How to convince myself to go faster?

[waktasz]

We had a long field course today, 160 total points. I shot it in 23 seconds only down 5 points I think. I'm a C class shooter. Another A class guy went after me and shot it fairly sloppily, definitely worse hits than me on every target. He shot it in 20 something seconds. Just from some quick math looks like he beat me on this stage anyway.

How do you guys force yourself to go faster? I'm sure if I could have dropped the 3 seconds if I went out and blasted the few very close targets and settled for a few C's. How do you figure out when to go fast and take some charlies when it could help you overall?

[Flexmoney]

Faster is best when it comes from efficiency of movement.

[Jake Di Vita]

I'm sure if I could have dropped the 3 seconds if I went out and blasted the few very close targets and settled for a few C's.

You may have beat the A class shooter doing that, but you'll never beat a M or GM if you have to choose.

How do you figure out when to go fast and take some charlies when it could help you overall?

Don't let speed control your game. Shoot each round when your vision tells you that you are going to hit the target. Then work on pushing your vision to work faster but with the same accuracy in practice.

When you are improving, you'll be shooting right on the edge of where you can only call half your shots, when you stay there long enough you'll start seeing more and more accurately assuming you are holding accuracy of your movements in the highest regard. I don't know if that last sentence really makes sense, what do you all think?

[bkeeler]

We had a long field course today, 160 total points. I shot it in 23 seconds only down 5 points I think. I'm a C class shooter. Another A class guy went after me and shot it fairly sloppily, definitely worse hits than me on every target. He shot it in 20 something seconds. Just from some quick math looks like he beat me on this stage anyway.

How do you guys force yourself to go faster? I'm sure if I could have dropped the 3 seconds if I went out and blasted the few very close targets and settled for a few C's. How do you figure out when to go fast and take some charlies when it could help you overall?

Read HERE this might help a little.

BK

[badchad]

Then work on pushing your vision to work faster but with the same accuracy in practice.

What are the best ways to work on that?

[waktasz]

We had a long field course today, 160 total points. I shot it in 23 seconds only down 5 points I think. I'm a C class shooter. Another A class guy went after me and shot it fairly sloppily, definitely worse hits than me on every target. He shot it in 20 something seconds. Just from some quick math looks like he beat me on this stage anyway.

How do you guys force yourself to go faster? I'm sure if I could have dropped the 3 seconds if I went out and blasted the few very close targets and settled for a few C's. How do you figure out when to go fast and take some charlies when it could help you overall?

Read HERE this might help a little.

BK

!!! huh???

That does make sense actually, but it also basically says never to waste a make up shot making up a C trying to get an A, and making up a D is only sometimes worth it.

I started my shooting 'career' in IDPA, and dropping anything outside of the -0 zone is worth making up, since it's worth .5 or 1.5 seconds added to your time and I can make it up faster than that. Maybe I'll try to hose the next match I go to an just see what happens. Maybe my eyes can keep up with it and I'll still get my hits...maybe not...and maybe it will score better anyway. Something else to try, too bad lots of the clubs in my area are taking off for the winter now

Edited November 17, 2008 by ima45dv8
Removed objectionable graphic.

[Jman]

when you stay there long enough you'll start seeing more and more accurately assuming you are holding accuracy of your movements in the highest regard. I don't know if that last sentence really makes sense, what do you all think?

Well it does to me..I think. Call the shot and hold it during the second while simultaneously shifting eyes to the next target. Am I close? The "shift" is slower for me at distance.

Jim

[Jake Di Vita]

What are the best ways to work on that?

You have to be right on the edge during practice. If you are paying attention, you will start being able to read the sights faster out of sheer necessity.

Well it does to me..I think. Call the shot and hold it during the second while simultaneously shifting eyes to the next target. Am I close? The "shift" is slower for me at distance.

In terms of transitions, you're close. But I'm talking in terms of shooting as a whole. Let me put it this way: There has never been a champion racer that hasn't crashed into the wall a couple of times in his career. You can't learn to accurately control your shots at speed, unless you crash and burn once or twice. Striving to be as technically accurate as possible during the crash is what makes you better.

[JThompson]

What are the best ways to work on that?

You have to be right on the edge during practice. If you are paying attention, you will start being able to read the sights faster out of sheer necessity.

