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Proper fundamentals yet staying relaxed


Dhudgins525

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So in my journey to getting better at the sport of action pistol I have reached a point of diminishing returns. We all understand that we have to grip the gun and manage recoil and see what we need to see to make a given shot depending on difficulty along with the necessary amount of trigger control and visual patience. (Still constantly working on those things) We also hear that you still need to stay relaxed in order to move efficiently and fluently throughout a stage. So my question is how do you isolate the strong grip and shooting fundamentals without inducing tension? Is this something that comes with more practice and experience or is there some mentality that we should incorporate into our practice that allows us to attain this knowledge? Watching the top tier shooters we can all see that they look relaxed and very nimble while people like myself look tense and cumbersome. I know we all seem to reach plateaus and then break through them but at this point I seem to be having serious difficulty breaking through this one. Advice and guidance is greatly appreciated and definitely will be put to use! Thanks in advance to anyone that can help! If it matters I am A class in CO with a fairly high B average in production. 

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How often do you live fire classifier-type speed shoots? An El Prez, Can You Count, etc?

 

I find running that kind of thing over and over REALLY helpful to learn to go fast without rushing.

 

Second is to push hard to get even faster.  When you back off to 90% of that speed, which would be your current flat-out speed, you can do it more loosely. That’s the pace you want to shoot matches at; never balls => wall. 

 

Edited by MemphisMechanic
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Relaxing your body is overrated. It's achieved cliche status at this point as far as I'm concerned.

 

What you see in top tier shooters is extremely high skill in the fundamentals of USPSA that have been forged in countless hours of work. Whenever you feel like you've hit a plateau, go back to the basics and start over with the fundamentals. Focus on executing the common skills uncommonly well. 

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1 hour ago, MemphisMechanic said:

How often do you live fire classifier-type speed shoots? An El Prez, Can You Count, etc?

 

I find running that kind of thing over and over REALLY helpful to learn to go fast without rushing.

 

Second is to push hard to get even faster.  When you back off to 90% of that speed, which would be your current flat-out speed, you can do it more loosely. That’s the pace you want to shoot matches at; never balls => wall. 

 

I live fire the stand and shoot stuff  enough that my classifiers have greatly improved and I'm moving up on that end of things but just looking through videos my movement during a field course looks very choppy and sloppy.

25 minutes ago, Jake Di Vita said:

Relaxing your body is overrated. It's achieved cliche status at this point as far as I'm concerned.

 

What you see in top tier shooters is extremely high skill in the fundamentals of USPSA that have been forged in countless hours of work. Whenever you feel like you've hit a plateau, go back to the basics and start over with the fundamentals. Focus on executing the common skills uncommonly well. 

So what basics of movement should I go back to? The drawing and reloading basics aren't what you're referring to is it?

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The fundamentals of USPSA. Grip, stance, shot calling, presentation to target, draw, reload, enter position, leave position, shooting on the move, etc. There is no secret sauce. Become so good at the basic stuff that it draws the attention of people watching you. Make all of your movement crisp and clean....that means no extra motion beyond what is required to get the job done and executing the skills in a consistent way. An example of this is getting the same grip everytime or calling every shot at the match consistently. Improving movement in USPSA is mostly about shooting earlier when you come into position and leaving a position at the earliest moment possible after your last shot. Shooting on the move is mostly about training to maintain stability of the gun independent of what your lower body is doing. It's easy to summarize in a paragraph but in reality what I just said requires thousands of hours of work.

 

The answer of how to get better is almost always go back to the basics.

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@Jake Di Vita that is what I think I needed to hear. I've got to figure out ways to mix up my training some more and work on all of that to get to the next level. When training by yourself,(which is what I have to do most of the time) how do you go about trying to develop a technique for entering quickly and smoothly and leaving quickly and smoothly? Do you video yourself or just try your best to self evaluate by body feel? This is the part of the game that I haven't gotten knee deep into yet and I want to try and make this part of my training as efficient as possible in order to make the most gains. For example in dry fire last night I set up a few arrays around the house and practiced drawing on those different arrays and then moving to the others, constantly varying what I was doing but there isn't a standard for that sort of thing, so how do you know that you're practicing it correctly?

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Picture a big jacked dude in the gym warming up with weights that other guys cant even lift once... He's capable of more, and that warm up is just business as usual.

 

He's done that particular movement, and supporting exercises thousands of times over to get to the point where it looks as easy as it does. At one point, he probably struggled with that weight, too.

 

Ability comes through hard work and experience. As said, there's no secret sauce. 

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It's really odd that I have just now figured out after two years shooting USPSA and idpa that you can get a pretty good ways while absolutely sucking at moving through and navigating a stage, but once you reach that point and realize it then you're thinking oh sh** what do I do now. 

