Fast or Accurate

[1973]

Is it better to be fast or accurate?

[Duane Thomas]

It is better to be both.

[The_Vigilante]

Duane,

Now tell him how to accomplish both of those!! I know: Dryfire, Dryfire, Dryfire, and so on infinitum. A little practice in between your dry firing would also be helpful.

Edited September 26, 2009 by The_Vigilante

[Duane Thomas]

It's just that the basic question is indicative of the either/or mentality most people have regarding speed and accuracy. For most people, that's a very real choice they have to make. But it's important to realize the eventual goal is to have both - and one of the first and most important steps toward achieving that is to dump the either/or attitude.

[mpolans]

Ideally both. But because the cost of not getting premium hits is so high relative to the extra time it would take for most folks to get two good hits, I would say that accuracy is generally more important than speed in IDPA.

[RobMoore]

Getting a -1 hit cost you .5 seconds. That gets to be a lot if you add them up. Could you have hit the zeroes with less than .5 seconds each extra worth of aiming and trigger press? Probably so. Think about shooting at two different targets. One you get -2, one -0. With a whole second worth of extra time, couldn't you have been 3 inches more accurate with your shots?

The thing about speed vs accuracy is that accuracy you can quantify easily in your head as you go. You know how accurate you're being if you're calling your shots. Do you really know how fast you're going until the time is written down at the end? Its very hard to focus on just going fast and hope your shots are accurate. Its much easier to focus on the accuracy and let the speed take care of itself.

Edited September 26, 2009 by RobMoore

[bkeeler]

Yes fast and accurate. Or as fast as you can be accurate.(Did that make sense?)

BK

[Steve Koski]

1973,

Start out with accuracy, and as your skills improve turn up the speed while maintaining about the same accuracy.

Koski

[MarkCO]

Go as fast as you can accurately shoot. I finished 6th overall in a state match many years ago, 6 points (3 seconds) down total. Maybe I was going a bit slow, but I was always totally in control and calling every shot. I never even looked at the targets after shooting the stages since I knew where all the hits were. After that match, I played around a bit with speed and accuracy balance using one course of fire that I knew well for practice. I found that when I increased speed 20% my time added due to points down equaled 20%, so it was a wash. Faster resulted in worse scores. At about 15% increase, I could still call the vast majority of my shots, except the under 5 yard hammers, and have over 95% -0 hits, no -3 hits or misses. It was finding my balance where my accuracy suffered due to going to fast that really paid off. I had a SS classification in SSP (130 seconds) about 6 months before that match on my first classifier try. Once I had my balance, I shot the classifier in 94 seconds, skipping EX altogether. That said, I am a great proponent of shooting accurately and then pushing up to that point just before speed hurts your accuracy.

I hope that honest answer helps you out some.

[Taildraggerdave]

You can miss fast enough to win although moving the slider a bit toward the accuracy side is probably better.

Dave

[Duane Thomas]

Start out with accuracy, and as your skills improve turn up the speed while maintaining about the same accuracy.

Honestly, I have not found that approach to work very well. The problem with "start out slow and accurate, then improve your speed" is that you're not learning to shoot accurately at speed because you're not practicing it. I tried that approach for years. I could shoot accurately slow fire but when I turned up the speed the accuracy went out the window. Finally I realized the problem was that I was spending most of my time shooting accurately but (in the overall scheme of things) slowly. I wasn't pushing the speed as much as I could. How are you ever going to get really good at something you never, or very rarely practice? Even when I was firing fast, there was always that control freak part of my mind that just couldn't let go, couldn't just let it happen.

Finally I made the mental leap to "Hey, let's just see what happens if I put the gun out there and shoot as fast possible. Don't worry about the speed, the speed will be whatever I can achieve when I'm shooting balls out. Just sit back, watch the sights, and take care of everything else EXCEPT shooting fast. That part can happen on its own." When I did that, I found that not only did my speed improve immensely, so did my accuracy. I found that I really do have all the time in the world to track the sights, to fire accurately, to transition the gun between targets, even when the gun is firing itself as fast as I can.

Granted this level of performance is tied into opening up your visual inputs and learning to trust your subconscious mind, to have faith that as long your subconscious can see what the sights are doing in recoil it will be able to piece things together, figure out what you did when the sights tracked perfectly, what you did when they didn't, and sort things out, with no conscious effort on your part, into "Hey, that thing I did where the sights tracked perfectly? I should do that every time."

