How can I shoot faster?

[RobertLx]

Title says it all. I have a hard time getting fast splits when I need to do more then 2 shots. Classifier Can You Count for example, I don't know what my splits actually are, but they are slow. Is there a drill or workout routine to help with trigger finger speed? I do well with field courses, but often screw up classifiers because of this thought that I'm gonna do it slow. Then I try and go as fast as I can and don't watch the sight.

[CB45]

Ever thought about setting up "Can You Count" as a drill in practice?

Maybe a Bill Drill?

[joshxdm9]

+1 bill drill!!

[bigfish]

I would guess that too much tension might be part of your problem. Real most likely there are better places to pick up speed. Like target to target transitions and entering and exiting positions

[blaster113]

try Triple Six; one string at 25, 15, 7 yards with 6 rnds on each target. Do this drill enough and you'll know how fast you can push at each distance and what your hits will look like.

[motosapiens]

First things first. What are your splits now?

second things second, if you are having trouble shooting fast at 5 yard targets, I would do some practice shooting fast at 5 yard targets.

One thing that really helped me was some dryfire practice, just pulling the trigger for 5 or 6 shots very quickly, and also doing just a few drills from 5y not worrying about accuracy, just trying to get all the hits on paper. Once I got a feel for the speed, I was able to keep pretty much all of it as i reintroduced the control to hit alphas.

[RobertLx]

I can accurately do .20 splits. It's just the physical pulling of the trigger when I'm shooting 3 or more rounds. It's slow for me. I don't know what my splits are, but my buddy said "that's as fast as you can shoot?" I can't go faster even if I throw accuracy out the window. Just shooting into the berm is slow. Glock 3# trigger

[motosapiens]

How much bill-drill dryfire do you do? I bet not much. I found just a couple of sessions drastically improved my ability to fast without freezing up.

Pulling the trigger 3 or more times shoulnd't really be any different than pulling twice. Just keep going.

[Jshuberg]

I can accurately do .20 splits.

I don't know what my splits are, but my buddy said "that's as fast as you can shoot?"

I don't understand this. If you are actually shooting .20 second splits accurately (5 rounds per second), that's nothing to be ashamed of

Going with the presumption that your problem is in moving your trigger finger fast enough, there are a couple things you can do. First off, if you have a death grip on the weapon, it can interfere with the dexterity of your trigger finger. The proper grip has a lot to do with being able to smoothly and efficiently move your finger on the trigger. One thing you can do as an exercise is to hold a clicky pen in your support hand with the button pointed away from you, wrap your weapon hand gently around it, and work the button like a trigger. I've found that Pilot G-2 pens work great for this. They have around a .25" of movement and a decent weight spring. Try to get your weapon hand into the approximate position of when holding your pistol, and place the button on the same spot as where you place your finger on the trigger. Think of this exercise as a "speed bag" for your trigger finger. You'll notice when trying this that the more relaxed your weapon hand is, the easier it is to click the button on and off rapidly. One thing that might help is to let the trigger return spring move your finger forward to the point of reset. You don't need to use your finger muscles in both directions, just during the squeeze (provided your trigger return weight is sufficient for this). The sequence is to press and relax, press and relax, etc. rather than muscling your finger one direction and then reversing and going the other direction.

Beyond the mechanics of moving your finger, the act of shooting rapidly and accurately involves a whole ton of things. Basically though, you want to discover a grip that will automatically return the front sight back down into the rear after the recoil pulse subsides without having to make any additional movements. The idea is that you use your muscles to create a "spring" that allows the pistol to flip up slightly during recoil, but then return back to where it came from sufficient that you don't have to move anything other than your trigger finger to make another accurate shot. I've made a few posts on this subject lately if your interested in this.

The other part of shooting quickly is observing your sights. There are a huge number of aspects to this, the most important is to not blink when the shot breaks. After that what you need to do is let go of waiting to see the sights aligned before breaking the next shot. Doing this involves your conscious mind having to make a logical assessment that the sights are aligned, and this will add additional reaction time to your splits. Shoot at a particular cadence, and simply observe the front sight in motion. If your "spring" is working properly the sights will be aligned back on the target before you're able to activate the trigger again, no matter how fast you shoot. If your grip slips or you otherwise throw your shot you'll realize it immediately after the fact by the sight picture you had the instant the shot broke. You want to take your shots according to the cadence your comfortable with, trust that you'll be on target when the shot breaks, and keep a hard mental focus on your sights so you can call your shots on the occasion where the shot isn't good enough. Once you can do this well at a particular cadence, increase the tempo slightly. If at any point you start to lose the front sight while in recoil, slow back down to a pace where you can continuously observe the motion of the front sight through a rapid fire string.

