breaking through a plateau

[mark dye]

I just returned from the Area 6 match. I am disappointed with the results. I turned in a very average performance for my current ability. I shot reasonably consistently (only 5 D's, one miss, and one no-shoot for 12 stages). The miss was on a difficult weak hand standards, the no shoot was a piece of steel with a no-shoot behind it. I have reached a point in my shooting where it is necessary to make some changes in order to break out of a rut. In the last few years, I have spent the majority of my training time developing my shot calling and consistency. It has served me pretty well, and has gotten me to an average Master classification. I can now comfortably deliver a competent Master class level performance on demand (ususally!). What I am now lacking is the speed to compete with better M's and top GM's. For years, friends have told me that I needed to be more agressive, and that I needed to speed up. I am now believing that they are right!

Obviously, I need to practice breaking out of my current "comfort zone" by pushing the limits of my speed. How can I do this without feeling "out of control" all the time? One thing that I am planning is to spend a little time shooting a dot. I have always been an iron sight shooter, and am just now beginning to see the value of shooting a dot in relation to overall shooting ability.

I would love to hear others chime in on their methods of pushing the speed envelope.

Mark Dye

[Micah]

It has been my experience that plateaus hit when we have squeezed all that we can out of the current training that we do. Be best ways to break through these barriers is to train using new methods.

One thing that I have done that has made a dramatic improvement in my shooting is adding two barricades to my dryfire training. They are 22ft apart, and with them, I am able to do box-to-box, barricade-to-barricade, low/high to high/low port, shooting on the move drills among many others. All classes of shooter can benefit (but upper level shooters achieve) being ready to shoot the instant they enter a new shooting position. Doing such drills will teach you to move quickly and efficiently from different shooting positions and make you aware of the time that is wasted setting up in each position. Work the snot out of that, and you will see your times drop dramatically.

[Jake Di Vita]

You need to be pushing the ragged edge in practice. This is called threshold training.

[XRe]

I agree with both posts above, for starters. If you're in a practice rut, change it. If you're not pushing to the point of the wheels falling off in practice, you're not pushing, and therefore likely not improving (much).

One of the misnomers about this is that you can't improve "speed". You can't "get faster". What you can do is improve your "target transition speed", and you can "get faster at movement when not shooting", etc. You can improve discrete skills, not a nebulous, all encompassing quality of the shooting as a whole (that comes from improving the parts). Identify your weakest areas and attack them. If speed is truly the issue - speed at what? Draw? Reload? Shooting on the move? Movement (without shooting)? Position entry and exit (probably the biggest spot to make up time for most folks)? Indexing between targets? Hitting difficult/tight shots? Take a harsh, honest look at the state of your game, pick out the weakest areas, and starting chipping away at them. "Speed" will improve dramatically as a result.

If you have video, folks would probably be willing to make specific recommendations...

[shooterbenedetto]

I agree with both posts above, for starters. If you're in a practice rut, change it. If you're not pushing to the point of the wheels falling off in practice, you're not pushing, and therefore likely not improving (much).

One of the misnomers about this is that you can't improve "speed". You can't "get faster". What you can do is improve your "target transition speed", and you can "get faster at movement when not shooting", etc. You can improve discrete skills, not a nebulous, all encompassing quality of the shooting as a whole (that comes from improving the parts). Identify your weakest areas and attack them. If speed is truly the issue - speed at what? Draw? Reload? Shooting on the move? Movement (without shooting)? Position entry and exit (probably the biggest spot to make up time for most folks)? Indexing between targets? Hitting difficult/tight shots? Take a harsh, honest look at the state of your game, pick out the weakest areas, and starting chipping away at them. "Speed" will improve dramatically as a result.

If you have video, folks would probably be willing to make specific recommendations...

+ 1 speed is reached when you have molded the TECHNIQUE in movement. Do you lack in movement? or the shooting part?

taking a video of yourself and dissecting it is the best. REMEMBER not all stage design are meant for speed! some just require to

get to the shooting part and shoot all smoothly, but other stages require you to run and gun!

There is also a give and take...more speed will suffer in accuracy. I'm lucky to shoot with many GM's and the difference

is usually in transitions and sometimes movement or footwork on a difficult shot?

