How to increase pistol shooting speed

[Gio]

I agree that .26 is slow for a bill drill. There is a difference in match pace type splits and bill drill splits. I rarely see .14-.16's in matches, but that is my regular bill drill pace guaranteeing A's. If you are shooting .26 bill drill splits, my feeling is that you are probably shooting MUCH slower than that in a match or on a more complex drill with multiple targets. When you learn to track recoil and run the gun at a faster pace, your splits on any other kind of drill or target will also speed up.

[GuanoLoco]

Gun: Tanfoglio Witness Stock 2

I've been a .19 - .22 split guy for a while but had a breakthrough last Sunday. I was basically working Draw, 5, reload, 5 drills at 3 yards. I was also right up against a tall berm.

Attempting to maintain good weak hand grip, relaxed weak hand grip, and relaxing my body as I tend to tense up. 3 yards allows you to just look over the slide and easily maintain USPSA Metric Target "Lower A-Zone" (8x11") hits. I found myself maintaining 0.18 splits for the first time, and was occasionally seeing even lower numbers when I was really just trying to operate at the limits of my physical performance.

At one point, attempting to put 2 each on 3 targets at full tilt, relaxed I ripped off 8 shots - there was a 0.12, a couple 0.14's and I think a 0.16 in there. Fully in control? No, but I was finally starting to feel what it took to get the gun cranking along like that and one I felt it I could try to replicate it, and control it, and SEE the sights while I was doing it an running at subconscious control speeds.

[spinmove_]

Ok, two week update as promised. I didn't get to do much speed work as I only had the range to myself for maybe 5-10 minutes. But in that short time I was able to get about 4 Bill Drills off. I was working on a slightly modified grip where the gun was more centered in the web of my hand, firing hand was more relaxed that it had previously been, support hand clamping down harder and torquing inward. Firing hand was also torquing inward, but not nearly as much as the support hand, so the gun actually kind looks canted a la how Vogel does.

Given this, I was able to run called shot Bill Drills at the average of 0.26s. I was able to somehow sneak a 0.17, 0.16, and a 0.14 in there somehow as well. Most of my splits ranged from 0.27 to 0.25 so I'm pretty consistent there. In two weeks time I was able to shave off 0.1s on average. I'll keep working some of these drills and see if I can work more transition stuff in there as well and see what I can do next time around.

Thanks again to every one for the suggestions as they appear to be helping out.

[Mr_White]

That's not much live fire to throw at it to cut your splits by .1! Nice!!!

[spinmove_]

That's not much live fire to throw at it to cut your splits by .1! Nice!!!

Thanks! I think it was a combination of shifting the gun in the web of my hand slightly, relaxing the firing hand, clamping down harder with the support hand, and simply drilling the hell out of that presentation in dry fire that really brought it together.


Sent from mah smertfone using tapathingy

[AMC]

Depends on his baseline I suppose. I get around 2.10 if I have missed a week and by the end of my session I am around 1.85 with the odd lottery winning 1.65 thrown in to cheer me up.



There is nothing wrong with .26, mate.

Have a read up on human reaction time and you will find that it is between .15 and .30. For shooters it averages around the .25 mark, I will share who told me that in a moment.

You need to split reaction down into receiving the stimuli informing you to do something and then actually doing it. That breaks the times down to .075 + .075 = .15'ish and .15 + .15 = .30'ish.......or, for shooters around the .125 + .125 = .25'ish mark. So you can see that your .26 is very, very, respectable.

In practical terms that means if you are doing a Bill Drill starting at the low ready, 6 to the body and one to the head it should look something like:

1. Low ready to first body shot = reaction to timer move to body area .25 + reaction to requirement to shoot .25 = total time to first shot .5'ish
2. Each subsequent body shot .25
3. Move to final head shot .25 + final head shot .25 = .5

You will have good days and times may come down a smidge, you will have bad days and times will go up. Build your drills and set times around each target transition and shot requiring .25, not the draw though as that is a different matter and pistol holster juggling is difficult to time and needs practice, lots of it.

Bill Rogers has studied, dissected, analysed and implemented reaction time as the basis for his shooting schools teaching and training. Bill trains gunfighters. He has trained many, many, professionals at the highest level and started the school as a happy accident at the behest of ST6. If you need to test your ability I would point you at him, and it is Bill who will tell you that .25 is around benchmark for shooters and he has been observing and measuring that for over 30 years.

