Can You "back-up" Your Draw-hit Times?

[rimfire]

Our draw times necessarily include our reaction-time, the time it takes our brains to notice that the timer has "beeped" and to initiate our draw-stroke. That time runs about .20 second for most of us (on good days, with good focus, anyways! :-) So, if we "jump", anticipating the beep of the timer, we can "remove" some or all of our reaction-time from the time posted by our electronic shooting timers.

This "jumping" is especially likely to happen if we don't regularly reprogram the "random start" feature of our timers. We become "used to" the 3 second (or whatever) delay we've programed into our timers.

In the sport of Western Fast Draw, if you post a "record" draw and hit time, you get the next 3 tries to "back up" your "record". If you can't post a time that comes within .03 second of your "record", it is just assumed that you "jumped" the timer-beep.

What matters, or should matter, to us is what draw and hit times we can post upon demand, not what we once achieved, with luck. In my experience, the best guide to what we can expect to deliver (under match pressure) is what we can average for 10 tries, in practice, "cold", with no warmup draws or shooting whatsoever. No, we don't get to "throw out" our worst times, fumbles, etc, either. We take them all, warts and all, and work with what is, not what we wish was the case.

[BSeevers]

That's an old TGO ism that I have followed in my personal training. He once said You can do an .8X draw, the difference between us is I can do 10 in a row, on demand. Now I can too.

Getting grooved in on a target and doing a .68 or.59 once is fun but the other stuff is what translates into real match winning skills

Edited June 19, 2006 by BSeevers

[Genghis]

No, no, no! Can't admit that my .79 draw was a fluke! Although my times when warmed up were around 1.0 - 1.1.