Mr_White...

[Mr_White]

It's really not terribly innovative, I just try to not practice the exact same thing over and over so much anymore. I set up some dry fire targets of different scaled sizes, some open, some with hardcover, some with no-shoots in different orientations. I put a couple behind a barrier, I put a couple right in front of me. I start with my hands in one position or another, draw and engage the targets. Then I do it again, from a different start position, and engage the targets in a different order. I put a reload in there somewhere. Or movement, varying the direction. Or a tough lean. Or do it strong or support hand only. Basically just take a modest target array or two and try to mix up what I do with it, instead of practicing the same pattern of draw, engage, reload, etc., a bunch of times in a row.

[nycnoob]

Thanks thats very helpful. It is the kind of things I thought of but assumed you had some "secret sauce", nope on secret sauce, you just work at it.

[MVS]

I attribute any accomplishment to throwing a lot of work at it, which really is underpinned by motivation. Motivation enables the actual work needed to advance. I was very fortunate to get out-worked in another endeavor when I was about fourteen years old, and that lesson has stuck with me big time ever since.

So yes, a lot of dry fire. But that came several years into the larger volume live fire shooting I was doing. When I started dry firing a lot too, that's when I think my improvement accelerated more. That adoption of dry fire was also when I was becoming aware of higher levels of technical skill so I drove hard toward those instead of attacking some intermediary level of performance.

In dry fire, I have always leaned hard on the very core skills of trigger control, draws, reloads, and transitions, freestyle, SHO, and WHO. I now try to incorporate more random practice (as opposed to block), and include more movement and complexity and set up what could be considered fragments of USPSA stages with a couple of positions and mixed target arrays. And live fire whenever I can.

My progression started with a specific focus on defensive training - awareness, decisionmaking, gunhandling, marksmanship, tactics, etc. Then later it shifted to a focus on improving technical skills. I joined the internet as an active participant after that point.

Maybe as much as the motivation to work, I would also attribute any accomplishment to throwing off the yoke of expectation, and abhorring thoughts of it being impossible to duplicate high level competitive performance with carry gear from concealment. For me, it's a starting point to ignore any notion of impossibility.

Thanks for the detailed response. I really appreciate it.