[Duane Thomas]

I truly, deeply believe that most people actually have a much higher skill level than they realize, or will allow themselves to access. As a Master class shooter, you ALREADY have the skill level necessary to shoot at the level you want. You just don't trust yourself enough to regularly execute at that level. The way you learn to shoot fast is to shoot fast. Make it your goal that in your training sessions for, say, the next two months you are going to run the gun as fast as you can run it. Clear your mind, don't try to control the gun, just put it out there, watch the sights as a detached observer, and let it rip. On every run. See what happens.

Give yourself credit for the good hits, let the misses go. All too often we focus on what we did wrong, not on what we did right. I've been very bad in this regard myself for years, I'm only now getting on top of this. What will we reinforce as our habit? What we focus on the most. When you've done something right, focus on that. Example: you just did a sub-five second El Prez with ten As, one C and a D. Don't beat yourself up about the C and the D. That's gone, it didn't happen. I mean, truly, forget it happened. It's not important. Focus on what you did right. Focus on the great raw time, tell yourself, "I was AWESOME on those tens As." Focusing on the negative can poison your shooting by undermining your self-trust.

There's a story told about Jack Nicklaus (and if I have a few of the particulars wrong here, this is certainly the gist). At the height of his career, Jack Nicklaus was making a speech to a group of average golfers, and one of the things he said was, "I have never missed a putt within five yards in tournament play." Afterward when he was standing around talking to people, one of the attendees said to him, "You know, that's not true. I was watching you on TV last week at the US Open, and you missed a putt at four yards." Nicklaus looked at him and calmly repeated, "I have never missed a putt within five yards in tournament play." Later the duffer golfer was raving to a friend about how Nicklaus was living in denial, that he wasn't remembering facts straight, etc. The friend asked him, "What's your handicap?" The other guy said, "Twenty." The friend said, "So....you've got a twenty handicap and he's the greatest golfer who's ever lived. And you're saying he's doing it wrong?"

Great shooters - almost all great athletes in any endeavor - enjoy their capabilities. They GLORY in their capabilities. Pat yourself on the back for what you did right. Literally, pat yourself on the back for the good stuff. When you've done something right, when it all just clicked, physically reach around with your hand and pat yourself on the back, say out loud, "That was GREAT. You ROCKED." Okay, maybe you won't do that when other people are around, but when you're alone and practicing? Hell, yeah! This improvement in mental attitude and self image will have an immense effect on your performance level.

Run the gun as fast as you can. What you'll find is that, in the overall scheme of things, it takes so long to pull the trigger, even when you're running balls-out, that you can do all kinds of things while you're waiting on the next shot. You can track the sights, you can transition the gun. Literally you're always waiting on the gun. Just take off the brakes, let yourself run free. You'll find in short order you can execute at a FAR higher level than you currently believe, if you just let yourself.

[bkeeler]

+1

This is exactly what I have started to do.

Thanks Duane!

BK

[little_kahuna]

I truly, deeply believe that most people actually have a much higher skill level than they realize, or will allow themselves to access. As a Master class shooter, you ALREADY have the skill level necessary to shoot at the level you want. You just don't trust yourself enough to regularly execute at that level.

+1

Awesome statement, Duane.

I have suffered from this, and I AM overcoming it. *self-image builder*

I started at the other end of the spectrum, (going fast, becoming accurate) and I think that no matter how you start, you still have to learn the other side. I know that I needed to psychologically release myself from what I was used to. I had to completely step OUT of my comfort zone. It took most/all of my will power to forget the "go fast" attitude (or "forget about the time" attitude, for you). Use various drills (as mentioned above) as well as others (Steve Anderson's books etc.) to practice in a way that feels different from the norm. Push yourself. I know that going from accurate to "fast" feels WAY out of control, like your just speeding through. When I go too fast, and I recognize it, i can tell that i'm lowering my standard of "acceptable sight picture" and it may feel like this to a severe degree for you since you seem to shoot very accurately. If you want to go "faster" (in various meanings) be prepared to completely disregard your developed comfort zone/intuition/instinct. You must not only release yourself of expecations consciously, but also in your unconcious conditioning. When i was working solely on accuracy, i literally had to STOP, empty my mind of all expectations/feelings/conditioning, go to my natural/developed index (which i'm assuming you have since youre an M), find the sights/target, and proceed with the skill i'm working on (Accuracy, or transition speed or w/e).

Anyway!, sorry for such a long post. JMHO lol.

Hope it doesnt confuze you too bad

[Duane Thomas]

+1

This is exactly what I have started to do.

Thanks Duane!

+1

Awesome statement, Duane.

Thanks, guys.

[pjb45]

I have spent the past few months working on accuracy. It has shown positive results.

