Target Acquisition Speed

[Robco]

Great thread Robco,

I have to remind myself to keep both eyes open.

I was always taught to keep my non-dominant eye closed. Tough habit to break.

I'm going to look into local Sports Vision doctors, I never knew such a thing existed. Especially since I wear prescription lenses.

Man, so am I Willz. It is sure going to be great, if ironic, that untrained eyes/vision has been holding me in my tight 74% big match performance range for 2 years despite sending almost full time and about $50K on shooting in that same two year period trying to improve to little avail!

I will keep you posted on what I learn. I am on the way driving to Mesa AZ from Vegas as I write (wife is actually driving!) for a month of full time shooting every day, and have my GM Optometrist friend's contact info ready to call about this in a few minutes. He is not listed as a member of the COVD particularly, but since he is in Mesa, a good GM shooter, and a practicing Optometrist, he will be a good place to start!

Thanks

Rob

[sciolist]

My experience has been that most of this is cognitive, not mechanical. I started USPSA with very little shooting experience, but plenty of athletic background. So running around field courses and learning to manipulate new objects in space was not much of a problem.

I read Brian's book, started shooting a few matches a month, practicing daily, and progressed fairly quickly. It occurred to me recently that it's not that hard to just walk through a match and shoot 97% points in slow fire. If you put that on the clock and compute HF, you start to see how costly dropped points, penalties make-ups on steel, etc. really are. Doing this, I realized that most of my development has been more about refining the art of shooting *at* targets than actually placing hits on them. To the untrained eye, shooting with a coarse sight picture and shooting *at* the target look the same. But they are not the same thing at all.

So my primary goal on most stages now is to experience the sensation of having a little more command than I actually need to place 97% hits on the scoring surfaces. Everything in the match... adrenaline, competitive distraction, props, etc. pulls you away from that basic goal. If you can stay focused on that one goal, you can shoot over 90% points with an appropriate level of urgency, and you will shoot a pretty good HF percentage of what you've got that day. Let the other guys have all the make-ups and penalties.

Shooting in competition, it's natural to try and go fast to beat the other people. But you can't outshoot yourself. The best way to maximize HF throughout an entire match is to operate within your current limits. If you feel like your current limits are too restrictive, then build better mechanicals in practice. But do not flirt with those limits in competition. The math just doesn't work that way.

Paul, I have to tell you, your post has intrigued me since I read it while today while driving 15 hours to Vegas. Could not reply till tonight.

You are obviously getting this in big way, becoming an M class in under three years. Your insights shared here reveal a lot to me about your accomplishment in mental management.

"Funny" that I had not considered that the visual part of quick transitions had a MENTAL component! DUHHHH. You pointed that out in the first sentence! Rowdyb posted another big mind-expander for me too, above. So my erroneous presumption that training our eyes was a PHYSICAL thing, only, is obviously deficient.

So I am now in an excited mental state, anxious to explore this whole cognitive aspect of vision development pointed out by both of you guys. Clearly you are both onto something big as relates to the topic. Great job!

Your statements about shooting "at" targets vs. "placing hits on them" is thought provoking. If I understand you correctly, the point is that you are acting, as Brian puts it, guided by your INTENTION of shooting, not on outcome (score). You are "focusing" on the process of executing each shot, as it is performed, in the "present" just like Brian says. Awesome! You have added yet another perspective to the whole discussion above, and Brian's post.

You seem to be accomplishing, and describing your goal for match performance as "shooting within yourself," at a controlled pace, which pace is totally residual of whatever the tasks of doing so takes in time. I like it. And my experience supports your conclusion too. As has been said often by those who KNOW, we shoot our best performance when we shoot at our current capability level, not more or less. You have learned, as I am still working on learning, that match performance is kind of like the tortoise and hare story. Rushing ourselves and having to take many makeup shots, penalties and poor hits, is SLOWER on the clock and most likely lower-scoring. Especially tough lesson for striving intermediate shooters like myself. I desire to speed up my stage times, but have not been able to do so in a way that nets me a higher HF, with any consistency. In other words, I am "running the gun too hard" or pushing myself into the red-line of my capabilities, and beyond, with resulting failure. You are nailing the way to correct this type of error.

