Time Plus and how fast is fast enough?

[ToddG]

You're taking my post out of the context of the portion of the post I was responding to. A post was made implying that one could not make up for poor accuracy with speed in IDPA or that it was harder to do, which (A) I don't think is true, although I once did and (B) there are too many other variables to be able to compare the two.

Fair enough. So I checked out the first link, and in SSP, here is what I saw:

• Some people who shot more accurately than you, lost to you.
• Every person who beat you, shot more accurately than you.
• The guy who won the Division dropped the fewest points.

Now I suppose if you wanted to suggest that Ernest's comment (which you've now quoted twice) was meant in absolute terms, sure, you're right and he's wrong. But I'm pretty sure Ernest understands that someone taking an hour to score 100% hits at an IDPA match isn't going to be the winner. In context, as you like, the point was that poor hits hurt you a lot more in IDPA than in USPSA.

Let's look at that IDPA match you posted: You shot in a raw time of 68.67 seconds, far faster than the Division winner who did it in 75.22 seconds. But that raw speed wasn't enough to win the match even though you were faster than the best shooter. Pretty much demonstrates that speed alone won't win an IDPA match.

[BN]

But there are still two question in my mind. One, is it realistic for a given "team" to use time plus scoring as a qualification? Very similar to what IDPA or your own KSTG does with the classifier. Two, when does a shooter or when is a shooter ready to really push for speed? Ernest

For those who don't know me, I've been shooting for a while. My first competition was in 1981 and I have been shooting IPSC/USPSA, IDPA, GSSF and other stuff since. I am also a reserve police officer for the local PD and I have been doing the firearms re-qualifications for the PD for 20 years or so.

From a "team" or group standpoint, you almost have to use par times to get everybody through a qualification in any kind of reasonable time frame. Some will pass and some won't.

From an individual point of view, you should start using some form of sliding timing plan. If a shooter can "pass" a par time qualification or skill test it is time to move on to harder things.

I like the .50 penalty per point the best. I shoot a lot of IDPA and that seems to me to be a good trade off of speed and accuracy. GSSF is 1 second per point and rewards accuracy more. When I have shot at SSG with Hack, he uses 1 second per point and I find my self slowing down more to get the points. Susan and I took some half day classes from a local trainer a couple of years ago. The emphasis was on accuracy. Susan said she didn't want to go back because it was slowing her down too much.

USPSA is a different game altogether. A very great emphasis on speed. When I shot mostly USPSA before IDPA started a 2.00 hit factor was considered an accuracy stage and a 5.00 hit factor was considered a speed stage. Now the hit factors can be over 10.00 for a speed stage. I don't know what changed. I find when I shoot USPSA now, I am a few seconds behind because my stage planning skills aren't up to date.

It seems to me that who you shoot with has a lot to do with perceptions. If you are shooting with skilled people, you will rise to the occasion and attempt to equal or beat them. If you are shooting with lesser skilled people, you will only rise far enough to be a big frog in a little pond.

Bill Nesbitt

[ToddG]

It seems to me that who you shoot with has a lot to do with perceptions. If you are shooting with skilled people, you will rise to the occasion and attempt to equal or beat them. If you are shooting with lesser skilled people, you will only rise far enough to be a big frog in a little pond.

So much this. ^^^^^

[LangdonTactical]

Which is clearly not the case given the links I posted, and which you appear to also disagree with.

Well to me, if you look at those scores, it does prove the point. First of all, you clearly are a very fast shooter, and should be classified at a much higher level. But you also gave up 44.5 seconds in points. That is a ton of time and I have a hard time believing that you could not have shot slower and ended up placing much higher. You are shooting at Master class speed, but your accuracy is holding you back. Be very careful of looking at the people that you are beating and feeling good about your performance when you clearly have the skills to shoot with the guys that win the whole match, not just the ones in your class.

The point is, just because you can shoot fast enough to make up for poor accuracy at your current level does not me that will get you where you want to be. That is the whole point of this discussion. Speed is a huge component, but it will not carry the day if you do not him something important.

As Wyatt Earp said "Fast is fine, but accuracy is final".

[Dagga Boy]

Hey Ernest, let me see if I can shed some light on strictly the LAPD D Qual on this, as I am where Gary got it from. I went to LAPD D Platoon in 1989 as a 24 year old fairly new policeman who just got assigned to take over my agency's SWAT training and knew I needed help. Larry Mudgett was kind enough to take me in and give me everything. One of the "gifts" was their qual course. The "A" course is shot from the low ready (a true low ready) and I made some slight modifications to try to get a little more out of it. This is what DocGKR posted. The "B" course is fairly similar but shot from the holster with an added second of time for the middle section of drills. I used to shoot this every night after work at minimum, and was very good at it. I also shot it with a DA/SA gun which was challenging and after 10 years is why I have horrible arthritis issues in my hands.

