"Go big" versus incrementalism in training

[ToddG]

I had hoped this thread would spark discussion, with specificity, as to how folks were systematically incorporating stretch training into their shooting performance improvement plan.

For me, "improving speed" is a whole distinct category of practice.

First, I'm not going to work on improving speed for speed's sake on a skill I cannot perform repeatably 100% at a calm pace.

Once I have the skill down enough to do it right every time when I'm not worried about speed, I can begin to spend some of my practice time on building the speed. Personally, I usually use 90% as my target when pushing for speed. If I'm missing more than that over the course of many multiple reps, I'm getting ahead of myself.

Under some circumstances, it can be worthwhile to push yourself to maximum speed, damn the results, just to find how fast you can move & see. My biggest problem with this is that many people turn this into their normal practice method (even if they don't realize it) and those are the folks who have the hardest time dialing back when they need to be 100%. Years ago, there was a period of time when SLG and I stopped worrying about 100% on low% targets and spent a lot of practice on hitting a giant 8.5x11 sheet of paper at 5yd as many times as we could in a given PAR. That taught me a lot about seeing faster, tracking my sights faster, etc. But it's not something I do every time I go to the range or even every month.

Like I said in my first post, a lot of this comes down to what your goals are. For some folks, "be faster" is the goal. And that's a perfectly reasonable goal. But for other folks, "be more consistent" is a goal and it's equally as reasonable. In my experience, the latter approach is a better method for building 1-time on-demand cold performance. At a match, I can walk over to the safe area and warm up my draw, reloads, sights & trigger, etc. I'm going to shoot four, ten, twenty stages and know that not every shot on every stage is going to be perfect. But if I'm out to dinner with my wife and someone decides to go all SpreeKill on us, or I'm in the parking lot and someone tries to mug me, there won't be a warm up and there won't be a chance for reshoots or makeups.

edited to add: GJM, I find this line of questioning interesting given your response to the 3x5 Speed Push DotW awhile back.

[GJM]

edited to add: GJM, I find this line of questioning interesting given your response to the 3x5 Speed Push DotW awhile back.

You will have to explain to me what you find interesting about this.

It was SLG that opened my eyes to some of my thinking on this topic. My wife was stuck at 1.35 on her draws. In practice, she would try to go faster, throw a few shots, and I would tell her to dial it back because her accuracy was suffering. This happened a few sessions, leading to frustration for her and me. I called up SLG, discussed the problem, and his advice was to let her shoot 10 magazines if necessary, hits all over the countryside being fine to get used to the speed, and then predicted accuracy would naturally follow as she got used to the new speed. First session, we did this, it only took maybe two full magazines, and she shaved .25 off her draw. Sure made me a believer that sometimes you need to train differently to improve.

[ToddG]

You will have to explain to me what you find interesting about this.

Because it was about pushing speed and you seemed resistant.

Sure made me a believer that sometimes you need to train differently to improve.

Right. I think I said that in my last post, didn't I? There are times when it's good to break through a barrier that way. That's because sometimes the limit is a mental one rather than a skill-based problem. But -- and this is what I tried to convey in my first post -- it's a mistake to think you can make that 0.25s improvement over and over again just by "going big" every time you go to the range.

[GJM]

Because it was about pushing speed and you seemed resistant.

The great thing about being me (humor), is that I can believe something today and something completely different tomorrow -- and call it following the natural learning progress. That said, I don't believe my thoughts there and here are inconsistent at all.

What I was resistant to, was the first part of that DOW, establishing the "slower" baseline, for reasons I tried to articulate in that thread. I really liked the second part of the drill, and learned a lot, as should be obvious from the amount of time I spent with that DOW. If you ever told me previous to that drill that I could shoot two hits to the 3x5 from OWB concealment in 1.50, I would not have believed you. In fact, I attribute THAT specific DOW with my last Friday's 3.92 clean FAST (no, that is not something I can do on demand, yet). While 3.92 is in no way my new normal, it has made what used to seem really fast for me, now seem a lot less fast. Best use of ammo I have made in a long time, and made me a real convert to stretch training.

