It is .40, so I am shooting major.

It helps if you don't have a deeply ingrained flinch like me.  At local matches I regularly finished in the upper 25% on open target run and gun field courses only to choke on tight shot classifiers and speed shoots.  

A now deceased friend used to say, "Slow becomes smooth.  Smooth becomes fast."

For USPSA though, that typically turns into "slow down and get your hits" when you need a mentality that keeps you moving fast.

You don't need a deadnuts center of target hit, you want to be moving as fast as possible and not overaiming. Just barely in the A zone is just as good as center of A zone.

lol

Mine is slapping the trigger. One of my buddies was ROing me one day and broke into laughter mid string. I asked why afterwards and he and another friend said I was slapping the trigger like crazy and he didn’t understand how I was hitting anything. It’s how I used to shoot revolvers all the way out all the way back…just like Jerry Miculek and I think Rob Leatham just without the great results

I thought I would add being B in one year is really good.

It you go to a range and light it up people will stop and watch you shoot.

I was a b class shooter in limited for 5 years.I just simply did not improve, no matter how much I shot.I think the last year I was B, I shot 20,000+ rounds that year.First of All Ben Stoeger, is a dick, he and I do not get along, but he regularly shot at my club.As much as  I dislike him, Ben is the one who really pissed me off enough to dry fire , I mean seriously,like hours. In 1 years time I went from B to M, and was running right with alot of local Gm's( not national lever GM's.I simply cannot move fast enough to beat the really good guys, but I am competitive at stand and shoot stages.
It was explained to me like this, you need to dry fire 10 times for every live round fired,minumum.Once you don't even think about recoil compensation flinches, or any other flinching, grip, or gun handling problem,you can put all of your focus on the stage.

It SUCKS,to dry fire  that much,I mean, mind numbing,boring, but it works, it's the only thing that helped me.

Pay attention to your stage planning, sometimes what might be the shortest route may not be fastest.  Try to get a feel for how a stage flows and if it's possible to shoot something on the move. Some of the GM fat bodies in the sport are very good at not starting and stopping alot.

Congrats on your journey. That's great.

You got the Ben Stoeger is a dick thing correct.

There is no fucking way I would buy his books and/or videos.

Before Ben, there was Steve Andersen, Saul Kirsch, Matt Burkett, and Brian Enos.

EDIT:  and Jerry “The Burner” Barnhart

Like somebody else mentioned above, get a timer.

I would highly recommend the AMG Commander.  If you get the (practice part) of the Practiscore app, the AMG commander talks to your smart phone via blue tooth.

I take screen shots of the “drills” I have done.  I can track my performance that way..)

My other piece of advice is to start a journal and set some objectives and goals.

Shoot fast and don't miss.

If you can't do that, shoot more often in your spare time until you CAN shoot fast and don't miss.

Go to more matches too, even some IDPA matches, they should at least help push you more and get you better at transitions and problem solving during stages.

1.  Realize USPSA is a toolshed populated by toolbags, and simply enjoy shooting a match at your own level with friends;

and if #1 is not possible,

2.  Take up a different game


About 20 years ago, I shot USPSA religiously for 5-6 years.  I was high overall in my division 5 years in a row in the annual "big" local championship (150+ shooters):  3 times in Limited 10, then twice in Single Stack.  Was also High Overall in the first large 3-gun match held in this area. I gave up shooting USPSA for a number of reasons, but I do have perspective on the game.  Every shooting sport has its share of unusual personalities, but USPSA attracts more than it's share of jerks.  It rivals Trap and High Power in this regard.

Coming from a LE background, where shooting is taught based on survival techniques and lessons learned, the USPSA game structure and rules are fairly ridiculous.  Fun yes, but "practical" is an oxymoron in this case.  The scoring grossly favors speed over accuracy.  If you are a deliberate type of individual, without very fast reflexes or the ability to process multiple sensory inputs at once, you're not going to score well.  If you can accept that, you can enjoy shooting it at your own pace and have a good time.  It's like running - trying to compete equally with someone who was born with the better genes for it, is a waste of time.

Speaking of running, in many major matches there's a lot of it in the stages, plus plyometric stopping and starting and various other physical tasks.  If you are not good at that, and/or fast, you have no chances of placing highly.  If you spend 15 seconds of a 40 second stage running, the guy that spends 12 seconds running will beat you badly.  Why torture yourself trying.  Again, the scoring is not objectively based - your score is based on your ranking against the shooters that beat you.  Shooting a particular score is only relevant in terms of who did it faster than you.

Probably not what you were looking for, but self-evaluation is the first step to a satisfying life.

Stop competing and you won't suck anymore.

USPSA is full of people who are dicks and tools.

I don’t care if Stoeger is a dick.  I’ll never meet him in person.

I care if his publications help me get better.

If you boycotted everything that had an asshole associated with it, you’d own just about nothing.

It's all just marketing.

I can't disagree with most of what you said. Also, I understand the scoring favoring speed and the athleticism needed to save that time. I'll never be the best, but I want to improve regardless. More fun than golf.

Missing

Last week the local master shooter was joking that I was going to beat him because he was shooting an iron sighted .45 (cz97). It was a ".45" match so 9mm was penalized more for misses so he wasn't shooting his normal gun. Neither were the normal top 3 shooters.

I told him he's still going to win because he lived for matches and was more efficient and thoughtful when it came to planning stages.

He did win but I did beat him on one stage and came in 2nd overall.

