How Do You Measure Where You Are At

[wide45]

JB, I don't mean to be totally at odds with your view.

Competition surely drives improvement.

I also believe "The competition is important to me because I learn where to improve."

If I am shooting in the same match with one of the top GM's, they are not going to place higher because of the GM card. The man who shoots better that day will win.

Past performance is for Las Vegas, and it does work, but I'm just not interested.

[Kory]

I know how well I shot a match before I see the results.

Too many misses on steel (I shoot mostly steel) and lots of makeup shots, I know I sucked that day.

Too many non-A's, or poor movement, or whatever I KNOW I didn't do well, I know I sucked that day.

Sometimes the results disagree and say I did OK (relatively), but I know better than to believe that.

I imagine a day whan I'll finish a match and not be thinking, "If only I didn't blow that, or screw this up, or had I done that..." and then I'll think I did pretty good. Probubly not GM good, but close to 100% of what I can expect from myself at my current level.

I suppose the most valid yardstick I have accepted to compare my shooting to other has been my total time shoot Steel Challenge. There are enough runs on enough stages to remove that occasional short-term lucky deviation from my long term average. (AKA, the lucky classifier out of nowhere that says I may be better than I really am)

[tightloop]

for those who have been in the Zone, you go to a match, any match and know you will do well...might not win, because someone is really better than you, but it is those days that show us where we need to concentrate our efforts to continually improve...if we don't do that, we fall farther behind...

as TGO says...you better get going cause he is a million draws ahead of you...

[eric nielsen]

Beauty of a post on this subject by some guy named TGO:

HERE

[kurtm]

I don't think "classifiers" really reflect what we do in this sport. Most are stand and shoot, strong and weak hand, and reloading. Now granted ALL these skills are tested in a Classifier but when in a match do we do a "flat footed reload", When do we do weak hand shooting on a field course? strong hand only ? Very occationally when we have to carry something. Most of the stuff we do involves movement, or shooting at things that move, and shooting around things that don't need to be shot. I am a "B" by classification and have yet to finish out of the top 10 ( Limited ) at any match I have gone to ( granted, not that many pistol only matches of any great size, but enough to be able to say that) Because of my back ground, I am really good at shooting while moving, and moving fast! These skills aren't tested by Classifiers and yet these are the "major Match skills". Now I will admit I will compair how I am doing by how the other guys do in limited, but more for the info of how muc and what I have to work on. Wide.45 is right Each day is a new day, and I really just lok for consistency in what I do, and try to improve that very thing. KURTM