I am a sloth

[JFD]

I'm starting to realize that my first year of competition is going to accomplish little more than the identification of my major problems.  Granted, this is very helpful and I've been having a great time, so I hardly feel the effort has been wasted.

My main problem is a lack of speed in field courses.  I'm not sure what the heck is happening, but my lack of speed is killing me.  Shooting mainly "A"s is the only thing that keeps me in the middle of the pack.

When I shoot a speed type course where there's no movement, I typically always end up finishing in the top 5, beating a lot of Open and Limited shooters (I'm shooting L-10).  Our bay where these stages take place is kind of small, so ranges are pretty close.

I'm figuring that this performance means that my reloads, short range accuracy, draws, and general calmness is pretty good.

Classifiers scores range from "C" type scores to just plain pitiful.  Weak hand shooting is a problem, as well as some type of brain fart with the sights as soon as I hear the words "Virginia count".  Just stuff I have to work on and I'm happy that I know what to work on.

I'm no sure what to do about the lack of speed when movement is needed.  I'm planning to set up practice stages in the back yard and will start building simple target stands tomorrow.  I may start out dry firing using my 686 just to get multiple trigger pulls without having to thumb cock my 1911.  I've seen a nice airsoft 1911 that looks like an ideal practice tool once my financial situation improves.

I don't have a timer either, but don't know if one would be useful unless the airsoft gun would be loud enough to make it work.

I've been shooting IDPA type matches for several years where there's very little movement needed.  Fast reloading while on the move (speed reloads are allowed) tended to negate my lack of foot speed so I never identified this as a problem.

I'm planning on taping my sessions, possibly timing the runs when watching the tapes, looking for problems at the same time.  

I feel like, based on the local matches, that I can just set up a simple 24 - 30 round run & gun stage that should suffice for my needs.

Am I missing anything?  

Live fire with movement may be possible when I'm alone at the range, but this can't be counted on.  Besides, I really need to work on weak hand shooting and calling my shots during range sessions, as dry firing can only do so much.

[shred]

I'm nowhere near an expert on this topic, but in my experience, newer shooters complaining of "Lack of speed" tend to be a) doing too much and not making best use of their time. Lack of running speed is way down the list.

When I say "doing too much" and "not making best use of their time", I mean things like getting into a shooting box, then bringing the gun up, then looking for a target, then looking for the next one, then moving the gun over to it, etc, when a "faster" shooter will have the gun up an on target when he gets there, and will transition between the targets much faster. Matt Burkett's tapes have lots of good stuff about movement and how placing your foot like so when entering a box can save you 1/4 second or more. It's efficient, not fast movement that's key.

Shooting on the move is a good example. Todd does a demo with two boxes about 7 yards apart and 3 or 4 targets. The first string he draws, shoots one target from box A, then hauls butt to the second box and hoses the rest of the targets. The second string he shoots on the move from A to B, moving much, much slower, and shooting much slower, but cracking off the last shot as he gets into box B. His time is much better on the second string because it's more efficient to do two things at once; moving slowly and shooting slowly is much faster than moving fast, then shooting fast

(Edited by shred at 1:24 pm on July 24, 2002)

[JFD]

We don't have very many shooting boxes at out local match.  Maybe one stage besides the classifier may use them.  What I'm focusing on now is the typical run&gun that has no boxes, although I see what you're saying and will likely be able to apply that advice to myself as I identify my problems in more detail.

All I know for sure is that as the movement requirement increases, my scores decrease.

I like to compare myself to a particular "A" class shooter who performs well in sectional and area matches.  I've been picking up little things that have been helpful while watching him shoot a stages.  I'm shooting L-10 while he's shooting Limited.   He's not reloading unless mandatory in a 24 round stage.

This is a "quick" comparison between the 2 of us in last sunday's match, not including the classifier(that particular score will die with me).

Stage - Getting Your Reloads Down - 18 rounds - No movement beyond 2 mandatory reloads and shooting from a lower position after each reload - 5 seconds difference between the two of us.  I placed 3rd in this stage.

Stage - Playing The Slot - 6 IPSC targets & 5 plates - No more than 10 feet of movement with no shooting boxes in 3 shooting positions - 6 seconds difference between us.  I placed 8th in this stage with 2 reloads.

Stage - Color Blind - Roughly 25 yards of movement in an approximate straight line engaging 3 target arrays in 4 groups.  Last array was low behind cover, so we had to move right up to it to engage - 8 seconds difference between us - I placed 11th in this stage with 3 reloads.

Stage - Sweet Dreams - 18 rounds - Started lying down on a simulate bed with gun on "night stand".  25 - 30 yards of movement needed with the final target requiring darn near powder burns due to hard cover.  Also involved a door that had to be opened - 13 seconds difference between us - I placed 9th in this stage with 2 reloads.