I am going to use your phrase "but you can't outshoot yourself" to remind me of how silly and ineffective it is to push myself in match performance. Great!

Thanks!

I had very little shooting experience when I read Brian’s book, and I haven’t really reread it since, but it seemed to me one of his major themes was learning how to function with less visual information. That resonated with my experience in other sports, where I got good at doing things by truncating them down to the minimum. Most of that stuff is physical. If I’m only doing half as much work as you and we have roughly the same strength, I’m twice as strong.

So with shooting, I started working on minimizing what I needed to see in live practice. But I still wasn’t shooting very good points across an entire match.

Several things got me thinking about this, but probably the main one was taking Stoeger’s class last spring. We started off with a field course, which everyone shot, and Ben went last. The relationship between Ben’s run and mine looked about like what I expected, so NBD.

Then we did some drills. Alrighty. Now Ben was tearing off 15HF El Prezes pass after pass. The best EP I’ve ever shot is under 10HF. So on the field course, obviously Ben was shooting way below the top of his mechanical ability on a static array.

Driving home from Ben’s class, it occurred to me that I had never really worked specifically at the skill of seeing *more information in the same amount of time*. I had only been concerned with getting hits based on less information, which is pretty much the opposite of what I then knew Ben was doing.

The fastest 9-yard rack I’ve ever shot is a shade under 2.5. I could probably repeat that in 15 tries, but in that process, there would be a bunch of runs over 4.0. If we set the par at 3.75, I could likely make 10 successful runs in a row. You tell me which is the better way to shoot in a match.

I always joked I’d be able to make Production M without being able to shoot, and that is exactly how it went. Part of the reason I said that is because I knew I would need to develop a certain level of mechanical ability before my ego would leave me alone and just let me shoot at my own pace. I figured that level would be about 85%, and that turned out to be right.

I look at it like this: There is a big number and a little number. Big number is you against the world. Little number is you against you. Chase the little number, and the big one comes along for the ride. Chase the big number, and the little number is likely to actually go down. I’ve beaten plenty of shooters who were better than me just because I made fewer mistakes, and I’ve been beaten for that same reason. Considering all the things that can happen, you might possibly beat anyone in a match… except yourself. You absolutely cannot outshoot your ability over the course of a match.

My personal goal in USPSA is to develop the ability to *consistently* shoot within 95% of my current ability. The rest of it is just window dressing. That little number is a profoundly beautiful and introspective thing. For me, there is no sense of speed or accuracy, and certainly no blending of the two. A stage is defined by a constellation of sight pictures, and the hits are just physical echoes of those.

If you can accept the idea that you really do have the mechanical ability to shoot 97% points and work to that standard, you can eliminate a lot of the (im)probability. I think there should be very little sense of anything other than simply placing hits on the scoring surfaces with a degree of urgency appropriate to your current skill level.

[benos]

Robco:

By the way, we met at Area 2 in 2011. I was on TGO's (as a C-class brown-nosing rookie! ) and you drove up on your bike and visited a while. I had already read your book once by then and felt privileged to meet you!

I remember that.

[Nimitz]

This is not meant to be rude, so please don't read that tone into my reply. More 'matter of fact' is what I am going for.

First and foremost I shoot for the competition aspect of it. So if I've paid hundreds of dollars and days of my time to go see a sports vision specialist I am not going to give what I learned out on a forum.

Generically as you seek to improve this is what I can pass on. From a board certified doctor. Not a self taught pro, not someone really good. But a person whose job it is to increase professional athlete's performance.

-90% of the decisions you make during a physical activity come from what you "see". visual processing is one of the paramount skills to develop.

-you can work on improving with drills and such your ability to track, focus, change focus ect.

-developing hand eye coordination will improve your shooting measurably.