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1 hour ago, Dhudgins525 said:

When training by yourself,(which is what I have to do most of the time) how do you go about trying to develop a technique for entering quickly and smoothly and leaving quickly and smoothly? Do you video yourself or just try your best to self evaluate by body feel?

 

Video is good.  Watching video of great shooters is good too and then comparing yourself.  Good drills to work on movement for me are box to box drills.  An array of targets with 4 boxes setup in a square.  Your giving yourself a very specific place to go so working with the timer can show you what is working and what is not.  Like Jake said, the key is doing things sooner.  Is your gun up coming into position? How soon can you start shooting into the next position?  What things can you do with your body to stabilize your sights so you can shoot sooner depending on shot difficulty?  How soon can you start to leave a position based on target difficulty?  I would start with wide open targets and work on shooting sooner and leaving sooner.  Remember that trying to fix accuracy/speed/movement all at the same time is not really efficient.  Work on one thing at a time.   

 

1 hour ago, Dhudgins525 said:

so how do you know that you're practicing it correctly?

 

That is THE question right?  Use video.  Compare yourself to others.  Use the timer.  When you feel you have reached a plateau thats when I look for external help.  Take a class or setup a practice session with someone thats better than you.  Even if they are not better than you at everything, someone watching and commenting on what they see can be very valuable.  It is possible for someone to offer you insights that may not can accomplish the task themselves.  I have guys at our local matches that will ask me to do a quick review of each of their stage runs that squad with me.  Im sure there are those that you shoot with that would do the same.  

 

You can also create a range diary here and get some feedback on your videos. 

Edited by CrashDodson
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1 hour ago, Dhudgins525 said:

When training by yourself,(which is what I have to do most of the time) how do you go about trying to develop a technique for entering quickly and smoothly and leaving quickly and smoothly?

 

I train by myself almost exclusively as well. Videoing yourself is absolutely a useful tool. Through the years I've developed my proprioception to a pretty decent level so I have a really good idea of what my body is doing even just by feel. Diagnosing video of yourself where you compare what you thought you were doing with what the video shows you did is a great way for building the connection between feel and reality. Anderson's call it and leave it drill is really good for entering and leaving positions. It's probably worth buying his 3rd book Get to Work just for that drill alone. There's a lot I disagree with Steve about but as far as match mode and his drill call it and leave it, I think he's absolutely dead on and the value of those two things is more than worth the price of admission.

 

1 hour ago, Dhudgins525 said:

For example in dry fire last night I set up a few arrays around the house and practiced drawing on those different arrays and then moving to the others, constantly varying what I was doing but there isn't a standard for that sort of thing, so how do you know that you're practicing it correctly?

 

Very good question. The correct method for entering is the method that enables you to fire an accurate shot at the earliest possible moment. Vice versa the correct method for leaving is the one that gets you moving out of position as soon as possible after or while firing the final shots in the position. The methods I prefer is what I learned from Max and Travis in the only class I've ever taken. Here is a video of him explaining it. Generally it is preferable to keep a consistent level as opposed to standing up when you arrive into position. It is also a good idea to keep the gun high during movement for many reasons. A par time can be a useful gauge of progress in dryfire and driving that par time down can be valuable for getting you to move or fire sooner (faster).

 

You must be your own harshest critic.

Edited by Jake Di Vita
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@CrashDodson and @Jake Di Vita wow guys that's alot of great info! I think it's gonna take a couple of times reading through it to really grasp all the knowledge. Thank you and I'm gonna start putting some to use tonight. I think I'm gonna try to setup a dry fire array that is something I can setup again later and get a baseline and then break it down and work each piece individually and then go back and setup the whole thing and see if I've made any progress after a few training sessions. May even try to setup the camera and get some videos. I guess I'm about to break the no running in the house rule that we constantly get onto the kids for!

Edited by Dhudgins525
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Finding space to do dry fire movement is not easy for most of us.  I used my garage until it got taken over by house remodeling projects.  I also had some 1/3 scale thin metal targets made that I use in the back yard for dry fire. 

 

For some, including myself, its easier to do a documented dry fire program than just making up stuff on your own.  There are many dry fire resources out there if you don't already have some.  I mix and match with drills from Anderson and Stoeger mostly.  A structured program works best for my personality.  Its also good at times to dry fire a random array that you create in your match mode.  Calling every shot and making up "bad" shots.  Its easy to start cheating yourself in dry fire when really pushing par times.  But the speed that can be gained from doing so is also of value.  