There were 17 total shooters.

My feeling is that while I may possibly start off fast, when I have to engage that first array I slow down, then never speed back up between arrays.  

I think it would be better to move at one speed from start to finish, never slowing to shoot.  This type of shooting is what I have almost zero experience with.  I'm actually more experienced with shooting boxes, at least boxes that are fairly close together.

Shooting on the move is something I really need to work on.  Perhaps I can shoot on the move faster than I'm doing now, but my brain doesn't think so.    I'm not capable at this time of doing anything beyond dealing with the stage at hand.  The buzzer sounds and I deal with what's in front of me.  I don't appear to have much control over what happens next, and can't recall being able to think of things such as "speed up", "reload faster", or anything else that may allow me to consciously improve my score.  I'm trying to call my shots and am doing this only fairly well, but good enough to know when an extra shot will be useful.

I can manage to deal with whatever small adjustments show themselves to be needed during a walkthrough, but that's about it for conscious thought.

I believe the speed that I shoot practice stage will translate into the speed I shoot actual stages in competition.  I really believe that major improvement is headed my way as soon as I get off of my butt and put in the work.  Speaking of which, I think I'll get off my butt right now...

[Flexmoney]

JFD,

Here is some of my observations (poor as they may be) that I am getting from your posts.

-  You feel you reloads are good when you don't have to move.  When you do have to move, they may not be as good.  

You need to know, not feel.  Get a timer and check your reloads.

-  You seem more comfortable with shooting boxes than with no-box, field courses.

You have to visualize your plan of action before the stage starts.  If there is not a shooting box, make one mentally.  There are often "sweet spots" that shooters will want to engage targets from.  Sometimes the grass is worn bare in that area...sometimes someone has taken their shoes and made a bare spot...sometimes their is a peice of paper that serves as a cue on where to stand.  Get all of that figured out in your plan.

-  Calling the shot is key (as you seem to know).  If you can't yet call the shot while shooting on the move, then don't.  You will need to practice more.  My second shot on paper is often off when I am shooting on the move.  I let the second shot loose at about the same time my foot hits the ground.  No good...no call.

-  Into, and out of, shooting postions.  Get leaning out as you call your last shot from a position.  Be ready to shoot as you come into the next position.

-  Drills

There are lots of drills that cover about everything that could be worked on.  Make yourself a program to practice all the important stuff.

-  Timer

The timer tells no lies.  Use it and you will know where you are losing time.  you will know how fast you can hit a A at ten yards.  You will know if your reloads are taking 1.5 seconds or 3.5 seconds.  You will know how long it takes you to shoot a split on a target and how long it takes to transition to the next target.

You are right not to be trying to think during your run on a stage.  Figure all that out in advance, then relax and shoot what you see.

I am also 100% in agreement with your closing statement... I really believe that major improvement is headed my way as soon as I get off of my butt and put in the work.

I think I'll go do some dry-fire too.

[Bill Schwab]

JFD,

Your title for this thread cracks me up.  

I think you should re-register with the site so instead of JFD your handle is The Sloth

[Flexmoney]

I was reading another thread...made me think of this one.

here it is:

http://www.brianenos.com/cgi-bin/ikonboard...=30&topic=9

[JFD]

Flexmoney

Thanks for the advice.

My main problem at this time is not being able to afford a timer.  No way, no how.  I'm in the midst of a nasty unemployment situation right now that is making just shooting a match seem like a real luxury.  Reloading and casting my own bullets is the only reason I'm still able to practice.  I had to do some serious trading just to gear up with 10 round mags.

I'm thinking using a stopwatch while reviewing my video is the only way I can time myself until things get better.  

IDPA and a IDPA/IPSC type match I used to shoot has resulted in me being pretty good with shooting boxes and speed shoot type COFs.  At least this is what I'm comfortable with.  Of course the field courses are where the major fun is, so I have little urge to return to those matches.

I now have a cheap semi-auto 15 shot Powerline 1911 copy air pistol to practice shooting on the move.  I'll move up to an airsoft gun when I can.

I'll make some more target stands tonight and set up a field course tomorrow.  I'll use the air gun for shooting on the move practice, and use my match gun for dry firing on the move + reloading practice while on the move.  Then I'll review the video, try to time what I've been doing, and then try to get over how stupid a shooting sloth probably looks on video.  I'll also have to devote more time to dry firing indoors as well.

My weaknesses are still hidden from me to some extent.  Not knowing the right way to do something tends to make the wrong way seem correct.  I'll keep reading old threads and see what I can pick up.

While not thinking too much while shooting a stage is a total accident, I need to start getting more serious about planning the stages before the buzzer.  Right now it's pretty much "engage the targets" at some point, "reload after the last shot", and just keep that up until I'm finished.  I plan with a little more detail if the COF is more complicated, but not a whole lot more.

