Tips for improvement (M to GM)

[Production_shooter]

I primarily shoot IPSC, but there are a few mini steel matches every year in my country where I always participate. 

Last mini match (4 stages), I almost made GM in CO, with 94%.

I had too many make-up shots on pendulum, and my draw on fast stages like roundabout might have been a little slow (I think I may have been quick to draw, but then spending ~0.2s to confirm the sight picture before firing). I was using my normal IPSC loads (133-134PF), but I am planning to make some reduced loads for steel challenge. 

 

I want to improve my steel challenge skills, and am looking for tips and ideas on how to do this. Most of my training will be dry firing. I do have access to a range for live-fire, but it is too small to setup full steel challenge stages (not wide enough). 

 

My current ideas for dry fire:

Draw:

• Work on draw speed on big open targets, to hopefully reduce the draw time ("speed mode"). 
• Work on draw to difficult target, to train the dot showing up exactly where I want it ("match mode"), after hopefully obtaining more speed from the first speed mode drill. 

 

Transitions:

• Set up a downscaled steel challenge stage to practice in dryfire. This way the specific transitions can be trained 
• Probably do some runs in "speed mode" to quicken up the movements, then switch back to "match mode" to ensure proper sight picture on each target. 

 

How did you make it into GM territory? and improved further from there? 

Edited August 30 by Production_shooter
typo

[Darqusoull13]

Shoot Steel Banners were by far my most cost effective and most efficient training for SCSA and it wasn't even close. SCSA is almost entirely about repetition at the M to GM phase.

How To: 

For every division write down the peak time, then divide that by 4 to get individual runs. You'll need to dry fire 0.1-0.2 FASTER than the 100% time to hit GM (95%) in matches consistently. For reference, PCCO/RFRO I'll usually hit 100% these days and when I dry fire SCSA I'll be in the 110-120% range. 

For CO, write down your draw on each stage. Subtract that from the Peak/4 time. That's what you actually have to shoot the targets in. You'll see that the draw is low hanging fruit coming down from a 1.5s draw to even a 1.1-1.2s draw when you multiply out 0.4-0.3 x 4. 

From there, it's as easy as 15 minutes a day, no more than 2 stages a week dry fire. Again, focus on low hanging fruit. If you've got an 80% RAB and a 94% OL, practice RAB. 

Live fire is almost required to ensure your dry fire is effective. When I was pushing for a top 10 at WSSC I was live firing no less than twice a week with at least 1 being dedicated, focused practice. Some weeks I had 2 SCSA matches plus practice. 

 

Grant said he live fired every day but that's the difference between top 10 and world records. 

[Renno]

I wrote this a few years ago when I was around 110%GM in my divisions. This covers the strategies I used and I built off of for the last few years, having never practiced live fire on any stages outside of matches.

 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yf3uV8sK0d5EXKoqDHWNpb-bEESYwYE9aJQCeOi2XKw/edit?usp=drivesdk

 

When I began shooting match times that were 100% or higher, I was focusing on shooting clean rather than making speed the priority. I think a trap many shooters fall into is trying to prioritize a time rather than naturally working up to that point. I wasn't trying to shoot for a certain speed, but rather I was shooting it in a very repeatable manner and speed came from practicing that process. 

 

While you practice, you are subconsciously developing a formula/process to execute that allows you to make one transition at a time. You're not trying to memorize a stage pattern. This is especially important if you don't have access to practice real stages outside of a match.

 

Jesse Misco, Brad Jeffers and I also cover some information to flesh out the process in their podcast found here: 

 

https://on.soundcloud.com/3zXw3W6gkh6HRPLk9

Edited August 30 by Renno

[Production_shooter]

Thanks for the detailed replies 

 

I can see that the written guide on training methods is slightly different than the methods I use for IPSC. Except for the match performance, which in IPSC, I would describe as only shooting as fast as your vision permits, which is probably the same as 90-95% performance. 

 

For training though, I would have thought to also include some "speed mode" repetitions, where I turn the par time down to train my vision for the increased speed. Of course, increasing the speed also initially means not seeing the sights properly or inaccurate transitions. Then, after having gained some speed, I would increase the par time slightly, to allow proper transitions and sight pictures. 

 

I have previously been very focused on getting good repetitions in dry fire, more than building speed/training my vision. I have recently realized though, that sometimes going aggressively in dry fire to build speed and improve vision, can be quite beneficial. 

 

Very interesting point about not memorizing stage patterns. I would have thought that building up some muscle memory would be good, but on the other hand I am certain that my previous match performance was solely due to my overall transition skills from IPSC. 

 

I was thinking to setup a different dry-fire stage each day, but perhaps it is better to do multiple days in a row on each stage instead? 

[Renno]

If you are shooting as fast as you can process your fundamentals like finding the target, processing a good sight picture and calling the shot, you're already shooting as fast as you can perform with high reliability. You can push faster than that and exceed your consistent ability by sacrificing fundamentals like not quite calling the shot or not fully processing the information you're seeing. This will result in a wider performance window where your bad strings are much worse, and your good strings are much better. The problem is that practice is mostly about developing an understanding of what you are doing so that it can be repeated on command. Shooting faster than you can process in practice is like watching a movie on fast forward and trying to replicatr the script after. Yeah you may have got to the end faster but you didn't get all the information out of it. Now if you go to write out the script from memory, you're going to be missing a lot of the finer points that you needed to observe in order to recreate it.

