Input wanted- training a young comp shooter

Long time lurker, first time poster.

My 11 year old son has started shooting USPSA, he will shoot his 3rd ever match this weekend. He has very good fundamentals and gun handling. He is deliberate moving through a stage. He is also very accurate. In his last match he had the fourth most A's and 0 M's.
He could definitely move faster between positions but I'd rather him grow into that as he becomes more comfortable moving with a gun.

Something that I think he needs to work on is recoil management. We've been working on grip and stance as well as shooting Bill Drills. I'm just not sure how much he is capable of due to his size. He is 4'9" & 80 pounds.

We're having a blast so far.

Just wondering if anyone has been through anything similar or has any words of wisdom.

My background is in defensive training, no competition experience other than watching it on TV.

Thanks in advance.

FWIW he may just not be built enough to grip hard enough just yet. I would say give it time, on top of growing up he'll naturally get better the more he shoots too if he's remembering to just grip as hard as he comfortably can ;)

I did some competitive shooting with my boys. At his age, I would just let him have fun as long as he is safe.

I remember my wife relaying a story of a 30ish year old guy who was happy that he beat my 14 year old son at a stage. Typically it was the other way around so we all got a laugh out of it.

What Peally said. I would also have him start learning how to visualize and execute a plan. Don't worry about him having a good plan or anything, just that he visualized it. That will also help him stay safe when the stage requires uprange movement or starts facing uprange, etc.

Thanks for the advice so far.
I'm definitely not pushing him to perform but he is competitive and wants to do better. He is also a "practicer", loves to dry fire, practice reloads, etc.

We talk a lot about having realistic goals for his age and experience. He shot NSSF rimfire for a while before starting USPSA so he has the competition itch.

I put him in Limited Minor so he has fewer reloads to worry about.

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Originally Posted by Quantrill

Thanks for the advice so far.
I'm definitely not pushing him to perform but he is competitive and wants to do better. He is also a "practicer", loves to dry fire, practice reloads, etc.

We talk a lot about having realistic goals for his age and experience. He shot NSSF rimfire for a while before starting USPSA so he has the competition itch.

I put him in Limited Minor so he has fewer reloads to worry about.

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If you're not aware of them look into one of USPSA's junior camps. I can't imagine a better way for a kid to move his game up than intensive coaching by the best shooters.

Keep it fun. Also, realize he will soon discover girls. ;)

Him being safe is the most important thing. In USPSA, time is important. Advice I was given, is shoot slow and do everything else fast.

Lots of good advice in the thread.

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Originally Posted by Bill Nesbitt

Keep it fun. Also, realize he will soon discover girls. ;)

Him being safe is the most important thing. In USPSA, time is important. Advice I was given, is shoot slow and do everything else fast.

Lots of good advice in the thread.

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Yep, good advice.
Shot his match today. Either he just had a bad day or our emphasis on recoil in practice hurt his accuracy. He had 2 or 3 no shoots, a procedural for shooting 7 rounds on a 6 round course of fire.

He was squaded with some good dudes and had fun.

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Originally Posted by Quantrill

Shot his match today. Either he just had a bad day or our emphasis on recoil in practice hurt his accuracy.

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It doesn't matter a lot how high the gun recoils, as long as it comes back on target.

I have yet to go to a USPSA match. So take it for what it's worth, possibly nothing.

I think the biggest thing that I have learned since I started trying to improve, is to pay attention to what I see. Where my eyes are pointed, what is in my peripheral vision, what is in focus, and what is not. If I had started out realizing that I need to really, really, focus on where I want to shoot and then just let the gun come up and the shot happen I would have be further along in skill development then I am. My ability to process what I actually see is just now starting to come together 8 months into actively trying to learn and improve.

With reps and practice I think the recoil control, hand speed, movement speed, will all come along. Especially as he gets bigger. Being able to put all those things to better use will depend on how much of what he sees he can actually process, and how fast he can do it.

But like I said, that just seems to be what holds me up with my progression, and I'm not shooting real competition yet.

-Cory

Not so much an answer, but a resource: You can always reach out to one of the junior shooters growing in popularity. Deven Wagner comes to mind. I'm sure he or his parent(s) would be glad to share some insight.

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Originally Posted by lightning fast

Not so much an answer, but a resource: You can always reach out to one of the junior shooters growing in popularity. Deven Wagner comes to mind. I'm sure he or his parent(s) would be glad to share some insight.

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This is good advice and we do have a such a resource. We have made friends with a very good junior shooter and his parents. We've got good advice from them so far. There is more than one way to skin a cat so I'm just looking for as much information as I can get. There are a lot of good shooters on this forum.

Update.
My son has now shot in 4 club matches and enough classifieds to make D. He's pretty pumped to be "classed" ��.
He continues to shoot accurately. He has abondoned his stage plan a couple of times mid stage which was a learning experience. We've talked about sticking to a plan and staying in his wheelhouse, meaning a plan he can execute well. We will shoot one more club match and a "big" level 2 or his month. I'll try to get some video posted of him also.

