Practicing From Concealed Holster

[peterb]

I practice press-outs at all sorts of different speeds depending on what I'm trying to accomplish. But when I'm trying to get faster at something, I either need to:

• correct mistakes in technique, which is best done at less than full speed
• push through a plateau in my comfort zone, which is best done at full speed

Both sever a purpose and it's a mistake to assume that one is better than the other or will always necessarily deliver the best results.

Right. As mentioned before, it's a lot like learning to play a fast piece on a musical instrument. You work out the fingering at reduced speed to figure out what's smooth and efficient. But at some point you crank up the metronome or backing track to a speed a bit faster than you can play cleanly, and do your best to keep up. Alternating between the two will eventually get you playing faster with fewer mistakes.

[bcauz3y]

But what a lot of the "smooth is fast" and "accuracy is final" people seem to forget is that you won't get to pick your pace. I see people all the time who can hit a 3x5 at 7yd... given ten seconds to aim, breathe, squeeze, relax, aim again, settle, press. Is that one step on the path? Sure. But far too many people just stop at that point and measure their success based off of nothing but where the bullet eventually landed on the paper. You shot a one hole group at 7yd? Hooray. How many times would I have shot you in the chest while you were aiming that first shot?

Is a miss bad? Absolutely.
But so is being too slow to get off a shot before you're dead.

I agree completely Todd.

I suppose the entire point of my point of my post could be summarized best with:

"Go as fast as you can while making hits"

[SamuelBLong]

I was unable to confirm his hypothesis today. My open draws were consistently faster than my concealed draws over 6 runs with a J frame. The mean difference was .34 and the median was .37.

I'm finding a similar difference in my testing. For me, no concealment, on average, is approximately 0.38 sec faster than my concealed draw to first shot. I should also note that i've only looked at drawing to low probability targets. I need to go back and look at the difference in drawing to some bigger targets / multiple shots w/ hit percentages.

I like this data tracking thing. I'm really able to point out specific areas that I need to work on and areas where I can improve.

[JRas]

concealed is slower from what I've seen

I normally wear a regular t-shirt though. I pull my shirt up to my arm pit on draw

I know some people wear those vests or a jackets that they swing out of the way, not a fan