Shooting USPSA and I 'm slow-way slow. Hints/tips please

Dudedog,

I know you that when you posted you were specifically asking about USPSA, but these videos should be helpful. These are IDPA centric videos posted to Youtube by William Daugherty. I am no great shakes, but this guy seems to be pretty smart. I believe he mentions that he went from beginner to master in IDPA in 2 years. I found these 4 videos to be very interesting and different than normal IDPA/USPSA videos. He basically discusses what he thinks people should think about "on the path to marksman", the "path to sharpshooter", the "path to expert", and "the path to master".

The Path to Marksman:

The Path to Sharpshooter:

The Path to Expert:

The Path to Master:

Hope you find these useful. I have come back to them several times and watched them again and again.

Dude has his finger in the trigger guard during every single reload. Any advice he gives is invalid.

Dude has his finger in the trigger guard during every single reload. Any advice he gives is invalid.

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Interesting viewpoint waktasz, although it might be hard for you to say if his finger is in the trigger guard or adjacent to it, especially based on the angle of the from the head cam.

Must have been hard for him to work his way up through the ranks of IDPA while getting DQ'ed from every match.

You can accept that if you like. The rule is that the finger must be clearly outside the trigger guard, not just off the trigger. It's very difficult to call in real time, luckily for us the dude posted evidence. All these screens are out of just one of the videos linked above

Seeing a finger on the trigger during a reload (which in USPSA is often during movement) is a hard call to make in real-time. Get your RO certificate and see for yourself

That's exactly what I said. Hard to call in real time. Doesn't mean he shouldn't avoid doing it.
and since you asked, I'm a USPSA CRO

I wasn't picking sides on this debate. Just saying as an RO, it's a hard call to make. In general, unless it is flagrantly obvious or results in a AD, I don't make a call on what I 'may think' I've seen

Dudedog said:

Sights-stock Springfield loaded (2015 model) black sights with some orange paint on the black front sight.

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Dudedog, thanks for sharing your learning experience. I don't shoot any competition yet, but I try to do some drills just so I can measure my progress or lack of it.

I don't know how good your eyes are, but I knew when I started doing drills that I had a difficult time picking up my front sight. With older eyes it needs something well defined and light for me to pick it up. I painted my front sights the fluorescent green and orange, and realized that the lighter green was easier for me to pick up. The next step was to find some light green sights, since I wasn't planning on using the painted sights since they obviously did not work in very low light conditions.

At the end I bought the lumi-green sights from Ameriglo. I got lucky that OpticsPlanet had a $45 sale, free shipping and an additional 10% discount if I spent at least $50. So I bought them for two of my guns, and they work great for me. Every little bit helps.

https://ameriglo.com/collections/sig-xd/products/sig-xd-pro-glo-tritium-fronts

I am following this thread with interest to learn from the experienced shooters.

Shoot as fast as you can see your sights for every shot, no faster, no slower.

Dudedog said:

Have a match coming up at the start of next month, will try to get some video.
Move faster, maybe shoot slower.

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Looking forward to the next "match" report with accompanying video. With all the advice given so far, I think we can demand a substantial improvement. No pressure.

Beginning note: I haven't read the whole thread, sorry...busy, but wanted to give my two cents.

I shot USPSA for a couple of years in college (2005-06 I think). Started out as a "C" in production, moved into "B" by the end of the first year. I had a pretty deliberate practice regime. Did a lot of drills with dry fire...draw from the holster, draw, fire. There was a match that had a lot "start with your hands on your head and the targets behind you. on beep, turn and engage". So, I practiced that turn, safe draw, first shot. (sidenote: had a...more experienced gentleman...aka old and grumpy, lol, try to tell me I was doing it wrong turning one way and that I should turn the other direction. Told him I had practiced it going one way and that I had timed myself and was faster that way. And I smoked him on that stage. If the stages are posted beforehand, read up on them and practice your first move and see which way you're faster).

I did a lot of magazine change practice too. It's hard to do with a dry fire thing at home in the livingroom or whatever, but practice dumping a mag and putting a new one in. All one fluid motion.

In whatever practice you do, practice keeping the front sight in focus.

When you practice at the range, load up 5 or 6 mags and once and slip a snapcap into each one at random, usually towards the bottom. Then shuffle the magazines up (so you don't know what's coming) and shoot...you'll be astonished at how much flinch you have. took me 2000 rounds of practice like that to get rid of my flinch, but I did eventually. When you don't know you have a blank in the chamber but then do and the gun twitches when you shoot...embarassing yes, but very informative. But forces you to focus on being smooth.

Also - get some lessons! What I did was save up for 2500 rounds of ammo (this was pre-Obama mind you) and payed in advance for a lesson a week for a month. I'd go, shoot the lesson, and then come back once or twice a week and shoot on my own. Come back for the next lesson and have the guy fix all the bad habits you got into the last week. Each lesson was only like 20-30 minutes. At the end of that, the indoor range I shot at had a USPSA-style (not sanctioned or anything) match, half the guys there were police/SWAT, etc. I beat the SWAT guys with about double their scores. And that was just a solid month of dedicated practice.