How many rounds through a handgun per range session?

[TTS]

Here is a video of Jerry Miculek shooting .15 splits (with one .10)

https://youtu.be/ChSazF41q-s?t=2m25s

Yeah, well, he's evolved beyond and is no longer constrained by human limitations.

That's why I am so amazed that you are shooting faster than him!

[jshuberg]

Thanks, but to be fair that was at contact distance, I wasn't using my sights, and just chased the ghostman around the corner.

I can definitely get the gun moving quickly, but maintaining decent accuracy at speed is something I'm still struggling with as I said. The difference between a 10-12" group and a consistent 5" group at this speed is a *huge* difference in skill. Holding A's at 7 yards I have to slow down to around to .2 or so, and on a really off day slower than that. I'm still working on it though

[TTS]

Thanks, but to be fair that was at contact distance, I wasn't using my sights, and just chased the ghostman around the corner.

I can definitely get the gun moving quickly, but maintaining decent accuracy at speed is something I'm still struggling with as I said. The difference between a 10-12" group and a consistent 5" group at this speed is a *huge* difference in skill. Holding A's at 7 yards I have to slow down to around to .2 or so, and on a really off day slower than that. I'm still working on it though

In any case, that is good shooting. Better yet, we can all agree that the heat caused by such shooting is not detrimental to the firearm.

[farmerj]

I'm trying to understand why people find it so hard to believe that you can easily learn these same techniques and achieve similar results.

Phorvick and I were teaching this stuff 8-9 years ago.

Shooting sub .2 splits and hitting your target beyond contact distance is an upper echelon ability. The difference in consistently shooting .2 splits and .1 splits is similar to driving at 100mph vs 200mph. Almost anyone in any car can do 100mph, but at 200mph you need a very special car and driver not to wreck.

If you have been teaching people to shoot sub .15 splits (and hit the target) for years, you are beyond any of the instructors I have worked with or trained under.

This is all assuming we are talking about 5-6 shots not 2. Most competent USPSA competitors can do a .15 AA/AC on a close hoser target.

In a practiced and memorized technique, it's easily doable. Most don't practice trigger reset consistently. Not just doing what jshuberg is talking about, but just coming forward enough to feel the sear reset.

Experience has shown that most shooters are coming so far forward to remove their finger from the trigger and then squeeze again. It can double and triple your time as well as make you inaccurate.

I can't even say I do/did use my front sight much after learning to index shoot. I learned it slowed me down significantly when I pressed on the front sight and focused on it. You're shooting mobg (minute of bad guy) not moa bullseye.

If I still shot like I did 7-8 years ago, instead of once a year, I'd still be as accurate. Too many things led to it not being a higher priority. And it very much is a highly perishable skill.

I've never taught people two to the chest/ one to the head either. Always center or low center mass. If you're shooting steel, you have different desires than If you are shooting for self-defense. Shooting center mass you are shooting to stop an action. The head is bobbing and weaving too much compared to shooting center low (hips or pelvic girdle) which will immobilize or cause significant blood trauma with disabling mobility. I don't shoot for steel so I don't teach it. And since all above pivots around the pelvic girdle, it remains rather stationary and an easy target.

One of the frustrations I have with most instructors and courses is so little is taught about proper trigger reset. It focuses on trigger pull and front sight. IMHO, it limits your ability to teach as well as your students ts ability to improve. I saw it in the guard and with the federal Leo who were in my MP unit. I also saw it with most of the steel shooters who did attend my classes. When the light goes off, its an incredible thing to see.

[Ron Burgundy]

Experience has shown that most shooters are coming so far forward to remove their finger from the trigger and then squeeze again. It can double and triple your time as well as make you inaccurate.

Yes, it can if you are also applying other poor technique. Removing the finger isn't a speed or accuracy problem if you have proper grip. Some of the best pistol gunners in the world are trigger slappers.

I think there is a time and place for each technique. I'd never slap the trigger for a bullseye type single shot but favor a smooth, straight pull. For self defense or action games, slap that pig.

In one of his books, Ben Stoeger (5x national USPSA champ) talks about the slap vs riding the reset that was helpful for me. As a test, put your palm on the a table and tap as fast as you can. Try again but this time only raise your finger enough to clear the table (e.g. Riding the reset). Which is faster?