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@CrashDodson that is sort of in reference to Anderson's speed mode training, right? I try my best to be sure I'm calling shots even in dry fire or at least knowing when they weren't good enough but I find myself over aiming the gun, that's the best way to convey it that I can come up with it right now. The gun isn't showing up on target when I snap my eyes to next target most of the time but I've caught myself paying more attention lately and realizing that I am following the dot in the corner of my eye so now that I'm somewhat aware of the problem I'm working on trying to break that bad habit. @benos I definitely feel like most of the time I am pushing and rushing. Could you explain a little further as to why that is detrimental. Does it induce tension and strain?I've got your book and read it shortly after getting it and I need to read it again since the first time I read it I don't think I had been shooting long enough to truly understand all the knowledge and wisdom in it.

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I think its a similar line of thinking to andersons speed mode/match mode.  In "speed mode" you are pushing for speed gains, while still paying attention to your sights.  If your shots are less than ideal, thats ok, as long as you know they were less than ideal.  The idea is you cant learn to go fast without trying to go fast.  When pushing speeds your shots are going to get sloppy, but the focus is on realizing how fast you can go and pushing those limits.  His "match mode" training is where you will be calling every shot and making up anything that you should be making up in a match.  You would be shooting based on what your seeing vs balls out speed.  This is the shooting you would take to a match, shooting as fast as you can acquire acceptable sight pictures for the given target distance and difficulty and calling the shots. 

 

I think the point of aim stuff, the bringing the gun exactly to where you are looking will come with time/reps.  Are you having that trouble from the draw also or just in target transitions?  When doing target transitions try using your legs more than your upper body to drive the gun to where you are looking.  Over swinging the target could be due to trying to muscle the gun over with your upper body tank turret style.   

 

As @Jake Di Vita can explain much better than me on body mechanics, tension is not a bad thing.  When trying hard you are going to be tense, there is no way around it.  I think having tension in your body allows for the motions to be more repeatable.  My definition of rushing with regards to shooting and moving would be crashing into positions, choppy movements and having to make a lot of adjustments.  You can also rush the shots because maybe you feel slow when what you need to be doing is getting lower and using what you see to make the shots.  I have a bad habit of breaking the first shot too soon while entering a position by just pointing at the brown thing and letting it rip because it feels faster and then trying to move out of the position before really calling the last shot.  

 

I've watched Max's video Jake linked at least a dozen times.  What has also helped me in my movements is having a good stage plan, having visual references for where you are going to place yourself and looking at where you are going.  For the longest time I was more concerned with eyes on target than where I was going.  You have time to acquire the target/sights as your entering the position in your last step or two, make sure you are looking at where you are going to go, the same way you look at it during your walk through.  When walking the stage/drill don't just be like "going here...pew pew, going here...pew pew, going here", you need to know exactly where you are going to be placing your feet and rehearse it over and over in your mind.  Try doing visualization in your dry fire just like you would on a stage, it helps stop you from just going through the motions and makes a big difference for me.

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I found a couple previous posts on this and tweeked them a bit...

 

At any Steel or IPSC match, my goal was basically the same: To hit each target's maximum scoring area as quickly as possible. 

 

Many subtleties lie in this. On a steel target, this means to hit it as quickly as possible on the first shot. It doesn't necessarily mean, however, to hit the target in the center. Therefore you must learn, at all times, to read the sights accurately enough so you will know, at each instant, where the bullet will land if the gun were to fire. Think about that sentence carefully. Apply this same concept to the A box of an USPSA target.  

 

If you’re the type that tends to apply too much control - meaning you seldom shoot bad or uncalled shots, but feel your times are too slow - carefully analyze the above paragraph and re-evaluate your goals. 

 

Until you realize that your pace should be the result of what you need to see to call the shot, we have the concept of "pushing," which serves to wake you up to the fact that your goals are incorrect. You are not seeing either what or all you need to see, at each moment. When you’ve trained to see “more,” you will no longer be aiming at a target and not be pulling the trigger. 

 

If you’re the type that typically has uncalled misses or uncalled poor hits, again, using the concept of “knowing where the barrel is pointed at all times,” will awaken you to the wisdom of allowing what you are actually seeing to dictate the pace of the action.

 

The cool thing is the same medicine cures both diseases – uninterrupted total seeing - without the desire to shoot faster than you can know what you are seeing.

 

Reduce what you’d like to accomplish to the bare essentials. Ask – What must be done in order to hit a target as quickly as possible? (The goal.) 

 

You must find the target (visually), know the gun is aimed at the target, and hold it there until the shot fires. That’s about it. 

 

Everything will change for you… 

Once you figure out you can shoot A's as fast as you can shoot hits, without ever being in a hurry.

Or, calmly not rushing, you realize that it doesn't take any longer to shoot A's than it does to shoot hits.