Let me get to what is being missed on this forum versus what was intended by that course. Most here are shooting it from the holster and thus already running it faster than intended.........holy crap......he didn't suggest that slow may be good. Yes I did. That course teaches "pace". When done repetitively it teaches the needed pace at a true street level on how fast to go to get a solid accuracy standard. The problem with L/E is not getting them to shoot fast, its getting them to hit. Then the goal is to hit surgically. Then we try to minimize the number of shots fired which is why there is a heavy emphasis on controlled pairs to the body and then immediately to the head. In street shootings, constant assessment and evaluation of the threat is critical. The difference between a good shoot and federal prison can be the difference in what happened between shot number 5 and shot number 6. I also added a bunch of handling protocals to the course as well to emphasize correct gun handling and manipulations. What we got out of this course is that the group of people I trained and shoved this course down their throats with a ton of repetitive work on it ended up doing spectacular in street shootings. Text book failure drills on suspects, single head shots on hostage takers, very low round count shootings with very high hit rates, tactical reloads as an automatic response, exceptional use of retention shots (part of the "B" course), etc. My guys got into very solid shootings, and were rarely sued and always cleared by both the department and D/A's office. This was from a bunch of average cops working a part time SWAT assignment who didn't know a split time from a tee time, nor did they care much. They hardwired a pace into their subconscious as to how fast to shoot to get specific levels of high accuracy. My guys flat drilled crooks at a medium controlled speed.

Now as a young gun guy, when I was presented with this course from Larry Mudgett, I asked a typical rookie question about varying the course. "Geez, don't I always have to come up with some new and different course all the time to be creative and mix things up...?" The answer was "NO". While you needed to come up with various courses to test various skills, the qualification course was shot a lot, and remained the same. Larry said that if you want to make things "different", shoot the course stripped down in basic gear to qualify. Then when your people get the hang of shooting it, increase the difficulty by shooting in full gear, shoot it in gas masks, shoot it in the dark with a hand held light, shoot it with a WML, shoot it strong hand only, shoot it support hand only, or a mix of the above. The key was to learn a pace and accuracy standard under a multitude of conditions. So, I am sure you can max this course. My shooting partner and I maxed it all the time with full size USP 45's and SIG P-220's. We were shooting 50,000 rounds a year of .45 Ball mostly running this course. What was hard was running it with the variables. Shooting it in "No-Light" in our work uniforms with hand held flashlights was much tougher, and we were not maxing it by any stretch.

I hope this helps. I just wanted to point out that the goal of that course was never to see how fast you could shoot it, but to see how clean and consistent you could shoot it. For what its worth, I got to spend a lot of time on a catwalk watching the old legends of "D" Team (when Scott Reitz, Larry Mudgett, John Helms, Ralph Morton, Ron McCarthy and many other of the SWAT gods were operational) do one cold (no pre-run, and changed after every group) hit after another, on an ever changing shoot house with shoots (which needed to evaluated and assessed), non shoots, hostages, and changing environmental conditions. I was amazed that every hit was at such a controlled pace-never slowing or speeding up, just a constant fast walk (duck walk) with a constant surgical application of shots at a very even pace. That was also an organization that had zero tolerance for hitting non-shoots and hostages. It is not like competition in any way shape or form, but it does pay off in spades in the field.

[rob_s]

Pretty much demonstrates that speed alone won't win an IDPA match.

And again you're leaving out a key part of the quote (which I'm tempted to quote again for you but I'm guessing at this point it's just willful), which is that it is possible to win a USPSA match on speed alone.

[LangdonTactical]

Hey Ernest, let me see if I can shed some light on strictly the LAPD D Qual on this, as I am where Gary got it from.

Thanks for the reply. Just to be clear, I really did not start the tread with the idea of picking on or even as a discussion of the LAPD Qual. I just used it as a drill when I went to the range, and then the question came up in my own mind about speed vs accuracy. Which lead me to the time plus scoring and personal training standards or if there is a place for Time Plus scoring in a qualification for any team?

Thanks for the insight to the origins and history of the qual.

[Dagga Boy]

No problem. In context, the biggest issue we always had was best use of ammo and training time. Many top tier military units get pallet loads of ammunition and training time. Most L/E don't. I was actually shocked when i went to LAPD at how tight they were as well with budget money, training time and ammunition and equipment. They were as poor as everyone else. The key to many of these courses was "bang for the buck". The LAPD "A" course gives a ton of stuff for a box of ammunition. I remember a guy trying to sell a LAPD SWAT legend on how awesome he and a couple of his guys were at "point shooting" after a 5 day school where they were shooting 500 plus rounds a day in close range. The response was classic. "That is awesome, but we don't have the ammo budget to maintain that kind of shooting program, so we just use our sights instead."

