[Werewolf]

I compete in IPSC matches. In every match I've competed in score wise I usually rank number 1, 2 or 3 out of 40 or 50 shooters (about 80% of my hits are A zone - in an average match I usually only get 1-3 misses out of 120 or so rounds fired). BUT because I'm so darn slow once you divide the score by the time to get hit factor - well - I end up in the bottom third or so of shooters.

This is extremely frustrating.

No matter what I do I just can't seem to improve my speed. If I go faster then I miss and the misses really impact score.

I've asked the guys at the match how do you go faster and still hit and I get these bull???? answers like it'll come it'll come. Practice, practice, practice etc. Well I do practice and it ain't comin'!

I'm probably just slow but if there is a technique or practice method or drill or something that I can do to improve my speed I'd sure appreciate knowing about it.

[SDC]

You need to push yourself against a known quantity; get a timer which will let you set a "par" time ("beep" to "beep"), and then fire your string in that time. If you can do it, set your par time a little faster, and so on.

[Grump]

Disclaimer: I'm still pretty slow too.

But here's how I've sped up noticeably:

Pistol:
Trigger reset--Mentally follow-through with high concentration of where the front sight was when the shot broke, and keep the trigger all the way back for your follow-through. Mentally "accepting" the recoil and "wishing" the slide to come straight back has significantly reduced my bucking of recoil and twisting the muzzle down for really bad flinch-misses. THEN your front sight focus shifts to release the trigger just enough to feel the reset and quickly repeat the process when the sights are acceptably within the A zone.

Sights--Practice out to 10 yards has shown me just how sloppy the sights can be and still get an A Zone or a solid head shot hit. Educate yourself on target size/distance so you can take advantage of how big the target is, and know how much to slow down at 15 yards, 20, 25 and 50.

Practice--Practice what's hard. Take the timer advise.

Rifle:
Is this a factor for your IPSC shoots? Is there a rifle stage in most matches? Take the trigger reset notes above, and add building a solid position to resist whatever level of recoil you have. Experiment a bit--one variable at a time--with your standing, kneeling, barricade, and sitting positions. Watch how far up/past the target your sights go after firing each shot to assess this, plus how much you wobble while getting back on target. Learn about natural point of aim and get to know and love your hasty sling for any shots beyond 25 yards.

HTH.

[Werewolf]

Thanks Guys...

I'll give all those things a try.

A timer would be a great help - may stop off and get one on the way home from work today.

[Correia]

I have the opposite problem, I go really really fast, but sometimes my accuracy is pretty crappy. This is especially bad since I shoot IDPA mostly, and if you think IPSC penalizes for bad accuracy, you should check out IDPA scoring! :)

Try this. When you are practicing, don't try to shoot little tiny groups. Shoot as fast as you can keep them in the A zone. If you your group is nice and tight then you are going to slow. Speed up until you start to drop some out of the A. Now stay at that speed and try to become more accurate.

Also in a match it is often the things other than shooting that really add time to your score, not the actual shooting. How fast do you move between shoot areas? What is your draw like? How fast do you do reloads? Often times I will watch shooters shoot really well, and then they slow WAY down to do a reload. Or they will walk, not run to the next shoot position.

Watch the master class shooters at your club. Often times their split times aren't that much different than many shooters, but they are perfectly smooth and have no wasted movement. Everything they do is crisp and efficient, and you can be sure that they haul when they need to move.

Get a friend to video tape you shooting a match. Then go back and analyze it. You may be surprised by what you see. I know I was the first time I video taped myself. I kept yelling at the TV "What the hell are you doing!?! MOVE! MOVE! Correia you slug!" :) Seriously though, watch the video and look for things that you could do faster.

[eerw]

Werewolf..

shooting IPSC speed usually comes in different places..

movement, transitions and presentations..do you know where you might be slow...
most simply it is doing things smoothly ( in a relaxed state ) and with economy of motion..cut out the wasted motions..

A timer is good for establishing your baseline and then measuring your improvement over time. Keep a notebok and chart your progress..

here are a couple of great resources..
Matt Burkett makes a great DVD series for these skills, Brian Enos has a fundamental book that is a must read..and Brianenos.com...a great competition shooters resource..

Anyway...to shoot quickly in IPSC..you need to be able to align your sights with the target and shoot as soon as you are able..and move as efficiently as possible. pretty simple..but tough to do...
remember..it is a balance of speed and accuracy to win...

good luck...if you are in the Colorado Springs area..I'd be happy to head to the range with you and get some practice in too..

