Risk vs. Reward on first shot

[GOP]

This is a very timely thread for me, as I have noticed that my "competition draw" averages around 1.75 at 7m on a 8" target (pathetic, but I hate the vest). By comparison, my draw on a 2" circle at 7m with the same gear is 2.0 seconds with a proper press-out. Obviously, this needs to get lowered on both fronts, but I think I may apply "Occams Razor" and primarily train the press out. For me, at my skill level, my priorities are accuracy, movement, transitions, then speed, as that is what is going to lower my times the most.

[jthhapkido]

For comparison purposes, the stage that initiated this conversation was Roundabout. I had been drawing to the 7 yard plate, and then transitioning to the back left 15 yard plate, then the other 15 yard plate, then the front right plate, and finally the stop plate. After working on it with some guidance from a friend, I started shooting the back left plate, then the two front plates, then the back right plate and then the stop plate. The reasoning was that I could get a faster transition into the big open plate after a 1.5ish draw to the rear plate, and that by shooting the rear plate last before the stop plate I wouldn't have to brake the gun as hard heading into the stop plate.

..and for myself, I do the left-hand variant of your first plan: draw to the close R, then far R, far L, near L then stop plate. Drawing to the near gets me an easy first hit, a good transition to the harder targets, and leaves me the easy shot before I move to the stop plate. Taking a harder shot right before the stop plate means a bigger chance of missing, and coming back to it from the stop plate would therefore be more difficult than if I was coming from the near L target. Plus, the layout makes it an easy L-to-R run of three shots, with the only difficult one being the first one.

This was our January match, and the Roundabout runs start at around 2:15 or so. Showdown is the first stage. (And please skip the Outer Limits runs, because they were embarrassingly bad.)



As you can see, I generally transition with more precision than I draw. (Which doesn't seem to me like it would be a surprise, but my draw isn't very good, so it may just be me.)