Go for all Alphas in matches, until speed catches up later?

[Flexmoney]

You won't hear me talking about going faster or slow depending on if you are getting 90-95% of the points/Alphas.

Because...that is a speed focus. (fast or slow)

I regard that as some of the worst advice I ever received.

I don't equate that with pushing the edge or not...that is different. Pushing is fine, but the focus needs to be in the proper place. How about pushing the vision?

Every time we get one of these threads, we all chime in without whatever we think is helpful. What we ought to do is suggest the shooter get the timer out and go shoot 20 Bill Drills at 8y and record each and every split and hit. Then, we'd have something real to go off of.

[Dan Burwell]

An analogy: a really great race car driver is going to hit every turn perfectly 95+% of the time, and about 5-% of the time his tires are going to get just a bit squirrelly.

I bet you ask the race driver if is goal is 95% he will answer a big Hell no, his goal is 100%.

that’s him pushing the limits in order to find exactly where that golden line between control and loss of it lies. Without the driver dabbling in his version of our C Zone, he’d never know where his limit stands and he’d go too slow to win the race.

The driver is not very likely to push the line in a race, just as we shouldn't in a match. Practice is where you push the limits and find out where they lie. The match or race is where we demonstrate our current skill set.

[warpspeed]

For me, it is not nearly as important to get 90+% of the points as it is to not get any penalties.

Mikes & NS will ruin everything. So I shoot as fast as I can w/o any of those. Oddly, when I do, the points seem to follow.

Edited June 1, 2009 by warpspeed

[Jake Di Vita]

For me, it is not nearly as important to get 90+% of the points as it is to not get any penalties.

Mikes & NS will ruin everything. So I shoot as fast as I can w/o any of those. Oddly, when I do, the points seem to follow.

And if you shoot only as fast as you can hit the target, chances are no penalties will oddly follow.

[UW Mitch]

Lots of great advice here that's helping me think about my own shooting. Jake's advice is along the lines of my short mantra to myself - I go for the fastest A I can get. When I walk through the stage, if the shots are placed absolutely perfectly in the center of the top half of the A, where I like to aim, in a nice tight group, I know I slowed down too much. If I get Cs or Ds I know I rushed it. For me the learning has been WHEN to go quickly and when to slow down (depending on movement, distance, hardcover, no shoots, tilted or moving targets etc). I've also found that at my level (C in almost everything) the transition between targets and movement is where I can benefit the most over just having fast splits. Eventually I'll string these all together. Thanks for thought provoking discussion.

~Mitch

[Chris iliff]

It's hard to understand (speed focus) and I find myself lapsing at times. Try asking yourself what is the most effecient way. I don't like to even use the words fast/slow when talking about shooting, but sometimes I do lapse. I don't know how to explain what Flex is saying any clearer, and that is frustrating. S. Anderson summed it up best in my opinion by saying, " Shoot "A's" at your natural speed". Practice balls to the wall and go and shoot A's in the matches. Sooner or later it will come together for you. Good luck, and um, err, Godspeed?

[benos]

Those type of techniques support being efficient and accurate at the same time. Pitting accuracy against speed is mental thing. You end up seeing too much, or too little.

From my experience, even when you "slow down for accuracy" you still end up seeing too little.

Right.

Slowing down, speeding up, or even shooting for all A's may not be good goals. The most important thing is to learn to see - learn what you need to see to call each shot as you fire it.

Then you'll develop both accuracy and speed equally.

You want to shoot A's. All the top dogs do, quickly. But if you spend too much of your attention "trying to shoot all A's," you won't have any attention left to "see what you need to see."

Another slant - instead of trying to "stop the sights and shoot an A every time," learn what you have to see so you can fire the shot at the earliest opportunity you have to shoot an A, for each shot.

Whatever you need to see to do that will vary with the targets's difficulty level.

Maybe spend a day experimenting with that with 3 targets, one at 5 yards, one at 15 yards, and one at 25 yards. Draw and shoot them close to far for a while, then shoot them far to close.

be