 

Shooting faster to test your limits is a good idea, but it should only be a smaller portion of your practice routine. If you're shooting faster than normal and missing but still processing everything, that's not a bad thing. If I'm going fast and hitting only 80% of my shots, thats okay as long as I'm calling my shots for what they truely are and seeing everything I need too. That way I can make corrective action and the practice is useful. What becomes bad is when you're going faster and failing to process everything. If I'm only hitting 80% of my shots and I didn't see a thing, then I'm just building bad habits. You don't have any information to work off of to build a repeatable model. You're just adding more imprints on your subconscious that dilute the good imprints.

 

It's better to get faster at doing it perfectly than to sort through a mess of sloppy reps. It makes you a more reliable competitor in higher stress settings, builds confidence that you can simply rely on your foundational skills rather than risk to meet your goals, and preserves the self image by reducing the frequency of bombed matches.

 

Sports psychologists believe that optimal training is 5 or 6 days a week. Having a break or two is important to preventing burnout and stopping bad habits before they cement themselves. This is because we remember the things we do right longer than we remember the things we did wrong. And usually we forget bad habits faster than our skill decays. I like to do 3 days on, one day off. And I make sure to put two days on prior to a match when I'm able too. It also helps to have multiple days put together. If I can only practice two days a week, it would be optimal to put them back to back so that my improvements can compound. If I have a good day on Monday, I should go again on Tuesday and try to cement in what I learned and use the confidence from my success on Monday to propel my practice on Tuesday.

 

The benefit to practicing official stages is that you can know what you can get away with ahead of time. Like I know I can usually shoot plate 2 of roundabout without making a complete stop based on previous experience making that transition. Or little things like "man plate 3 on speed option is really hard for me, I need to take that swing a little more careful next time." You develop that benchmark within like 5 matches and that's where the benefits really end. When I run a good stage, it's not the result of memorizing the motions to shoot the plates. It's about repeating one simple process over and over: a transition. I put my eyes on the next target, I put the sight between my eye and the target, I call the shot, shoot, and repeat. If you try to memorize the motions to shoot a stage as one process, it's too complicated to be repeatable. Plus if it held any water, you would still fail at the first match where the staff mismeasured the plates. SCSA allows 2" of variance and level 1 doesn't require a laser leveled, it'll catch you fast.

Edited August 30 by Renno

[Renno]

I usually set dry fire targets up kinda random. More horizontal than vertical because SCSA is mostly horizontal transitions. Then I do practice matches where I dry fire all 8 stages and just try to minimize makeup shots on the clock. The time isn't important but it simulates the pressure pretty well. A good match will have like 2 or three makeups on the clock, 6 clean stages. A meh match is like 4 clean stages, 4 makeups. 

 

Then live fire once a week or so to confirm my shot calling is correct. I set up 10" and 12" plates at about 25-30yd and practice transitioning between them and calling the hits.

[Matt1911]

I don’t have access to a full set of steel targets or the room to put it at my local range which is more of a lane type as opposed to bays I can use, so this is what I set up to practice live fire. 
It’s butcher paper behind paper plates to get a good contrast of color and simulate the white painted steel targets. 
Having only 3 targets, I make up random order sequences to shoot 5 and I can set different distances etc. 
It helped me make M from struggling to get out of mid A 

[Production_shooter]

On 8/30/2024 at 9:25 PM, Renno said:

 Then I do practice matches where I dry fire all 8 stages and just try to minimize makeup shots on the clock. 

 

Thanks for the very detailed replies, I really appreciate it. I will try to focus on quality reps in dry fire.

 

When you dry fire, do you pull the trigger as well? Normally when I dry fire for IPSC, I rarely use the trigger. For steel challenge though, I feel that using the trigger helps me focus to get an appropriate sight picture on each plate before I "fire".  

[rooster]

I made dry fire targets by buying the plastic corrugated panels from Amazon. I actually made exact stages in my back yard and dry fired almost daily. Dry firing greatly helps with technique and gun handling, but it only takes you so far. My dry fire times were always faster than live fire. I always seemed to make the par times, but at matches I was always at least a tenth slower. So if your not hitting GM times at matches and dry firing a lot it’s live fire that will take you there.

[Cuz]

Glad I found this, lots of good info. I ave to take the time to go through it all, but don’t want to forget about it. 
Thanks for providing it. 

[Renno]

I pull the trigger when I dry fire. On my rimfire guns I put a small chamber flag in and let the bolt rest against it. That way the trigger goes all the way to the back but does not drop the hammer. It also keeps the weight distribution the same. On centerfire guns I rack the slide every time and break the trigger pull on the last shot so my timer picks it up on max sensitivity. I kinda pretend to pull the trigger on the first 4 shots by pressing it up to the wall but not breaking it.

 

I made weighted magazines by removing the followers from old bodies and filling it with metal BBs and hot glue to simulate loaded weight/balance in a safe manner for dry fire as well.

Edited September 3 by Renno