Slow and steady or fast and sloppy?

Gothmog

Gothmog

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No this thread doesn't belong in OT! :D

I'm talking about your speed in an action shoot.

It seems to me that IPSC is mostly about speed ... but I'm a very casual observer of that sport so I may well be wrong. I mostly shoot Tac Rifle and the scoring and stages appear to balance accuracy with speed for the most part.

My evidence? When I watch vids of myself shooting I look to be moving and shooting way slower than necessary, yet I seem to score ok for the most part. That tells me that if a slow shooter can score well, the scoring must empasize accuracy to a significant degree.

Should I be trying to speed things up? Obviously having both speed and accuracy is best, but how does one get there?

For that matter, do you find yourself to be a tortoise or a proverbial hare in the shooting game? What have been your experiences in trying to make changes or advance your skills?
 
It's a hard one to answer. All things being equal the faster shooter will win. If most or all of your shots are dead centre you need to speed up.

Just remember: you can never win by missing really fast.
 
IPSC is no different then any other sport. It all comes down to practice. If you do not practice you will not get any better. This game is about points , if you are getting you points the speed will come.

I go to matches and I see is guys asking how fast somebody went.
You watch the top shooters they ask how many points down. There is a big difference.

Just my $0.02

Joe
 
To be more precise, IPSC is about points per second. Assuming Comstock, which is true for the bulk of stages you will shoot.

You can improve, by either scoring higher, or being faster, since the object of the exercise is to optimize the ratio above.

To determine how to proceed a lot comes down to what division and power factor you tend to shoot.

As an example, if you're shooting production, everyone gets scored minor, so it may make more sense to slow down just a bit to get that A. If you're shooting standard with a major caliber, you can afford to have C hits since the point difference won't be as much, hence sacrifice some accuracy to pick up speed.

Also when you talk about speed, there are various aspects to optimize and work on. As an example, shot split times, aren't as relavant in production division as target transition times. Open division is different.

In short (yeah right :) ) it all comes down to the division you intend to shoot. Look at the scoring and stage details to determine the appropriate balance for you.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
Henry
 
I tend to shoot slow and steady but it depends on the stage and distance to target. Its been a long while since I shot IPSC but I go for slow and steady. Practice and you'll be amazed at how quick you can get. Keep it smooth and natural. I saw a national champion warming up and I though he was slow till I saw the times and score. YIKES! He was fast. Havent heard of or seen Nick in years...
 
I think most everyone has asked this question. What I have been told
is do not try to go fast. I could not quite understand the theory that
"speed will come". The way it was explained to me is that when I stop
looking for my hits the speed will come naturally. Meanig if you know you
hit the A's before the smoke clears, you will already be on to the next target.
If you second geuss your shots, you waste time. FWIW

DVC
 
Open division is different
You are wrong about that. It is the same in all divisions. Splits do not win the match transitions do. But I think we are getting ahead of our selfs. You must crawl be fore you walk. It is better to go bang...bang...bang and get all you points then go bang.bang.bang and drop points or worst yet get mikes.

To determine how to proceed a lot comes down to what division and power factor you tend to shoot.

I am sorry you are wrong.
It does not matter what division and power factor you are shooting if you are drooping points and getting mikes in open , standard or production you are going to finish alot lower in the final results.

To back this up look at the top shooters in all divisions. They will all be in around the same time. It is the points that make the diference.

Points first , the speed will come.
 
curtdad said:
I think most everyone has asked this question. What I have been told
is do not try to go fast. I could not quite understand the theory that
"speed will come". The way it was explained to me is that when I stop
looking for my hits the speed will come naturally. Meanig if you know you
hit the A's before the smoke clears, you will already be on to the next target.
If you second geuss your shots, you waste time. FWIW

DVC
Click to expand...

Yes, you have to be able to call your shots as you fire them, but in all IPSC divisions you have to shoot 90 to 95% of available score if you want to have a chance of winning. This is true no matter what the fastest time on a stage ends up being; you have to get the points. Thinking of increasing one's speed is a false economy. You should instead, focus on improving your efficiency/economy of motion. The more efficiently you transition, the better your times will be. The top shooters don't usually look like they are moving all that fast, but their times are always a few seconds quicker than everyone else. This is because they are only doing those movements that are absolutely necessary to the execution of the stage.
 
Have to agree with Mobile on this one.