[Mr_White]

I had hoped this thread would spark discussion, with specificity, as to how folks were systematically incorporating stretch training into their shooting performance improvement plan. Not just, "some days I go big," but rather I spend X percentage of a typical practice session on stretch goals, and believe, even subjectively, it has had Y impact in moving my overall level of performance.

I think everyone has a performance range, from what you can do sometimes on a great run, to what you can do on demand, to what you can do when you aren't doing well at all, and everywhere in between. I think effective practice moves that whole performance range upward rather than just a specific portion of that range.

Over the last few years, I think it would be accurate to say that I have gone the 'go big' route, because I'm just like that. There have been some important temperings applied to my natural inclinations though. As mentioned before, Todd's class, Ben's class, participation in GSSF and USPSA, and I would also say participation in the DotW in this community and keeping my training journal all act as tempering forces and as occasions where I do have to shoot where I can pretty much own it or face failure when it 'counts'.

My practice regimen is kind of screwed up right now, but when it has been in full swing, I would say I spend most of my time on stretch activities. I'm driving slightly to very hard most of the time. I shoot how I can own it pretty reliably when I think it 'matters.' So for me, that's competition, the DotW, demos for class, or anytime I am low on ammo and don't want to be left with crashing as my last shooting memory of the day. Otherwise, I am pushing it to one degree or another most of the rest of the time.

And I've seen this be very effective for me. I can't know whether another approach would have been more effective, but this has been working. I've seen my scores in competition - GSSF and USPSA - improve over time, and I've seen my scores on practice tests such as the FAST and IDPA Classifier improve too.

And I don't necessarily mean speed has improved across the board. Some of my shooting at distance is faster. But in a lot of instances, it's my accuracy and consistency that has improved at the speed I was already going.

In my experience, most shooters aren't very honest with themselves. The "go big" crowd often talks about that one time a drill went spectacularly well but forgets all the instances with misses and mistakes and fumbles. Awesomeness that isn't repeatable or dependable isn't awesomeness, it's freak chance.

A surmountable challenge in all this has been to learn to dial it back and not push, when the circumstances demand it. The key point is that I must not con myself into thinking that what I can do on demand is the same as when I push it hard in practice. That required me learning to accept that it's normal to do better in practice than in the match, or whatever on demand circumstance we are talking about. And that the way to do better on demand is to move the entire performance range upward. For me that has come from trying to do lots of really hard stuff in practice, which inevitably includes plenty of failure too.

There is an element of mental management to that as well. I think it is helpful, for me anyway, not to focus on errors. That's different than pretending I didn't make them. There can be a fine line between completely ignoring your mistakes, being aware of the fact that you screwed up but leaving it in the past and just trying again, and in focusing unproductively on failures or perceived failures. Seems like you said something about that to me a couple of months ago.

As to 100 per cent, on truly challenging shooting problems, isn't that a goal and not a guarantee?

Some of that hard stuff – like shooting the swinging bowling pin on the run, or shooting the hanging tennis ball on the move or small targets fast at distance – has me convinced of GJM's point above. At some point, the technical problem can be made so hard that there is no guarantee of success. The important takeaway for me is to recognize when that is the case, so informed decisions can be made, based on the actual circumstances at hand.

[ToddG]

What I was resistant to, was the first part of that DOW, establishing the "slower" baseline, for reasons I tried to articulate in that thread.

Establishing a baseline is a key part of performance tracking. In that particular DotW, it was also about being disciplined enough to get 100% hits on demand.

A surmountable challenge in all this has been to learn to dial it back and not push, when the circumstances demand it.

