USPSA Pistol Help

[MUNCHIE]

I recently shot my first pistol match, I got 97% of the available points shooting minor but ended up in the middle of the pack (27 out of 44). What kind of drills can I do at the local range to speed up my shooting/splits?

[joelogic]

Usually speeding up the trigger pull does not speed up the stage time by much. More than likely your game plan on how you are going to attack the stage is lacking a little. Find the top 10 finishers and next time get on their squad and watch how they run the stage.

If you really think your transitions are slow buy a timer and practice. I really like the 1-5 drill.

[HighLander51]

Transitions is where you save, or loose, time. Take a look at Taran Butlers videos.

[speedrrracer]

As was said, it's 99.99999% likely the answer has nothing to do with your shooting, and everything to do with your movement.

Most new shooters are very capable of moving at the same speed as (using an excellent example from above) Taran Butler, who is both fat and getting old. However, they're often not comfortable moving with a gun at that speed. This is where practice comes in -- you need both the "aha" moment where you realize it's OK to move very quickly, and the quality practice to do it safely.

Moving at Taran's speed is 1) no big deal and 2) just a small fraction of what makes him so great. With practice, it won't be terribly long before you're moving at his speed, but getting his economy of motion will take much, much longer, and lastly, approaching his smarts and experience at tackling a stage as efficiently as possible will take a very long time.

Putting in the practice time on economy of motion will pay big dividends. You'll be making yourself more efficient, and, because you're practicing it, you'll be able to do it more quickly. Double whammy. Also, as was said, try to squad with better guys and learn how they approach arrays. Take classes, buy books and videos -- it's all out there.

[Bobby Hated]

post a video of you shooting and we'll critique your technique. did you shoot at 5 Dogs?

PS finishing in the middle on your first match is phenomenal. how old are you?

[MUNCHIE]

5 dogs is this weekend I believe, I shot last weekend in Clovis. This was my first pistol match but I have shot a few 3 gun matches recently. I need to find a way to relax and absorb the walk through because I am afraid that if I try and speed up through the course of fire I will end up missing targets. I am curious how the top guys do their walk through, do they count targets? Group targets together? Count and have a visual reference for reloads, how do you walk through and plan the stage to be most effective and not blow past targets?

[SARC_Mike]

@Munchie
You were at the CCPL? So was I! I am still a rookie, only shooting in 6 matches so far. My second with my limited gun. I am a gear geek and my gear is way better than I. I have found my errors come in course prep. I don't take enough time to map out the course and last week I FTE'd a target in 2 stages. Really hurt my scoring. Which squad were you in?

[HighLander51]

5 dogs is this weekend I believe, I shot last weekend in Clovis. This was my first pistol match but I have shot a few 3 gun matches recently. I need to find a way to relax and absorb the walk through because I am afraid that if I try and speed up through the course of fire I will end up missing targets. I am curious how the top guys do their walk through, do they count targets? Group targets together? Count and have a visual reference for reloads, how do you walk through and plan the stage to be most effective and not blow past targets?

Take a competition shooting class. Most clubs offer that and they are usually taught be Grand Masters.

[MUNCHIE]

I was in the squad that started on stage 4

[SARC_Mike]

Ok, I was a stage behind.

[DRAB_81]

I learned pretty quickly that transition, both between targets & shooting positions, has WAY more to do with scores than shot speed. During my first match I shot pretty fast trigger wise (while still scoring good hits), but took my sweet time between shooting positions. My overall score/ranking for that match definitely reflected that, although I placed 2nd in Unclassified. I have become much more comfortable running through the stages, and being more aggressive in general. My scores and ranking is getting better and better. Sometimes we can also take too much time focusing on getting A Zone or Down Zero hits, so much that it's actually a detriment to our score in the game.

Tactically, a C Zone or Down 1 hit isn't going to translate to a bad hit in a SD situation, but lack of speed can be the difference between life & death sometimes. Speed comes with time & thousands of rounds, but the perfect hit isn't always worth stalling for IMHO.

[MUNCHIE]

And I would love to take a class with someone who is competitive in the sport but I haven't found any local classes

[SARC_Mike]

John Linenbach with Tactrainers is awesome. He won Production class last week and was 2nd (or 3rd) overall shooting minor. He has a whole menu of courses that you can take to the range and real life. I am a pretty decently trained shooter and one little grip change on me that he made has worked wonders. Now if I can keep my brain from turning to mush at the sound of the buzzer I could win some of those comps!

[GeoffLinder]

Target size and distance determine the split/transition time you will get.

Assume 10 yard target distance and full targets. If standing in a solid position you should be able to manage an A hit every .25 to .30 seconds. Splits on a target and transitions to another target should be almost identical (depending on distance between targets). Basically, the recoil recovery time determines this. When transitioning to another target you need you need to use the recoil recovery time to drive the gun to the next target.

Now for the math. Say you have 15 paper targets, that's 30 shots. That works out to 28 splits/transitions. At .25 per that is 7 seconds total shooting time. Movement time on a stage will quite often take up as much 2 to 3 times or more than the actual shooting time. Splits are important, but they are not the biggest time factor in many cases.

Planning your movement to minimize time can help as much or more than speeding up your splits by .10

Also, for minor or major, the general rule of thumb is that you should be earning between 90 and 92 percent of available stage points to properly balance speed versus accuracy. 97 percent is too much time spent on the shots themselves IMHO.

Hope this helps :-)

[Bobby Hated]

get on brianenos.com too...