[Navy joe]

Hey man, it'll come if you practice! :D

If you are an accurate but slow shooter I'd be willing to bet that you are applying some target shooting principles and you use a stance, body index and grip that is all wrong for speed.

Do what I haven't done yet and buy every tape and DVD Matt Burkett has got. Buy the book while you're at it. You can get those on www.mattburkett.com or you could go to www.brianenos.com and buy them plus Brian's book, Practical Shooting Beyond Fundamentals. I also highly suggest you hang out in BE's forum on there, tons, tons of good info. I'm still lurking there, but lurking regularly.

[Zak Smith]

1. Buy a shot timer, some IPSC targets, and patching tape.*
2. Read Brian Enos' book, and think about what he says.
3. Go to the range and practice.

The actual precision in IPSC is not very difficult. Pretty much every IPSC shooter could get all A-zone hits (or maybe a couple B's on the head) if they took time to do so.

But you don't need to use all that time for every shot - you only need to "aim" enough to get the required hit - even A zone. To illustrate this point, try putting three IPSC targets spaced about 3-5' apart at 7 yards. On the buzzer, shoot each target twice. Start at your normal pace and note your groups. Then start going faster and notice where the shots go. After doing this, you should be able to get a feel of what kind of accuracy you trade off for more speed.

-z

* shot timer: about $130 from Brian Enos, IPSC targets can be bought from places like TargetBarn.com or salvage some after an IPSC match (ask first).

[gobabygo]

Heh. I know exactly what you mean.

I've shot my first 2 USPSA matches over the last 2 weeks. In the first, on gross score, I'm pretty sure I was way up at the top... but when divided by my time (to get hit factor) I was way down at the bottom (shooting L10 and all the mag changes didn't help any either).

So I figured that I needed to shoot faster, so in the second match I shot faster.... and missed all over the place. It was awful. In fact on one stage I got a 0 because I had so many penalties (strong hand only shooting also didn't help any).

For the match this weekend, I think I'm going to take my time to make sure I get a good shot off, and just speed up everything else.

[Zak Smith]

In Limited-10, managing magazine changes is really important. Slide-lock standing reloads waste tons of time. A few tips:

1. All your reloads should be when moving away from a position from which you've just finished shooting.
2. Your "how to shoot this stage" plan should take into account that it's very costly to shoot more than 10 shots from a single position - that standing reload again! This means the order in which you shoot it may be significantly different from the order in which a Limited or Open shooter shoots it.
3. A much better shooter than I once said, "Always shooting to magazine capacity may win you the stage, but leaving some margin will win you the match."

If you can get the confidence to know where you've hit the target at the time the shot breaks, you can shoot much faster - less thinking.

-z

[Navy joe]

Not that I'm any good or anything, but I thought I'd add this. If you have to think about going fast or have to try to go fast, don't because you won't. When people start trying hard is when everything goes to caca. The times when I have a clean run that is fast it all seems so slow.

Slow is Smooth is Fast.

So you can't shoot .15 splits accurately, so what. Take your time and enjoy all the extra time you make by not going ape arms on the draw, jerking the gun around on transitions, and wasting steps. Eliminate all unecessary actions. (That means have a plan)

My favorite tip so far. Wiggle your toes when you step in the box to see if you're tense. Betcha can't the first time. Courtesy of Matt Burkett.

[Zak Smith]

Along with what Navy joe was saying, here are some alternatives to "trying" and "thinking" while shooting a stage.

Instead of the "plan" being a narrative that you have to "think through", you should visualize the stage. Visualization is programming, and your body will do what you visualized.

-z

[mattjoe]

Planning on how to shoot a stage is extremely important. If there is only one way to shoot a stage, then this isn't all that helpful, but you want to begin to look for ways to shoot a stge with the least amount of movement between shooting positions.
Also, you need to quit worrying about your speed if you're having up to 3 misses in a match. You need to focus on shooting a clean match first, no misses, no no-shoots. Penalties kill.
Know where your hits are, don't be afraid to take a make up shot.
I honestly believe I shot faster when I started than I am today, but I generally had a miss every stage. So although you feel you need to speed up, you need to balance that increase in speed against your tendency to miss. I've determined that on a medium size course, a miss is generally worth approximately 3 seconds for A-M class shooters, meaning, the resulting miss will drop you from where you would have been to where someone who ran the stage clean, in 3 seconds more time, finished the stage. As classification goes down, the miss is even more harmful, as the hit factor is likely to be lower.

Do you have a match this weekend?

[stipilot]

I compete in IPSC matches. In every match I've competed in score wise I usually rank number 1, 2 or 3 out of 40 or 50 shooters (about 80% of my hits are A zone - in an average match I usually only get 1-3 misses out of 120 or so rounds fired).First, understand this: the number of points is not your score. Your hit factor is your score and as you know, that's total points, minus penalties, divided by time.