Watch ---> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYDiKda0PHA

.Anyway, I'm off to San Francisco for the next week now.

Sorry I missed this post.....you could've looked me up!

[Chuteur]

Sorry I missed this post.....you could've looked me up!

Probably in a couple, or three months again. If I don't get timetabled to death I shall happily drop you a line.

[Sig_Fiend]

I'm going to ignore the different possible applications and focus purely on mechanics, since the OP simply asked about how to go faster.

I highly recommend checking out Matt Burkett's Timing Drills. They're wonderful in their simplicity, but quite effective. Start with the drills as written, and then modify accordingly as you progress. Once you start gaining speed, feel free to drop split times, increase distance, or modify any other variables to keep pushing yourself beyond your comfort zone.

Pulling the trigger "faster" isn't the issue. It's not terribly difficult for a person to be able to bust out sub .20 second splits. The trick is putting in the reps to develop the subconscious competence with it, to be able to do it consistently and on demand. You have to start by breaking down the individual fundamentals first, however, and refining your technique with those.

With the timing drills, you'll experiment with different ends of the spectrum in terms of grip strength/tension, and will eventually find your happy medium for a given split time. The amount of tension will vary depending on the speed and difficulty of the shot. You'll also notice, as you experiment, that you'll see different characteristics in how the slide tracks under recoil. This is important. Recognizing these subtle differences will allow you to more effectively self-diagnose and make improvements.

The important thing to keep in mind is the principle of why these are referred to as timing drills. In essence, you need to get a feel for the recoil characteristics of the gun before you can get your fundamentals in sync with those characteristics. It may seem like a small issue, but the difference of a few grams in slide mass, bullet loads, recoil spring weights, etc. will all have a substantial effect on how the gun feels, if you pay attention to it.

One example would be transitioning from a low bore axis gun, like a Glock, immediately to a higher bore axis gun like a SIG or H&K. Many will complain about "height over bore", but the real issue is that they're simply not used to the timing of the gun, therefore it feels a bit "clunky" to them when shooting. Considering there are plenty of successful competition shooters using guns that have what many would call a "higher bore axis", that's clearly not the issue. The real issue is in syncing up your upper body tension and post ignition push to be more effectively "timed" with the particular gun. That will come once you put the reps in.

[Surf]

Getting faster for myself always entailed all of the ancillary things besides pulling the trigger faster. However for the context of the OP, "getting faster" for me has been;

Seeing better / faster
Learning to focus intently on the front sight which keyed me in on being able to track the front sight movement up and down throughout the entire recoil phase. Not "there it is", "now its gone" and then "there it is again". But truly watching the up down movement throughout the entire phase. We often lapse on this one and might first learn to watch the muzzle movement or revert to it, but learning to honestly track the dot on the front sight. As proficiency increases or shot acceptability becomes more forgiving then we can adjust accordingly and "see what we need to see". However I think we should be more strict here especially while in the learning phase.

Being ready
Making sure that the weapon is ready to fire the instant you have an acceptable sight alignment / sight picture. This very much means resetting of the trigger during the recoil phase which is critical. Not being ready for some shooters can allow for a negative or below level muzzle dip in the recoil phase. Of course there are other fixes for that, but it is exacerbated by not "being ready".

Minimizing muzzle rise
Being able to minimize muzzle lift. Obvious, but it greatly improves or optimizes the ability to track the sights. Also the gun is "ready to fire" quicker. We just need to make sure the shooter is ready with the sight tracking and reset of the trigger.

Timing or cadence split to split
Improving our timing or by creating a predictable shot pace that is highly repeatable in muzzle lift and return, so a predicable front sight track. This can be created no matter the split speed and often why shooters like shot to shot to be similar as well as, shot to shot to transition to shot to shot to be similar. This in turn improves our ability to learn to see faster and track the sights via a more predictable movement.
In other words: Bang...Bang...Bang...Bang...Bang...Bang OR Bang.Bang.Bang.Bang.Bang.Bang is better than
BangBang....Bang..Bang......BangBang.......Bang

Grip and trigger finger
Is in a more correct balance to allow for quicker movement in the trigger finger. There are also more optimal ways to run a trigger for purely increasing speed. But if it has a trade off that negatively affects results for other reasons then we still need to find the correct balance.

I'm sure I could think of others, but these have been key for me.