This exercise was proof enough for me to start working on my grip and worrying less about riding the reset. YMMV but it has helped me.

[jshuberg]

Rob Leatham and several other top shooters teach a controlled slap.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mrp]

This was from a year ago or so. It was a class where we were shooting from a buddies Jeep.

Here's what it looks like from a sedan.

http://i.imgur.com/PqtvQTh.gifv

[jshuberg]

Since we were talking about this in this thread, I figured I'd keep the conversation going here rather than create a new one.

Today I went to the range, and decided to time my rapid fire strings with a shot timer. Not all of them, but to just sort of spot check them to see where I'm at these days and if I could see a pattern. The reason that I stopped using a shot timer when training on rapid is because the timer adds additional stress. Under most circumstances I can ignore the timer, but controlled rapid fire is difficult, that any little distraction or mental stress got in the way of learning how to do it. For me at least, it had been a mental speed bump that was messing me up, so I stopped using it to keep it from interfering with my performance. I brought it back in from time to time, but hadn't been using it as a general rule when rapid fire training. Also, I typically don't begin firing in response to the beep. I hit the timer, load 5 rounds into a mag, the mag into pistol, come up on target, take a breath, and squeeze out the string. Basically isolating time to first shot from the problem of rapid fire. Again, while developing this skill, you want to minimize all other distractions in order to "find" the moments inside of the moments. Once you've developed the basic skill, pulling the timer back in, at least occasionally, will help out significantly in figuring out what's happening. But at the onset of rapid fire training it can work more against you than for you. At least for me anyways.

Today I put 150 rapid fire rounds downrange, in 5 round strings, at a target at 5 yards. Accuracy was a little bit sloppier than normal. The majority of my rounds were upper center mass inside of 10", although I did have several flyers.

Below are a a couple 5 shot strings that were more or less representational of how I was shooting. I noticed something very interesting though. There was a general pattern of increasing speed over the course of the 5 rounds. While doing this is a good way to train on increasing your speed (starting at a comfortable pace, and increasing your speed over a string of 15-20 rounds), this is not what I was trying to do here. I believe that this is something in my head, where I subconsciously hold back on the first couple rounds while being concerned with accuracy. The reality is, the best way to hold maximum accuracy is to maintain a consistent cadence. Introducing timing variations introduces inconsistency, and inconsistency is, well, inconsistent. Inconsistent timing will lead to inconsistent accuracy, and at these speeds, .03 seconds is a 30% change in speed. I need to make a point of emphasizing consistency at these speeds rather than speeding up during a string. That either means holding back just slightly to the pace I start at, or starting with balls-out speed rather than ramping up over the first couple rounds to get there.

Another thing I noticed is that the timing of my trigger stalls, where I start applying rearward pressure before the trigger resets, didn't cause as much increase in split time as I thought. My split times for stalls were all under .2 seconds, even though they felt like an eternity to get let off the trigger to reset and squeeze again. This also casts doubt on one of my presumptions about my "galloping" trigger technique - that trigger reset happens by leveraging my startle reflex to relax my trigger finger for a very brief moment to let the trigger out to reset. If I can squeeze the trigger, realize the gun didn't fire, let out to reset, squeeze and fire a round in .18 seconds, while *not* leveraging my startle reflex in response to the previous shot (since there was no previous shot I was responding to), I must be using another mechanism other than startle, that's still faster than my conscious raw reaction time. I'm going to have to spend some time thinking and reading about this, since I'm not sure how it's working. Another observation the timer made me aware of (that I should have been able to recognize even without it) was that trigger stall always happened after the 2nd shot or the 3rd shot. It never stalled after the 1st, and never stalled after the 4th. This is also the place in my strings where I was increasing speed slightly. One very common mistake people make is to increase muscle strength in response to moving faster. This makes me wonder if both my occasional trigger stall and accuracy issues aren't both related to consistency of cadence, and less about my weapon hand grip strength as I suspected.

My plan moving forward is to focus on consistency over speed, slow down a few hundredths, and see how much increased consistency effects my accuracy and trigger stall issues. That means, more work on the timer. I think I've pretty much gotten past the point where the timer interferes with my being able to do this, so hopefully I'll have a breakthrough in the near future by letting the timer tell me what's going on.

