Speed vs. accuracy balance, should I change anything?

[IronArcher]

SO I have shot 2 matches (IDPA "style) and am seeing that I am well above average for accuracy (just missed most accurate at the last shoot by a couple points....I was down 8 on my first every swinger...a bill drill at that. Prior to that I was down 1 for 2 stages.

Now of course, to be fair, I will sometimes fire a couple make up rounds if I don't think I hit well, and some of these are actually slowing me down (I was kinda dumb in that near the end of a stage I had a -1 that I went back for that took more than .5 seconds...so I should have left well enough alone)

Save for the make up shots, do I change anything? My logic (from an admitted noob) is that speed will come in time. But I wonder if I'm being TOO critical about getting zero down. I know if IDPA goes to 1 sec/point I would be doing better compared to those I am shooting with right now. But that is then, this is now. Do I risk losing my accurate shooting if I start focusing on speed more (as in losing a skill, not just losing the points....and is that skill harder to get back than speed is?)?

More philosophical than anything right now, but isn't most of this between the ears anyway?

Thanx!

[motosapiens]

your best bet is to learn to shoot accurately at a faster rate. The most important piece of that puzzle imho is the ability to call your shots (know where the shot went from the sight picture as the shot breaks).

I would advise you to make calling your shots your first priority, both in dryfire and live fire. Once you start feeling like you can score your targets at least somewhat from the sight picture, then I would add in some speed training.

Edited February 29, 2016 by motosapiens

[zhunter]

I know NOTHING about IDPA, so this is based on USPSA

HF is the number of points you get per second. Are you a 3 HF guy, or are you a 5 HF guy? Of course every stage is different, but bare with me. Are you shooting Major or Minor scoring? At first (assuming a newbie) I would try to shoot 80% of the points at a patch, then 85%, then 90%. 90+% is the end goal.

So, to make the math easy, let's assume you are a 5 HF shooter, hence you earn 5 points for every second on the timer on a stage. Assuming minor scoring, a C is -2 or 1/5th of a second, a miss is a potential loss of 15 points, 10 for the penalty and 5 for the Alpha you did not get, so a miss is a 3 second penalty. A "D" is essentially a miss without the 10 point penalty or 4/5's of a second.

Now you need to do your math, based on your typical field course HF. IF you are a 3 HF shooter, a miss is a 5 second penalty. It's not simple, but IF you want to play the game you need to figure out where your emphasis needs to be.

Bottom line, there are several way S to look at it, I'd go with match percentage points first, and stage HF's second, but both are important.

[Jake Di Vita]

With using zhunter's guide realize that every IDPA stage is effectively a 2 hit factor stage which means accuracy is extremely weighted in your overall score. You do need to work on going fast in practice, but in IDPA your match pace must revolve around hitting the center of the target just about every time. If it does go to 1 second per point down, you should basically never drop a point.

If you are running the ragged edge of speed and accuracy in practice, your ability to translate that speed to a match without suffering in the accuracy department will increase. Speed won't just come by itself. You cannot learn how to shoot fast by shooting slowly.

Edited February 29, 2016 by Jake Di Vita

[MemphisMechanic]

I've shot more IDPA than most of the guys who will reply to this post, so although they are better shooters, I can "speak IDPA" a bit more fluently.

So here goes...
In IDPA accuracy is even more crucial than Production in USPSA (arguably the most accuracy-intensive division they have, alongside revolver.) Jake is correct, USPSA guys: an IDPA stage is almost always a production stage with a hit factor less than 5.

Simply put; how do you win a stage? Well, you shoot it faster than everyone else at the match and you do it with perfect accuracy. If that were easy, competitive shooting would be boring! So here's the thing - to shoot all zeros (or Alphas in USPSA) faster than the next Master shooter, you cannot shoot 1-hole groups in the center of the target. The larger your acceptable target is, the faster you can hit it, right? Everyone on the planet will shoot six shots into one target faster if that target is the side of a barn than if it is an 8" circle.

What we end up with is a man with a high level of skill trying to shoot a group (of two shots, but still, think of it as very fast group shooting) inside of the 8" down-zero zone. If he is running for the fastest possible time he would fire probably 80-90% of his shots cleanly in the -0... but some of them will inevitably wander into the -1 area on the target if that man is really, really pushing.

When I'm trying for an overall stage win I am working on a lot of other things - but lets ignore draw, reload, and movement and focus only on pulling the trigger. I want to shoot a run where I see everything I need to. 3 times in 5 I will just barely shoot zero points down. The other two times around 5-15% of my shots will land in the -1 very close to the circle that defines zero down.

• This means that if I shoot an 18-round stage I will drop 2 to 3 hits into the -1 zone at the very most if I want to have a really good shot at winning that stage in a sanctioned match
• This means that I might just shoot it clean. But I can't bet you $50 beforehand and maintain the speed I carried through that stage.

If I am shooting with enough precision to manage a clean run 100% of the time, my competitor will often edge me out by dropping a point and shooting the stage 3/4 second or more faster than I did. The winner will shoot with blazing speed *and* phenomenal accuracy.

Oh, and the guy with a blistering raw time and 35% of the points dropped? He only does well at the club level - I like having him around at big matches. Watching his triggerslap his way to a midpack finish is sadistically entertaining.