Going to a sports vision dr or a vision development dr will get you lined out on all of this in detail. Our sport is driven by seeing and vision once you master the physical basics. Because very few people get paid to shoot, very few people have taken the time to really check this aspect of training out in my experience/opinion.

Lots of people have gained good knowledge from their own empirical data, which is good. But if you are really capital S serious and want to push the learning curve I say go see someone from the links I posted above. College sports athletes do this, the professionals in many sports do this but shooters seem to think it will just happen with time and experience. It might, by why put it to chance and trial and error? You wouldn't do that with developing the mechanical skills of shooting well.....

rowdyb: i have a curiosity for you while i try to find a local sports vision specialist .... when you worked with the one you chose was it similar to working with a physical therapist where they show you what exrecises, etc to do and then you're off on your own or do you continually go and work with the Dr, kinda like seeing a chiropractor?

[rowdyb]

I went from C to A (waiting on update) in 6 months I think by the grace of spending 1/3 of my practice on vision development. I plan on making M in the next 6 months and I know this is helping. I am not talented, I need this kind of hard work to make it happen.

I have been to a sports psychologist 3 times and a vision doctor(two different ones) three times as well. It is much like the therpist analogy. I was tested, evaluated in one visit and my goals made. In the next visit I was given exercises, drills, talked about my sport and given a program. Subsequent visit was to gauge progress and answer any questions. So it is not like the chiropractor. Once you got it, you got it and you do it on your own.

I'm glad people are excited about this. I started a thread a long time ago about vision here I think. If it were dug up some of the beginning stuff I learned is covered in it. I did another sport previously at a high level and was used to researching ways to find an edge. When I took up competitive shooting it didn't take me long to realize this, vision development, was a key area that professional coaching and training was lacking in exposure to us as competitors.

ps-Rob I will be at the Area2 match two weeks from now. Squad 29. We should get together and say Hi.

Edited February 28, 2015 by rowdyb

[Nimitz]

cool, thx. did you switch vision doctors becuase one had more knowledge about shooting sports? how important is it that the Dr understand our sport at all?

Edited February 28, 2015 by Nimitz

[rowdyb]

Both doctors got it pretty quickly. I just switched 'cause I could. Trying to learn as much as possible and one was cheaper.

They wanted to know times, distances, movement, relationships in space between me and targets. That sort of thing. That stuff I did mattered to the 1/100th of a second. That normally the longest I was focusing was for 30 seconds or so. That I was looking at things from arms length away out to 35 yards away or so. That normally I was the one moving and most targets were stationary and lots of them. That sort of stuff.

I pulled up my youtube channel in their office to show them a match as well on my phone. One dr I saw had a passing familiarity with shooting so it wasn't totally foreign to him. All ways to be prepared for your visit/consultation. Oh, mine of course both did eye exams as well.

[Nimitz]

thx. i did a search from that link you posted and ther were 2 listed with 20 miles of me ... unfortunately their websites only talked about vision problems with childern and nothing about sports vision work. I'll have to call them and maybe expand my search out to the Orlando area (60-80 miles) and see what pops up ...

as useful as this will be for USPSA it should be huge for Steel Challenge. with the appropriate effort it just might be the breakthrough that gets me into the sub 2 sec realm on thiose stages where i've been stuck in the 2.05 - 2.25 sec times for months ....

Edited February 28, 2015 by Nimitz

[Robco]

Well, today I shot a club match at Rio Salado in Mesa, AZ, as planned. Have had less than 3.5 hours of sleep for the last 3 nights while driving from Wyoming, etc. Anyway, burned out big time so will make this short and sweet for now.

I had a good conversation with my friend at the match today, Kerry Pearson, who is a good GM USPSA shooter and a practicing Optometrist here. I had a call into him Thursday about Vision Development which rowdyb has turned us onto in this thread. First off, he does not provide this particular service in-0ffice. Second he is familiar with it. He summarized how it relates to shooters as follows.