Anyways, I wrote this up for myself as much as anything else, to get my thoughts on today's session down so I can refer back after future range trips. Since we were discussing rapid fire techniques I figured I'd share with anyone interested. If anyone is interested in this, and would like to follow along with what I'm leaning about how o master this, let me know and I'll start a new thread.

[farmerj]

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast

[LePetomane]

Usually 200 rounds total of combined .45ACP and .38 special. Sometimes I bring the FN Five/Seven and I'll put 100 through that.

Do you reload the 5.7?

I do not.

[jshuberg]

Slow is smooth and smooth is fast

Ha! That's absolutely right. There's a lot more truth in that statement than most people realize

[TTS]

Since we were talking about this in this thread, I figured I'd keep the conversation going here rather than create a new one...

Nice shooting! I gave up on using my shot timer at the indoor range, too many other shots to pick up.

I thought about trying that Double Alpha watch/shot timer guess it uses the recoil impulse combined with sound.

[jshuberg]

Nice shooting! I gave up on using my shot timer at the indoor range, too many other shots to pick up.

Thanks!

You can get a Pocket Pro II to pickup just your shots, but it can be a bit tricky. It's obviously important that the people on your immediate left and right aren't shooting something super loud, and it also helps to be in the center of the bay to reduce echoes off the walls. I reduced the shot sensitivity from the default of 13 down to 3, and the dead shot time from .11 down to .05, and then set it on the bench and shot directly above it. I had no problems with it picking up other peoples shots, and it only missed picking up 4 or 5 of my shots out of 150 rounds. I might kick the sensitivity up to 4 or 5 next time and see if it's any better.

The more I think about this, the more I'm questioning whether my trigger stalls are actually what I'm thinking they are. As much as the timer today allowed me to see things I wasn't aware of, I think I need to recruit someone to video a shooting session at a high frame rate so I can see what is actually happening at the trigger when I stall. I need an unbiased, external observation of what's happening so I know what the error truly is. Timers and video are the way to get there, since it appears that I'm missing something important when relying on my own observations.

I might go out tomorrow after work, while the experience is still fresh in my mind, and see if working on consistency of cadence doesn't help to improve things, both on paper and on the clock.

I thought I erased it, but going through the shot history I found my best splits of the day. This is something I'm proud of:

[TTS]

Nice shooting! I gave up on using my shot timer at the indoor range, too many other shots to pick up.

Thanks!

You can get a Pocket Pro II to pickup just your shots, but it can be a bit tricky. It's obviously important that the people on your immediate left and right aren't shooting something super loud, and it also helps to be in the center of the bay to reduce echoes off the walls. I reduced the shot sensitivity from the default of 13 down to 3, and the dead shot time from .11 down to .05, and then set it on the bench and shot directly above it. I had no problems with it picking up other peoples shots, and it only missed picking up 4 or 5 of my shots out of 150 rounds. I might kick the sensitivity up to 4 or 5 next time and see if it's any better.

The more I think about this, the more I'm questioning whether my trigger stalls are actually what I'm thinking they are. As much as the timer today allowed me to see things I wasn't aware of, I think I need to recruit someone to video a shooting session at a high frame rate so I can see what is actually happening at the trigger when I stall. I need an unbiased, external observation of what's happening so I know what the error truly is. Timers and video are the way to get there, since it appears that I'm missing something important when relying on my own observations.

I might go out tomorrow after work, while the experience is still fresh in my mind, and see if working on consistency of cadence doesn't help to improve things, both on paper and on the clock.

I thought I erased it, but going through the shot history I found my best splits of the day. This is something I'm proud of:

I use the exact same Pocket Pro timer. Ill have to try the settings you suggested. It has always picked up other people's shots, but I haven't ever tried the sensitivity that low.

When I had Robert Vogel out this summer he made a comment to the effect that he never worried about split times as much as accuracy. I think this goes to what you were talking about before... the difference in a .12 or .2 split is minimal unless it causes a miss.

[jshuberg]

For me, it's the same theory as aim small miss small. If I can shoot .12 second splits with decent accuracy, shooting .20s feels like I have all the time in the world! Think of it like speed bag training for a boxer. It's excellent for training, but not necessarily something that lends itself directly to competition or defense. It also amplifies any errors in your technique, specifically grip errros, so that you can observe them and correct them.

When you take your timer out, make sure to put it on the bench, and to shoot your gun above and slightly behind it. You should get good results.