Smooth is smooth
Fast is fast

I achieved success (relatively speaking) learning from:

Anderson-  raw speed from first 12 drills of Refinement and repetition. Field speed through his visualization process. Lastly, the mental game.

Stoeger- grip, visual game, field drills and strategy.  His books and group lessons are excellent (a few free on YouTube).

My personal opinion:
1) you earn the right to shoot fast through many hours of dedicated and focused dry fire. 20k rounds is a waste of time and money as a path to improve speed.

2) mental game has an enormous impact on performance.

3) You should spend a lot of time thinking about proper grip and vision. Today I shoot as fast as my vision allows. Seeing what I need to see is just about all I think about at matches.

Well….see?

The thing about “action pistol shooting” is nobody is ever gonna get put on the cover of a Wheaties box for it.

Hell, Kim Rhode was the first woman ever to win medals in 6 consecutive Olympics.  She never made it on the Wheaties box.

Sooo…strictly from an ROI standpoint, one can dump all this time and money into USPSA, and what do you get to show for it?

Plenty of other people before Stoeger tried to pass on “practical shooting knowledge” , and did so without being a dick.

True-er words about the USPSA culture have never been spoken.

And I was a Match Director and a (quasi-???) sponsored shooter.

(EDIT:  as a match director, some of the petty personality conflicts I had to put up with had wondering “Are these really adults with guns that I am dealing with?”)

There is a thread going on now over at the Brian Enos forums about “brassing”.

See?

It used to be an accepted and fairly widespread practice that other shooters would collect your brass for you as you shot the stage.  Your fellow squadmates would hand back to you your brass and your mags as you walked back from watching the RO score your targets.  

Huh!

I guess that fell out of fashion about 10 years ago.

Help-me-stop-sucking-at-USPSA

OK. When you see a peepee, just walk away. The urge will pass. :)



That was my joke for the day. Sorry. GD made me a bad person.

The fact that you’re even shooting USPSA impresses me. I suck too bad to even think about showing up.

Tell me you’re slow without using those words.

Slow is just fucking slow.

Efficient is fast.

Let me ask you this:

When you’re in a match how often are you standing still to perform a reload?

If that answer is “never”, why would you want to get better at that?

Leatham sometimes gives bad advise. This is one of those times.

I’d argue that you’re still developing the muscle memory whether standing still or running, but yeah I would think practicing both is important.

I’m a pretty new shooter when it comes to running courses so for me, I still practice them in one spot.  Eventually I think doing them on the move is something I’ll want to work on.

Is it generally easier or more difficult to do things when you’re moving or standing still?

So why stand still?

Even if all you’re doing is stepping forward or to the side at a leisurely pace you should always incorporate movement into your reloads. That way it’s even easier when you’re standing still. Conversely, if you practice static reloads it can easily turn into a shitshow when you’re now moving.

Based on your results in the pistol drill thread, I bow to your expertise

I’m just trying not to learn everything at once.  I don’t know that overload will be helpful for me.  I’ll try a few moving around.  I assume a majority of reloads in action shooting are whilst moving.

(Emphasis on ASS)

I'm shooting low capacity guns so am reloading standing and moving but if you watch the better shooters they plan their reloads while moving so as not to waste time.

I disagree. So do a lot of people. The skills that make you good at a match make you good in the real world. Accurately shooting things fast as fuck matters in the real world.

So work on fitness? That helps all areas of live, not just shooting.

When I first started competing, I heard the experienced guys talk about planning reloads.

By putting that into practice, it moved me from the bottom 10 to mid-group overall, overnight. With tons of dry fire drills it got my fundamentals pretty good. I set dry fire pars and trained to them.

You need to set training goals. Practice in dry fire, test in live fire and make sure you're filming yourself in both. Watch the video and see where your wasted movement is. Efficiency.

Learn good footwork. Understand and learn how to move in and out of shooting positions. Actions that require you to not shoot, try to do when you're moving from position to position. Learn and experiment where and when to shoot on the move or stationary. Efficiency.

Hope this helps, OP.

Edit: quoted the wrong post and deleted it

Frankly whatever this guy says has a lot of weight

Yeah I think I quit when guys wouldn’t tape

My 4yo loves playing with stickers... I mean taping.

Word.

Biggest annoyance at matches is people not helping reset. Had plenty of guys act offended when I tell them they need to go help and not just chill in the shade chit chatting or fucking around on their phone.

Most of the 3 gun matches anywhere near me all use 4" square steel as pistol targets and arent afraid of hiding them in the weeds...  After a few of those, USPSA targets seem HUUUUGE!

There is something to aim small miss small.  Take a piece of cardboard and make a small uspsa target, then use it as a stencil to paint a bunch of them on a larger sheet.  Practice putting one shot on each in a random order - even with a .22.  when you get to the point that accurate hits are about the cadence of unaimed as fast as you can fire, move the target back...   concentrate on your sight picture on each target.  speed up until you start missing, then slow up a bit and practice more.

You need to shoot more. I haven’t shot USPSA in a while but when I was, I fired at least 400 rounds at practice every week, and 600 if I had the time. All the practice made the matches really easy.

Improving my accuracy was a journey but I reached it relatively quickly with practice.

Improving my speed is freaking hard.

It’s difficult to crank up the speed and accept Cs especially after years of thinking a lawyer is attached to every round.

My problem is over confirming my sights and it’s a time vampire.

More about the journey than the destination for me.