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I just shot my first real USPSA match, but I'm a little confused


wdfwguy

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w, you are scored based on the number of points you score per second.  So speed is essential.  Here is an example.  A friend shot a 32 round stage and scored all As, but took 30 seconds to do so.  Another competitor simply blazed away and shot all Cs and Ds, but only took 13.6 seconds.  His hit factor was higher than my friends.

 

Right now you are consciously aiming every shot.  With time you will learn to let your subconscious do the aiming, at least on the closer targets.  That is hugely faster.  Say it takes you a second to aim and fire your second shot.  That is 16 seconds you are giving up on a 32 round stage.  If you get your splits down to .2 seconds, you  only give up 3.2 seconds.   That 12.8 second difference is huge.

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If you work on your vision, you can shoot As just as fast as you can shoot Cs. You have to work on both accuracy and speed. If you just hose targets, that might work at your local match but at bigger matches, those at the top shot both fast and accurate. So work on both accuracy and speed. On close up 5 yard and in you need to hammer those targets and you need to get As. You need to know where to put on brakes and where you can speed up to get acceptable shots. You should strive to shoot 95% As on a stage. That means on a short or medium course dropping only 1 to 2 Cs, in a larger field course maybe 4 Cs. shooting minor when the power factor is the same for everyone, you need both accuracy and speed. You don’t need to give up accuracy to be fast. 

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1 hour ago, GunBugBit said:

If you can, set up real classifier stages in live fire sessions, shoot them on the clock and calculate your hit factors.  This will advise your match shooting as to the speed-accuracy balance.  I find the balance to be somewhat delicate.  I can't just blast away or I'll get too many penalties with some 0.0 hit factors, which is obviously no good!  And I can't take the time to be more precise than necessary, that'll be too slow.  The sweet spot is not all that easy to find.  It takes plenty of match experience and smart practice to know how to find it consistently.

 

Be precise when you're shooting at high-disaster factor clusters, and hose them when they're close and the disaster factor is low. 

 

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for.  Great idea, I could set up a small stage of some kind and run it at different speeds and see which get me the highest hit factor.   I could also remember how it's setup and use it to track progress.

 

Thanks!

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11 minutes ago, SCTaylor said:

 

Says the Open/Limited GM! Major PF certainly changes the game for scoring.

 

Ha, no doubt. 

I've shot CO at my last two Majors though. 

 

But seriously, I don't want to discount the need for points.  ALWAYS try and shoot the most points you can.... just don't let your stage times suffer because of it. 

Edited by Ssanders224
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8 minutes ago, wdfwguy said:

 

Thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for.  Great idea, I could set up a small stage of some kind and run it at different speeds and see which get me the highest hit factor.   I could also remember how it's setup and use it to track progress.

 

Thanks!

 

Setup a standard classifier. El Prez or Front Sight are two good ones. And those are pretty setup to run any of the standard drills afterwards.

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2 hours ago, HoMiE said:

If you work on your vision, you can shoot As just as fast as you can shoot Cs. You have to work on both accuracy and speed. If you just hose targets, that might work at your local match but at bigger matches, those at the top shot both fast and accurate. So work on both accuracy and speed. On close up 5 yard and in you need to hammer those targets and you need to get As. You need to know where to put on brakes and where you can speed up to get acceptable shots. You should strive to shoot 95% As on a stage. That means on a short or medium course dropping only 1 to 2 Cs, in a larger field course maybe 4 Cs. shooting minor when the power factor is the same for everyone, you need both accuracy and speed. You don’t need to give up accuracy to be fast. 

Good advice here.  IMHO the development of vision skills is as important as pure shooting skills if you want to make it into the top 85%.  Unfortunately it’s difficult to explain exactly what that means— it’s one of things where you’ll work on everything else a ton and then one day a lightbulb clicks, you’ll suddenly you get it, and it will feel like you’re staring from the beginning all over again, lol.  My advice is to work on.seeing the sights, seeing the sights, and seeing the sights AS you practice awareness of how speed affects the movement of those sights.  That’s what you can do on your own in dryfire and live fire practice. When at matches, really make it a goal to squad with M’s and GM’s and watch how they plan their stages snd move through them. A phrase you might hear them say is “move fast, shoot slow” and be confused because they seem to be shooting fast too. The fact is that they ate seeing fast, which makes it feel to them like they are shooting slow.  This cones from practice.  

Edited by jkrispies
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58 minutes ago, jkrispies said:

Good advice here.  IMHO the development of vision skills is as important as pure shooting skills if you want to make it into the top 85%.  Unfortunately it’s difficult to explain exactly what that means— it’s one of things where you’ll work on everything else a ton and then one day a lightbulb clicks, you’ll suddenly you get it, and it will feel like you’re staring from the beginning all over again, lol.  My advice is to work on.seeing the sights, seeing the sights, and seeing the sights AS you practice awareness of how speed affects the movement of those sights.  That’s what you can do on your own in dryfire and live fire practice. When at matches, really make it a goal to squad with M’s and GM’s and watch how they plan their stages snd move through them. A phrase you might hear them say is “move fast, shoot slow” and be confused because they seem to be shooting fast too. The fact is that they ate seeing fast, which makes it feel to them like they are shooting slow.  This cones from practice.  

A better phrase would be “move fast, shoot as fast as the target distance and presentation appear”. Knowing how fast you can shoot can only be acquired as you practice and put that into your skills bank. 

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HF is points per second. On high HF stages a C or 2 won’t kill you if shooting major. Minor you’re loosing 40% of the
points. In minor consider a D as a no penalty miss. You lose 80% of the points. The lower the hit factor is on a stage the more As you need and you need to make up any Ds and possibly Cs. In practice I work for 95% As at speed and no Ds.


