my personal addendum to Anderson's dryfire drills

[rvb]

Here is a tidbit I recently discovered that has helped my dryfire practicing (and as a result my match performance).

We are all familiar with Steve Anderson's Refinement and Repetition. For most of the drills Steve suggests doing a certain number of reps above your "baseline," so many reps at your baseline, and a few below that baseline. I've been following that recipe for probably 18 months and it works very well. But lately I was stagnant. I hadn't even opened my book in months as I knew for most of the drills (including some of my own drills) what my baseline is. But I stopped seeing an improvement in my comfortable baseline, I stopped taking notes cause nothing was changing.

I realized I was suffering from "timer trauma." ... Too hell bent on TIME. I was very tense. I was just trying too damn hard. This began bleeding over into my matches as I could just FEEL the tension in my arms and shoulders and belly at the "standby!" command. I decided I needed to forget about time and "learn" to relax.

Here is the technique I thought might help:

After I've completed a dryfire drill, including after "pushing" myself by going below my baseline, I do another 3-5 reps AT my baseline, or even a couple tenths over. In other words, after going faster, I go slower. My goal on these reps is pure relaxation and seeing all A's. Actually finishing w/in the baseline time was secondary. I hoped that I could prove to myself that I could hit my baseline times w/o being tense and focusing on speed.

The result??? I found myself waiting on the par buzzer!

I did this for the past two weeks and shot a local match this weekend. It was one of my best performances since idpa nats last year [i didn't go this yr ].

Instead of tanking the classifier stage, I decided I was going to shoot it like an "above baseline" dryfire drill.... Take my time and make my hits. I finally shot another M level classifier which will pull me even closer to Master. Now I have experienced the "feeling" and can carry it better completely through my dryfire session and into matches. And if I lose that feeling I have a technique that works for me to get back to it. My baseline times are getting slashed!

One final tidbit, The CED7000 timer is great w/ it's repeat par time function, but I didn't realize how IT was rushing me. Give yourself plenty of time between repeated beeps so you don't feel rushed to get set for the next repetition!

I would be interested to hear feedback on this.

I realize that a "speed focus" is not a new problem, but I don't recall hearing a specific dry-fire technique to help cure it. So I hope my learning helps someone.

-rvb

Edited October 7, 2008 by rvb

[Flexmoney]

Brian has posted a drill that he and TGO used to do. They called out their time goal before they shot a drill. The kicker was that they were to get as close to the goal as possible...without going faster the the goal.

[rvb]

Brian has posted a drill that he and TGO used to do. They called out their time goal before they shot a drill. The kicker was that they were to get as close to the goal as possible...without going faster the the goal.

Funny you mention that... I was just re-reading that section of his book tonight about 2 hours ago.

A little different it seems, but subtly so. He talks about intuitively pausing on the last shot to make the time if he was faster than expected on the earlier shots.

My goal was not the baseline par time but to shoot w/o the tension and to see where I ended up relative to the par time. I was pleasantly surprised when I beat it. But I dogear'd that page so I'd remember the drill next time I go to the range. (although by now just about EVERY page is dog ear'd, so it doesn't really help any more to find what I'm looking for!).

-rvb