sarge450 Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 Really struggling with my time on the larger field courses, I love shooting them but when I compare everyone else's time to mine it is almost embarrassing. I know a lot of it is poor stage planing on my part, but I don't know how to fix it. Was fortunate enough to have someone video me this past weekend and I can see a lot of hesitation and indecisiveness as I am going through the stage. I am getting good hits but my time is terrible, hit factors in the 3's and 4's. Any tips on how to prepare or plan for the bigger stages? Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FireNHole Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 I am not an expert but I have seen great improvements with the few tips I'll list here. Remember that a poor plan executed correctly is better then a great plan executed poorly. Once you have a plan in place ( however good or bad you may think it is ) program it into your memory. Run it through your mind at least 10 times before you shoot. This may be hard if you are first up but in any other circumstance you should be able to do this. You want to be able to close your eyes and visualize yourself running the stage at your match speed. Seeing every target. Seeing when and where you are going to reload. Visualizing the sight picture on different targets ( a good example is going from a 5 yard target to a 20 yard target ). Now that you have your plan programmed don't change it. If you see someone else run the stage before you and it looks good. Don't do what they did. In fact after you watched them run it go ahead and visualize your stage plan again in your head so that something they just did won't creep into yours. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarge450 Posted April 7, 2014 Author Share Posted April 7, 2014 That makes sense. I get my plan ready before everyone starts and then typically go about watching, pasting, and resetting poppers. Never run through it again in my head. I will try that next time around. Could run through it after each shooter while pasting even. Thanks Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hops Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 Post the video, that makes it much easier to see where improvement can be made. I usually walk the stage and figure out a plan, then discuss it with a few other good shooters which either causes me to modify it slightly or just reinforces that I have a good plan. I then run it through a couple of times, then run it through mentally visualizing it a bunch more times. I also watch the other shooters going through the stage and visualize myself doing it, so that gives me a few more visualizations before I step into the box. Oh and i try to really have a sense of urgency so that I sprint through the course instead of jogging or even worse, walking quickly. Not sprinting will add a lot of seconds to your time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarge450 Posted April 7, 2014 Author Share Posted April 7, 2014 Ok, here is the video. I see a lot of areas I need to improve, but any help or pointers are welcome. I thought I had a plan but it seems I forgot it as soon as the timer beeped, to me it looks like I was lost and looking for targets rather than running a solid stage. Thanks for any help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6LDjPPx4EXI Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgkeller Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 After counting the targets to make sure you don't overlook anything, start at the end and work your way back to the start. Make your plan around the locations that you must shoot from because certain targets can only be engaged from the one location. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 Are you sure movement is your real problem? It certainly may be contributing but what are your times on stand and shoot tyes of courses (ie: classifiers)? If you're unable to shoot a typical classifier at the 75% or better level than I am going to suggest that it is your fundamental USPSA skills that you should be focusing on first. If you can't stand and shoot accuractly at speed what makes you think by adding in movement you will now be able to do that? Most shooters don't want to believe this is the case and believe that if they can learn to just move faster they can become great shooters .... Most don't want to put in the time with the fundamentals of our sport since its much more fun to run around and shoot, right? Rest assured, the top shooters did not skip this process and learned to stand and shoot accuractly at high speed first ...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jdphotoguy Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 (edited) The big issues I see from your video are not shooting on the move and poor stage planning. It looks like you were enganging most of the targets from some distance instead of quickly moving up to them and shooting while on the move, even if at a slow walk. Several times you stopped and had to look for targets or were out of position the see the targets. This could be corrected with better stage planning. Edited April 7, 2014 by jdphotoguy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarge450 Posted April 7, 2014 Author Share Posted April 7, 2014 Are you sure movement is your real problem? It certainly may be contributing but what are your times on stand and shoot tyes of courses (ie: classifiers)? If you're unable to shoot a typical classifier at the 75% or better level than I am going to suggest that it is your fundamental USPSA skills that you should be focusing on first. If you can't stand and shoot accuractly at speed what makes you think by adding in movement you will now be able to do that? Most shooters don't want to believe this is the case and believe that if they can