Fixing the Follow up Shot.

There are many reasons for having to take a follow up shot. The stage could require two or more hits on a single target, a miss, or real-world effects. What some fail to recognize is the time required for the follow up shot. Using quantifiable metrics, we can see how much time it will take for that second shot to achieve the desired result.

A lot of drills focus on cadence and rhythm. The Viking Tactics 1-5 drill is a great drill for working target transition flow and staying on the cadence. What is happening is your shot process happens 15 times across three targets with four target transitions. The speed at which you can work through the shot process depends on how well you do work through it.

The basic flow of the shot process is getting stable enough to aim, hold the aim long enough to launch the bullet, adjust and repeat. How well you did each part will dictate the outcome. Therefore, we spend many hours and dollars getting correct stance, zeroing, and skill development. Until recently, most of this work was done either dry fire with no tracking and live fire with only the targets and a shot timer to gauge effectiveness.

The Mantis X and competing companies have changed that though. I can now do dry fire with a score that carries over to live fire. I can now have metrics on what exactly changes from dry to live. With the Mantis X10, I can tell you EVERYTHING the firearm did during a shot.

The work I did yesterday was on the Recoil function of the Mantis. Here are some things I can now apply dry fire to and work on live fire

Average Recovery time: 0.12 Seconds

Avg. Muzzle rise: 0.92 degrees

Avg. Recoil Width: 0.61 degrees

Avg Recoil Angle: -7.21 degrees

Here is what those numbers mean

Movement has stopped and the sights are back on target in 0.12 seconds. This means that the aiming portion of the shot process can start 0.12 seconds after the last shot has fired. The better the position and recoil management the lower this number will be.

The muzzle is rising less than one degree, which sounds good, but the math says 55 inches at 100 yards. That rise is going upwards a -.071 degrees or left.

All this allows me to focus on things that keep the muzzle down, and limits left and right movement during recoil. These things will also drop recovery time.

To close, here are four shots broken down. Shot 4 also had a 0.04 recovery time

You can see by the analysis of the recoil what things need work. This makes your work focused on weaknesses vs guesses

This is Quantified Performance.

Ash Hess