Yesterday, after I did my normal routines. I worked on transitions. The basic Matt Burkett drill, two targets about 10 yrds apart, about 15yds away. Draw, 2 shots, transition 2 shots, back and forth until the mag was empty.

First run the draw was 1.3, splits were .24-.29 and transitions .34+. As Matt has said, "Go Faster"

Next run, the draw 1.09, splits in the high teens and transitions in .29 range,

Last four runs: draw <1.04, splits .16-.18 and transitions in .22 range.

Pushing the limit, helped, I needed to stop swinging my shoulders, just the gun. That brought some transitions down. Seeing the green fiber on brown and firing,helped a lot. Firing when the sight settled and not waiting. The strange part was the trigger, I was faster pulling finger completely off the trigger.

I tried to put Duane's advice into an action plan. It seemed to work.

[boz1911]

Mark, I feel you're pain. I too turned in a lackluster performance at Area 6. The posts in this thread are outstanding. I didn't feel that I shot all that bad nor did I make a lot of mistakes, so I had to sit down and evauate where the weakness were that cost me points. After some thought I had to conclude that movement was one problem and the other was swinging the gun from left to right during transitions incorrectly. I have now set up my practice to primarily address these issues. I set up a short course where I draw and run as fast as possible engaging targets. This is sorta what Jake is talking about, shooting at the very edge or beyond. I also set up a little stage where slowing down and entering a shooting position correctly is the goal. Tomorrow we have a match where I'm thinking about really pushing it as hard as possible just to see where I'm really at.

Thanks Duane for a fresh outlook post.

[Duane Thomas]

Yer welcome.

I know that going from accurate to "fast" feels WAY out of control, like your just speeding through.

Not necessarily. I believe that once your shooting hits a certain level you are capable of firing at a MUCH higher rate of speed than most people realize, and still see the sights, still feel in control, for every shot.

I'll give you an example. As I was ramping up my skill level on the way to shooting a Master score on the IDPA classifier, I looked at my times, and my points, and realized I was too slow, and too inaccurate (hey, there's a great insight, I know no one ever had that one before ), that at the speed I was shooting, I needed to drop, essentially, no points or I just wasn't going to make it. I tried improving the accuracy while retaining the same speed. Nope. All that did was make me slow, and the accuracy didn't improve nearly enough - usually not at all, actually.

Okay, that didn't work. Let's approach the problem from the opposite direction. So I said to myself, "Push the speed, see what happens." I found that without all the fiddle-farting around, and obsessing about accuracy, not only did my speed improve greatly but so did my accuracy. Like, stages on which I normally dropped 10 or 15 points, suddenly I was dropping one or two points. There's something to be said for shooting so fast your conscious mind doesn't have time to interfere, that all you really have time for is putting the gun out in front of your face, pulling the trigger as fast as possible, and watching the sights.

NOTE: I'm not saying, "Shoot fast, don't worry about accuracy." In order to make "Just put the gun in front of your face, pull the trigger as fast as possible, and watch the sights" work, you have to have a really good index and trigger control. You'll find, when the gun comes up on target with the sights perfectly aligned, when the sights naturally return to alignment between shots, when your trigger pulls don't interfere with the gun returning to index after a shot....it's actually really easy to see the sights because they're always right there where they're supposed to be. Try just shooting fast without that strong base, on the other hand....

[JasonC]

Thanks for the posts, I am also working through this. I have found that my biggest hurdle is not the willingness to push in practice but the willingness to look worse in the short term in order to improve over the long term. Ego, what a pita.

[boz1911]

It has been my experience that plateaus hit when we have squeezed all that we can out of the current training that we do. Be best ways to break through these barriers is to train using new methods.

One thing that I have done that has made a dramatic improvement in my shooting is adding two barricades to my dryfire training. They are 22ft apart, and with them, I am able to do box-to-box, barricade-to-barricade, low/high to high/low port, shooting on the move drills among many others. All classes of shooter can benefit (but upper level shooters achieve) being ready to shoot the instant they enter a new shooting position. Doing such drills will teach you to move quickly and efficiently from different shooting positions and make you aware of the time that is wasted setting up in each position. Work the snot out of that, and you will see your times drop dramatically.

Thanks PB.

Been working on this skill hard lately but mainly box to box. After watching some recent video I realize it's working. What I haven't been doing though is putting all that I've learned into matches. I think this Sunday I'm really going to focus on being ready to shoot the "instant" I arrive at a shooting spot.