Hope this helps!

Edited March 11, 2014 by Jshuberg

[Dr. Phil]

TGO has an excellent video on You Tube listed under "action target". Great for getting those splits down. Like 10 shots from the holster in 3 sec! Fun stuff...

[RobertLx]

Good tips guys. I think you may be right jshuberg, I think I'm muscling through the return stroke and I get tight and tense in my strong arm. Not that either of my arms are strong lol. I like the pen clicker idea.

I don't dry fire as often as I should. It's so boring. I'm trying to get into Bens books about it.

Do you guys think if I dry fire bill drill with a Beretta (heavy DA pull) it will help? Or will it be counterproductive because I shoot a glock in production?

[motosapiens]

Do you guys think if I dry fire bill drill with a Beretta (heavy DA pull) it will help? Or will it be counterproductive because I shoot a glock in production?

Whether I'm practicing with DA or SA gun, I only get a real trigger pull on the first shot. the remaining shots are just simulated, so on the da, i let the trigger out past the SA reset point, but not far enough to engage the double action. I don't think there's much benefit to practice with something other than what you actually shoot in competition.

[Pasley]

Practicing with your competition gun makes sense but I was watching a Miculek video the other day and he said he liked to practice with as many different guns as possible. In particular guns that had heavier triggers, lesser optics etc.

[StraightUp_OG]

Dry fire is essential to trigger control. Make it a game so it is not so "Boring".

[Reshoot]

I would forget about the targets, for a moment, and just go out and shoot . Shoot at an embankment, as fast as you can, not aiming at anything. Just observe yourself and the gun. You might be surprised what you discover.

[mississaugagunnut]

TGO has an excellent video on You Tube listed under "action target". Great for getting those splits down. Like 10 shots from the holster in 3 sec! Fun stuff...

I just watched this video, it's a fantastic drill. I can't wait to get out to the range and try it out.

[Nimitz]

If you can already shoot .2 sec splits and get 2 alphas you are plenty fast enough. Don't spend your valuable training time trying to lower your splits to what? .18? .15? No point when you are probably losing multiple tenths on every transition you make. Order of magnitude differences here ....

As far as classifiers go, over 75% are shoot 3 targets, reload, shoot 3 targets. You want to do well in classifiers? practice draws, reloads and transitions between 3 targets ....

Splits for show, transitions for dough ....

[Andreas]

Good tips guys. I think you may be right jshuberg, I think I'm muscling through the return stroke and I get tight and tense in my strong arm. Not that either of my arms are strong lol. I like the pen clicker idea.

I don't dry fire as often as I should. It's so boring. I'm trying to get into Bens books about it.

Your strong hand should hold the pistol firmly, but not so hard as to interfere with trigger control. Put a death grip on the pistol with your weak hand. Your fingertips should get white from the pressure you're exerting.

Get Ben's book and dry fire a half hour every evening for a few weeks. Make it a point to aggressively work on ratcheting down par times. You'll be amazed what happens.

[benos]

I would forget about the targets, for a moment, and just go out and shoot . Shoot at an embankment, as fast as you can, not aiming at anything. Just observe yourself and the gun. You might be surprised what you discover.

I'll second that one big time!

[RobertLx]

Last night my friend and I shot my new limited gun I just got. I shot 6 rounds into the berm with no aiming and got crappy splits. I did not record them, but it was along the lines of .20, 28, 30, 24 .32. His were all low 20's and down to .15 splits.

Mine are all over the place and slow. Not sure how to get that finger working any faster.
My friend says its in my head and you hardly ever need to shoot more than 2 rounds anyways.

Between starting routine dry fire, and maybe bill drills when the weather gets a little warmer, Im not sure what else to do.

[StraightUp_OG]

Stop worrying and thinking about it. Focus on just sight picture and trigger control. Once you allow yourself the freedom of not thinking, your speed will improve. If you keep telling yourself that you are not fast enough then you won't be. Sadly thinking creates a self fulling prophecy.