[Duane Thomas]

You can miss fast enough to win

Indeed. It's quite possible, depending on the level of the competition, to drop, say, 30 points during a five or six stage match and, if you're very fast, still win because you've basically outrun everyone. You were so much faster than anyone else that even your dropped points time penalties weren't enough to offset the huge speed advantage.

Of course, that approach works right up until you run into someone who's almost as fast as you but more accurate.

[lugnut]

I'll try to use a quote that I use all the time over and over again.

"Shooting fast requires trading off accuracy for speed.... if you don't have accuracy to begin with you have noting to trade off."

You NEED to be able to shoot accurate... then it's a balance of how fast you can go without dropping more points than you gained by going faster. Easy huh? NOT. It never gets easy. I know equal shooters where one shoots faster but drops more points, the other shoots slower put drops fewer points.

I try to move fast.... I know I am dropping more points that I should sometimes but I KNOW the accuracy and speed will converge wth more training. Plus... I really like fast.... slow isn't as fun!

[MarkCO]

Start out with accuracy, and as your skills improve turn up the speed while maintaining about the same accuracy.

Honestly, I have not found that approach to work very well. The problem with "start out slow and accurate, then improve your speed" is that you're not learning to shoot accurately at speed because you're not practicing it. I tried that approach for years.

Finally I made the mental leap to "Hey, let's just see what happens if I put the gun out there and shoot as fast possible. Don't worry about the speed, the speed will be whatever I can achieve when I'm shooting balls out. Just sit back, watch the sights, and take care of everything else EXCEPT shooting fast. That part can happen on its own." When I did that, I found that not only did my speed improve immensely, so did my accuracy. I found that I really do have all the time in the world to track the sights, to fire accurately, to transition the gun between targets, even when the gun is firing itself as fast as I can.

With all due respect, you agreed with the post you thought you were disagreeing with and acutally made the point. But, the gun really was not "firing itself."

[Duane Thomas]

Ah, I was wondering if someone would catch that wording. "The gun firing itself" is a mental trick, a way of regarding things, that I use to distance myself emotionally from caring about the shooting as it occurs. Just put the gun out there, watch the sights, and let the gun fire itself. Really, when I'm firing my best, it does feel like the gun is firing itself because my conscious mind is not doing the shooting, my subconscious mind is in control and does not impinge onto my conscious mind. And I'm just sitting back, enjoying the dance of the sights, thinking to myself, "Gaaaaah-damn, that gun can shoot good!"

[steel1212]

It is better to be both.

I wanted to answer the question with a simple "yes"

From the AMU guys mouths, "its better to be fast and explosive, we can teach accuracy". Basically figure out what it takes to get through the stage as fast as you can with in the rules. Now if your missing everything you need to slow down but go as fast as you can and get hits. Now figure out what it takes to go that fast and get good hits. When you hits improve push it faster again and repeat.

[Duane Thomas]

With all due respect, you agreed with the post you thought you were disagreeing with and acutally made the point.

With all due respect in return (seriously) , I don't see that.

It has struck me - and this is something I've only really understood in the past few years, and then of course it took me years more to actually find the guts to act on it - that there are two basic ideas among competition shooters when approaching the relationship between speed and accuracy.

Group A is terrified of missing, so they take the approach, "I will learn to shoot accurately first. Then I'll worry about becoming faster once I'm accurate." This is by FAR the most common approach.

Then we have Group B, a much smaller group. Every so often, just occasionally, along comes a shooter who says, "I just want to shoot fast. I'll put some effort into becoming accurate later....as long as I don't have to slow down to do it."

When they're just starting out, our representative Group A shooter may - MAY - beat the Group B shooter. Then again, he may not. But you take those same two shooters a year or two later and pit them against each other, and, granted the Group B shooter has indeed worked to bring their level of accuracy up to the level of their speed, he's going to absolutely walk all over the other guy. Because the Group A shooter still has an either/or attitude toward speed and accuracy; the Group B shooter doesn't, he can do both.

Like I said, I started out a Group A shooter. I wasted immense amounts of time, and I don't mean just on the timer, I mean years of my life, trying the "accurate first, the speed will come" approach. It was only when I made the conscious choice to move over into Group B that I really started seeing major improvement.

Of course, there are the people who decide to shoot "fast" (which in the overall scheme of things is not very fast at all) and they never get accurate either because they've never learned how to shoot. But we don't care about THEM.

