Any tips on remembering what target you've shot?

[bockerSV]

On stages where you have targets that may be right next to each other but you can only see one at the first shooting position and then both at the next position, how the hell do you keep straight what you've hit? I find myself having an issue with field stages that are set up like this and it's making my brain hurt. Any tricks would be helpful, I feel like during walk through I keep them straight for the most part and then fold when it's time to shoot.

[bajaholic]

Look for the little black holes in the Paper... If they have them, they have already been shot. If you are not seeing any black holes after you have shot at the targets, those are called "mikes", He is NOT your friend.... Either way, you are going way to fast. I know it has been debated here in the past, speed vs accuracy, but I still think it will ALWAYS come down that you need to get the shots, or speed means nothing.

[bockerSV]

I have young eyes, but im shooting production so those holes don't look very big if the targets a decent ways away. I do think slowing down is good advice, a slow double alpha is a whole lot better than a smoking fast double mike and possibly 2 procedurals.

[Hi-Power Jack]

It takes practice. The more matches you shoot, the easier it gets - until

you get to be a Super Senior. Then it gets harder.

[Mapzter]

In a situation like that, I take note of if I'm going to be shooting the left or the right target. Then I visualize setting up on and shooting that target only, and leaving the position.

[Shadyscott999]

Experience. Those HUGE field courses with eleventy billion targets will shrink the longer you shoot. Before long you will know where every target is, hidden and not. Break the stage down into sections. Trust me, this part gets easier.

[Ultimo-Hombre]

No shortcuts amigo. To be competitive you have to be able to memorize every single target.

Develop a consistent method for your walkthru, finding all the targets and comparing sequence and shooting positions.

Then stepping thru the COF and counting your shots. Confirm that your plan matches the round count in the stage description, then commit it to memory.

Getting together with a squared away competitor and asking him to help you with stage planning will really help!

[amish_rabbi]

knowing which targets you shot is just the beginning of the memorizing, after that you can work on memorizing exactly where your movement marks are, then exactly how many steps from each position. Its fun

[Poppa Bear]

The toughest memory stages have identical targets sitting side by side. The easier ones have different heights or some marking on the targets that makes it simple to identify which target it is. Sometimes that marking is nothing more than that one target was hit accurately so that it has a big group of pasters in the A zone and the one next to it has them spread out, or it has a target stick that looks different. Find the things that make them different and visualize those defects as you plan your walk through.

[mgardner]

During Level 1 club shoots it's a good idea to become an RO so you can rotate in and help run the stage before you shoot. Seeing it shot a few times by shooters (especially the good ones) will help. You'll get a shooter's eye view and it helps me visualize the targets. If they make me go first and I haven't had my coffee I'm toast. LOL

Edited August 17, 2014 by mgardner

[bockerSV]

I suppose I might get in a little trouble if I start making numbers out of pasties as I paste up targets for shooters before me, huh?

[RangerTrace]

Those are the stages that you have to run over and over in your mind and even then, if you have a malfunction, you're likely to forget your plan.

[garp]

Our local club had this type of course design set up this past Saturday . The COF was start on the right side bay and move to the shooters slight left and forward at the same time with the shooting areas/ports coming into view as you advanced. You could see multiple targets from each shooting area. However, with the forward advancement, you could no longer engage targets you passed due to vision barriers and 180* violations.

I break down the course of fire by "zones." The COF had a least one target that you could not see from the other shooting positions, thus forcing you to move to that shooting area/port to engage at least one target. By grouping my targets into zones, and as stated previous, I look for visual clues. I shot the closets targets from the first shooting position, even though I can engage other targets slightly further down range. The next port had targets lower on the sticks, thus another visual clue to only shoot that set of targets. By the last port, the few remaining targets were grouped with a pepper popper, again, using that visual clue, I shot that group of targets.

By zoning my targets, I only had to remember 3 (groups) of targets, not 5 or 6 targets that could of been shot at from each shooting position.

***g************

Nothing like being at the range on a Saturday morning with the smell of burnt gun powder filling the air........

[thermobollocks]

I generally try to remember what I'm going to shoot at each shooting position. Often I'll wind up with a shooting position where I have to remind myself "skip #4, skip #4, slip #4" or "skip the wide open one on the left, skip the wide open one on the left"

[BeerBaron]

They are memory game stages. for those stages the most important part is proper stage planning and visualisation.

You need to be able to close your eyes and picture when and where targets will become visible to you.

In the beginning what will happen is the buzzer will go off and that plan will just erase from your mind! With practice your mental game improves and you'll be able to keep to the plan.

You watch the top shooters like eric G. a few minutes before his run he'll be standing somewhere with his eyes closed leaning this way and that, hands out in front effectively dry firing (not holding a gun of course). he is visualizing his whole stage run. guys like him are at the point where he can do that and then tell you to within a small margin what his actual time will be on that stage. that's the goal.

