Round count vs skill

I try to shoot only as much as I'm capable of concentrating on in any one session. That means that I usually only take 100 centerfire rounds, a brick of .22lr, and stop whenever I'm getting noticably fatigued. I don't wan to ingrain bad habits... I also do try to spend a good bit of time working on slow-fire, accurate fire at 10, 15, 20m...

But with that said, there's alot to be said for shooting rapidly, especially with a defensive handgun. I'm spending more and more time working on hammers at 7 yards and under... because I can shoot 5-shot, one ragged hole(ish) groups at 10m with all 3 of my defensive guns, and honestly, I don't care to tighten it up any more than that. At this point, I'm working on getting speed - able to get 2 rounds out as quick as I can press the trigger, and maintain good CPM hits.

And that, inevitably, does require round count.

I agree that the core to being a competent marksman needs is the ability to hit the intended target on command. I think that becoming a highly skilled shooter has to include shooting a lot of rounds, while keeping them on target. Dry fire and basic marksmanship will make you good. Loads of perfect practice will make you great.

I used to be very active in martial arts and taught many students. One thing I always said was, "Good practice is better than a LOT of practice. A LOT of GOOD practice is best." Often a student would start kicking the heavy bag, then after 10-20 good kicks they would throw abut 40 bad ones. I told them they just trained themselves to throw bad kicks. They would have been better off stopping after the good ones than throwing the extra bad ones. I think this holds true for shooting as well. If you shoot 10 rounds with good technique and blast another 100 down range did you practice good skills or did you teach yourself the bad habits more? If I drive to the range and I shoot poorly, I stop there, pack up and go home. If I'm doing well, I'll do the extra shooting to ingrain that into my technique.
Another thing I did for myself and those I taught was to drive technique above all else FIRST, then to build speed with proper technique, the power comes with the speed and technique. Its the same with shooting. You have to practice good technique first, then build your speed WITH good technique. THEN you will be a good shooter. In real life you will revert to your training. if your practiced good techniques you will revert to that and will have a greater chance of success. If you spent more time throwing rounds down range, thats what you will do in a pinch.

The more shooting I do, the more I respect shooting as a martial art. The same mindset and practice are there. The Asians recognized that handling a bow, staff, or a sword were martial arts and required skill, concentration, and proper technique. A sword in the hands of a novice is deadly, in the hand of a Master the effect is 10 fold. A handgun or rifle is no different.

... round count has little to do with increasing your skills.

Click to expand...

Round count has ALOT to do with improving skills.

While it is easier for me to reach the line of limited returns when training precision fires, speed work requires a much higher round count to reach the same "fatigue factor". Throw in movement, strong and weak hand firing, mag changes, alternate firing positions, and it all adds up to more ammo than I can afford.

Wow, so all that stuff about muscle memory and shooting familiarity was all garbage. Got it. Thanks.

Whether shooting by yourself or attending a class round count has little to do with increasing your skills. Do we judge a quarterback by how many passes he throws or by his completions?

Click to expand...

So football training and football games are the same thing as shooter training and being in battle/competition?

We count football efforts based on battlefield (game) performance. Few of us are able to have gun-related battlefield performance. Either we aren't in gunfights or we don't compete.

Of course, the quarterback's ability to do well is based on his training and also on the performance of the receiver to help make completions. We can't count on bad guys helping us by trying to move in front of our bullets to help get our hit percentages up.

I think he's got a point. Popping off fewer rounds more frequently (50 to 100 per week) is better than blowing through 500 rounds once a month. Plus, it doesn't make much sense to keep doing the wrong thing over and over.

Doing drills with a 50-round count seems to be helping me much more than just performing ballistic masturbation by dumping 200 rounds through the same chewed up target with three different guns. Helps the wallet and calms the wife down too

When my wife was learning to shoot, her mentor would send her to the range with one cylinder full for her DAO conversion K frame S&W.

Six rounds.

When she got back with her target, they'd sit down with it and go over each hole to diagnose what she had done in firing that round. She learned to be a very conscientous shooter, and is a very good one today.

Wasn't me who taught her, BTW- she was very well trained when I married her. 8^)

lpl

Like the old IPSC saying goes, "you can't miss fast enough to catch up".

I think the point the OP was trying to make is that simply throwing a few pounds of lead downrange without any purpose doesn't develop skill. Yes, it's going to take a lot of ammo to develop a high level of skill, but those rounds have to be coupled with some purpose and direction, analyzing any mistakes and taking the appropriate correction.

While it may be true that a high round count in and of itself doesn't ensure that a given shooter is a good shooter, most good shooter happen to have a relatively high round counts compared to most poor shooters.

So I'll have to weigh in on the side of high round counts; perfect practice performed in high multiples being preferable to perfect practice performed a few times.

Never ceases to amaze me when students show up at a class and say that they have been shooting or years and the target says different.

Click to expand...

oh yeah i know exactly what you mean.

I still can't do more than extremely basic work on cars.

My shooting skills are better than my mechanic skills but, then, I've worked on them more.

The average shooter is 30-40% better when they get warmed up.

we've all seen em a hundred times...but they apply.

http://usmilitary.about.com/od/militaryhumor/a/gunrules.htm

I can't tell if George is stirring the pot to open minds...or just fishing for trolls

Similar to kendo..I'd prefer 10 good strikes to the men as opposed to 100 poorly executed strikes.