Three elements to Vision Development for shooters.

1) Ability to rapidly and accurately refocus between objects at different focal lengths (e.g., close up and far off targets). This can be improved with drills which exercise the eye muscles.

2) Ability to rapidly move the eyes in the socket. This means being able to efficiently re-point the eyes in all directions without the head moving to do so. Muscles again, so can be improved with training.

3) Visualization - what he said this meant was the stage preparation process - which of course is referring to cognitive aspects of seeing.

He said there are no specialists doing much with this in this Mesa area. So he thought I should be able to do my own research into it, books have been written on some aspects he said, and set up and do my own program and probably reap most of the benefits.

Well, as rowdyb had said, it may be a different story from a practicing specialist in this narrow field of Vision Development for sports performance enhancement. I cannot disagree, since I have not done what rowdyb has.

I am in Mesa for the whole month of March, so since there are no specialists here, I will just have to work on this all myself.

Got to get some sleep. They have already setup half of the Area 2 stages and I cannot be burned out for that match. Need my eyes to work well!

Thanks again rowdyb for sharing this all with the forum. Obviously it has generated a lot of discussion and thought. Might positively impact a lot of us!

[Robco]

Shot my first match today since this post and all this great discussion. Club match at Rio Salado in Mesa, AZ. Not much competition turned out but I needed it to prepare for Area 2 there in 5 days! They are already setting up stages for Area 2.

Anxious to try to put into match use some of the new info and principles discussed in the forums, and all the thinking about how to utilize it in match performance, I went forth! (albeit having only 9 hours total of sleep in the prior 3 days!)

First stage, the classifier, 4 Bill Drill, I actually stayed "within myself" and did well. All hits, only dropped 9 points (not bad for 35 yard targets and strong and weak hand!) and shot an 84+% classifier on it. I literally recall seeing and calling every single shot on this stage, not rushing, and most importantly - I ONLY released each shot WHEN I SAW WHAT I NEEDED TO SEE! This may have been the first time for that to happen, for me, on an entire stage, in all of my 4 years shooting!

I shot it just like it was any other stage (I.e., I did not think of it differently because it is a classifier). So I am sharing this, to not only reinforce it for myself, but to reiterate a few concepts the experience involved.

1) Visual patience - especially with long difficult shots like 35 yards, and with weak and strong hand firing, trying to shoot with any concept of a cadence or rhythm is deadly. You HAVE to let the sights drive the gun and the time is, what it is on each shot. Timing is very different shooting single handed than when shooting freestyle. You have to WAIT until you SEE what you need to see for each and every shot.

2) Trigger control - especially with long difficult shots like 35 yards, and with weak and strong hand firing, good trigger control is absolutely necessary on EVERY SHOT in this classifier. I got all 6 A hits on the weak hand target as a result.

There is NO support hand to make up for poor trigger control when shooting single handed. Timing is very different than when shooting freestyle.

3) Mental Management - first, treat classifiers just like any other stage. Second, do not go into a stage making any decisions in advance like shooting speed/cadence, or any other preconception about the shooting part. You have to just let the sights drive the gun - shoot each shot only as each sight picture dictates.

4) Smooth is fast - I never say "slow is fast," as I do not agree with that one. Even though this Va Count standard does not have the aspect of makeup shots and all the problems being sloppy can introduce, it is still true that the fastest way to shoot this stage, is to shoot as soon as you have an adequate "sight picture" for each shot. NO SOONER than you can see what you need to see. If you rush either the sight picture, or the trigger control on any shot, it will be a failure. Not a short cut.

5) Not making mistakes is faster - Take the time to perform all tasks in a smooth manner, especially awkward ones like changing from strong to weak-hand on the clock. Same for reloads. Better to take the necessary time at your skill level, to accomplish all of these right the first time, than to have to suffer the much larger time waste if you miss a reload, or don't get a good grip or knock the safety on when taking up weak hand grip, etc. Also, this holds true for non-VA count stages where you CAN shoot makeup shots - taking an additional 5/100's for each shot to assure a good sight picture and trigger control is way faster than additional shots on the clock.