learn to just move faster they can become great shooters .... Most don't want to put in the time with the fundamentals of our sport since its much more fun to run around and shoot, right? Rest assured, the top shooters did not skip this process and learned to stand and shoot accuractly at high speed first ...... Movement is not my only problem I am sure of that. I need work in all aspects of competition shooting. Working on those areas now with dry fire and live fire drills. Thank you for the advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarge450 Posted April 7, 2014 Author Share Posted April 7, 2014 The big issues I see from your video are not shooting on the move and poor stage planning. It looks like you were enganging most of the targets from some distance instead of quickly moving up to them and shooting while on the move, even if at a slow walk. Several times you stopped and had to look for targets or were out of position the see the targets. This could be corrected with better stage planning. I agree this stage was a bust from the start, I was lost as soon as the timer went off. I will start practicing shooting on the move, I have a bad habit of stopping and shooting the target. Stage planning is big issue to, and it really shows on a stage this size. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mgardner Posted April 7, 2014 Share Posted April 7, 2014 I train doing sprints 3 days a week. It shaved lots of time from the longer courses and I don't get winded as easily so I can control the gun better. I go 3 miles and there are little side streets every 100 yards so I sprint to the corner then walk to the next corner and repeat. At 62 it's not easy but well worth it. You don't need to learn to shoot on the move but moving quickly from array to array and setting up in the right spot should help. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ron Ankeny Posted April 8, 2014 Share Posted April 8, 2014 FWIW, Steve Anderson has a stage planning sheet that really helped me during my developmental years. It might be available on his website. The stage you shot looks like it had a lot of very difficult shots. From what I could see, there were a lot of shots that couldn't be shot on the move. In those cases, get there fast and shoot the array in the most efficient order, and hopefully you will have a target you can shoot while leaving or just as you arrive. Leaving on steel, especially a plate in front of a no-shoot is a tough deal. When you have those wide transitions from left to right and right to left, it is important to have a bomb proof plan and to execute those wide transitions with a passion. It is also important to be proficient at shooting an array from both right to left and left to right. You will eventually need to learn if it easier for you to shoot the hard shots first, then the faster or easier shots, or the other way around. Most folks find it hard to shoot fast, then slow. For now, get your mental game together and figure out how to plan. When you are preparing for a stage, you will know you are ready when you can shut your eyes and visualize yourself shooting the entire stage. While you are doing the visualization, it doesn't hurt to visualize shooting all A hits. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarge450 Posted April 8, 2014 Author Share Posted April 8, 2014 FWIW, Steve Anderson has a stage planning sheet that really helped me during my developmental years. It might be available on his website. The stage you shot looks like it had a lot of very difficult shots. From what I could see, there were a lot of shots that couldn't be shot on the move. In those cases, get there fast and shoot the array in the most efficient order, and hopefully you will have a target you can shoot while leaving or just as you arrive. Leaving on steel, especially a plate in front of a no-shoot is a tough deal. When you have those wide transitions from left to right and right to left, it is important to have a bomb proof plan and to execute those wide transitions with a passion. It is also important to be proficient at shooting an array from both right to left and left to right. You will eventually need to learn if it easier for you to shoot the hard shots first, then the faster or easier shots, or the other way around. Most folks find it hard to shoot fast, then slow. For now, get your mental game together and figure out how to plan. When you are preparing for a stage, you will know you are ready when you can shut your eyes and visualize yourself shooting the entire stage. While you are doing the visualization, it doesn't hurt to visualize shooting all A hits. Thanks Ron, that really helps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris iliff Posted April 12, 2014 Share Posted April 12, 2014 Are you sure movement is your real problem? It certainly may be contributing but what are your times on stand and shoot tyes of courses (ie: classifiers)? If you're unable to shoot a typical classifier at the 75% or better level than I am going to suggest that it is your fundamental USPSA skills that you should be focusing on first. If you can't stand and shoot accuractly at speed what makes you think by adding in movement you will now be able to do that? Most shooters don't want to believe this is the case and believe that if they can learn to just move faster they can become great shooters .... Most don't want to put in the time with the fundamentals of our sport since its much more fun to run around and shoot, right? Rest assured, the top shooters did not skip this process and learned to stand and shoot accuractly at high speed first ...... This is dead nuts correct in my opinion. I spent years running around moving fast. In some segments of the shooting competition world the "stand and shoot" type practice is frowned upon. This, I have learned, is pure horse pucky! As Nimitz