If I find myself up against swingers or those horrid dropping/turning things, I've had good luck declaring total ignorance and asking people who know what they're doing.  Maybe I should do that on all stages.

Once again, I'm having a great time regardless of the score, so I'm not going to start crying over my current skill level.  This last match I placed 7th out of 17 shooters overall, so that's not too bad for a shooting sloth.  I just noticed I won L-10, and beat 1 Open shooter and 3 Limited shooters.  That makes me happy even if there were just 3 L-10 shooters.

I'll check out that other thread as well.

UPDATE:  I did set up a small field course today and shot it many times.  I feel like I picked up on a better way to move and spotted that I had a tendency to drop out of my index between arrays.  When I kept the index it appeared that I shot much faster.  I wasn't able to get accurate times for the stage runs though, so this is just based on what I could see on the video.

I did time 10 reloads that were done with my match gun and just dry firing the stage.  Out of these reloads, my slowest was 1.69 seconds, while the fastest was 1.11 seconds.  Average was 1.39 seconds.

Time to draw and fire one shot was anywhere from 0.67 seconds to 1.14 seconds (poor draw), with the average being 0.86 seconds.

Just based on stages where drawing and reloads are the main activities, I normally easily hold my own against all but the really good shooters, so I figure these times must be at least  decent.

I've been trying for some kind of actual alignment between the front and rear sights lately at nearly all distances, and I'm not sure if this could be overkill.  Today I was mainly looking at the front sight and getting "A" hits fairly easily with the air pistol.  I'll likely leave this alone for now, concentrating on running my backyard stages and looking for sloth-like behavior in other areas.

I need to figure out a way to time my runs so I can see what's really going on.  I also want to set up a better stage than I did today.  

[Flexmoney]

Sounds to me like you are doing pretty good.  Keep up the practice and the dry-fire...no worries.

Don't sell the stopwatch and video short.  I am pretty sure that Enos and Leathem used to time each other with a stopwatch.  I know from Barnharts's tpaes that he uses a stopwatch (often to see how much time he has with activators and moving targets).

If you can get some video of the local top-dogs shooting and moving you might pick up some pointer by comparison.

Look thru the "drills" section here for shooting on the move and getting into and out of shooting positions.

And buy, beg, barter, or borrow a copy of Brian's book.  (It saves time and ammo.)

Oh...stay focused in practice.  Don't try working on too many things.  (Some early advice I got when I first came here.)

[JFD]

Thanks a lot.  I'll get the book next.

I've got some basic problem transitioning from IDPA to USPSA that I haven't gotten figured out.  It could be nothing more than I've run into stiffer competition, but I think there's some difference in mindset involved.  I need to talk with the better shooters more.

[JFD]

I found a good "speed versus accuracy" thread with a bit of searching.  While there seems to be disagreement on the subject, it made for a good read.

I'm thinking that the main goal of my backyard practice should be more mental than anything else.  

During the walkthrough at a match I make sure of things like reload points, order of engagement, "hidden" targets, and things like that.  While waiting for LAMR and the beep I mainly attempt to calm down and sort of clear my mind.  

I end up shooting lots of points in my sloth-like manner.  Penalties are rare.  Stupidity rears it's ugly head from time to time, such as maybe focusing on the sights a little too much until I reach the steel plates.  Then I decide to hose a bunch of misses...

During my backyard practice today I was trying to shoot fast, but never really tried to reach that out-of-control state.  Tomorrow I'm going to try for a total out-of-control condition, then back down from there until I reach a decent A/C situation.  I'm constantly getting beaten by A/C/D shooters who are much faster, so I think I'll have to back off of trying for all "A" hits.  This only works in IDPA.

I'll increase the target distances to keep myself honest and will definitely work out some sort of start signal so I can time the runs.

The good thing about video is I can comment on what I'm doing so things make sense later.

I'm going to do some surfing to see  if I can locate a timer I can afford.

Forgive the long posts, but I'm thinking out loud and typing this stuff seems to help me.

[Flexmoney]

I took a gunsmithing class at Cylinder & Slide.  Bill Laughridge had us do all the work by hand, mostly with files.  

When we were filing away...getting close...we checked the part for fit, it might need just a little taken off of the right side.  Bill would instruct us not to put any extra pressure on the right side of the file.  He would have us just think of the file taking off a bit more material on the right side as we made out passes with the file.

...the point of that rambling being...

For me, I can't try to go fast and have much luck (I get too fast and drop points/misses).  What seems to work for me is to have the feeling of speed dancing around in my skull someplace...while I focus on trying to be smooth and not waste motion.

Maybe the "feeling of speed" isn't quite right either.  Brian, in his book,  talks about shooting in a state of meditation.  When I first read that, it seemed kinda funny to me...or at least to what I thought I understood meditation to be.  Perhaps I now think of it as more of a state of mind where I have better awareness.  