[Robco]

I had very little shooting experience when I read Brian’s book, and I haven’t really reread it since, but it seemed to me one of his major themes was learning how to function with less visual information. That resonated with my experience in other sports, where I got good at doing things by truncating them down to the minimum. Most of that stuff is physical. If I’m only doing half as much work as you and we have roughly the same strength, I’m twice as strong.

So with shooting, I started working on minimizing what I needed to see in live practice. But I still wasn’t shooting very good points across an entire match.

Several things got me thinking about this, but probably the main one was taking Stoeger’s class last spring. We started off with a field course, which everyone shot, and Ben went last. The relationship between Ben’s run and mine looked about like what I expected, so NBD.

Then we did some drills. Alrighty. Now Ben was tearing off 15HF El Prezes pass after pass. The best EP I’ve ever shot is under 10HF. So on the field course, obviously Ben was shooting way below the top of his mechanical ability on a static array.

Driving home from Ben’s class, it occurred to me that I had never really worked specifically at the skill of seeing *more information in the same amount of time*. I had only been concerned with getting hits based on less information, which is pretty much the opposite of what I then knew Ben was doing.

The fastest 9-yard rack I’ve ever shot is a shade under 2.5. I could probably repeat that in 15 tries, but in that process, there would be a bunch of runs over 4.0. If we set the par at 3.75, I could likely make 10 successful runs in a row. You tell me which is the better way to shoot in a match.

I always joked I’d be able to make Production M without being able to shoot, and that is exactly how it went. Part of the reason I said that is because I knew I would need to develop a certain level of mechanical ability before my ego would leave me alone and just let me shoot at my own pace. I figured that level would be about 85%, and that turned out to be right.

I look at it like this: There is a big number and a little number. Big number is you against the world. Little number is you against you. Chase the little number, and the big one comes along for the ride. Chase the big number, and the little number is likely to actually go down. I’ve beaten plenty of shooters who were better than me just because I made fewer mistakes, and I’ve been beaten for that same reason. Considering all the things that can happen, you might possibly beat anyone in a match… except yourself. You absolutely cannot outshoot your ability over the course of a match.

My personal goal in USPSA is to develop the ability to *consistently* shoot within 95% of my current ability. The rest of it is just window dressing. That little number is a profoundly beautiful and introspective thing. For me, there is no sense of speed or accuracy, and certainly no blending of the two. A stage is defined by a constellation of sight pictures, and the hits are just physical echoes of those.

If you can accept the idea that you really do have the mechanical ability to shoot 97% points and work to that standard, you can eliminate a lot of the (im)probability. I think there should be very little sense of anything other than simply placing hits on the scoring surfaces with a degree of urgency appropriate to your current skill level.

Paul,

This is another great post by you! You are literally inspiring me to finally do what I already know I need to do, but have repeatedly failed - shoot a match at my own ability and see how it works out for me! I am going to plan on doing this at Area 2 starting Friday. You make so many good points that mirror my own findings and experience, and we share a very similar tenure and quick climb to M class, in a couple years, yet have not yet risen to match performance to match our classification. I notice you have not shot any large matches. You need to remedy this my friend! How about Area 1 in June, not too far from Oregon! (Was IN Oregon last year). I think it is time for you to spread your wings.

Below is a post I made this morning, in reply to a 2 year old thread started by Donovan Montross. He is a young guy in his late 20's I guess, out near you, who made GM fast and shoots relaxed as far as I can tell. Nice guy. I stated some things in that post this morning you can identify with!

Thanks

Rob

Beginning of Donovan's Topic post = http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=169004#entry1873850

My comment at the end of Donovan's thread = http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=169004&page=3#entry2346272

[Robco]

Interim Update on a little research I have been able to do on my own, regarding Vision Therapy - Eye exercises essentially.

