Low ammo and competition

[Warped Mindless]

I’m not a competition guy so I figured I would ask here…

I have a cousin who just turned 21 and is interested in doing competition. I believe he insist on IDPA even though I told him that many of the experts seem to gravitate towards USPSA but whatever…

He is a new shooter and still learning but the one time I shot with him he seemed to have a grasp on safety and shot ok.

He is worried about having limited ammo. When I asked how much he could budget for a month he said 500rds most months. I then introduced him to dryfire and I’m giving him copies of Ben Stogars books for Christmas.

He asked me if that amount of ammo was enough when combined with daily dry fire but since I don’t do competition I didn’t know how to answer that.

His goal is to make Master in IDPA by the end of next year. Again, I don’t know if that’s realistic with his ammo constraints.

Advice form you guys who compete?

Edit: to clarify 500rds is his practice count he can budget separate from the ammo he would need for matches. He told me “500 most months” but I don’t know if he means he can sometimes do more than 500 or if sometimes he has to do less. I didn’t ask for clarity on that.

[fatdog]

I cannot comment on the Master thing as that implies different levels of practice for different people, and some need more live fire Vs dry fire than others. 500 rounds is easily enough to either shoot a club match or have a practice session about 4 times a month and "be in the game" based on typical IDPA match round counts.

[JCN]

@Warped Mindless

Yes, I think. Especially for IDPA the way the 5x5 classifier is structured.

There’s only one main classifier so you don’t have to accomplish a running average like USPSA or a diverse bank of “pop quiz” skills to have on tap.

Plus it’s more limited target engagement distance so again, a more defined set of skills.

The main question is: how rabid of a learner is he?

Jay Beal is the gold standard of someone ammo/budget limited who competes at a high national USPSA level shooting 2000-3000 rounds per year. That’s a little different for someone with more handgun experience, but that’s the example people are going to know.

He has an interesting set of interviews that talk about him maximizing dry fire and doing hybrid dry/live sessions where he doesn’t shoot every shot in a live session and he will dry half the shots in a practice run.

So the short answer is: Yes, can be done.

He’ll have to be really committed to it in dry AND have a very keen power of observation to improve quickly if he doesn’t have formal coaching.

I would recommend gifting him the Max Michel patreon online course for USPSA (I think it’s $25 a month or something) for a short time (2 months) and he can binge the past videos.

Or he can get a site supporter membership here and join the Splits coaching thread.

[CraigS]

500/month is fine. Wife and I used to shoot 300-350 each range trip. Then pandemic and expensive ammo. We dropped that to 100-150. Now we are back to maybe 200. One thing we do is quite often load only 4-6 in the first mag and shoot at 4-5 targets 2 shot each. that is 90% of idpa and also forces us to practice reloads. We also move at some point. 2 targets close together and the next pair we need to move 10-20ft to engage. I haven't shot uspsa but several idpa shooters do it. Apparently there is much less direction on how to shoot the stage and stages are more like to be 20-25 rnds vs idpa max of 18.

[Jim Watson]

I think 500 a month practice in addition to however many matches he can get to in addition to dry fire and study should be ample to develop skills.

How many matches is that? Granted good health and weather - neither very good recently - I can get to an indoor USPSA every Wednesday, regulation IDPA two or three Saturdays out of the month, one to three outlaw shoots providing the same general shooting if you can handle the sometimes wacky rules and stages.

[JCN]

@Jim Watson
@CraigS

To clarify, are your replies regarding just competing in IDPA or are they regarding the goal of becoming master in ID PA within one year with little handgun experience to start. Those are two very different things.

[GyroF-16]

@Jim Watson
@CraigS

To clarify, are your replies regarding just competing in IDPA or are they regarding the goal of becoming master in ID PA within one year with little handgun experience to start. Those are two very different things.

Concur.

In my experience, 150 rds a session, one session a week, supplemented by dryfire is more that adequate to make substantial gains in handgun skill.
That said, there’s plenty of experience and gamesmanship that goes into making Master in IDPA - things that can only be gained through experience and repetition in matches.
While the shooter in question MAY be able to shoot to a MA level in a 5x5 classifier through practicing the classifier, I would strongly recommend against that path. In my experience (again), the Masters and even Experts who attain those classifications through match bumps and (to a lesser degree) shooting the FULL (72 rd) classifier are MUCH stronger shooters.
The 5x5 classifier (4 strings at 10 yds on a single target) has utility for getting new IDPA shooters an initial classification, but bears little relationship to what it takes to win matches.

[MVS]

Concur.

In my experience, 150 rds a session, one session a week, supplemented by dryfire is more that adequate to make substantial gains in handgun skill.
That said, there’s plenty of experience and gamesmanship that goes into making Master in IDPA - things that can only be gained through experience and repetition in matches.
While the shooter in question MAY be able to shoot to a MA level in a 5x5 classifier through practicing the classifier, I would strongly recommend against that path. In my experience (again), the Masters and even Experts who attain those classifications through match bumps and (to a lesser degree) shooting the FULL (72 rd) classifier are MUCH stronger shooters.
The 5x5 classifier (4 strings at 10 yds on a single target) has utility for getting new IDPA shooters an initial classification, but bears little relationship to what it takes to win matches.

You said most of what I thought. While I don't think this thread is really specific to IDPA, I will point out that the new bump system will severely water down the pool and there will soon be a lot of Masters and Experts who are not. Of course this doesn't affect those who don't attend majors except in the fact that classifiers have been cut way back as well under the new rules. I truly hope they intend to add another level above Master. (I know about DM, but that isn't really a classification per se)

Everything said by most in this thread is probably correct, with proper determined dry fire he could possibly make Master in that time frame on 500 rounds a month, if that was the main focus.

[Jim Watson]

I know a guy who made USPSA Master from scratch in 18 months but I do not know his practice regimen. This was back when ammo was cheap, he probably shot a lot more than We IDPAs.

[CraigS]

@Jim Watson
@CraigS

To clarify, are your replies regarding just competing in IDPA or are they regarding the goal of becoming master in ID PA within one year with little handgun experience to start. Those are two very different things.

I was thinking more along the lines of improving his performance. Whether that would get him to master or not I have no way of predicting.