[UCOShooter]

Walk through the stage as many times as you can and once you have done that, making sure you have seen all the targets, walk through again at full speed. Once walk through is over every time you hear that buzzer go off, close your eyes and imagine that stage in your head and see every target from all your shooting positions. Repeat until it is your time to shoot. It just takes a lot of practice.

[Nimitz]

Visualize, visualize, visualize ....

You must learn how to do this like trigger control, transitions, reloads or any other skill. Unfortunately there is no drill to practice this either. It's something you learn by a lot of experience.

However, what does help is how much visualization you do before it's your turn to shoot. If you can't close your eyes and run the entire stage in your head, every target, every position, then you are simply not ready to shoot. Unless the stage is a very simple short course or classifier you should be visualizing CONTINUALLY until it's your turn to shoot ... That's what the top shooters do.

[MarkCO]

On stages where you have targets that may be right next to each other but you can only see one at the first shooting position and then both at the next position, how the hell do you keep straight what you've hit? I find myself having an issue with field stages that are set up like this and it's making my brain hurt. Any tricks would be helpful, I feel like during walk through I keep them straight for the most part and then fold when it's time to shoot.

Called a memory stage. It has nothing to do with shooting skills at all, but memorization of each view and what targets or available more than once.

[bockerSV]

I tried this out at a local match over the weekend, one of the stages wasn't really a tricky one to remember what had been shot persea, but it took a bit of discipline to not shoot at a target as soon as you could see it and wait to take it from a more adventageous shooting position. So after walk through, I kind of went off by myself and sat and visualized the course of fire. Except for one mishap in my foot position that made me shimmy around when I should have been shooting, it made the stage much smoother for me! So thanks guys, I just need to keep practicing.

[motosapiens]

I generally try to remember what I'm going to shoot at each shooting position. Often I'll wind up with a shooting position where I have to remind myself "skip #4, skip #4, slip #4" or "skip the wide open one on the left, skip the wide open one on the left"

I think this is MUCH more effective than remembering what you have already shot. You need to remember what you still have to shoot, at each position, so you can shoot the ones you have to shoot without hesitation.

[eric nielsen]

It takes a combination of skills and techniques to do well on "memory" stages. As has been mentioned, it's often possible to make out the difference between two adjacent targets based on appearance - if one has a target base that has spray-paint on it and the other does not, one has a target stick that goes above one shoulder and the other does not, find that and remember that. Also it can take very precise footwork, to where the most important thing moving one position from another is where you place your feet on the ground.

Also it will take getting OUT of the habit of shooting every target sequence left-to-right or right-to-left; besides memory stages (and skipping targets) you'll find you get better in matches if you can find away to engage the biggest, easiest target FIRST coming into a position; you can practice both by setting up big & small dry-fire targets in your house and deciding the engagement sequence you "need" to do for your simulated stage, for instance 4 targets in one room (skip target #2) and 4 targets in another room (come in on the biggest one and skip another that you've declared already "shot"). New shooters often assume that the time spent transitioning wider distances is always bad; sometimes it's better to enter easy & leave easy; watch some match footage at Norco Running Gun, that's a club where the majority of shooters do this on most of the stages.

Maybe the biggest skill needed, and overall probably the biggest thing I need to work on, is visualizing - better and better all the time. It's something you can do at a traffic light, in an elevator, at a boring meeting, but especially you need to visualize AT your practice sessions. If you only visualize at matches, it's a lot like only shooting live ammo at matches. You've given away a lot of match points before you even arrive at the match.

Edited September 16, 2014 by eric nielsen

[thermobollocks]

I generally try to remember what I'm going to shoot at each shooting position. Often I'll wind up with a shooting position where I have to remind myself "skip #4, skip #4, slip #4" or "skip the wide open one on the left, skip the wide open one on the left"

I think this is MUCH more effective than remembering what you have already shot. You need to remember what you still have to shoot, at each position, so you can shoot the ones you have to shoot without hesitation.

We're in a game of efficiency. What is the most efficient way to remember what you need to remember? It's like a mental tangram with different colored pieces.

[BGREID]

I don't like stages where there is only one way to shoot them. And what is with the odd starting positions?

[rvb]

you need to come up with a good plan during the walkthrough. You shouldn't be worrying about what you've already shot, you should have a plan that tells you what to shoot from various positions. Visualize it and rehearse it in your mind over an over until it feels well rehearsed. Use the time pasting to walk past your shooting positions and look at the targets you'll be engaging from there.

[kcobean]

As I always tell my son, you're ready to shoot the stage when you can stand here with your eyes closed and mentally shoot every shot, every target, make every movement, every reload in sequence without thought. We call this our "Mental Video Recorder" and it prevents having to think about whether you've shot a target or not, which will cost you seconds.

In our walk-throughs, our goal is to walk the stage only the number of times required to mentally record our stage plan until we can replay it in our MVR. I only have to know how to execute a stage for a few minutes until that shooting is in the past. So I make that stage plan the thing in my mind until "range is clear".

The practice of MVRing the stage, and then executing the plan I've recorded has, for the most part, eliminated having to wonder if I've shot a target or not even on complicated memory stages.