First, it should be noted that this is a hugely controversial area on the net. Lots of aggressive "hucksters" out there making sensational claims and promising miraculous results for a small fee, etc. Traditional eye care service providers generally "call BS" on it all, which may or may not be the truth, but we should consider their point of view. I.e., a lot of their incomes may be threatened if eye glasses were rendered unnecessary by eye exercises for example. I am no dog in this fight and have not tried any of these ideas myself, so bear that in mind. I am simply beginning my research now.

Second, lots of cited official sounding studies clarify that many physical eye sight problems cannot possibly be improved by eye exercises. I tend to believe this, to the limited extent I understand it all at this point. Analogous to my belief that infections are better cured with antibiotics than by prayer.

However, my expectation at this early stage of my research is that eye exercises make sense for improving function of a healthy eye, especially for visual improvement capabilities for practical pistol shooting. Much of the eye-work involved in our sport involves muscles in the eye area, so it follows that those muscles, like all others, might benefit from exercise. Just don't expect miracles regarding vision correction, for example. So I am not dissuaded at all. Especially when we can apparently get the information for free and give it a try! Below is one site link, out of many I looked at, which provides most of the exercises which I have seen in other sources and those mentioned by my Optometrist friend and GM shooter.

I will give them a try. Nothing to lose but a little time. I see no risk. And of course this in not an endorsement at all, nor any sort of recommendation that you should not, instead, still follow rowdyb's advice about consulting a vision development practitioner.

http://www.eyetrainer.org/

Check it out.

[Robco]

Interim Update on a little research I have been able to do on my own, regarding Vision Therapy - Eye exercises essentially.

First, it should be noted that this is a hugely controversial area on the net. Lots of aggressive "hucksters" out there making sensational claims and promising miraculous results for a small fee, etc. Traditional eye care service providers generally "call BS" on it all, which may or may not be the truth, but we should consider their point of view. I.e., a lot of their incomes may be threatened if eye glasses were rendered unnecessary by eye exercises for example. I am no dog in this fight and have not tried any of these ideas myself, so bear that in mind. I am simply beginning my research now.

Second, lots of cited official sounding studies clarify that many physical eye sight problems cannot possibly be improved by eye exercises. I tend to believe this, to the limited extent I understand it all at this point. Analogous to my belief that infections are better cured with antibiotics than by prayer.

However, my expectation at this early stage of my research is that eye exercises make sense for improving function of a healthy eye, especially for visual improvement capabilities for practical pistol shooting. Much of the eye-work involved in our sport involves muscles in the eye area, so it follows that those muscles, like all others, might benefit from exercise. Just don't expect miracles regarding vision correction, for example. So I am not dissuaded at all. Especially when we can apparently get the information for free and give it a try! Below is one site link, out of many I looked at, which provides most of the exercises which I have seen in other sources and those mentioned by my Optometrist friend and GM shooter.

I will give them a try. Nothing to lose but a little time. I see no risk. And of course this in not an endorsement at all, nor any sort of recommendation that you should not, instead, still follow rowdyb's advice about consulting a vision development practitioner.

http://www.eyetrainer.org/

Check it out.

Here is a pretty fair and balanced article on a vision professional site, summarizing the eye exercise controversy in a short, easy read. Might help anyone get started in their own research into the subject.

Here are two excerpts from the article:

"You possibly can "train" your eyes to see better in different ways, such as in how your brain and your eyes adapt and function."

and

"These programs differ from supervised programs of vision therapy prescribed by eye doctors (usually optometrists) to correct certain eye alignment and other binocular vision problems, or to enhance dynamic visual skills for sports vision."

http://www.allaboutvision.com/buysmart/see_clearly.htm

Edited March 2, 2015 by Robco

[titandriver]

Nice job - thanks!

[rowdyb]

hopefully i never lead anyone to believe that what i talked about would fix a vision problem that requires glasses or correction. it wont! anyone who says otherwise is selling you something in my opinion.

but it about taking a healthy eye and making it work better, for the purpose of sport.