One of the things Wayne and I focus on is consistency and the guarantee of solid hits. Wayne often uses the analogy of driving on the highway at a 130MPH. You can do it, but there is little room for failure, you have to be totally dialed in, and you have very little time to deal with unexpected issues. On the other side, when you are at 70MPH, you can do this almost without thinking, and you have a lot of room to deal with un-forseen issues. Relative to shooting, we run some drills with the students at full-speed and driving to the maximum of their capabilities. We let them see that it doesn't take much to "drive off the road" (or off the bull in our case) when running at maximum speed. We then have them run the drills at a speed where they know every round will hit perfectly every time to find their "70 MPH" that they can do in autopilot and can counter things like a less than optimal grip from the holster, a little less than perfect trigger press, or or stalling the trigger or not properly using the sights. In a fight in less than optimal conditions like a range, we want them running at 70 MPH and we want them on autopilot so that they can work with the whole picture of a shooting involving a live adversary. I have nothing against pure speed and its attributes. The key in my mind (and I am very okay with others thinking different) is that I consider speed as a combination of speed of both running the gun AND the speed at which you can think and critically assess what is going on in the whole situation. Essentially, the speed of problem solving and not the speed of how fast you can simply press a trigger. We all have different goals on what we are looking for. Some want a USPSA rating, or to win a IDPA title. Others have a totally different idea of speed shooting like World Fast Draw, while others have a need to deal with human adversaries....and these will be dependent on the environment you are in as well (overseas military, domestic L/E, citizen home defense, citizen CCW, pure War, etc....). I guess "how fast is fast enough" is dependent on what the goal is on the other side. Having been in a couple of shootings, I came away from them with the idea that I can only go as fast as I can guarantee to be "right" on my decision and getting the opponent down as fast as possible.....and that may take slowing down to hit in a place to put them down with the weapon at hand.

[GJM]

Very interesting, and great minds must think alike, because Bill Rogers in his "Sunday night" lecture, uses the speed analogy. His take, though, is that you want to train at the 130 or whatever mph equivalent of the physiological limit. That way most stuff is pretty sedate by comparison. He says the problem with continually training at the pistol equivalent of 70 mph, pretty soon 70 starts to feel fast, and the day you need to go 95, the wheels come off.

Here is an example. My wife was convinced she needed 2.5 seconds to put two shots, open carry, into the 3x5 card (2.0 for shot 1 and a .50 split). We have an email study group, and two members did some break out on the 3x5 this week. She decided to go push her self today. In her first session, she got down to the 1.70's for two hits. She was incredulous and never thought that would have been possible. She went onto other stuff, and came back to the 3x5, and was easily putting, open carry, two hits in less than 2 seconds. If she had stayed with "par" of 2.5 seconds, the day she needed to do it in 2.0 would have been ugly. I believe this is a case where training at 130 mph helps you drive 70, or whatever is required that day, with more confidence and success.

[Dagga Boy]

Much of this is context and what you are trying to attain. My thrust is purely defensive/offensive use of the pistol under the legal parameters in place in the United States. Most of the folks I have trained over the years were not top tier military, not competitive shooters, and not people who wanted to become true experts with firearms. They have been mostly people who have to carry firearms as part of their job, or those simply trying to attain a solid level of confidence with a firearm in order to protect themselves....which includes "when" to use them. Most of these people think that they just pull the trigger fast. With them accuracy standards MUST come first.

For the training junkies and serious students and shooters who are squared hard on the fundamentals and have mastered the accuracy side, then of course trying to pick up speed is the way to go. Its why we train. For many, making the environment more difficult is not in the cards, so pushing speed is a way to improve.

Driving analogy: I drive fast and offensively. I take it seriously. When I went to the Petty Driving school I had no issue maxing a NASCAR track at the fastest a non-licensed NASCAR driver can run (147 MPH). I had zero issue running this fast (and the other students had tons of issues including one guy pulling over and quitting after hitting just over a hundred due to fear). I had also been chasing idiots in uncontrolled pursuits for a long time. Just watch the first chase scene in End of Watch for a good glimpse. I've been in high speed wrong way chases that look like Ronin, so having a nice wide banked track with a properly equipped vehicle allowed me to run much faster than those I was with in class. For most of them, they have only driven at highway speeds and never under stress all their lives, so they had to learn to really guide the vehicle with stress (accuracy) as we had to hit specific markers before they could increase their true speed. I also know there were students there who were serious about "racing" and focused on strictly learning to race at speed on a track. For those folks, there is no doubt that they would be much better "daily drivers" because of their race focused driving. The only issue was going to be that they were going to be short on the massive stress and unpredictability side of driving on the street at those speeds, and in reality would hopefully never have to use those skills. Like shooting, they were still better prepared in some areas than the First Responders who drive like this all the time, but don't take it seriously and can be a real danger to the public they serve due to not being serious about driving skill.