stage to shoot my head wasn't exactly in the right place. I didn't take any penalities but my score was not exactly up to my normal standards ... got on top of it pretty quickly as the 2nd stage I shot a new personl best an then proceeded to shoot a good match from that point on. This Saturday will be my last SC match for 2015, an 8-stage event at Volusia County.

This morning's training session with Outer Limits was a real study it opposites ... started out with my open gun and was having a lot of weak hand grip issues causing lots of 1st shot misses. When i did put together 5/5 runs the average for all those was 5.62 secs. I switched to a 'first box' drill where I'd shoot the first 2 targets & then move out of the box. I did 16 reps but only 11 were clean runs. Draw time ave was 1.77 secs and the 2-shot ave was 2.22 secs.

Switched over to my rimfire gun and things were completely different. Accuracy mode stage time was 13.22 secs. Switching to speed mode my 1st run was a clean 5/5 3.7 sec run. did a total of 11 runs including 2 more 5/5 runs at 3.23 & 3.19 secs. Also manged 2 sub 3 sec runs as well (2.93 & 2.95). Finshed up in shot calling mode with 2 more stage runs. First was an 11.94 sec stage time & the 2nd was a 12.32 sec stage time. The changes I've made for shooting this stage are obviously starting to pay off as I used to consider runs in the 4.5 - 4.75 sec time really good ... now those same times are slow for me ...

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thx. I think I figured out what happened ... going to test my theory this weekend ...

so I got around to doing some math based off of the match and with personel bests on Accelerator, Showdown, Smoke & Hope & Speed Option, my "unofficial" rimfire classification using the same 6 stages used now for centerfire stands at 96.07% ...

using all 8 stages it 's at 95.2% ....

of course with the latest comments from our President my "match based" classification is only 89.47% so who knows what it really is going to be .... :)

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just posted video from Saturday's 7-stage match ....

Very cool to see how you shoot the stages. I'm sure it's just an optical illusion but I swear the 4th plate on 5 to go isn't setup in the proper position. Plate 1 is 10', 3" to the left of the flag and the 4th plate is 10', 3" to the right. It looks like the plate on the left side is placed properly but the one on the right looks short to me.

Pause the video at 5:17 and you'll see what I'm talking about.

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yeah, I see what you mean but we surveyed all the stages and there are metal plates in the ground to ensure they are always put in the same location ... funny you should mention 5 To Go because next Friday it's going to be the first stage we bury the 12" hollow rectangular steel tubes I had made up for holding up the 2 x 4 posts so we'll be resurveying all the stages again as we putthe new system up ... no more dragging out 35 steel "H" frame stands ....

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