Just see and breath.

[Chris iliff]

I can't go faster even if I throw accuracy out the window. Just shooting into the berm is slow. Glock 3# trigger

Good tips guys. I think you may be right jshuberg, I think I'm muscling through the return stroke and I get tight and tense in my strong arm. Not that either of my arms are strong lol. I like the pen clicker idea.

I don't dry fire as often as I should. It's so boring. I'm trying to get into Bens books about it.

Do you guys think if I dry fire bill drill with a Beretta (heavy DA pull) it will help? Or will it be counterproductive because I shoot a glock in production?

Haven't been on in awhile, but this caught me so I'll respond.

Motosapiens is giving you some good advice in his posts, actually most of the post are good. Why did I quote you? Well, it just seems that you ask a pretty good question, then you make some pretty good excuses. You don't get to have it both ways with me, ............you either want to shoot faster splits, or you want to make excuses why you can't. Which one? I'm leaning that you want faster splits, right?

Ok, go back and read post #2 by CB45 (Master Open Shooter) now read everything Motosapiens wrote and post #19 by Benos.

In post #2 the Bill Drill suggestion is huge, ..........coupled with regular berm shooting, post #19 and you'll figure it out. It might take some ammo, but if you can stick with it and be positive, you'll work it out.

Now that I've highlighted and isolated the important few points that address your question and have been mentioned, I'll add the following.

None of the above matters one fat baby poop if you are not SEEING your sights. Seeing the sight is where it all begins. That input is what eventually becomes subconscious and at that point you won't even think about pulling the trigger, it'll just happen when it needs to happen.

To start off, Yes, just start pulling the trigger as fast as you can count, 123456, boomboomboomboomboomboom. This will help. But, you need to quickly transition from rapid 123456 trigger pulls to OBSERVING the sights and all the muscles in your face while pulling the trigger rapidly 123456. At this point we are getting down to business. Once you get that down and can see EVERYTHING while doing it,...sights moving up and down, brass ejecting, unicorns prancing, etc....it's now time to put your new found skill on paper at 7 yards doing Bill Drills, 6 shots all A's from the surrender position. Watching the sights and keeping them in the A zone will become automatic. From surrender a Master class shooter should be consistently under 2 seconds. If you are a beginner, I'm estimating a Bill Drill around 2.50 to 3 seconds. The important thing is to work it down and SEE everything.

Hope it works out for you, good luck and be positive!!

[motosapiens]

Last night my friend and I shot my new limited gun I just got. I shot 6 rounds into the berm with no aiming and got crappy splits. I did not record them, but it was along the lines of .20, 28, 30, 24 .32. His were all low 20's and down to .15 splits.

Mine are all over the place and slow. Not sure how to get that finger working any faster.

My friend says its in my head and you hardly ever need to shoot more than 2 rounds anyways.

Between starting routine dry fire, and maybe bill drills when the weather gets a little warmer, Im not sure what else to do.

How much bill-drill dryfire have you been doing? If the ONLY time you try to move your trigger finger fast is in live fire, you're probably not practicing it anywhere near enough.

Start with a par-time you can make (2.5 seconds?) and draw and fire 6 shots before the beep. Try to space them evenly and try to make them controlled so the sights aren't jerking all over. You don't need a target for this, just a blank wall so you can see the sights. gradually bring the par time down. I predict in a few evenings of 15-20 mins practice you will teach your trigger finger to move more quickly but still with control.

[CB45]

RobertLx,

I wouldn't get too wrapped up in this endeavor. Use Bill Drills and Berm Drills as a learning tools to watch the sights while shooting fast . I think solely focusing on fast splits is a waste of resources.

Learning how to shoot 2 A's on every target, despite target difficulty, in the appropriate time frame, will get you a lot further. I've proved it over and over to myself that splits don't win, A's do.

Applying the appropriate sight picture and trigger pull for every shot is way more important than a 1.8s Bill Drill. I am simply amazed how many people don't understand this. Everyone just wants to squirt 2 bullets at each brown target and 1 close to steel, then hope for hits on paper. That's crazyness.

IMO, YMMV... good luck!

[Dkrad1935]

Squirt two bullets! That's me