Well it does to me..I think. Call the shot and hold it during the second while simultaneously shifting eyes to the next target. Am I close? The "shift" is slower for me at distance.

In terms of transitions, you're close. But I'm talking in terms of shooting as a whole. Let me put it this way: There has never been a champion racer that hasn't crashed into the wall a couple of times in his career. You can't learn to accurately control your shots at speed, unless you crash and burn once or twice. Striving to be as technically accurate as possible during the crash is what makes you better.

I think, Jake is saying you do your crash an burn in practice, so you know where the line is a match. As you get better that line will move as your ability to call increases.

Edited November 17, 2008 by JThompson

[Rocket35]

Most increases in speed or reduced stage times is in the non-shooting stuff anyways, IMHO. Don't outshoot your sights and work on speeding up your movement, transitions, target indexing and gun manipulation.

[Hi-Power Jack]

Nothing wrong with C's if you're shooting major.

If shooting minor, you have to evaluate the

problem with C's - especially if both of us

are C shooters to begin with.

If you're an A shooter (I doubt I'll ever get there)

you might need to step up to more A's to make

the hurdle - but right now, I aim at the A zone,

but am happy to shoot 1/2 C's with a major load.

Jack

[Jake Di Vita]

Don't outshoot your sights and work on speeding up your movement, transitions, target indexing and gun manipulation.

That will make you better at everything but shooting.

I'm not saying that isn't important, but the goal of this sport will always be to put shots on the target as quickly as possible.

Take a shooter with GM class shooting ability and D class movement, chances are he'll still perform reasonably well - but it will also be much easier for him to elevate his movement ability. Take a shooter with D class shooting ability and GM movement ability. It will be much more difficult to get the second shooter to GM performance than the first.

The better you are at the actual act of shooting, the more potential you have to draw from.

[Rocket35]

Jake I think you missed my point. What I mean is not to rush your shots for the sake of speed. The fundamentals of shooting cannot be taken for granted to increase one's speed. One needs to work on seeing quicker. But rushing the shots will be the surest way of crashing and burning. The biggest chunks of improvement will come in the non-shooting stuff I believe.

As in this case- shooter has the ability to shoot well (fundamentally), but is looking for speed. Speeding up the non-shooting stuff will get better results than if he starts taking the shooting part for granted just to reduce stage times.

Edited November 17, 2008 by Rocket35

[Duane Thomas]

You have to be right on the edge during practice. If you are paying attention, you will start being able to read the sights faster out of sheer necessity.

Let me put it this way: There has never been a champion racer that hasn't crashed into the wall a couple of times in his career. You can't learn to accurately control your shots at speed, unless you crash and burn once or twice. Striving to be as technically accurate as possible during the crash is what makes you better.

Jake,

This is a matter I've been giving a lot of thought lately, and I'd like your feedback here. I believe that, in the early stages of skill development, a shooter needs to learn to shoot accurately. The ability to place the shot right where you want it, given all the time in the world to execute your techniques perfectly, is the cornerstone upon which shooting with a combination of accuracy and speed is built. As Angus Hobdell puts it on 3GM (I'm paraphrasing here), shooting fast and accurately is a process of trading accuracy - ultimately refined sight picture and trigger control - for speed. If you have one-hole accuracy potential to start with, then you can trade away a LOT of your refinement for speed. If you don't have that skill to start with, then you have nothing to trade.

So we start by becoming accurate shooters. We need to be able, at a given distance (let's say five yards just for the sake of discussion), if we have all the time in the world, with our gun and ammunition combo, to be able to literally put the bullets through the same hole. But once we have that.....the only way to learn to shoot fast - and stay accurate - is to start shooting fast. We push ourselves beyond the speed at which we can hit well. At first our accuracy goes to hell, we're dropping an immense amount of points, if not missing the entire target on occasion. We're really not seeing what we need to see, because it's all happening out there faster than we're used to picking up.

At this point, the temptation is to slow down and start hitting better again. But this a temptation to be resisted. Because the only way to learn to shoot fast is to shoot fast. As you continue shooting fast, opening yourself up to your visual inputs, in short order you'll find you see more, your vision works faster, and you find you can indeed see what you need to see to aim your shots in that time frame. But the only way you'll ever learn to operate at that speed is to operate at that speed. And if you're an accuracy oriented shooter who really, really wants those points, this is hard to force yourself to do. Hard, hard.