You have to be willing to drop a point or two because you're pushing the ragged edge of perfection in your sight picture if your focus is to shoot for speed. Notice that this is a very different philosophy than slapping the trigger as soon as the sights are somewhere back down from recoil, like most newcomers do.

• This does not mean you deliberately shoot when the sights are misaligned to go faster.
• You never intentionally throw points away to get a faster time.
• Anything that is not -1 or lower (aka a hit in a noshoot, a miss, or a -3 shot) is a large failure.

One last parting thought: Never make up a -1 hit until you're around the Sharpshooter skill-level. By the time you see it, decide to act, and bring the gun to bear, it has been better than half a second. Yes, this includes scenarios where you are already aiming at that target! Once you get fast enough that making up -1's is possible... you'll know when to do so and when to leave them alone.

Edited February 29, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[MemphisMechanic]

You have to practice reading your sights and driving the gun faster - practice shooting faster than you could the day before.

You also have to practice to know you can shoot a small group at 25 yards - practice being more accurate than you were the day before.

These are both skills you need to possess in order to win.

[Hi-Power Jack]

1. speed will come in time.

2. isn't most of this between the ears anyway?

1. NO. There was a great posting here a month or so ago on how to shoot faster. LOTS of great info - try to find it.

It involves grip, stance, your ammo, your springs, your gun, your trigger control, etc. Complicated. I shot

for years and couldn't improve my speed without sacrificing accuracy, until I read here how to do that.

2. NO. See above. It's equipment and technique, and GOOD PRACTICE as opposed to bad practice.

[motosapiens]

1. speed will come in time.

2. isn't most of this between the ears anyway?

1. NO. There was a great posting here a month or so ago on how to shoot faster. LOTS of great info - try to find it.

It involves grip, stance, your ammo, your springs, your gun, your trigger control, etc. Complicated. I shot

for years and couldn't improve my speed without sacrificing accuracy, until I read here how to do that.

2. NO. See above. It's equipment and technique, and GOOD PRACTICE as opposed to bad practice.

IMHO, the key is separating the concepts of speed and accuracy. The most effective way I have found to increase speed (and I was a real turtle for a long time) is to temporarily forget about judging accuracy and just shoot faster. It doesn't really matter if you don't get the hits when training pure speed, as long as you are calling the shots and seeing the bad hits. As long as you are calling the shots, you will have the information you need to refine your technique to add back the accuracy at that higher speed, and much of that refinement happens without any conscious effort because you already know how to shoot accurately.

Of course that doesn't really work all that well if you're not getting the necessary information from the sights, but that is way I think calling your shots should be the primary training goal until you get good enough at it to leverage the super-powers it will bestow on the rest of your training.

[IronArcher]

So are you then calling your shots effectively AFTER you have shot them vs. consciously ensuring the sights are on before pulling the trigger (specifically for 2nd and subsequent shots)? i.e. on a Bill Drill do you know by looking at the sights your on target, or do you know after each shot?

I have found I actually CAN do that... but never trust that they will be there without a full confirmation of the sight picture before the shot.

On occasion I have played around "double tapping" and can see the sights on the second shot (and amazingly to me, they are usually right on target), but I am seeing them effectively after I have committed to the shot, not before. I always thought this was just screwing around having fun... should I be actively training like this? My heart says yes, but I have always read that you need a good sight picture before shooting, and double tapping is bad.... Maybe the truth lies somewhere in-between?

Edited March 1, 2016 by IronArcher

[motosapiens]

There's 9187349812374 posts about shot-calling by people much more skilled than me, and I am definitely still learning it, so take everything I say with a grain of salt or 3.

first throw away the idea of 'double-tapping'. that typically means 1 sight picture for 2 trigger pulls and that is never a good idea. I am trying to see the sight picture for every shot.

However, seeing the sights for every shot does not mean that you see the sights perfectly centered and stable in the middle of the a-zone for every shot. For example, if you are moving, the sights just aren't going to be stable ever. You have to keep aiming until the gun goes off. Sometimes, something happens between when you start pulling the trigger and when the shot breaks, and your sights may no longer be in a-zone. If you are seeing the sights at that moment, you will know about it, so you can fire another shot if necessary.

The same stuff happens when stationary and shooting quickly, but I find movement training makes it more obvious and easier to grasp and understand.

If you wait until you have a perfectly stable sight picture, and then squeeze off 2 controlled shots with good sight pictures, you will get lots of alphas and be very slow. To get faster I think you need to start pulling the trigger earlier, and keep aiming the gun during that process, and you have to keep watching the sights until the gun goes off so you can catch the occasional screw-ups, where you overswung the target and hit a D or something.

[Chris iliff]

Speed won't just come by itself. You cannot learn how to shoot fast by shooting slowly.

No words wiser

[Nimitz]

Speed won't just come by itself. You cannot learn how to shoot fast by shooting slowly.

No words wiser

Yep, one of the best single sentence pieces of training advise you'll ever read on this forum ...

[IronArcher]

Just watched 2 Ben Stoeger DVDs. It explained a lot.

I now have a good grasp on how to shoot faster and what sight pictures I need to be looking for.

Can't wait to take a class with that guy!

Thanx to all that replied, it helped as well!

Edited March 4, 2016 by IronArcher