A little guidance would be great

[dagger10k]

Yesterday I shot my 5th USPSA match, in my 4th month of shooting, and I finally did close to where I think I should be doing.

However, I would appreciate some critiques on my shooting. I can tell some obvious mistakes I made, but anything I'm sure there's a lot I don't notice.

This was the December match at Solano Targetmasters. It was a little rainy, and pretty wet that day, so not many people came.

Stage 1:

On this stage, things went pretty well. The main thing I noticed was that my first shots after drawing, and after reloading were both pretty slow. It looks like maybe I'm not presenting my gun out very well. Maybe pushing too fast, and letting it bounce around a bit at the end?

Stage 2:

This stage seems to have gone ok, aside from the miss, obviously. I am not sure why I missed. My draw is a little slow too.

Stage 3:

On the first target, I think maybe I looked away before the shot broke, or something, but I did not call my shot at all on the first target. I had no idea where the shot went.

Stage 4:

I was a little slow on the turn because of my heavy hiking boots that had mud caked all over them. As a result, I think I got in a hurry, and didn't get my feet into position right. I am pretty sure I shot outside my feet on the rightmost target.

Btw my time was exactly 3.72 on both strings.

Stage 5:

As always, the longer the course, the more mistakes I make. I called a miss on one of the targets, on the right side of the right side, but rather than shooting it from the left side, which I could have easily done, I swung back around to the right side. And then I missed that last popper twice, because I was losing my visual patience I guess. Also, I realize I am very slow moving around the barrels, and moving across the middle as well. The ground was a bit wet, but I had enough traction that I should have been able to move faster than that.

So anyways, any comments would be appreciated. I want to make sure that I am not ingraining any bad habits!

Edited December 15, 2009 by dagger10k

[CHA-LEE]

This is what I see……..

First and foremost, edit your videos to only show the shooting. You will quickly ware out peoples willingness to give you advice when you have a 1:22 video and a whole minute of it is wasted time.

Stage 1 – Watching for the steel to fall is a big time waster. Call your shots solid so you can move on without looking at the targets to confirm hits. You need to get the gun higher up during your reload. The gun should be up at face level between your eyes and your next target.

Stage 2 – When you make ready, load the mag into the gun in the exact same location and speed as you would do it during the stage run. This further burns in the correct way of doing it. Think of your target engagement order in the best and smoothest way to engage. You shot the left popper first, then the right, then transitioned all the way to the left again to pick off the plates. It would have flowed better if you shot the poppers from right to left then up to the left plate and shot those from left to right. Your big swing to the left after finishing the poppers caused you to bounce while stopping on the first plate and thus a miss.

Stage 3 – I hope that the RO said “Make Ready” before he said “I am going hot” at the start of the video. If not, you could have been DQ’ed for handling the gun without being instructed to do so. You can only handle the gun after the “Make Ready” command is issued by the RO. Your surrender position is a little excessive. Your wrists only need to be above your shoulders, no more. Extra movement is extra = extra time. So minimize the movements to save time. This is a risk verses reward kind of stage. Calling your shots on the steel and getting solid hits saves you a lot of time. You could have seen no movement of the popper as you transitioned to the first paper or even heard that you missed the popper on the first shot. It would have saved more time to make up the miss right away verses saving it for the end as the long transition back to it wastes a lot of time. This comes back to calling your shots solidly. Did you call it a miss and still move on? Or did you call it a hit and move on? If you feel that you don’t have the “Time” to call your shots then you sure as hell don’t have the extra time to come back to it and make up a miss. Give each target the respect it deserves. You should be able to call every shot.

Stage 4 – Once again, too excessive of a surrender hand position. What is the delay in shooting on your first shot? It looked like a smooth and accurate mount of the gun, then this long delay before the first shot. Are you looking for something particular? Aligning the sights? Aligning the gun on the target? As soon as the gun is mounted and on the target you should be breaking the shot. The quality of your stance/grip/draw will dictate how refined the final position of the gun/sights are when your draw is complete. Work on dry fire until you can mount the gun in a sights aligned on target state on every style of draw. Until you can do this every time on command, you will forever waste time on the clock correcting imperfections in your stance/grip/draw after the buzzer goes off. When someone tells you that a “Consistent time” is good when comparing a turn draw verses a standing draw they are feeding you a line. The standing draw string should always be faster than the turn draw simply because there is less movement needed before you can start shooting.

Stage 5 – Can you tell us what limitations the Stage Description had? From how you shot the stage it looked like there were mandated targets to be engaged from the boxes at the extreme ends of the COF. Once we know what the stage description mandated for target engagement it will be easier to give an evaluation. Without knowing the stage description I would have shot the whole stage between the two barrels from a single position. Or even on the move going from one side to the other slowly. But I am sure they put those boxes at the ends of the COF for a reason. So let us know what’s up with those so we can help you break it down.

[dagger10k]

Sorry about the videos, I have re-uploaded them with only the shooting.

As far as stage 3, yes I waited until after he said make ready before loading. I've seen people DQed before, and have no desire to do that.

I just totally lost my focus on the first popper here. I couldn't call my shot at all, so I didn't know that it didn't fall until just about the time I was shooting the first paper. I figured it would take too long to go back at that point, so I just waited until the end. It wasn't a time thing, it was just a brain fart.

On stage 4, I'm not sure why I take that long for me to get shooting. I can't say for sure. I know I need to work on my draw. In dry fire, my draw is around 1.2 seconds both hands relaxed at sides and turning surrender. It looks slower in live fire.

It certainly seems that the standing draw should be faster, but it doesn't seem to be that way so far.

On stage 5, the stage description mandated that we engage everything except for those two popper and two paper targets from the boxes on the sides. So that was 2 poppers and 3 paper from each box.

Thanks for all the help CHA-LEE. You certainly gave me a lot to think about.