At least that's where my mind is these days.

[Aristotle]

I haven't read the other responses, but as a quick sloppy measure, I usually tell myself. If I shot all A's, but it felt slow, it was probably slow. I can live with say 30% C's and no D's = pushing the envelope. It depends on available points, etc.

That said, as I think may have been said above, the key to shooting faster is to shoot %100 in practice, and %80 at a match. What tends to happen is Adrenaline will get you up the rest of the way. The courses were I actually do really well in, usually feel's slow and boring when I shoot them. Efficiency in movement, managing your shots and mag changes and taking my time to hit the harder shots and hammering the closer shots also decreases your time.

[Duane Thomas]

If I shot all A's, but it felt slow, it was probably slow.

Sometimes if it felt slow it was slow. Sometimes if is felt slow it was really fast.

For me the key seems to be that moment when the shooting is done, and normal perception of time returns. At which point, oftentimes, I'll find myself thinking, "Gah-dayam....that was fast, wasn't it?"

[Aristotle]

lol, Duane.

That's the beauty of video, I get to recall what "really" happened. What I recall in memory, often times is not what happened.

[Jake Di Vita]

As in this case- shooter has the ability to shoot well (fundamentally), but is looking for speed. Speeding up the non-shooting stuff will get better results than if he starts taking the shooting part for granted just to reduce stage times.

Yes but we are not talking about decreasing stage times without increasing shooting ability - that's all well and good but will only get you so far. You can have the best movement skills in the world, but if you can't increase your actual shooting ability, you're pretty much screwed. My post was strictly about shooting ability.

Duane,

That is pretty much how I feel about things right now as well, although I'd wager a lot of the top shooters would disagree with me...

Let me use tanning as an analogy...If you go tan 10 minutes a day for a week, you will get tanner. If you tan 10 minutes per day every week for a year, how much tanner do you get? The answer is little if any. The reason for that is the body adapts to the stresses placed upon it, but it only adapts as much as it required. Once something becomes routine, the body no longer has any need to adapt (read: improve) because it has no need to.

In terms of practice and improving - all gains come from your Central Nervous System (CNS). The best way I've found of improving is simply to push it, but it needs to be with a purpose. For example, I usually recommend devoting the first half of live fire sessions to accuracy oriented practice, and the 2nd half towards pushing it. When pushing it, I want to shoot as fast as I can keep them on the paper - while still making my goal to hit Alphas. This is to only way to stress your CNS to perform faster and more accurately.

What I want you to do is ratchet up the point at which the margins become unacceptable so that it takes more and more horsepower to make you fumble. You won't do that without crashing and missing some targets. This is called threshold training, and it's the most natural thing in the world to do.

When I'm training someone, the first thing I want to do in ingrain proper technique. Then I'll say to you, "Duane, I want you to go faster. No, not sloppy...faster. Faster and less sloppy, I want both." I'm gonna push you, and you'll be really frustrated, but if I don't get you to where you're faltering and I'm seeing form faults, we aren't going hard enough. It's from that faltering that I want to make the correction. I want you to type so fast you miss the keys, then I'm gonna tell you to stop missing the keys. I want you to shoot so fast that you're missing targets, then I'm gonna tell you to stop missing the f***ing targets.

What we're trying to do is correct your technique at the fastest speeds.

"The fastest delivery for given output is along super correct lines of action."

[Jman]

I'm freaking loving this topic.

My track coach recognized my speed early and converted me to sprints instead of the distance races. I struggled and was getting beat regularly be very small margins. Frustrated and pissed, I wanted to quit. My coach made me understand that I lost those races during the first 30 feet. It was very hard for me to perform on the edge of disaster. Leaning to blast out of the blocks is learning how to plow your grill into the cinders. Which I did, a lot. After practicing the start maybe a million times it still felt like crashing but with no impact. Suddenly I was winning and by solid margins.

Jim

[XRe]

You can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs.... Practice is the place to make mistakes. Loud, brash mistakes. If you're not purposefully pushing at least part of the time, you're not making progress (at least, after you've gotten the technical details worked out on the skills). One of my favorite techniques for working on transitions in practice is to commit to a cadence for a particular drill - and then race my trigger finger to get the gun into the A-zone on the next target before the shot goes off. You'd be surprised how fast you can accurately move the gun now, today, if you'd only let yourself

Efficiency is worth its weight in gold. Fast does not feel fast... it feels smooth and flowing (unless you're shooting an 18-20HF field course... then fast feels FAST... ).

