What was your "aha" or breakthrough moment?

I've been a member of this site for 7 years now, and an active participant for at least 5.
5 years in and I've still not accomplished the following things:

1. Coin-level FAST runs on-demand from concealment
2. 100 on a 25yd B8
3. Turbo-pin level on Gabe's stuff (with our without concealment).
4. A sub-2.5 Bill Drill clean

Some here have said I am a good shooter. When I look at those I encounter at the range in the real world that seems to be the case by comparison.

Then again, I'm not hanging out with GM's all the time.

I hear a lot of talk about a lot of things. I see guys win awards. I've been in classes with some high level shooters, but 2 things stand out to me:

1. I don't see guys who can pull off the 4 examples (not a conclusive list, just my current list) I listed above on demand
2. I don't know how to get there either

Maybe the first 90% is easy and it's the last 10% that takes hours, and hours, and thousands and thousands of rounds. If that's the case, cool just tell me and I'll keep plugging away. However, if there's a magic switch that I'm missing somehow, someone have mercy and tell me what it is.

This is something @karmapolice and I have talked about at great length and there seems to be this idea of this mystical level of ninja pistol performance, but can people really do that or did they just happen to do it once or twice at the right time in front of the right person or camera?

At the risk of excluding someone who should be on this list (so please forgive me) the guys on this site that I think probably can shoot at that level on-demand are, @SLG, @Mr_White, @Kevin B. , @DocGKR, @Surf, @GJM, @Duke, @nwhpfan. Interesting also to note how none of them really post anymore (GJM excluded) too.

That’s a challenging list of 4. There are a bunch of men who’ve shot an even bigger bunch of other men in the line of duty who probably couldn’t do all those runs on demand, either.

Wow.

Well I’m not sure I’m qualified to be listed with all those guys and I’m really not sure I could do any or all of those drills on demand. @PREDATOR (Sir Keeper) is probably there. @jetfire (Caleb) and the Jedi too

I’m almost always better/faster and less error prone cold or having not shot for a week than I am at say the middle day of a set of classes. Knowing what to do without having to think it helps me a lot.

My personal progress was accelerated when I stopped remembering the bad shots and focused on the good ones.

Everyone misses. So what benefit comes from hyper analyzing a mistaken shot I don’t want to repeat? The book “with winning in mind” covers this.

I’m the type of person that seeks to do everything to the best of my ability - yet i have to pull a hard stop when doing or being the best at something begins to dominate my life.

As a person I struggle for life balance very heavily and healthy obsession is not a good thing for me.

As to posting less - for the most part I don’t feel as though I can add much to most discussions. Along with that - work travel, kids, land ownership deal out constant time constraints.

1. Generally, I can do that. That doesn't mean I never mess it up though.

2. I'm good for a ninety-something. I honestly don't remember if I've ever shot 100. It's certainly not my norm.

3. This one I can definitely say I can do successfully most of the time. In something like 16/18 classes, I've hit the overall Turbo threshold of at least 4/8 runs. Most of them are 5 or 6 out of 8. I've hit 7/8 a couple times. I haven't hit 8/8 yet.

4. I can do that pretty comfortably.

You already brought it up, but I think it really helps to at some point just shoot a lot for a long time. Like, have a year or two where you shoot basically as much as you can, whether that's 10 or 20k or whatever it is. Try to do it productively and with purpose of course. But at some point shooting a lot is probably necessary. And I don't know, maybe you've already done that.

I know for me, part of the challenge is to manage maintenance and improvement as motivation level changes over time. I haven't been posting as much for a few years as some things have changed around in life, and definitely the character of my interest in shooting wanders around to different aspects of the craft and related areas of study. I just haven't been on fire to shoot a bunch of drills and video them and pore over the numbers. That's ok, I still like to shoot and train - that hasn't changed.

You asked about ah ha moments. Mine was when I truly learned to shoot the sights, which is when I learned the visual focus shift. That opened the world (of fine detail in the sights in motion and thus precision at speed.) One certainly need not do that vision thing, but I think getting deeply in tune with seeing and driving your fine visual reference around is a big key to development. People get excited by different things over time, and the sights may not always be that exciting. But the time that you're excited about them is a very productive time of development. Im convinced that same excitement I found in extreme sight focused shooting is found by others in target focused shooting with both irons and dots.

People get excited about all kinds of different aspects of shooting, and each time, something gets better. That is how it has to be.

I think improvement is occasionally mercifully easy, but that most of the time it's hard and you have to grind it out.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Sidheshooter

That’s a challenging list of 4. There are a bunch of men who’ve shot an even bigger bunch of other men in the line of duty who probably couldn’t do all those runs on demand, either.