Shoot all A's and you eliminate one variable right?

Then all you have to do is work on speeding up everything else. If you can explode into movement off the very beginning of the beep, keep the gun in your face, plant your feet where they need to go and nail every reload you will rocket up the classes to GM.

I am a Master in standard in NS, and I've shot a grand total of ONE clean match. Yep. Misses or no-shoots on all but one local level 2 match.

After a while of shooting all A's you will start to "call" your shots and you will "feel" a miss, or a bad shot. The trick is learning to trust your sub-conscious "feel" and making up the shot.

I'm still working on that.

:p :redface:
 
"Slow and Steady" or "Fast and Sloppy"... that's like asking "Do you want to be kicked in the back or the front". My answer is "neither".

If you are getting great hits, work on speeding up.
If you are not getting great hits, work on accuracy.

Speed or Accuracy: Which is more important in a particular stage? The winning hit factor will give you a really good idea. If it's over 8, I'd gladly sacrifice a point or two for a half a second. If it's under 3, I'll take extra time to get every point I can.

Remember: "You can't miss fast enough to win" is a good rule of thumb.

-ivan-
 
There is a curve, that you want to reach the apex of.

If you were to plot your performance on a certain course of fire, for instance.

Tom does the stage in 10 seconds.

You do it in each of 5, 6, 7, 8 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, and 15 seconds.

Say at 15 seconds, you shoot all A's, and at 5 seconds, you drop a bunch of mikes. Your best hit factor is going to someplace between those.

This means you are going to have a bunch of speeds at which you get precisely the same hit factor, above and below the "bump" at the top.

When shooting, try to get to the bump, and when practising, try and shift the bump towards higher hit factors.

Make any sense?
 
It's not about how fast you can shoot, it's not about how fast you can hit the target, it's how fast can you shoot As.

I tell all my new shooters: shoot all As, doesn't matter how long that will take you, and you will not be last. Guess what - works every time.

I really laugh at people coming up with "if you're shooting all As you're shooting too slow." That's nonsense. A better statement will be if you're NOT shooting pretty much all As, you're shooting too quickly!

If you're shooting all As, and you're not maxed out on speed, it means you're ready to try and see if you can learn how to speed up, while maintaining good hits. Since when is losing points (i.e. not hitting all/mostly As) a mark of a good IPSC shooter!??
 
omen said:
It's not about how fast you can shoot, it's not about how fast you can hit the target, it's how fast can you shoot As.

I tell all my new shooters: shoot all As, doesn't matter how long that will take you, and you will not be last. Guess what - works every time.

I really laugh at people coming up with "if you're shooting all As you're shooting too slow." That's nonsense. A better statement will be if you're NOT shooting pretty much all As, you're shooting too quickly!

If you're shooting all As, and you're not maxed out on speed, it means you're ready to try and see if you can learn how to speed up, while maintaining good hits. Since when is losing points (i.e. not hitting all/mostly As) a mark of a good IPSC shooter!??
Click to expand...

So, in short, you should always shoot more As, and you should always do it faster.

If you are the A-est, and the fasterest, you will be the winningest!
 
To answer the question .... neither.

You must simply go as fast as you can still hit mostly A's

If you shoot slow, try going faster and by that I mean looking for each shot and each next target faster because you can only go as fast as you can see.

So to improve you must practice improving what you see and how fast you see it.

You must see the sight/dot on each shot lift from the target at the point where you want the bullet to hit it. If you keep both eyes open and force yourself to do that you won't have misses and you can do it faster than you can move you hands.

Misses come from looking somewhere else while you finger is still pulling the trigger, or maybe not looking at all.

Then try looking to the next target and where you want to hit it and focus on that spot as fast as possible, see the sight/dot line up at that spot, maintain keeping the sight/dot on that spot untill the gun lifts in recoil and then do it again.

As soon as you start to get D's and misses you are not staying with the sight/dot until the gun fires, and you can do this in 100ths of a second.

Next movement...but that's another can of worms.( smooth is fast)( less is less) etc.

Tag line from Team Klingon galactic IPSC tour "speed is the economy of accuracy" so often so true....
 
I like:

"I may be slow, but I'm not very accurate." Off topic, but funny.:p

"They only score the holes"

Of course, the ubiquitous:

"See what you need to see"

I think that is my favourite one.

DVC,

V7
 
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