point out, you have to have this skill. Think of stages as a series of classifiers and you are moving as efficiently as possible between them. When I started thinking this way, after 8 years of just moving fast, hmmmmmmm,.......I made Master in Open and everything improved. Don't get me wrong, I am in no way a contender in my class on anything outside of locals and smaller type matches, I just don't practice enough anymore. But, until you learn the stand and shoots, at least above the 75% level! it's not going to really click for you in my humble opinion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted April 14, 2014 Share Posted April 14, 2014 It took Ben Stoeger beating that lesson into me before I finially got it .... I started shooting Steel Challenge in 2013 specifically to force myself to learn to stand and shoot accuractly at speed under match conditions. I shot my first match in March and last month I competed at the US Steel National Championships and finished 24th out of 81 competitors in the rimfire match (a penalty on Outer Limits cost me a top 20 finish). Although Max has nothing to fear from me any time soon I was very happy with my first showing and it was directly related to focusing on learning to stand and shoot accuractly at speed first .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ben Stoeger Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 Really struggling with my time on the larger field courses, I love shooting them but when I compare everyone else's time to mine it is almost embarrassing. I know a lot of it is poor stage planing on my part, but I don't know how to fix it. Was fortunate enough to have someone video me this past weekend and I can see a lot of hesitation and indecisiveness as I am going through the stage. I am getting good hits but my time is terrible, hit factors in the 3's and 4's. Any tips on how to prepare or plan for the bigger stages? Thanks Do you practice running around with your gun? Do you feel like you know where you are headed on big stages? Do you have a plan for the stage before you shoot it? Can you close your eyes and remember the plan? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sarge450 Posted April 15, 2014 Author Share Posted April 15, 2014 (edited) Really struggling with my time on the larger field courses, I love shooting them but when I compare everyone else's time to mine it is almost embarrassing. I know a lot of it is poor stage planing on my part, but I don't know how to fix it. Was fortunate enough to have someone video me this past weekend and I can see a lot of hesitation and indecisiveness as I am going through the stage. I am getting good hits but my time is terrible, hit factors in the 3's and 4's. Any tips on how to prepare or plan for the bigger stages? Thanks Do you practice running around with your gun? Do you feel like you know where you are headed on big stages? Do you have a plan for the stage before you shoot it? Can you close your eyes and remember the plan? Up until last week the answer would have been no to all the questions above. I would walk through the stage with everyone else and devise my plan then never think about it again until I was up. I have learned in the last week you can't do that. I seemed to be able to get away with it on stages where you just stood and shot or go from box to box shooting from the box. But not the shoot and move stages. Shot a match this past weekend and while the stages where not as complex as this one I just kept visualizing what I was going to do. Ended up having one of my better matches with the exception of a few mistakes, which I have hopefully fixed. Also started dry firing with different drills everyday last week, already seeing improvements. Edited April 15, 2014 by sarge450 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BSeevers Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 Do you have good shooters around? At the very least squad with them and follow their plan. If you ask me at a club match I will tell you what I am doing and why I am doing it. Sure there is the 4% of the time they do something that you can't but most of the time you can just mimic them, slower. Sure at times you can't do something, for example if they go Activator Static Static Mover you do Activator Mover Static Static or whatever. 98% of the time good shooters run the same plan. Oh on that note I often get a laugh at shooters on my squad who watch 3 GM's and 4 M's run a stage the exact same way and then do the opposite. I don't get that. Of course there are anomalies but 98% time there are not. Of course there are times it's a wash if you go "left or right" first.Etc. Here's another "secret" a field course is just 3 or 4 "stand and shoots" or arrays, connected together by movement. At least that's how I approach it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
uncledoc Posted April 15, 2014 Share Posted April 15, 2014 After counting the targets to make sure you don't overlook anything, start at the end and work your way back to the start. Make your plan around the locations that you must shoot from because certain targets can only be engaged from the one location. This is my area of contention......in every stage last Saturday, I forget to engage a target or two....I could have finished must better if I did a better job of making a plan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted April 20, 2014 Share Posted April 20, 2014 Did you not see the target during the walk thru or just forget to shoot it during the run? Those very different problems to solve. For the first one you must first find every target and confirm that you have before you ever think about forming a plan. For the second problem you must learn how to visualize a stage before you shoot it. If you can not close your eyes and run the entire stage in your "mind's eye' you are simply not ready to shoot, period. If you're BSing with your friends, chit chatting, checking out the groupies or whatever and then you forget to shoot a target well you know know what you need to work on. Watch a champion shooter like Ben Stoeger just before it's his turn to shoot. On a big field course you'll see him go off by himself about the time that he is the 'in the hole' shooter. Is he being anti social? Nope, he's visualizing the stage over and over to ensure he's ready to shoot ...BTW, all the top shooters do this ... There's a hint in there somewhere ... