Practicing for on demand performance

[John Hearne]

In terms of on-demand performance, I think that recency will trump about everything else. The last time that you confirmed your kinesthetic alignment of the gun via dry practice or live fire and the ability to execute the basic motor programs needed to run the gun will be hugely important.

If I'm worried about on-demand performance, I'd make sure I was dry firing as much as possible. I've found that I can deliver most of my performance potential with 4 sessions of dry practice and a 100 round session every week.

Jeff Cooper recommended presenting the gun 10 times before you left the house. If you do this, you're about as prepared as you can reasonably be.

[Stuffbreaker]

Frequent dry fire has been the key to improving my on-demand performance, as well. In 2013, I did half the live fire practice I did in 2012, but added 3-5 hours a week of dry practice. Prior to adding dry fire, I'd hit a plateau in the worst way. After adding dry fire, I broke the 5 second barrier in FAST cold for the first time, and advanced an entire class in both USPSA and IDPA. Shot calling improved immediately. I even won a stage overall at a major event, my first stage of the day.

In dry fire, I do both varied and repetitious drills applied mostly to small stages comprised of movement between 5-8 targets with multiple shooting positions. I use a par timer to help identify tweaks that get me to my maximum performance threshold for a particular stage. Cranking out rep after rep is the best way for me to shave time on a stage/drill and find the optimal sequence and types of movements that yield results. It would be difficult to isolate what works and what doesn't in a particular sequence without repetitive practice on a timer. I move on when focus wanes, then come back to the drill sporadically throughout the rest of my session to see what I've retained.

After several reps, drills can start to feel automated. I move on when I'm making small mistakes and corrections on the fly, but still hitting a par time I struggled with initially. At this point, running the stage backwards or jumping around to different skills helps me get back in focus. Its difficult to quantify exactly what I'm learning by jumping from drill to drill, but it does seem to help.

[Rick Finsta]

This puts words to why I like Dot Torture; I find that I don't improve performance doing the same drill over and over and over, but the more I do Dot Torture (and other similar drills where I only do limited repetitions of several mini-drills), the better I seem to progress. I also have found when working with a novice (well, more novice than myself, even), that any kind of drill like DT is a waste of time and ammunition, as the wheels will come off as they try to work the fundamentals under the slightly different rules of each dot. I like the concept of recognizing the subtleties of different skills/applications, and how that could foster better cold performance; and I think that area is exactly where a novice would do poorly. If they don't know what "right" is, how are they supposed to recognize different shades of "right?"

As for boredom, I've also found that having some kind of "fun drill" to break up the monotony of practice can help a student stay focused over a longer practice period. I usually just do something like the "Lucky Charms" target; it is just enough of a break to get the jitters out, then back at it.

Perhaps there is a good way to develop a curriculum that uses those "fun drill" breaks to recognize when a student is ready for the more advanced training regimen; when they start to perform well on those consistently (not necessarily to a hard and fast standard) they are ready for the more/smaller drills workout.