Most of the replies offer a lot of good advice except to say that practice, practice, practice is fine IF... you're practicing proper technique. Matt Burkett has a good book and videos, Brian Enos has a good book. Jerry Barnhart has a good set of tapes. Better yet, if you have the $$$, take a class from one of those guys, Todd Jarrett, Rob Leatham, etc. If you can't afford them, find a local or regional GM or M to spend some time with. Once you find better ways of doing things, then practice, practice, practice to perfect it.

[Werewolf]

stipilot stated: First, understand this: the number of points is not your score. Your hit factor is your score and as you know, that's total points, minus penalties, divided by time.

I do understand that. My point was that my *total points* ranked me in the top 3 of 40 or 50 shooters but that my speed put me down into the bottom third. Frustrating to say the least.

Everyone has given great advice.

I've sat down and analyzed what and how I do things.
My wife goes to watch and has told me her observations.

I've acquired a timer. I'm going to baseline myself and press my shooting speed untill I stop getting A hits and then practice at that speed until I am getting them again.

I usually compete in limited 10 and in the matches I've competed in my wife says I usually waste 5 to 10 seconds reloading so I'm going to practice reloads (the guys I compete with usually take no more than 1 to 2 seconds to reload).

I'm going to practice reloading on the move.

After I get to a point where I'm placing in the middle to top third of the pack (if ever - there's one GM, 2 M and a crap load of A's in the area where I compete) then I might be ready to pick up some of Burkett's or Eson's stuff.

Thanks for all the tips and advice gentlemen. I really do appreciate it.

[Navy joe]

Whoa, stop the presses! Your wife goes and tolerates/likes your hobby? Well good, stop asking for her opinion and stuff a video camera in her hand. Rewind all week as necessary.

Edit: Timer use for now. Figure out how to set par times on it. Practice specific drills like draw and shoot 1 A or shoot 1, reload shoot 1. Get a par time you can consistently do them in then start lowering it by a tenth.
In case you don't know par time gives you a start beep and then a stop beep separated by the time you set it for.

[Sunray]

How well does your pistol fit? Can you comfortably reach the trigger? If the pistol fits, go take some courses. Sometimes it's just technique. There's also a certain mind set that needs to be there to shoot fast and accurately. It sounds like you're accurate enough. You just need the technique required to shoot faster.

[Werewolf]

I use a Glock 22 and it feels real nice (I used a 1911 in the ARMY for many, many years but never in competition - I really like the light feel of a polymer framed pistol). The only problem with fit is my thumb won't reach the magazine release button without shifting my grip. This is one of the reasons that reloads take so much time - well that and what my wife says is fumbling around trying to find the reload mag.

[SDC]

Unless you're shooting in Production (which doesn't make sense with a .40), there's no reason you can't put in an extended mag release; I've got one on my Standard Glock, and you can hit it without changing your grip. If you want to stick with the standard release, it's just a matter of changing your grip slightly. Most of the time when you're changing a mag, you end up taking your off/support hand off of the pistol and reaching for your next mag, so all you need to do is rock the pistol to the left in your strong hand while you're taking your off hand off the pistol. Then, get the pistol up at eye level and tilted slightly away from you while you're grabbing your next mag and bringing it up. This lets you LOOK the new mag into the pistol, which reduces the chances of snagging the feed lips on the mag well. If you're a right-hander, you'll also want to think about shooting a stage the way that works the best for you; ie. shooting a stage left to right, so during your reloads, the pistol will be in a safe direction. Take a really close look at how the Masters and As in your area shoot a match, and you'll start to see how lots of little things all put together make for a really smooth, fast stage.

[Ankeny]

The best time to get proper instruction and to develop proper fundamentals and technique is in the beginning. Even a first time shooter can benefit from the resources listed above. An IPSC field course is about economy of motion and smoothness. An IPSC speed shoot is about raw speed, fundamentals and technique. Why not develop all of those with the aid of proper instruction right from the start?

[stipilot]

Ankeny is absolutely right. If you wait for instruction, it's just going to be harder to break bad habits before you can implement better technique.

[P7shooter]

Get the timer, then do Bill Drills. A simple and fast way to get speed. The Bill Drill is drawing and shooting 6 shots into the A zone of an IPSC target (range 7 yards though you can increase/decrease that as necessary). A very good time is less than 2 seconds. Must have only A's to count. From a non-race rig with Production type gun, work to get under 2.5 seconds. That will get your splits down.