[Duane Thomas]

Now if your missing everything you need to slow down but go as fast as you can and get hits. Now figure out what it takes to go that fast and get good hits.

Would you not be able to accomplish that more easily if you actually operated at that level (fast) all the time?

This reminds me of a story Bruce Gray likes to tell about him and Robbie Leatham.

Bruce and Robbie are shooting one day - I can't remember if this is at a personal practice session or a match - and Robbie just blazes through with max speed, posting mostly crappy hits, even a miss or so. Bruce goes through with what he calls "my more deliberate, A-zone hungry technique" and when all is said and done has a better score than Robbie.

Afterward, Bruce decides he's going to give the kid (Robbie is about 20 at the time) some advice. The conversation goes something like this:

BRUCE: You know, you might want to think about what you're trying to accomplish here.

ROBBIE: I know what I'm going to accomplish. I'm going to be world champion.

BRUCE: Not with accuracy like that you're not.

ROBBIE: I can teach myself to be accurate. And when I do, you're not going to be fast enough to catch me.

This conversation sticks in Bruce's mind for two reasons. (1) This was the last time Bruce ever beat Robbie. (2) Robbie was right. A year later he was the World IPSC Champion.

[Duane Thomas]

I'll try to use a quote that I use all the time over and over again.

"Shooting fast requires trading off accuracy for speed.... if you don't have accuracy to begin with you have noting to trade off."

That's me, right? If not, I've certainly said that in the past. Yes, the very best shooters have great accuracy skills. If you don't have that, then when you push the accelerator you have nothing to trade off. I'm just saying that a person will much more swiftly (no pun intended) get to the point that they have speed AND accuracy if they shoot fast while working to pull their accuracy up to the level of their speed than trying to do it the other way around. And this is coming from someone who did try doing it the other way around, for years.

If I could go back in a time machine, I would become a Group B shooter right off the bat. I wouldn't have wasted years of my shooting career beating my head against the "I'll become accurate then fast" wall, and would be much further along the Path.

[Blueridge]

The way that I see it you must build the muscle memory of shooting accurately, then trust the muscle memory when shooting faster. If when you shoot faster you lose the muscle control, then you are doing it wrong. No matter how fast you go, you must maintain the muscle control.

People talk about being fast and accurate, but really the goal is neither. The goal is being UNDER CONTROL at ANY speed.

Edited September 26, 2009 by Blueridge

[Duane Thomas]

In my experience - and I'll be the first to admit that someone else (anyone?) may have a different experience - shooting accurately at a deliberate pace doesn't transition over to being accurate at speed, because you're not building the muscle memory to shoot accurately at speed. You're building the muscle memory to shoot accurately slowly. In order to build muscle memory for shooting accurately at speed, you have to actually build reps by shooting accurately at speed.

[Duane Thomas]

No matter how fast you go, you must maintain the muscle control.

I don't see it as a matter of maintaining muscle control. No offense, and I could stand to be corrected here, but that sounds to me like a very slow, conscious mind process. Rather I see it as a matter of trusting the subconscious mind and giving up any more "control" than it takes to monitor the sights.

[Steve Koski]

Muscles don't have memory.

[Jim Watson]

From the AMU guys mouths, "its better to be fast and explosive, we can teach accuracy".

Reminds me of a quote from a golf coach, "Give me a guy who can drive the ball, I'll teach him to putt."

[Blueridge]

In my experience - and I'll be the first to admit that someone else (anyone?) may have a different experience - shooting accurately at a deliberate pace doesn't transition over to being accurate at speed, because you're not building the muscle memory to shoot accurately at speed. You're building the muscle memory to shoot accurately slowly. In order to build muscle memory for shooting accurately at speed, you have to actually build reps by shooting accurately at speed.

Shooting accurately fast is the same as shooting accurately slowly. It is simply a different pace. You can squeeze a trigger fast or you can squeeze a trigger slowly, either way you are squeezing the trigger. Shooting accurately fast or slow is simply a change of pace. It is the idea of walking before you run, as both require the same mechanics and are separated by how quickly you do it basically.

I am simply trying to say that the mechanics need to become "automatic" at any speed. All shooters change speeds during a stage, with some more obvious than others. Just watch any of the videos of shooters going through stages. You will notice a difference between when near and far targets are being engaged. What is generally the same are the mechanics being used.

Edited September 26, 2009 by Blueridge