CHA-LEE Posted May 3, 2011 Share Posted May 3, 2011 Chris> What is your default aiming point on an open target? Default aiming point on open targets is generally about dead-center, to about 2/3rds of the way up. Why do you ask? On the stage where you are shooting partials and open targets you can really see a shooting speed difference and aiming point difference between the target types. If you change your default aiming point to upper portion of the lower A zone, then all of the partials effectively disappear. If you are always aiming at the "A" in the lower A zone a lot of the partials end up blocking or severely limiting the ability to shoot at this point of the target. Since most hard cover or no shoot partials block from the letter "A" in the lower A zone and below, if you raise your default aiming point to the upper portion of the lower A zone on all targets you never have to "Decide" to aim higher on partials. Any time you have to "Decide" to do something during a stage run it wastes time. So eliminate the decision process by changing your default aiming point. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Keen Posted May 3, 2011 Author Share Posted May 3, 2011 Sounds great. Thanks, I'll give it a try. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DonovanM Posted May 3, 2011 Share Posted May 3, 2011 Chris> What is your default aiming point on an open target? Default aiming point on open targets is generally about dead-center, to about 2/3rds of the way up. Why do you ask? On the stage where you are shooting partials and open targets you can really see a shooting speed difference and aiming point difference between the target types. If you change your default aiming point to upper portion of the lower A zone, then all of the partials effectively disappear. If you are always aiming at the "A" in the lower A zone a lot of the partials end up blocking or severely limiting the ability to shoot at this point of the target. Since most hard cover or no shoot partials block from the letter "A" in the lower A zone and below, if you raise your default aiming point to the upper portion of the lower A zone on all targets you never have to "Decide" to aim higher on partials. Any time you have to "Decide" to do something during a stage run it wastes time. So eliminate the decision process by changing your default aiming point. Wouldn't that slow you down on every single other target though, because you only have half of the available scoring area if you only aimed for the upper half? The distance side to side would obviously stay the same, but especially up would be severely restricted. That might be a good plan for someone shooting Major but I don't think it's the best idea for Minor, where a C hit is a much bigger deal. I guess it's one of those things you have to decide for yourself through some live fire practice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris iliff Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 (edited) I remember ROing Vogel a few years back at The Indiana State. It was the infamous brick wall back up stage. What I'll always remember was his hits were so close to each other and at the top portion of the A zone. I think he won Production Edited May 4, 2011 by fourtrax Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 Chris> What is your default aiming point on an open target? Default aiming point on open targets is generally about dead-center, to about 2/3rds of the way up. Why do you ask? On the stage where you are shooting partials and open targets you can really see a shooting speed difference and aiming point difference between the target types. If you change your default aiming point to upper portion of the lower A zone, then all of the partials effectively disappear. If you are always aiming at the "A" in the lower A zone a lot of the partials end up blocking or severely limiting the ability to shoot at this point of the target. Since most hard cover or no shoot partials block from the letter "A" in the lower A zone and below, if you raise your default aiming point to the upper portion of the lower A zone on all targets you never have to "Decide" to aim higher on partials. Any time you have to "Decide" to do something during a stage run it wastes time. So eliminate the decision process by changing your default aiming point. Wouldn't that slow you down on every single other target though, because you only have half of the available scoring area if you only aimed for the upper half? The distance side to side would obviously stay the same, but especially up would be severely restricted. That might be a good plan for someone shooting Major but I don't think it's the best idea for Minor, where a C hit is a much bigger deal. I guess it's one of those things you have to decide for yourself through some live fire practice. Its all about what you are choosing to aim at. If you aim at the upper portion of the lower A zone its actually more of a "Buffer" than you think. Most of the time when your shots deviate from where you intended them to go they go low. If you are aiming at the upper portion of the lower A zone you have a BOAT LOAD of A zone to work with if your shots go low. The point I was trying to make here was to eliminate the need to transition to a different aiming point on the target when shooting fully open targets or hard cover/no shoot blocked targets where the majority of the lower A zone is blocked. More transitions = more wasted time. You may still need to take some extra time to fire accurate shots on partial targets, but you eliminate the need to point and aim at a different part of the target. I always aim for the upper portion of the lower A zone and it does not slow me down one bit. It has also rewarded me with more A zone hits with low shots verses low C zone hits if I was aiming for the middle of the A zone. Sure some hits go high and hit the upper C zone, but the vast majority of the time the less than optimal hits still end up