This is the key issue to me and why I'm happy to take the incremental approach more often than the big jump approach. Hackathorn talks about it all the time; Langdon mentioned it just this weekend in his class: when people are put under life or death stress they tend to go at their all-out speed. Very few people can consciously dial it back to 75% of their "practice speed" when they feel like their lives are on the line. That's why practicing at a speed where I only get half my hits is unappealing to me. Sometimes it's beneficial to break through a plateau but I don't want to habituate on a speed that I cannot control when things are sub-optimal.

At some point, the technical problem can be made so hard that there is no guarantee of success. The important takeaway for me is to recognize when that is the case, so informed decisions can be made, based on the actual circumstances at hand.

Absolutely. And sometimes that can be beneficial... pushing limits doesn't happen when the limits aren't really pushing.

[Mr_White]

...Langdon mentioned it just this weekend in his class: when people are put under life or death stress they tend to go at their all-out speed...I don't want to habituate on a speed that I cannot control when things are sub-optimal.

I am not saying this as argument; I am rolling this thought around in my mind, just trying to think about it from different angles...

If people are going to go max speed anyway, then maybe habituating to a lower speed isn't really habituating. If people are going to go max speed anyway, maybe it is good to spend more time going max speed and learning to hang with it. The question is whether they will actually learn to hang with it or if it will be counterproductive in some way.

[ToddG]

By "max speed" I meant the speed they do their "speed" practice. In other words, the speed they're habituating to. I think it's very hard to back down from your norm, consciously, under stress, when you think your life is at stake, with no warning or preparation.

[Mr_White]

By "max speed" I meant the speed they do their "speed" practice. In other words, the speed they're habituating to. I think it's very hard to back down from your norm, consciously, under stress, when you think your life is at stake, with no warning or preparation.

I am confused then on what is being said about the speed people tend to go under stress. I thought you were saying Langdon was saying that people go their maximum speed. Or is it that they go the speed they have habituated to? Those seem like exclusive possibilities since lots of people habituate to a speed that is less than their maximum.

[ToddG]

My interpretation and experience is that:

• People who never practice tend to go at as-fast-as-the-finger-will-move speed.
• People who never practice going fast tend to go at as-fast-as-the-finger-will-move speed.
• People who practice shooting "at speed" tend to shoot at or around their habituated "this is me going fast!" speed.

That doesn't seem like a surprising result when you look at much of what's been said in this thread so far. The "go big!" school of thought, after all, is that pushing speed beyond restriction teaches you that you can make your body go faster... though, at least in the beginning, at the cost of control & accuracy. Spend a lot of time teaching your body it can go that fast -- go at a pace beyond control -- and under stress you're likely to go at that learned pace.

Does that mean you should never "go big," though? No. I think there's been unanimous agreement that it is beneficial at times to push yourself past that point of control.

Let's look at a concrete example.

Suppose our erstwhile shooter, Joe, never used to be able to fire two rounds on a 3x5 at 7yd from concealment in less than 2.5 seconds. He gets a wild hair one day and decides to "go big," just pushing himself like mad. Turns out that when he breaks through that mental/comfort plateau he can regularly get both shots off within 2 seconds and he's getting both hits about 50% of the time.

What should Joe do now?

1. Work at the old speed until that 2s time just catches up with him?
2. Work at the new speed until he can do it with 75, 90, 100% consistency?
3. Keep pushing to see if he can reach 1.9, 1.75, or 1.5 seconds at 50% hits?

I'd say #2, with the caveat that if he can't get his hit rate up after meaningful practice that he needs to dial the speed back until he's getting good, consistent hits.

edited to add: Another important thing to keep in mind, and something that very much goes back to the "100% consistency versus get-faster" debate, is what changes one makes to his technique in order to get faster. Different people are willing to make different degrees of change/compromise in the name of speed. The recent draw technique discussion is a great example of this. There's no question that under at least some circumstances, a straight from the belly draw, pressing the trigger before you actually see your sights on target, is faster. But that technique has disadvantages that some folks might see as outweighing a small gain in speed. Neither side is "right," it's just different people with different priorities and goals.