Please Critique my Training Plan

[Smitty79]

First a bit about me. I've been shooting action matches for about 18 months. In August, I decided I wanted to get better. I bought Ben's 15 minute dry fire book and started a little organized training. In September, I shot my first 40% classifier.

I am 57, a good bit overweight and a little arthritic. I'm never going to be the fastest person out there between shooting locations. I wear bifocals, though I am functional without glasses. My shooting glasses have strong eye focused on the front sight and my other eye is focused on distance. Beyond 25 yds, I have a terrible time getting the focus right to shoot good groups.

I have never been good at "grooving" technique. I don't touch type well. I was submariner, not a fighter pilot. 2 hour battles where you spend your time thinking has always been more my speed than 2 minute battles where you spend your time reacting have always been a better fit.

For work, workout and family reasons, I have time for one match or 300+ round practice session per weekend. I can do 4 to 5 20 min dry fire sessions per week.

I shoot a Matt Mink tweaked CZ85B right now and I have a CZ Custom Shadow coming.

At 7 yds, I can shoot:

2.5 sec Bill drills with an average of 1 close C and the rest A's. (My draw during this drill is 1.2 to 1.3)

2.7 sec Blake Drills

4 sec 4 Aces, my reload is terrible (of maybe 40 timed reloads in the last month, only 2 have been sub 2 sec)

My goal is to be shooting 60% classifiers by the end of the summer and get my B card about a year from now. I'd also like to win Senior Production at my local match a couple times by the end of the year. I'm not limiting myself to these. But they're good goasl for now.

I've read Brian's and Ben's main books twice, I have all of Ben's training manuals and Steve Anderson's is coming. I am focusing on the drills Ben lists in "Skills and Drills" with typical times for B shooters.

Even with that, the number of drills and ranges is daunting. For now, I am focusing my live fire practice on Ben's skill drills at 7 and 15 yards. I figure is I can do those well, adapting to a little closer and a little farther that I will see in classifiers, shouldn't be hard.

My dry fire set up consists of 3 2/3 scale targets 2 ft appart edge to edge. I stand 14 ft away to simulate Ben's standard practice set up at 7 yds. If I want to shoot tight shots, I shoot at head only or obscure the lower half of the target with other targets as no shoots.

My typical dry fire session consists of:

Cold El Prez, current Par is 5.5 sec, I make it about 1/3 of the time.

20 draw to sight picture

10 Bill Drill

10 Sight picture reload sight picture

Then I do 10 reps of 2 or 3 other drills. The ones I have current par times worked out for are:

Double Bill with reload

El Prez

4 Aces

Enos Transition (Full target and head shot)

2 each Strong hand only

2 each week hand only

Blake (Full and head shot)

I'm going to add a simulated Accellerator this week.

I usually plan the optional drills for the coming week based on on range practice performance.

Of my optional drills, I always do at least one with a reload. Since I can draw and shoot an A almost a second faster than I can do a shot to shot reload, that is a big weakness. I probably practice reloads 200 times a week.

On the range, I do pretty much the same drills above at 7 and 15 yds. I just added Accellerator last weekend. It was a mess. I have a hard time getting a good sight picture at 25 yds. The target is pretty blurry. Hard to aim small.

What do you think? Am I missing something? Am I wasting my time?

[CHA-LEE]

I think you need to invest in some training with a local resource. All of the books, DVD's, online help, or whatever else is not a replacement for effective in person training. A local training resource should be able to assess your current skill set, compile a list of issues that are causing you the most problems, and then formulate a training plan to get past those issues. This type of training isn't going to be cheap or easy, but its well work the cost.

Unfocused training by simply running through random dry/live fire drills is fairly useless training especially if you are performing the mechanics of the skills incorrectly. There are a ton of shooters out there that think that doing random drills from a book or video is going to magically make them better. Unfortunately that isn't true. The vast majority of these shooters couldn't even tell you what their issues are much less formulate a training plan to fix their issues. If you don't know what the problems are, then how can you fix them? Most shooters need in person training to point out their issues and spoon feed the solution to them before they actually "Get it" and start fixing the issue.

[Hi-Power Jack]

Three random thoughts:

1. Cha-Lee is an excellent resource for this question

2. Not sure why you can't get better vision at 25 yards?

3. Your plan looks good to me, and some of the times

look very good for someone who's trying to go from

a low C to a B - but, see #1. If Cha-Lee suggests

a change, I'd listen, carefully.

Good luck - wish I could force myself to follow in your

footsteps, and dry fire ....

[Smitty79]

I've had coaching from other shooters. But, other than my club's action range class, I haven't had formal training. The class is pretty close to an introduction to USPSA and is a total of about 10 hours and 300 rounds.

Other than the big guys, Stoeger, Mink, Anderson, Seeklander... Are there people who actually do this kind of thing? I don't think I need an NRA basic pistol class.

[CHA-LEE]

You don't have to pay a premium or wait forever to take a class from one of the top shooters in the nation. Go to your local USPSA matches and ask the shooters who a good local training resource would be. The local shooters personal training exeriences and feedback will easily point you in the direction of good quality local training resources.