Practice with a purpose

[CrashDodson]

I read this somewhere recently, a quote from Anders Ericsson.

"Not all practice makes perfect. You need a particular kind of practice—deliberate practice—to develop expertise. When most people practice, they focus on the things they already know how to do. Deliberate practice is different. It entails considerable, specific, and sustained efforts to do something you can’t do well—or even at all. Research across domains shows that it is only by working at what you can’t do that you turn into the expert you want to become.” -Anders Ericsson

So how do you put this into practice? How do you make sure that when your dry firing or at the range that you are deliberately practicing and not just going through the motions?

[perttime]

At my level it is pretty obvious: pick one weakness and dedicate much of a session to that.

You have to be careful, though: as Brian says in his book, practice does not make perfect, it just makes permanent. You need to practice something that will probably work.

[Hi-Power Jack]

I spent twenty years "practicing", without results.

Then I started talking to shooters, attending large matches, and reading

posts here at BE, and have actually improved.

Very important to practice well.

[CrashDodson]

Ive read books from Brian, Ben, Steve and Lanny....Ive taken classes...Ive listened to every practical pistol show...most of Steve's podcast...Not an hour goes by that I am not thinking about shooting in some form or fashion. Jake Di Vita has helped me out a ton as well.

I would say most of us dont have a coach to help us every week or to review practice video every week. I cant afford to take a class with a GM every month. How do you hold yourself accountable for your training? What does solid, purposeful, dry fire/live fire sessions feel like as opposed to just going through the motions? Do you video your practice sessions and review them? Do you write down your times on your live fire drills to keep a record of any progress?

I am trying to understand the difference between real practice and just wasting my time. If I am going to take 30 min or an hour or more away from my family 5-7 days a week I need to make the most of it. What are you guys doing in your practice to make it count?

Edited July 18, 2016 by CrashDodson

[CrashDodson]

In searching around I came across this thread which has some interesting stuff.

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=50226

[superluckycat]

I'm new to USPSA this year. Been seriously dry firing and practicing since April.

I keep a journal of my dry and live fire practices with drills run and par times. I alternate between Anderson's book and Stoeger's book for my drills.

I do Anderson's drills 1-12 M,W,F since my fundamentals need the most work. T, Th I do 2 drills from each section of Stoeger's book. Sat is either off or I might dry fire a mini stage. Sunday is live fire practice or a match.

The nice thing is being able to look back and see that you've cut 5 seconds off your El Prez since you started.

Now I'm happy to cut a tenth or two every couple weeks.

My par times keep getting shorter and my match scores keep getting better so this is working for me for now.

[CrashDodson]

Ive been shooting USPSA since October...coming from IDPA/3gun. I bought Andersons first dry fire book when I started IDPA. I have since picked up Ben's books and I just ordered Andersons new one.

In the back of Ben's dry fire book it has some training plans. I have been doing the accurate but slow plan. I run each drill about 15 reps. I have trouble with the logistics of the field course section....trying to setup stuff like ports in my house.

I have gone from the bottom 1/4th of the pack in local USPSA matches to the top 1/4th regularly. I am still classified C but have started shooting A classier scores in matches. I can shoot GM scores on things like El prez in practice after a few runs. I have been trying to get in at least one live fire session a week, but that is not always the case. I usually get at least 5 dry fire sessions in a week but I try every day. I have moved my dry fire to the morning before work instead of at night and that is working a lot better for me. I am more focused and I feel like I get more out of it.

I have not been documenting my dry fire at all but maybe that is something I should do. I have been reading about doing "random" practice instead of block practice for motor skills. Where block practice is doing sets and reps of the same drill...random practice you dont run the same drill twice back to back. Not sure if there is any value in that at this stage in my skills set.

[tha1000]

I think you definitely have to journal your dry fire. I do it bassham style. I've found it easier to keep separate journals for dry fire, live fire/classes, and matches. I use basically a moleskine notebook, document the date, duration, objective, what i did, any solutions that I may have found to a problem, along with what I did well that day. Keeping the separate books makes it easy to compare apples to apples when i am looking for trends and tracking improvement.

I have a pvc target stand and a metric target that I use as a port/barricade/vision barrier. I cut 3 sides of the a zone and folded it so I can open it when I want to work on port stuff and close it when I want to work with barricade/vision barrier. I dry fire in the garage, but my pvc stand folds pretty flat. I could store the whole thing under my couch if space was a concern.

Take my opinion for what it's worth. As you know, we have similar experience and are seeing similar results.

[CrashDodson]

I have Lanny's log book but I honestly have never used it. I know I should at least document live fire practice. I have been practicing live fire with a friend and a lot of the time its like..ok what do we work on now? Really need to get a live fire plan of some sort together.

[CrashDodson]

My big thing is that in dry fire, how do you know that what your doing is practicing. That your getting something out of the training and not just pointing your gun at brown figures on your wall.