It sounds like you culd turn the speed up a notch.  Come match day though, don't fall into the speed trap.  Watch out for it.  But, during practice, by all means...unleash the badger!

 

[JFD]

I don't think I'll turn into a speed demon in this lifetime.  I like "A" hits way too much to turn into "that" kind of a hoser.  

While there are people who can hose very accurately, that kind of ability is either way into my future, or just not going to happen.

I'm hoping that my efforts at backyard extreme speed will translate into at least a small speed increase at a match.  Speed has never been on my mind before a stage since I'm mainly trying to calm down and translate my plan into action.  

I was watching a master class shooter a few months ago.   He was messing around with a new Open gun and likely not shooting up to his true ability.  At any rate, I was amazed at his speed, but all those C/D hits appeared pitiful.  He won the match!  I was amazed that raw speed has that much impact on the score over accuracy.  It just doesn't seem right somehow even if this is a game not making any defensive claims.

All I'm looking for right now is to maintain most of my current accuracy while reprogramming my internal "speed clock" to a faster setting(Your "feeling of speed" I think).  I figure that in the future I may want to push the envelope in a non-club match, but I should shoot within my comfort zone in order to maintain sound fundamentals at the club matches.  I'll keep practicing in order to expand my comfort zone so I can eventually set my "sights" on the big dogs.  At least that's the theory at present, based on what little I know now.

I think it's time to order a book that will clue me in and help sort out what I'm trying to do.  Practical Shooting seems to be the one to get and it's about time I support this site with a purchase anyway.

Thanks again for the help.  

It's time to place an order...

[shred]

One thing I notice for myself is that I can no longer tell time during a stage. I can feel butt-slow and shoot an excellent stage. For me, that came from experience and lots-o-rounds downrange.

I compare it to learning to drive a car (remember that?). When you first start out, there's all this stuff going on, you've got all these controls, and you have a hard time just keeping it all together and paying attention to everything... and you haven't left the driveway yet. Flash forwards 5 years and you're calmly doing 80 down the highway, at night, drinking coffee and fiddling with the radio, all because you've done the basic driving tasks so many times that you no longer think about them.

It's the same way for me shooting IPSC-- there's a whole lot of stuff going on, and you need to work through and internalize each step so you can park it in the back of your brain and not have to think about it when you need to do it.

The bad news is getting that stuff internalized takes time. And if you don't do it right the first time, it's difficult to fix later because it just happens and you aren't noticing it.

It's also difficult to try and learn a piece that 'fits in' after something else you haven't internalized yet. I have this problem occasionally when friends ask me how to shoot a stage-- The answer I give them is sometimes very different than what they really need to be thinking about because they're at a different place in the learning process.

(Edited by shred at 9:15 pm on July 28, 2002)

[shred]

As I reread that thread a couple more thoughts came up.. It sounds like you can stand-and-shoot well enough, so where you'll save time probably won't be in shooting faster. (That's a paraphrase from Todd-- "where you save time is in what you do when you're not shooting")

You found some of that out when you were playing with keeping the gun up between arrays-- there's tons of time to be saved getting into and out of shooting positions smoothly and effeciently-- right now I'm working on visualizing hidden targets so the sights are right there as soon as I get to where I can shoot them.

(and as for the open gunners getting away with lots of C's and D's, watch some of the true GM's if you get a chance-- it's amazing how fast they shoot A's)

(Edited by shred at 2:45 pm on July 29, 2002)

[JFD]

Relating this to learning to drive a car is really on target for me.

I feel that my IDPA type experience has me up to the go-cart level, but jumping onto the USPSA highway is a new ballgame.  I'm simply having to think about everything a little too much.

I made 17 runs on my backyard stage today, slightly modified from a few days ago.  I timed each run and found that I could drop almost 2 seconds off my time.  This is a short 7 target field course that can be shot in 7 seconds by even a sloth.  I ended up shooting it as low as 5.87 seconds, but my average for the day was 6.66(this number could be a bad sign).

It's helping me get a lot more used to shooting on the run, has shown me I can get away with less sight alignment, and that I really need to be more focused before the buzzer.

One of the things I want to do is set up a simple speed shoot COF, then shoot it all day weak handed at least once a week.  This is my main weakness in basic shooting skills.

I also think I need to alternate shooting the air gun with dry firing my 1911 so I can throw reloads into the picture.  Matter-of-fact, even though I feel this is one of my few strengths, I'm going to devote a lot more time to reload practice (especially inside with the A/C on).  

I'm waiting on Brian's book to arrive so I can upgrade my practice for even better results.   I'll just have to wait and see what other jewels can be had when the book arrives.

Tomorrow I'll be doing some live fire practice, focusing on the weak hand and transitioning between targets.

Thanks for the help.