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No it doesn't.


Please explain. The math tells the truth. Yes, Major wants to shoot as many A’s as possible but will tolerate plans with many more C possibilities than Minor plans.


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17 hours ago, Hi-Power Jack said:

...

Either way, you need to :   1.  shoot as quickly as the sights are on the acceptable target, and

                                              2.  do everything else as quickly as possible.

 

Most of us try to shoot Very Fast (and miss) and do everything else slowly and deliberately.

 

The concept of running fast with a loaded gun in your hand does NOT come naturally to most

of us civilized folk   ….

 

Yep.

Shooting blindingly fast As doesn't help you do well if you do the non-shooting things slowly: draw, reload, move. When you need to move, MOVE.

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Anyone can shoot fast, but not everyone can see fast. And low splits are not the answer, fast transitions are. That's why Dalton and Fishcman invented the Steel Challenge to get everyone tuned up for IPSC back in 1981. 

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3 hours ago, SCTaylor said:

 


Please explain. The math tells the truth. Yes, Major wants to shoot as many A’s as possible but will tolerate plans with many more C possibilities than Minor plans.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

 

I wouldn't say that really.  Shooting C's still looses you stages shooting Major sometimes.  I've never approached any stage thinking "Ok, I can afford to drop X number of charlies".  

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Getting into the weeds... but my point is on certain targets or positions, major shoots will accept two C's as the overall speed is of higher importance than picking up 2 points.  

 

Or I could be completely wrong. I've been shooting for 2 years and still B class.

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I understand that I want to be faster at drawing, moving, reloading, transitions, etc

 

And, obviously, I want to shoot faster as well.  But, at my current level of skill...

 

I could shoot 95% As.  Although it would be too slow to get the optimum outcome.  I could also shoot as fast as possible (at my current level of skill) and get fewer As.  But I imagine my highest HF is somewhere in the middle.  I guess that's the heart of my question, finding that optimum balance of speed and accuracy at my current level of skill.  And then work in practice to be faster.

 

As GunBug suggested, I think it's a matter of setting up targets and shooting at different speeds and find the balance of speed and sight picture produces the highest HF.

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Learn to accept what is an acceptable sight picture for each shot attempted, and let that drive your "shooting" pace" (trigger time, splits). That pace may improve as you work on "seeing". Then do everything else as fast as safely possible  (movement, transitions, setting up in a shooting position, opening doors, etc. 

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43 minutes ago, wdfwguy said:

I understand that I want to be faster at drawing, moving, reloading, transitions, etc

If you just got started in practical shooting and want to get better...go take a training class. I spent way more in ammo than it costs to take a 2 day instruction class that takes you over the fundamentals. 

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6 hours ago, HoMiE said:

If you just got started in practical shooting and want to get better...go take a training class. I spent way more in ammo than it costs to take a 2 day instruction class that takes you over the fundamentals. 

 

I'm watching for something in my area.  It looks like Steve Anderson might be doing a class nearby in a couple of months.

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57 minutes ago, wdfwguy said:

 

I'm watching for something in my area.  It looks like Steve Anderson might be doing a class nearby in a couple of months.

Where are you located? If you have an established Grand Master in your area ask if they will do a training session with you. 

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1 hour ago, wdfwguy said:

 

I'm watching for something in my area.  It looks like Steve Anderson might be doing a class nearby in a couple of months.

 

Shoot some matches between now and then so you learn enough about the sport to be an attentive student, but by all means, take that class.

 

As for the rest...

 

(A class Production junkie here)

 

To shoot nothing but A’s, you’re probably shooting withing a 3 to 4 inch “group” on that target. By which I mean, if you were to continue engaging each target with 4 or 5 more shots, that’s the size of the group you would shoot.

 

To shoot production well, I’ll use Ben Stoger’s term: think “All A’s and close C’s”. If you were to shoot more agressively and shoot a ten inch group on each target, the majority of your shots would still land in the A zone. Most of them. You’d sometimes have one land an inch into the C. But you’d be massively faster. That pays off.

 

Next: What killed you wasn’t your shooting speed. It was your everything else speed. Have someone video you and them film the best guy on your squad too. Watch how much faster he gets to the next array after finishing off the last target. His draw. His reloads. That’s 80% of what is eating your lunch right now. Shooting slow is only 20%.

 

Back to the shooting part: hit factor is nothing more than points per second. You need to shortest time with best hits to win that stage.

 

The hit factor is different for each stage. A lot of close wide open targets with no long sprints between positions? El Prez is a good example. The winning hit factor is very high, over 10. That means being fast is more important than being accurate. My last Master classifier score was ona stage like this, and I had 3 C’s and a B. 25% of my hits weren’t A’s. But it was very smooth and fast.

 

Stages with lower hit factors? Around 2 to 5 or so, on those getting all A’s and only 1 or 2 C’s is very important.

 

 

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I shot a couple of USPA matches locally and an Action Pistol, all fun but I am taking a class in a couple of weeks. This seems like the best approach for me instead of wasting ammo trying to learn.

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48 minutes ago, Kilrb said:

  instead of wasting ammo trying to learn.

 

AMEN    :surprise:

 

Before I found BE Forums, I used to "practice"   -   all wrong - kept doing

the same mistakes over and over.     Very Little progress.

 

Buy some good books, get a lesson - then learn how to learn.    ?

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Getting into the weeds... but my point is on certain targets or positions, major shoots will accept two C's as the overall speed is of higher importance than picking up 2 points.  
 
Or I could be completely wrong. I've been shooting for 2 years and still B class.
 
What? I'd love an explanation to that statement.
It doesn't matter what division you shoot. You always should shoot as many alphas as possible as quickly as possible. If you aren't shooting 93+% of the points regardless of division you are doing it wrong.
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