Question for firearms instructors

[Doublestack45]

My question involves plateaus, hurdles, and ah-ha moments that you regularly see amoung intermediate level pistol shooters as they progress. What do you see "click" with people most often, and why?

Most of my training is daily dry fire at 1-2" targets with a weekly live session of about 100-200 rounds. While competition is not my main focus, I noticed last week during a club level IDPA match how much differently I run the trigger on the clock, versus my daily and weekly range sessions. Was very pleased with my results, but am now unsure what the benefits or disadvantages are of trying to replicate that "buzz" of unconscious gun manipulation that I feel under time constraints.

[Jay Cunningham]

Almost everything is an ah-ha moment for intermediate level shooters. The new shooters have nothing to compare stuff to and the guys that have been doing it a long time have seen A LOT.

[okie john]

My question involves plateaus, hurdles, and ah-ha moments that you regularly see amoung intermediate level pistol shooters as they progress. What do you see "click" with people most often, and why?

Not sure if this fits the format of your question exactly, but it falls under the heading of plateaus and hurdles.

I took a Pat McNamara class a couple of years ago. For some reason, all of the students were SWAT guys except me (former SF) and one other guy, so I was definitely an intermediate shooter in that setting. The "ah-ha" moment for me was understanding Pat's thoughts on performance-based training and outcome-based training as expressed by the "stay in your home" concept. As soon as I let go of the need to meet a particular standard on El Pres, I started nailing it. That changed everything I do, and I started improving much more quickly as a result.

When teaching people to shoot, I see "ah-ha" moments when I help people understand the nature of a problem or when I help them focus on fundamentals, which is a form of staying in your home. For example, if firing six shots in 20 seconds on a qualification course is messing with a shooter's head, I ask them to draw at the beep, then fire carefully aimed shots until I tell them to stop. I let them shoot for 20 seconds, then point out that they held the black (or whatever) for a 10-12 shots when the course only calls for six.


Okie John