When you realize you can shoot as fast as you can possibly shoot, with all A hits, by just shooting from what you are seeing.

Once you know that it doesn't take any longer to draw to a perfect grip and sight picture than it does to draw and start blasting with a sloppy grip.

Once you know for certain that you can call every shot as quickly as you can not have a clue where the shots went.

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@CrashDodson I have gotten pretty good at drawing to an acceptable sight picture and shooting the first array pretty well as in seeing everything and keeping good form and such but once I start moving I relapse into old bad habits. Target transitions are the worst but they're have been times when I "let go" and the gun shows up exactly where I need it to. I just can't do it consistently.  I'm gonna continue working on things as you have suggested trying to push the speed in practice and then using @benos advice and see what I need to see. I usually am pretty good at knowing what target I have a mike on if any and it's usually always when I'm trying to rush through an array and I leave it because it would take to much time to go back but if I can start making them up in more real time that would be great. I had two mikes on a stage this past weekend and neither surprised me due to the fact that I didn't remember seeing ANYTHING sight related on either target for the second shot and both instances were induced by rushing and trying to shoot at a movement level above my skill. I still finished 3rd overall out of 54 but was 11 seconds behind a GM PCC shooter. I left alot of points on the table with 3 mikes though. No d's and shot 91% of the available match points. My shot calling is getting better and my accuracy is getting better because of better shot calling but now I've gotta learn how to move through the stages more fluently, smoothly, and quickly while maintaining accuracy. From what I'm gathering though in my practice I just need to worry about the speed in order to accomplish my goal of getting faster and then go to the match and let my eyes dictate the shooting speed and my subconscious training dictate my movement, correct?

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For most guys,  going clickclickclickclickclickclick at the same cadence every time while trying to get the gun cleanly across 3 A zones... That is their procedure in dyfire.

 

Given Brian’s post, wouldn’t it make more sense to run the sights across the three targets and “click” each time you see them in the A zone, and ONLY when you see them in the A zone?

 

It’s what you want to do in a match, after all. His whole point is that both of these approaches can be done in the same amount of time, they just have very different results.

 

;) 

Edited by MemphisMechanic
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  • 2 weeks later...
On ‎5‎/‎24‎/‎2018 at 6:07 PM, benos said:

I found a couple previous posts on this and tweeked them a bit...

 

At any Steel or IPSC match, my goal was basically the same: To hit each target's maximum scoring area as quickly as possible. 

 

Many subtleties lie in this. On a steel target, this means to hit it as quickly as possible on the first shot. It doesn't necessarily mean, however, to hit the target in the center. Therefore you must learn, at all times, to read the sights accurately enough so you will know, at each instant, where the bullet will land if the gun were to fire. Think about that sentence carefully. Apply this same concept to the A box of an USPSA target.  

 

If you’re the type that tends to apply too much control - meaning you seldom shoot bad or uncalled shots, but feel your times are too slow - carefully analyze the above paragraph and re-evaluate your goals. 

 

Until you realize that your pace should be the result of what you need to see to call the shot, we have the concept of "pushing," which serves to wake you up to the fact that your goals are incorrect. You are not seeing either what or all you need to see, at each moment. When you’ve trained to see “more,” you will no longer be aiming at a target and not be pulling the trigger. 

 

If you’re the type that typically has uncalled misses or uncalled poor hits, again, using the concept of “knowing where the barrel is pointed at all times,” will awaken you to the wisdom of allowing what you are actually seeing to dictate the pace of the action.

 

The cool thing is the same medicine cures both diseases – uninterrupted total seeing - without the desire to shoot faster than you can know what you are seeing.

 

Reduce what you’d like to accomplish to the bare essentials. Ask – What must be done in order to hit a target as quickly as possible? (The goal.) 

 

You must find the target (visually), know the gun is aimed at the target, and hold it there until the shot fires. That’s about it. 

 

Everything will change for you… 

Once you figure out you can shoot A's as fast as you can shoot hits, without ever being in a hurry.

Or, calmly not rushing, you realize that it doesn't take any longer to shoot A's than it does to shoot hits.

When you realize you can shoot as fast as you can possibly shoot, with all A hits, by just shooting from what you are seeing.

Once you know that it doesn't take any longer to draw to a perfect grip and sight picture than it does to draw and start blasting with a sloppy grip.

Once you know for certain that you can call every shot as quickly as you can not have a clue where the shots went.

There is a connection with knowing this and being able to do this. To do this, you have to break the habit of not doing this.  I'm not trying to sound like a fortune cookie here! 

 

I know what benos is saying here is 100%! Making this automatic is the next step for me. 

 

 

Edited by B_RAD
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