My Two Cents

I think maybe the important thing is consistency. In other words, shoot as well as you can for as long as you can, then pack it in. If you can manage to shoot this way once a week, you'l improve your shooting tremendously.
A few years ago, I worked very close to an indoor range. I reload, so ammo wasn't a big concern. I shot at least once a week, most weeks more. Only 150 rounds or so each time, but that's about my limit for extremely concentrated shooting. My accuracy improved remarkably. I've now changed jobs, the range is not so convenient, and my accuracy has suffered somewhat.

To be honest, I don't see the value in a 50 round practice session for me. If I don't have time for at least 150-200 rds, I don't bother with live fire. Laying one round on top of each other is the way that I start and end practices (10 rounds at the beginning and the end to reinforce good habits). Dry fire is where you refine sight picture, trigger press and transitions- no reason to waste ammo on that. It takes rounds to work on splits, recoil recovery and "riding the sight" - as well as to verify that your dry practice is appropriate.

I don't think that you will find even a "B" class shooter in USPSA that fired less than 5000 rounds per year to get the Classification and at least 2500 to keep the skill. Making it to Master or Grandmaster takes many times that per year to acquire and maintain.

That being said, you can become a solid, accurate marksmen using very few perfectly executed shooting drills.

200 rounds will tire most folks out, and offer little accuracy value

I shoot merely 40 rounds average per session just to stay knife-edge sharp. Shooting regularly beats shooting a wheelbarrowful of ammo all at once. Spread it out throughout the week! NOBODY gets BETTER after fifty rounds of constant spitfire shooting. cliffy

well, I shoot a lot. I've been shooting for years. I was also recently out-shot by an anti-gun pacifist who never shoots. I was out of practice with that particular weapon, even though I've put thousands of rounds through it in the past, and have shot it very well. I just got rusty.

I practice mostly with my carry weapons, and the others often get neglected.

I like guns for a lot of reasons, and this compels me to own many of them. I just can't stay sharp with all of them and still have time to go to work and play with my kid.

The point I'm trying to make, is that just because the first 5, 10, or 20 shots from a student's weapon aren't perfect, doesn't mean that student isn't actually a good shot or that he/she exaggerated how good they are. Maybe they just need a warm up.

I beleive the practice of shooting your CCW EVERY time you go to the range is essential. Even if it's only 10 rounds. That's the 40 or so rounds I agree with cliffy for intent concentrated practice. The Wyatt Earp, slow in a hurry practice for draw and fire. Only 1-2 rounds fired per draw.

Unless I'm out in the woods by myself, I rarely get the slow methodical 20-30 draw and fires from full CCW mode. However, the more I've shot my CCW gun for fun, the more consistent I've become with it on target naturally. Round count responsible for that. I put more rounds through my carry guns than the others.

As stated previously in the thread, there are no 'warmups' in a real ccw req'd event. In my experience in other endeavours like snowboarding, this is where muscle memory from lots of practice and sheer repetition absolutely makes the difference. It makes you react, not think. The 'time slows down' thing really applies here.

Some of the quick moves I've made on my snowboard defied even my comprehension of how I pulled it off. These came simply after a season of riding open to close. When tired about 2/3 through the day, I went to the easy slopes and worked on fundamentals.

I have mixed thinkings (not feelings mind you) on this subject.

Dry fire is very useful for gunhandling- reloads, malfunction practice, draws to first shot, etc... I'm not sure that thousands & thousands of dry fires per month like some will advocate will do much good if there isn't also a fair amount of live fire. Perfect trigger press & the like is good to practice dry but if that's all you do & shoot maybe a hundred or two live rounds per year you're not going to make as much progress as mixing the two. That said, some people only have access to a live range a couple times per year so the constant dry practice is the only thing that can keep them somewhat up to speed & that's fine- you improvise, adapt & overcome.

I don't agree at all that you don't get anything out of a high volume of live fire in one range trip. You may not be able to make the perfect group after 50 or 200 or 500 rounds in one range session but there are things to be learned when you're not shooting to 100%.

Let's face it, we're not going to be 100% if attacked. When you accuracy starts to trickle off you need to recognize that fact as well as why that is (not just "I'm tired"). Are you jerking the trigger, not concetrating on the front sight, coming off the face of the trigger on reset, getting an inconsistent grip & not able to deal with it, etc... Shooting a box or two at a time can help you shoot better, but stopping when you're no longer perfect is quitting just when you can start to learn if you'll make the effort to do so.

While you might not be shooting the best group of your life at round 274 your body is learning how to compensate for the fatigue. Just like pushing yourself during exercise will make you stronger or increase your endurance, pushing beyond your comfort zone while shooting will do the same.

That said, there's a difference between getting something out of it & being so mentally and/or physically worked that you're not getting anything out of it. If you can't hit your IPSC target at 5 yards no matter how hard you try it was time to pack it in a while ago.

If one or two hundred rounds were all most people could shoot without serious degredation, most training courses would be limited to that. If you look around you'll find anywhere from 400 to a thousand per day depending on the course material & these places aren't turning out people who flinch hard enough to shoot themselves in the foot with every jerk of the trigger.