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Completely agree, and I'd go so far as to say, not be able to do any of them.

I think Gabe's right that a lot of it is just a grind. For drills, you can always break down the components and attack them individually. For example, I received some good advice from Gabe and Les about speeding up my reload from concealment and, let me tell you, going from 2+ seconds down to a 1.5-1.7 second reload made sub 5 second FAST's a pretty normal thing. It took a ton of dry fire reps to get that reload down to that point though, so again, it was a grind.

Likewise, I drilled speed heavily in advance of taking Gabe's class. Only managed 3/8 turbo runs in the class when under pressure, but I can do them even more consistently in practice, so the physical capability is there, just needed to work on the mental game. But again, it took a lot of reps and rounds down range to get it even just to that point and I've obviously got a long ways yet too go.

Ironically, with all of that speed focus, I found after the class I couldn't shoot B8's worth shit. So as soon as you grind and focus on one set of components, you find you've atrophied somewhere else so now you've got to make sure you bring that back up to the level. What you focus on will change, but the grind remains the same.

Motivation is huge and that has waxed and waned with me. I'm hoping to devote quite a bit of time to trying out the red dot concept this year as that seems to be just about the only thing that gets me excited to dry fire right now and, if you're motivated to dry fire, you know you're doing something right.

Edited to add: For the record, I too have never shot a 100 on a B8. Ton of friggin' 99's though... =\

My aha moment was when i stopped expecting a breakthrough. Being competitive in the USPSA Master class has taken a shit ton of hard work. There aren’t any shortcuts that I am aware of.

Your list of goals is also part of the problem. Those are benchmarks, and at least for me, aren’t a goal in and of themselves.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get to work. I am writing this from the range, after an excellent and fun practice session. I worked hard and maybe got 0.0001% better today.

Also a good coach can be a big help. Sometimes you need someone to tell you what to do to improve efficiently.

I’m a “senior” shooter and haven’t hit those levels. I have a pin from the late Todd Green(no coin) and few other small accomplishments. They are somewhat important to me. Karl Rehn has a book out(with a chart I think generated by Mr. White) where he analyzes how much work it takes to reach high levels of performance. It’s a long tough grind.
That said, if those measurements are important to you, I would suggest focusing on one or two at a time, realizing that
working on, say, a 100 on a B8@25 may affect your speed shooting and reload time.
I’ve been around exceptional shooters. I can’t think of one of them that did not put in an almost obsessive amount of effort to get to their near superhuman levels. And, as it seems Mr White typed earlier, most(all?) could not do everything “on demand”. I focus now on being safe and measurably competent,e.g., POST qualified, passing FBI qual, etc. That doesn’t mean I don’t admire all the folks the OP mentioned and others. And I read with interest their work, how they practice and test themselves.
Best of luck with your shooting; as Clint Smith has been known to say: “the harder I work, the luckier I get”.

To have a thoughtful discussion of this, you would need to start with defining “on demand.” On demand is a lot easier to do on the internet, and a lot harder to do in real life.

I don’t know anyone that, in real life, can repeatedly put down 100 percent of their relaxed practice ability, one try on a clock, in front of others. The way to put down performances like you describe, is to be able to shoot those drills at a much higher level in practice, so what happens on demand is 70-80 percent of your peak performance.

As long as we are discussing this topic, I have a few more thoughts.

1) fixed time drills. Fixed time drills can be easy or they can be hard, depending upon the time available and your skill level. We know that “rushing” while shooting does not lead to a good result on low probability targets. If you know you can make the time limit, you can shoot without worrying about time, and time becomes a non factor. If you struggle to make the time allotted, you have this monkey on your back that makes the drill exponentially harder.

2) on demand. 99 percent of people quoting on demand ability on the internet are either mistaken or outright lying. To quote on demand honestly, there would be more exclusions, qualifications and caveats than on a life insurance policy marketed on late night cable tv.

3) self proclaimed ability. A high percentage of people telling you how good they shoot, don’t shoot that good. Good shooters let their results speak for themselves. Good shooters also know how many better shooters there are than them.

4) classification. A high percentage of people constantly telling you their classification, are over classified. They probably shot the same classifier six or ten times to make their classification, and are lucky to shoot a classifier percentage equal to their class in the last year.

5) stand and shoot drills. Most good USPSA shooters are not devoting significant amounts of their practice to stand and shoot drills. They are about winning matches, not raising their classification percentage, so their practice reflects that. If there was a sport that consisted of the four listed tests, people would be amazingly good at them. Look at the crazy peak hit factors for Steel Challenge. A lot of timmie drills are tactical shooters trying to compete at something without really competing where the heat is in USPSA.