[Robco]

hopefully i never lead anyone to believe that what i talked about would fix a vision problem that requires glasses or correction. it wont! anyone who says otherwise is selling you something in my opinion.

but it about taking a healthy eye and making it work better, for the purpose of sport.

rowdyb - you did not mislead at all. Yes, some of the claims made by some practitioners in the field are exaggerated, but not by the type professionals you recommended. So no worries. I believe all readers here understand we are talking about enhancing healthy eyesight via exercises.

I just finished Area 2 this afternoon, three days of shooting. Had some very interesting experiences with the whole vision thing in this match. I am exhausted now, but will be thinking about them and will share my thoughts in a few days. Also spoke with a lot of top shooters on this SEEING subject and am making some new connections and understandings in the process.

[rowdyb]

Yep, to me anything that helps with visual processing, hand eye coordination and improving my eye muscles is extremely worth while. I too finished the A2 match and fell apart on Sunday. Now I know some things to practice even more!

[Nimitz]

My entry into practical shooting in 2012 started with Mike Seeklander's book "your competition handgun training program". In it he devotes an entire chapter to vision training, including specific exercises. He goes on to say that if need to prioritize the training in his book because you are brand new (that was me) that the vision training could be put to last priority. Having my hands full just learning shoot a handgun for the first time, never mind the whole competition thing, I pushed off the vision exercises afternoon trying them fora couple of weeks. I also didn't understand the concept of "you can only shoot as fast as you can see" like I do now. Needless to say I've already pulled out his and have been rereading the vision training chapter ...... Thx for the links as well Rob ...

[Robco]

Yep, to me anything that helps with visual processing, hand eye coordination and improving my eye muscles is extremely worth while. I too finished the A2 match and fell apart on Sunday. Now I know some things to practice even more!

I am still getting over the whole Area 2 week. Worn out. Will have to take a few days off from shooting now to regroup and recoup. Put up my match video this afternoon on YouTube. Pretty ugly. Shot 5 stages well, 80% on one and 82% on 4 of them. Lots of mistakes in this match, that show up clearly on the video. A lot to study and analyze and work on. But not now, need to rest up and recharge my batteries. Turned 56 during the match so feeling old. I won high Senior Limited after all......ughhh.

[Robco]

My entry into practical shooting in 2012 started with Mike Seeklander's book "your competition handgun training program". In it he devotes an entire chapter to vision training, including specific exercises. He goes on to say that if need to prioritize the training in his book because you are brand new (that was me) that the vision training could be put to last priority. Having my hands full just learning shoot a handgun for the first time, never mind the whole competition thing, I pushed off the vision exercises afternoon trying them fora couple of weeks. I also didn't understand the concept of "you can only shoot as fast as you can see" like I do now. Needless to say I've already pulled out his and have been rereading the vision training chapter ...... Thx for the links as well Rob ...

That is cool Nimitz. Seeklander actually had vision training in his book!

[Robco]

One thing I will say now, since I am supposed to be OFF for a few days resting up, about vision and my Area 2 performance/experience. I am of the opinion that having the capability to bear down hard on yourself while shooting is KEY. Regardless of the semantics here, and whether it comports with how Enos uses these words on the subject, what I am referring to is INTENSITY of SEEING. I got this verbiage from Bob Krogh Saturday at the Area 2 match. He put into words what I had failed to be able to express about this. When shooting, although you need to remain relaxed as Enos says, and not tense up, you DO need to focus intensely on the seeing part. That means not simply and idly watching what is going on, but actually being intensely involved and attentive to it all. When I am tired or "sleepy" or too relaxed mentally and physically, my shooting performance is horrible. Why? Because, as Lanny Bassham calls it, my level or arousal was too low. Things are happening too fast while shooting to not be peaked up for the process adequately. Seeing, apparently, is an act that can be performed at many different levels. Shooting well, especially in our USPSA style competition, requires a very intense type of seeing activity. To be able to SEE the sights lift and call a shot, is not something that can be done if one is not concentrating intensely on seeing it happen. Again, not contradicting anything Enos has stated, as I agree with him on all of this to the extent I understand it, but in my own words, the level of intense mental focus on the seeing part of shooting is HARD WORK. And therefore requires constant diligence to keep the level of seeing intensity adequately high. The tendency is to relax and NOT see at this level of intensity for long at all, let alone for a whole course of fire. I find myself doing well on parts of a stage - the part where my focus and concentrated attention and seeing is very high, and then relaxing or letting my guard down on another part with resultant misses or bad hits. And of course, all it takes is one bad shot to ruin a stage. No matter how good the other 31 shots were. Think N/s-Mike. In this analogy, a shooter has to be UP and ON for ALL 32 shots in the course of fire in order to perform well. And that, is difficult to manage to pull of, consistently, even within a stage, let alone within a whole match.

