Good benchmark for beginner times?

[Camhabib]

Complete beginner here, coming form the world of skeet shooting. Since I haven't been able to attend my first match yet, I've been doing some dry firing at home, working on both my draw and trigger pull. I have a Mantis X10 that I've been using to improve what I can from home, but I'm having a hard time figuring out what kind of numbers I should be shooting for (pun intended). According to my data, from buzzer to shot fired on target (with hands starting above the head), I'm about 1.9-2 seconds (see bellow). I just picked up the Ben Stoeger book and have been going through it, but I'd love to know how horrible my numbers are compared to others. According to the software, the various times are defined as:

• Grip: time from the start beep to when your hand grips the gun
• Pull: how long it takes you to pull the firearm out of the holster
• Horizontal: time from the pull to when the gun is drawn and rotated to horizontal alignment
• Target: how long it takes you to get on target after getting the gun horizontally
• Shot: time from being on-target to when the shot breaks

[broadside72]

TBH, those times are fine for someone starting out. There are so many other things that eat much more time that you will learn you need to work on.

[Farmer]

Read Ben’s book carefully. He mentions that transitions and stupid mistakes or getting rattled eat more time than your draw/first shot. 

[BoyGlock]

46 minutes ago, Farmer said:

Read Ben’s book carefully. He mentions that transitions and stupid mistakes or getting rattled eat more time than your draw/first shot. 

It also said fast draw is very important as it encompasses other skills in fast shooting like fast correct grip, fast precise index w/ your eyes in multiple targets transitions among others.

Depends in one’s beliefs. But Stupid mistakes and being rattled happens in both fast and slow draws. 

[tdp88]

If you're working on speeding up the draw then don't worry about the trigger pull. Then benchmark is .7 seconds to have the gun on target, I think a good starting goal is 1 second. Use Stoeger's drills and video yourself in slow mo if you can. You'll probably see a lot of delay in your reaction to the buzzer and you're probably wasting time on the grip part of your draw. The entire goal is to have the gun on target with a good grip as fast as possible. Don't get too caught up on what a certain top guy does or doesn't do during their draw, everybody is a little different. 

[shred]

Those times are fine if you've never been to a match.  Work on indexing to targets and getting good trigger presses on them.  There's one, maybe two draws per stage, there's 20, maybe 30 shots and at least half of them are transitions.  Then work on moving place to place safely and smoothly.  Most stages are going to have several to many shooting positions on them.

[rowdyb]

Most people only have a shot timer, so they don't have access to such discreet data about their draw. Most people know their draw time as from the beep to either a sight picture alone or a trigger press as well. In my case 0.70 and 1.00 seconds respectively at 10 yards.

 

In one of Ben's books he mentions 0.40 seconds as a time for getting the gun out of the holster. This I think would be similar to where your "Pull" data is? As far as comparative numbers you have all you need at hand, your own. Don't worry about other numbers, just continually strive to make your own better all the time.

 

Continue to dry fire, get to a match sooner rather than later and then realize the draw is a minor part of your overall training.
 

Edited August 15, 2020 by rowdyb

[Camhabib]

Appreciate the replies so far everyone. I should say that while I realize the draw is a small part of the stage, it’s one of the few things I’ve really been able to practice at home and get some actual metrics on to see if I’m making any progress. I’ve picked up a couple Stoeger books (including the dry fire) and have been doing lots of other exercises, but few others give me numbers to work with to compare my performance. Really looking forward to getting out there though. 

[IHAVEGAS]

If you haven't done it already, using the cell phone to record a practice session is a nice early step. The big kids often look slow because there is no wasted movement, most of us find that we are flapping about initially. 

[AZBeast]

Times are fine and like others have said transitions and reloads are. Critical also.

[GunBugBit]

A super speedy draw isn't necessary to do pretty well in low level matches, but the ability to automatically and reliably have the sights appear in front of your face aligned on the target you're looking at (this is called "the index") is super useful.  Along with that, you want to have your shooting grip set at the time the sights come into alignment.  As Ben Stoeger puts it in Dry Fire Reloaded, use 100% of available support hand grip strength.  And practice until you get the same grip every time.

 

If you are good at those basic elements of starting your stage, and your draw is also very fast, so much the better.  If you are into Steel Challenge in one of the draw-from-holster divisions where your draw time accounts for a big percentage of the time you spend on each string, you might be more keen about speeding up your draw.