Finally getting around to posting some videos. Attached is my sons 5th match which was the state match in 2017

http://youtu.be/5J1FZZRn8UY

Here are a couple from 2018
http://youtu.be/yw_fsFLzg3o
http://youtu.be/bcrVhIm4sHg

2019 sample
http://youtu.be/gSHTFg2Yu2U
http://youtu.be/-Fu-SuNtP4M

That match today, he looked pretty damned solid.

Thanks!

The last two videos are from this fall. They’re all dated Dec 27th because my IT person/ wife just uploaded them to YT yesterday.

I thought I’d throw up a sample of videos to chart his progress since I started the thread.

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Originally Posted by Quantrill

Thanks!

The last two videos are from this fall. They’re all dated Dec 27th because my IT person/ wife just uploaded them to YT yesterday.

I thought I’d throw up a sample of videos to chart his progress since I started the thread.

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His reloads are solid. Time to ditch the training wheels and move to production.

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Originally Posted by Alpha Sierra

His reloads are solid. Time to ditch the training wheels and move to production.

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He’s digging the 2011. We’re set to go major with it in 2020.

Major in 2020. Sounds like a plan. Presuming he continues to hold in own, improve, might he be ready from some outside instruction to the extent that is not happening already.

I say this even if you are an accomplished shooter in that boys often can better accept/hear input from other “coaches” even when dad is saying the same thing. Food for thought.

Good on your from making him into the young man he is now and the man he will become.

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Originally Posted by vcdgrips

Major in 2020. Sounds like a plan. Presuming he continues to hold in own, improve, might he be ready from some outside instruction to the extent that is not happening already.

I say this even if you are an accomplished shooter in that boys often can better accept/hear input from other “coaches” even when dad is saying the same thing. Food for thought.

Good on your from making him into the young man he is now and the man he will become.

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I appreciate the words and I agree. I take some pride in the coaching I’ve given him but he can definitely benefit from professional coaching. He has taken two basic classes from Tim Herron and Merle Edington. I need to get him to a more in-depth class.

He lost a lot of time in 2019 to a broken arm but still got to 59.57% in Limited shooting minor.

Coaching, more focused practice, and at least two level 2 matches is the plan for 2020.

Really great you have your boy shooting at a young age. As far as grip, I come from the Ben Stoeger school of thought which is to focus gripping the gun really hard with the support hand, and just firm on the strong hand. As far as doing well in USPSA matches, one of the biggest things that will quickly improve scores to learn to Analyze a stage, then strategize, memorize, and visualize. (More on this from Steve Anderson). Just that alone will eliminate “thinking” about what you need to do. I see so many shooters absolutely screw this up. I couldn’t recommend enough to listen to Steve Andersons podcast, he covers a lot of this in his podcasts. Good that he likes dry firing, that is another big key to quick success, again, S. Andersons book Refinement and Repetition, excellent dry fire book that is structured and makes it easy.

If you are really series about competing, I would also recommend joining Stoegers Practical shooting group;
https://www.practicalshootingtraininggroup.com/. It’s a pay site but if your boy is into it, it has excellent content and your an even get personalized coaching from your videos by Ben Stoeger and Hwansik Kim

Good luck

I’ve been giving the PSTG thing some thought. It’s probably online coaching or a class. I doubt the budget will allow for both.

When he first started I wanted him to be very conservative with the 180. When he moved laterally he always dropped his support hand and rolled the gun. I’d like him to have the gun up and ready to shoot sooner so we’re working on keeping the support hand on the gun more. Obviously there are times when dropping the support hand is necessary or faster. My question is; do you have a rule of thumb as to when you drop your support hand to move and when you keep a two hand grip?

I vaguely remember this question being discussed in Kita Busse's book as well as Tim Herron's podcast. Warning: I'm a die-cast timmy and the last time I did anything in competition was an IDPA classifier in April, unless you count going to Tim Herron's practical performance in November.

From what I remember, the general rule of thumb is somewhere between three to five steps. Since we are taking our support hand off the gun in order to move faster, i.e. pumping our arms as if we were sprinting without a gun, I would guess the number of steps is less about distance to the next target engagement and more about how many steps you could move in the time it takes to get the support hand off/back on the gun.

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Originally Posted by Quantrill

do you have a rule of thumb as to when you drop your support hand to move and when you keep a two hand grip?

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If I can cover the distance is 3 - 6 steps, gun stays up in my face unless there's something odd like a move uprange to my support side (I'm RH). Otherwise, it's time to run. The thing to train, if dropping the gun to run, is to bring it back up in front of the face with both hands before you finish your position entry.

As @Yung mentions, it's all about efficiency. Ideally you can set up a simple two target position exit and entry stage and time it at different distances between positions using both methods.