being A's due to aiming higher in the A zone. The problem with most people is that they don't even have a specific aiming point on the target. They see their gun indexed on "Brown" and shoot. The age old adage of "aim small, miss small" still applies, even when shooting fast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Keen Posted May 4, 2011 Author Share Posted May 4, 2011 You're so very right CHA-LEE. I tried it a little bit last night in dryfire, and I found out IT'S HARD TO CHANGE your index, or natural point of aim. I guess I've been aiming dead center for so long that it's ingrained itself in my subconscious. What I did was put a white paster in the upper portion of the lower A-Zone, and I found I had to force myself over & over to actually get the dot to cover that white paster. It kept going back to the center of the A-Zone. But I like the idea, and I'm gonna keep working on it in dryfire. It can only get better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corey Posted May 4, 2011 Share Posted May 4, 2011 The paster idea is what I have done as well. I think it helps, plus it gives me a smaller aiming point to shoot for. I think you'll like it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris iliff Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 I'm trying to get to Keen's level and now I have to aim at white pasters!?? CHA-LEE, kindly refrain from helping him, you are making my training more difficult....... Wait, that's a good thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Keen Posted May 5, 2011 Author Share Posted May 5, 2011 Chris, I've always put little white pasters on my targets ...... used to be 2 pasters vertical ...... now it's only 1 paster, and I simply moved it up a few inches. Aim small miss small. I recently squadded with a GM in open who said he only practices on partial targets. Doesn't even waste his time with open targets. Makes good sense to me too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris iliff Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 Yep, good sense!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corey Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 That makes me feel better about my training too! All of my dryfire target are either painted hardcover or have no shoots in front of them. And im using 1/3 scale targets. I can dryfire like a M/GM, now I just gotta shoot like one Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 5, 2011 Share Posted May 5, 2011 You have probably heard me say this before, but I am not a fan of putting artificial aiming aids on targets, such as white/black marks, X’s, or other things. I have never had much luck with doing this and have it translate well to shooting targets without these aiming aids. Calling your shots is all about seeing and processing a sight picture. This is 100% visual repetition training. If you repeatedly train your subconscious to locate a white paster on the target so you can aim at it and shoot it then you are arming your subconscious to incorporate looking for the white paster as the aiming point and shot calling verification visual queue. Then when you go to a match and don’t see the white paster on the targets your subconscious is left without a key ingredient in knowing what to aim at or validate the called shot. I have had significant trouble with using artificial aiming aids in both dry and live fire practice. I think its always best to practice with what you “Race” with. Practice on what you expect to see and experience in a match. You need to know where to aim on the target without training wheels to guide you to the right place. Practice smart and reap the rewards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Keen Posted May 5, 2011 Author Share Posted May 5, 2011 (edited) My motto is "Everything, in moderation." In other words a little experimentation is fine. It's all about learning. I have heard Flex say over and over "Pick a spot to focus on when you're aiming at a target." That was hard for me to do until I started using the pasters as index points in my dry-fire. In practice, and at many matches, I used to aim at "brown". Oh sure, I aimed at the A-Zone, but I was aiming at the whole A-Zone. This made me rather sloppy to say the least, and I believe finding a subconscious "aiming spot" or focal spot helped me find my accuracy. Now fast forward back to my dry fire, and after you mentioned raising my focal point, I discovered that I had a hard time forcing myself to aim higher, even though I had the white paster right there in front of me ..... I finally just had to force myself to look at the white paster. So I'd say my focal point is ingrained itself in my subconscious without the need to look for little white pasters at a match. But theoretically, I agree 110%. Edited May 5, 2011 by Chris Keen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 6, 2011 Share Posted May 6, 2011 Chris> You will get it figured out. I can only offer what my experiences have been with the learning process. Everyone learns differently so I don't think there is ever a universal best way to learn anything. The important thing is to know yourself so YOU know what YOU need to do in order to learn or relearn something. If putting pasters on the targets is what you need to relearn then by all means do it Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChrisW Posted May 6, 2011 Share Posted May 6, 2011 The video quality on the new camera is really nice. I talked my wife and mom into getting me one for my b-day. It will be here next week. What resolution are you using and do you need to compress the videos at all? I was thinking about mounting mine on top my head like Micah does but I don't know if it would still get a hat in the picture or not. Chris Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Keen Posted May 7, 2011 Author Share Posted May 7, 2011 Chris> You will get it figured out. I can only offer what my experiences have been with the learning process. Everyone learns differently so I don't think there is ever a universal best way to learn anything. The important thing is to know yourself so YOU know what YOU need to do in order to learn or relearn something. If putting pasters on the targets is what you need to relearn then by all means do it Thanks Charlie. I will. But I'm always open to new ideas either way, and I do appreciate your thougts and ideas. Keep em coming. The video quality on the new camera is really nice. I talked my wife and mom into getting me one for my b-day. It will be here next week. What resolution are you using and do you need to compress the videos at all? I was thinking about mounting mine on top my head like Micah does but I don't know if it would still get a hat in the picture or not. Chris The video quality is outstanding. 