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lawboy Posted April 21, 2014 Share Posted April 21, 2014 (edited) For field courses, I focus on reloads, setups, and exits. If you nail those three things, you will be in good shape provided you get your hits, of course. The reloads insure that you arrive with enough ammo on board for each array. The setups insure that you arrive at the array in a position to see everything you need to shoot from the position, ideally without having to move your feet to shoot. The exits insure that you don't break the 180, that you are pointed in the right direction, and that you are moving with urgency. I have never had any problem with field courses when I focus on reloads, setups, and exits. This focus requires that you mentally run the stage many times before you shoot it, just like many posters above had stated. Edited April 21, 2014 by lawboy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
glockified Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 I have the same problem as sarge450, slow times on 30-34 round stages. My hits are good, but my times are slow, sometimes 10 seconds slower than some of my buddies. I have learned a lot by reading these posts. Thanks for all the pointers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alma Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 I have the same problem as sarge450, slow times on 30-34 round stages. My hits are good, but my times are slow, sometimes 10 seconds slower than some of my buddies. I have learned a lot by reading these posts. Thanks for all the pointers. Not saying that is an issue here but I have seen some use "my hits are good" as a crutch that you prevents them from really opening up and being more aggressive in shooting stages. Your hits need to be good enough and it's your hit factor that you needed to worry about getting up. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyDucky Posted June 16, 2014 Share Posted June 16, 2014 (edited) When planning stages, you can use a memorization technique to help you get your plan down faster and execute more effectively. First, you walk through and see which shooting positions will be the best. Generally, you want to be as close to the targets as possible, so if you have a choice between shooting a target from your start position or up closer AND you would have to be up closer anyways because of another obscured target, then shoot it up close. So, first, I decide what my shooting positions will be. At this point, my stage plan might consist of P1, P2, P3, P4 in my head. I don't have to memorize which targets I am shooting, just what positions I will be standing at. Next, you need to decide where you will reload. It is best to reload on the move to save time, so if possible, you add in reloads between shooting positions. To decide where, you need to count shots on targets at each position. So if S1 takes ten shots, then I will reload between S1 and S2. (also at this point, if it would be better to use different shooting positions so that you can reload on the move, do it). So, second, I decide my reloads. At this point, my stage plan might be P1, R1, P2, P3, R2, P4 Finally. you need remind yourself how many targets are at each position. So the stage plan becomes P1 (5), R1, P2 (4), P3 (3), R2, P4 (6). But, since your shooting positions already covered all the targets, you don't really need to remember what targets are visible at what positions. Edited June 16, 2014 by LuckyDucky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Slabbie Shooter Posted September 18, 2014 Share Posted September 18, 2014 When planning stages, you can use a memorization technique to help you get your plan down faster and execute more effectively. First, you walk through and see which shooting positions will be the best. Generally, you want to be as close to the targets as possible, so if you have a choice between shooting a target from your start position or up closer AND you would have to be up closer anyways because of another obscured target, then shoot it up close. So, first, I decide what my shooting positions will be. At this point, my stage plan might consist of P1, P2, P3, P4 in my head. I don't have to memorize which targets I am shooting, just what positions I will be standing at. Next, you need to decide where you will reload. It is best to reload on the move to save time, so if possible, you add in reloads between shooting positions. To decide where, you need to count shots on targets at each position. So if S1 takes ten shots, then I will reload between S1 and S2. (also at this point, if it would be better to use different shooting positions so that you can reload on the move, do it). So, second, I decide my reloads. At this point, my stage plan might be P1, R1, P2, P3, R2, P4 Finally. you need remind yourself how many targets are at each position. So the stage plan becomes P1 (5), R1, P2 (4), P3 (3), R2, P4 (6). But, since your shooting positions already covered all the targets, you don't really need to remember what targets are visible at what positions. This. Right. Here. This is what I have to do! I knew I was on the right track but didn't have a system. This gives me one. Thanks Duck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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