[dynamicalflinch]

I might stir up the hornets nest, but I think you can get pretty darned good by just competing. People say to get your hits and speed will come--I disagree. Go fast and learn how to shoot at that speed as you go. Then go faster. At some point your speed will top out, and your shooting will catch up to it. Sounds crazy, but works for me. When the shooting is the actual weak point, then hit the dry firing and such. When the shooting catches up, get a video camera and see where you are missing the last bit of efficiency.

Flame on.

[CrashDodson]

I might stir up the hornets nest, but I think you can get pretty darned good by just competing. People say to get your hits and speed will come--I disagree. Go fast and learn how to shoot at that speed as you go. Then go faster. At some point your speed will top out, and your shooting will catch up to it. Sounds crazy, but works for me. When the shooting is the actual weak point, then hit the dry firing and such. When the shooting catches up, get a video camera and see where you are missing the last bit of efficiency.

Flame on.

Training is where you bring training guy and take yourself out of your comfort zone and push the boundaries and learn. Matches are where you bring match guy and shoot your skill level, call your shots....confirming your training.

Bringing training guy to matches is a recipe for disaster.

[tha1000]

My big thing is that in dry fire, how do you know that what your doing is practicing. That your getting something out of the training and not just pointing your gun at brown figures on your wall.

That's why I think you have to log your dry fire so that you can see the trends in pars over time. Your live fire should be confirmation that you are practicing.

[dynamicalflinch]

I might stir up the hornets nest, but I think you can get pretty darned good by just competing. People say to get your hits and speed will come--I disagree. Go fast and learn how to shoot at that speed as you go. Then go faster. At some point your speed will top out, and your shooting will catch up to it. Sounds crazy, but works for me. When the shooting is the actual weak point, then hit the dry firing and such. When the shooting catches up, get a video camera and see where you are missing the last bit of efficiency.

Flame on.

Training is where you bring training guy and take yourself out of your comfort zone and push the boundaries and learn. Matches are where you bring match guy and shoot your skill level, call your shots....confirming your training.

Bringing training guy to matches is a recipe for disaster.

That's what they keep telling me...

[tha1000]

I know guys that are competitive at the local level that at least claim to never practice... that being said, I don't think that you will find a whole lot of guys that are competitive at the national level that say the same.

[dynamicalflinch]

I know guys that are competitive at the local level that at least claim to never practice... that being said, I don't think that you will find a whole lot of guys that are competitive at the national level that say the same.

Top 16? You're probably correct. Top 50? Different story... IMO.

[tha1000]

I hope it gets you where you want to be. It's not feasible for me regardless, so I will continue dry firing daily and shooting my 1-2 matches a month.

[fellas]

My big thing is that in dry fire, how do you know that what your doing is practicing. That your getting something out of the training and not just pointing your gun at brown figures on your wall.

Do training for a for a motive lets say , try to make it to a good match and set a goal ex top 25 of you division , from then on find you weakness on that match and include them in your training. As i come from IPSC shooting it's similar .when i started i did the fundamentals improving the draw call the shots etc etc , now that i have more experience i try to make some sort of drills that include the fundamentals but more aggressive .

what drill are you running?

[johnbu]

I'm NOT an expert shooter, can't give any shooting advice, but....

In the real world I've worked closely with industrial engineers. I asked the one I shared a cube with why he was timing everything. And I mean EVERYTHING. He explained that without knowing where a process was (how long to reach the goal) ... how could he tell if he was going to reach his goal or even if there was a goal. He set many goals and timed deadlines like crazy.

Ex. He timed all the phases of collecting big round hay bails on his farm. He determined the optimum speed to traverse the tractor, the optimum flow (rear spear on the turn with left brake applied), then front spear and return. By doing so he shaved hours off the process and gallons of fuel. All by breaking the process down, timing each segment then setting and resetting goals to minimize overall time. He slso found he needed to smooth the path to the barn allowing operation in a higher gear....resetting and reducing that time goal.

I do Burkett reload drills and have been seeing improvement, but... in my few matches, I don't stand and reload (not by plan anyway). So I'm thinking about timing reloads while sprinting to a next position in recognition that reloading on the run is important and the reload action slows the run. I don't multitask well yet.

So in general, best training is done to support CORRECT goals. We engineers would make a list of the things negative to the goal (ex. Hit factor), prioritize by impact and highlight the ones that are low hanging fruit. Identify what needs to improve first, break down the actions, determine current performancevl of each, set goals, improve, re-evaluate, repeat until it's no longer top of the list and move down improving. In 35 years of process improvement, universally people work long and hard on shit that has diddly for impact because it's easier.

Right now, my greatest gains are going to come from cardiovascular fitness and start stop dash strengthening more than fundamentals of shooting. I take waay to much time between shooting locations. But I don't practice dashing between locations and around objects...because it's hard, hot, sweaty and not fun!!!