Shooting Tip #2 Part 1

Ryan here from Team CGS, bringing you a new shooting tip. Many people at our local matches ask how do I shoot so fast or how to get better times while competing.

My number one thing that I can recommend for people is to minimize any movement that is more than needed.

You loose time on the draw by moving your head and shoulders while drawing your gun from the holster, moving your gun down to belt level for a reload, and lifting the gun up after stepping into a shooting position.

Now that we have identified three areas that you may be losing time on, the remaining question is how do we overcome those issues and improve on our techniques..

First the draw. First things first..The shot timer. Once the RO has started the timer there is time lost due to a reaction of the shooter to the sound of the timer. I quote Travis Tomassie, a world renowned practical shooter, at the 2012 Shot Show during a demonstration. Hey says in order to react well to the timer you need to react on the 'b' of the word beep and not the 'p'. This is very true in the sense that the timer takes a few tenths of a second to completely sound.

The reaction is only one of many areas of the draw that Can be improved on. One other area is minimizing the movement of your head and shoulders while drawing. I watch a lot of newer shooters who react to the timer and sort of hunch down. Their shoulders go down, head retracts to the shoulder level, and body seems to completely tense up. Remember tense muscles are slow muscles, thus adding time to your draw. The movement of you moving your shoulders and head is costing you time.. Sometimes up to two tenths of a second. So what do you do to improve on this? One drill that I do to combat these issues is to practice drawing (unloaded and with no ammo around) in front of a mirror. Place a small price dot label (the kind you price garage sale items with) on the mirror at nose level. Make sure this is done in your shooting stance height.. Now practice drawing towards the mirror while keeping the dot on your nose. Doing this a few times will help you overcome moving your head during the draw..

You now may be asking your self, "does this apply during a turn draw or stages of fire that involve moving to a shooting box off the draw?" The answer is yes. This is true because this will help you bring the gun up to eye level consistently versus the eye level to the gun.. Changing your eye level changes your target focus, which creates a loss of time.

Let's move on to the shoulder movement. Keep your shoulders relaxed and in one position. Once the timer sounds you need only to move the arms along their pivot points. If te entire shoulder is moving up, this may cause the head to move changing your target focus. If you watch many of the pro shooters, they only are moving their upper arm along the pivoting point at the shoulder socket. There is no additional movement of the pivoting point. So remember anchor the pivoting point in your shoulder and allow the arm to smoothly go for the grip of the gun.

So in reality, how much time are we saving? Well let's find out. Say your loosing two tenths of a second on the reaction, a tenth on the head movement, and up to two tenths of a second on the shoulder movement.. That's a total of a half second.. Now of course this is looking at a newer shooter. The pros have hundredths of a second they work on.

Stay tuned or part two of this segment. I will cover the loss of time with reloading and stepping into positions during your course of fire.

Until next time, stay safe, shoot straight and have fun!

Ryan M.