1080p, but my PC wont handle that much video memory, so I'm stuck taking everythign in 720HD. Works great. But if you put it on top of your head your're guaranteed to get the brim of the hat into the vid. Just buy one, and figure out where to put it later. Thats what I did. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Keen Posted May 8, 2011 Author Share Posted May 8, 2011 (edited) Had a fantastic match today at Circleville. Shot my first stage of the day with only 1 extra shot on steel, and pretty much burned it down. This was a funky little stage that Micah designed, and somehow incorporated 5 MOVERS, triggered by 4 activators. 1 of which activated both a swinger & a drop turner simultaneously, which I tried to push and almost got all my hits on the movers. I based my plan on the fact that the drop turner was a disappearing target, so I figured if I didn't get all my hits on that target, I would just keep right on moving thru the stage, and it kinda worked out (I did get 1 of the 2 hits). Had 2 alpha on the swingers! The rest of the day was cake after smoking that stage. I think I only had 2 more makeup shots on steel the rest of the day, and there was alot of steel. 12 + 10 + 4 + 3 = 29 steel for the whole match. I shot penalty free and really felt good about my increased speed. I think trying to push myself is really paying off now. Only 2 weeks left until the Ohio State match. Giddy up! Edited May 8, 2011 by Chris Keen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OpenDot Posted May 8, 2011 Share Posted May 8, 2011 Great shooting Chris!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adrian_Sorah Posted May 8, 2011 Share Posted May 8, 2011 Nice shooting, first one looked like a fun stage!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sean Gaines Posted May 8, 2011 Share Posted May 8, 2011 Good shooting chris! couple things I saw. One mag seems to hang up when you hit the mag release, check that mag out, and see if it needs a little polishing. on your turn and draw, the first one, you are doing a little fishing. I guess thats what happens comming from limited. Also there is no "Power custom USA" LOL Other than that looking good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Torogi Posted May 8, 2011 Share Posted May 8, 2011 Nice shooting Chris.. I have to wait for that "Power custom USA" thing. lol. How'd you get that on the first place? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Keen Posted May 8, 2011 Author Share Posted May 8, 2011 Well, thats the problem. I pulled a copy of that "credits" video off the Rudy Project group forum, and I don't know how to edit it. I've been in a bit of a steep learning curve since I ditched Microsoft Movie Maker, for the more powerful AVS Editor. It's a MUCH better program, but I'm still having trouble figuring out how to do simple things, like fade in & fade out. LOL It seems so easy at first, but it's really complicated once you get going. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Keen Posted May 8, 2011 Author Share Posted May 8, 2011 Good shooting chris! couple things I saw. One mag seems to hang up when you hit the mag release, check that mag out, and see if it needs a little polishing. on your turn and draw, the first one, you are doing a little fishing. I guess thats what happens comming from limited. Also there is no "Power custom USA" LOL Other than that looking good! Yup, I felt sloppy on my turn and draw there. Vogel shot it in 2.20 with a Glock, & I was 2.60 with a dot. That says I need to work on my turn & draw. And I agree that I probably need to polish my mags again. Did it at the beginning of the season, but maybe it's time. And I'm still working on getting the bugs worked out of my video editing. I've switched over to a new program, but I'm still learning. I have no idea how guys like Jordan do that picture in picture stuff with the head-cam, so I just did a little back and forth action instead. Not sure I like it, but thats all I got for now. LOL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chris Keen Posted May 10, 2011 Author Share Posted May 10, 2011 Shot a nice little indoor match tonite at Miamisburg, and had plenty of time so we decided to re-shoot, making it almost 150 rounds of groovy practice with my open blaster. Shot clean, but was mad at myself for having 3 Deltas. I understand the cost of going faster, and will never confuse the trade off of accuracy vs. speed, but I still think at that distance (< 15 yrds.) I should be alot more accurate no matter how fast I shoot. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted May 10, 2011 Share Posted May 10, 2011 Are you calling the shots good but ending up with D's? or are you calling D's and simply accepting them due to the shooting speed? Your path to correction is vastly different depending on what the answer is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Create an account or sign in to comment
You need to be a member in order to leave a comment
Create an account
Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!
Register a new accountSign in
Already have an account? Sign in here.
Sign In Now