[bkeeler]

This reminds me of Control/Abandon.

This is what I have been doing lately in practice. I am pushing hard to get over the hump.

BK

[Flexmoney]

Mostly addressing the shooting aspect...

(I'm paraphrasing here), shooting fast and accurately is a process of trading accuracy - ultimately refined sight picture and trigger control - for speed.

I refuse to accept that.

Faster and less sloppy accurate, I want both.

That's the ticket.

What I see holding shooters back...all too often...is pitting speed against accuracy. It's a mindset of thinking one OR the other.

IMO, the shooter is going to continue to struggle and not reach their potentially with that mindset. For one, they really don't have a clear and defined goal. There is conflict in the basic thinking and direction.

On top of that lack of clarity...the conflict likely leads to "trying". (thus, tension and self-doubt...expectations and self-judgment)

So, how do you get rid of that conflict? Do you just think...speed? Do you just think...accuracy? Nope.

What I suggest is replacing the conflict with a thought...a mindset...that is clear and allowing. Something more fundamental.

IMO, that would be experiencing your shooting. Much of that will come through turning up your vision and noticing more of what there is going on. It's not just vision, however. It's all of our sensory input. It can be noticing how our body is positioned while shooting around a wall and noticing the tension that results....feeling how much grip pressure we are putting into the gun at the moment we break the shot...noticing what we are looking at as we come into a shooting position.

Our type of shooting has lots of stuff going on. It can be easy to overload. I like picking one aspect (whatever aspect is most fundamental...that needs work) and isolating that aspect as the focus of practice and training (and mental visualization).

For general grip and stance work, I like Bill Drills and Burkett timing drills (very similar). Only Alpha hits...even better, I prefer a fist sized group.

For transitions, Brian's transition drill is the bomb.

[benos]

Faster is best when it comes from efficiency of movement.

And efficiency comes from reducing or eliminating "delays."

Search out your shooting skill set and find each place you could be doing something sooner.

Being a natural efficiency freak, this topic is usually in mind, whenever I'm improving anything I'm doing.

When preparing a shot of espresso, to get the grinder turned on as soon as possible, the trick is to get the portafilter in my right hand and my left hand on the grinder's switch, as soon as possible.

It's like a mag change. As soon as the mag change is initiated, the first thing that must happen is that the mag must leave leave the pistol. So you need to figure out how to make that happen as quickly as possible. At the same time, the weak hand must move toward the next mag, so that by the time the mag is out of the pistol and it's positioned to receive the new mag, the new mag is coming right into the mag well.

Or like with transitions, in order to move to the next target as quickly and precisely as possible, the previous shot must be called with certainty.

Or leaving a shooting box - to get moving as soon as possible, again, the last shot must be called with certainty.

be

[Rocket35]

Faster is best when it comes from efficiency of movement.

And efficiency comes from reducing or eliminating "delays."

Search out your shooting skill set and find each place you could be doing something sooner.

Being a natural efficiency freak, this topic is usually in mind, whenever I'm improving anything I'm doing.

When preparing a shot of espresso, to get the grinder turned on as soon as possible, the trick is to get the portafilter in my right hand and my left hand on the grinder's switch, as soon as possible.

It's like a mag change. As soon as the mag change is initiated, the first thing that must happen is that the mag must leave leave the pistol. So you need to figure out how to make that happen as quickly as possible. At the same time, the weak hand must move toward the next mag, so that by the time the mag is out of the pistol and it's positioned to receive the new mag, the new mag is coming right into the mag well.

Or like with transitions, in order to move to the next target as quickly and precisely as possible, the previous shot must be called with certainty.

Or leaving a shooting box - to get moving as soon as possible, again, the last shot must be called with certainty.

be

Yeah- the non-shooting stuff.

[waktasz]

What you guys have been saying about getting outside of your comfort zone is spot on. I've been spending most of my practice time shooting at 20+ yards because I used to be terrible at that. Now I think I've slowed down too much from practicing that and not practicing anything closer recently. I'm going to try doing some things with the 7 yard bill drills to work on speed and trying to see more.