[b1gcountry]

I tried something interesting tonight in dry fire. I put a mirror next to a target 7 yards away. I put another target behind me. I actually transitioned focus between a 7 and 15 yard target. It made a difference i think.

[Robco]

I tried something interesting tonight in dry fire. I put a mirror next to a target 7 yards away. I put another target behind me. I actually transitioned focus between a 7 and 15 yard target. It made a difference i think.

That is interesting. Simply putting a half sized target next to the full size target at 7 yards, would simulate the relative size/sight picture difference, but NOT the optical focus difference. They would be in the same focal plane. But in the mirror, the simulated 14 yard target is actually at 14 yards focal length. I imagine this type transition drilling you did, is therefore more realistic and better visual training.

[b1gcountry]

You've got my point exactly.

The other thing I noticed shooting a live plate rack is that my eye will start to wander its focus to the berm behind the target. I think this is worse because the targets are actually disappearing, but you don't watch them fall, so I may be wrong about that part. I stopped doing it as much lately.

My point is our dry fire doesn't train the background focus distance properly either. Most df targets are pasted on a wall at the same focus distance, but there is usually a berm far behind our live fire targets.

Edited March 11, 2015 by b1gcountry

[Robco]

You've got my point exactly.

The other thing I noticed shooting a live plate rack is that my eye will start to wander its focus to the berm behind the target. I think this is worse because the targets are actually disappearing, but you don't watch them fall, so I may be wrong about that part. I stopped doing it as much lately.

My point is our dry fire doesn't train the background focus distance properly either. Most df targets are pasted on a wall at the same focus distance, but there is usually a berm far behind our live fire targets.

Another interesting point. I have had a similar experience when shooting a plate rack. If you break down what is actually (as far as you can tell anyway!) happening when shooting a plate rack, it must go something like this.

You locate the first plate. Move gun onto the plate. Execute shot while maintaining continuous aim on target. Then, if shot was CALLED GOOD, you move gun over to next plate while still in recoil, lead by the eyes first moving to the next plate. Like following the bouncing ball. So, if done properly, your eyes move from the plate before the bullet even hits the plate, therefore you would NOT ever see or focus on the berm behind the shot plate.

However, if you allow too much follow thru, and keep watching the first plate all the way back down out of recoil, you will probably see it fall over and then with no plate there anymore, your eyes will automatically focus back to the berm since it is not possible/natural to focus on thin air where the plate WAS. Obviously, if you were doing this, you would be shooting the rack very slowly due to all the additional follow thru time. You might do this intentionally if at an extreme range such as 50 yards, due to the difficulty of the target then.

So you have identified yet another "shortcoming" of dry firing, as far as its limitations of simulating live fire (lack of recoil being the most obvious, followed by lack of hit feedback). This is not to say that dry fire work is less effective or not useful. Clearly, one is not the replacement of the other. BOTH live and dry fire are necessary training methodologies.

You are presenting evidence that you are getting a lot out of the dry fire experience yourself, discovering such fine points as you have posted here. Good job! Keep that level of awareness up and you will get more than most do from dry and live firing work!