Metering performance / Consistency

[lancejoshlin]

I've been shooting USPSA a long time, and I've found that my biggest issue in matches is my sometimes inability to meter my performance down lower than when I practice. Pushing 110% in practice is great, especially when doing repeated drills, because of the familiarity of what's about to take place I can shoot a class or maybe two above my classification. When it comes to match time and I try to back off of my performance ever so slightly I either back off way too much, or not enough and it's sometimes very difficult to keep things at a steady consistency... Anyone else experience this ?

[MemphisMechanic]

Yes. Until last year it drove me nuts.

Stop prioritizing speed. Call every shot and let the speed take care of itself.

Simple. Not easy.

Go out and practice. But don't practice being faster. Slap a couple of ballbuster partial target arrays out there and shoot mini stages clean and swift over and over.

If you can't shoot one array of three partial targets cleanly with boring consistency in practice, how do you magically expect to do it in a match?

 

[lancejoshlin]

Yeah. I'm gonna try to keep a shot calling focus for the whole match Saturday. Every now and then the speed and front sight will mesh great and I'll have an awesome day and even win a local match every now and then. It's just hard to force it.

[MemphisMechanic]

I think that "forcing it" is the problem. Don't you?

Youre forcing the gun into the center of the target (ish) and ripping two shots off because you aren't able to make yourself shoot any other way with a focus on maintaining X amount of speed, unless you get lucky and the gun is already showing it to you.

Those are my bad stages or days.

Instead, require an acceptable sight picture for that target before you'll let yourself fire. Come hell or high water.

Edited December 9, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[lancejoshlin]

That's what I'm talking about... Forcing myself to better call every shot even if it feels slower... Gonna shoot for points and let the speed fall where it will.

[ShortBus]

You need Steve Anderson in your life soooo bad. He has podcasts, and with the issue you describe please pay the $20 to get access to all the old episodes and binge listen. 

 

 

[N3WWN]

You need Steve Anderson in your life soooo bad. He has podcasts, and with the issue you describe please pay the $20 to get access to all the old episodes and binge listen. 

 

 

Yup! This! [emoji115] [emoji1]

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

[lancejoshlin]

Shot a custom STI 6" 2011 at the match yesterday. Ended up winning first limited, and 2nd overall out of about 30 shooters, with the highest percentage of match points possible... MAYBE I've been running the wrong platform :-P buddy of mine is selling it to me, and he let me shoot it for the match to make sure I like it.

[lancejoshlin]

I've listened to some of Steve's podcasts. Can't seem to keep interested/entertained by him... Maybe it's that intro lol.

[MemphisMechanic]

On 12/11/2016 at 2:16 PM, ShortBus said:

You need Steve Anderson in your life soooo bad. He has podcasts, and with the issue you describe please pay the $20 to get access to all the old episodes and binge listen. 

Can't do it.

Skipping around past all the Van Halen and then "enjoying" 8 minutes of shooting talk crammed into a 45 minute long rambling podcast about all the surgeries on his dogs...

I have his first book. I'll buy his second one.

When he condenses his podcasts down to 10-15 mins of SHOOTING talk without turning it into a classic rock station I'll drop $20 on those in a heartbeat.

I actually liked his interview on the Shooters Summit (at www.firearmsnation.com) because Arik kept him on shooting topics for the entire 50 minutes.

I paid $20 for full access to the Summit, as proof of my earlier statement.

Edited December 21, 2016 by MemphisMechanic

[ShortBus]

I HATE, Van Halen and any of that type of

music, steves laugh is annoying, I could kill his dogs and not even care, his mustang is gay, his jokes are bad, I could go on and on. 

 

Point is, those little nuggets that you work so hard to finally hear is what you need. I don't tune into his podcast because I like it. I consider it training, part of the training I don't like, kinda like weak hand only shooting. I do it because that's what it takes to make it to where I want to go. 

I also don't listen anymore. I listened when I needed him and quit once I had what I needed. Could I have figured it out on my own? Sure,  it not in the time period I did with his podcast. 

 

I plan to take a class with Steve as well. We tried to host him locally earlier in the year but it just wasn't in the cards. I will try again later. 

 

In the mean time good luck with what ever method you choose. 

[MemphisMechanic]

1 hour ago, ShortBus said:

I consider it training, part of the training I don't like, kinda like weak hand only shooting. 

[benos]

Replace forcing and trying with watching and allowing. If you are not trying to do anything at all, but simply watching for the sights to appear in the A box that - will allow the shot to fire effortlessly as soon as an acceptable sight alignment is seen.

[lancejoshlin]

Thanks Benos . I need to go read through your book for the 12th time lol it's been a year or so since I recapped :-D

[CHA-LEE]

The main problem seems like you are only practicing one way. Sure we need some quantity of practice to push our limited to find the next level of performance, but we also need practice where we reign it in and burn in what it feels like to perform at your current skill level. Call it whatever you like, but I like to call the reigned in practice "Match Style" practice. The next time you go out to practice, treat it like a match performance with the same risk/reward you experience in a match.

The other aspect to consider is that if you have refined your skills properly to perform them efficiently and put urgency into your movements there isn't much more you can do to "Go Faster". You shouldn't be in a situation where you have to consciously decide that you need to do things aggressively for a stage run. That aggressiveness should automatically happen due to how you practice. The reality is that there is always going to be a feeling of being "Behind schedule" when you are doing anything on the clock. You need to be OK with that artificial time pressure and know for a fact that taking however long it takes to execute things properly is well worth the time investment. It may seem like it takes forever to align the sights and press off a clean shot on a difficult target, but that is simply how long it takes to get the job done properly. Trying to rush the process because you feel like its taking too long will only circumvent executing the process properly.    

[lancejoshlin]

Yeah, some of that makes sense. I do do variations of speed in my practice though. Usually start at half to three quarter speed to warm up, and do everything smooth and deliberate till I push past my ability. Its just hitting that settled in speed at a match and not backing off too much that's difficult.