Bad reps don’t count

[Matt Landfair]

When I first started shooting, I was obsessed with my round count. I knew that the top pro shooters shot tens of thousands of rounds each year in training and competition, and I believed that shooting that kind of volume would get me to that level. It did work a little. From 2011-2013 I shot around 25,000 rounds a year, and went from a middling C-class USPSA shooter to banging on the door of Master class. Compare that to 2016-2018 where through all three years combined, I’ve fired a total of 27,968 rounds. That averages out to 9300 a year, which is a lot by most people’s standards, I’ll agree. But what’s interesting is that despite shooting 1/3rd the ammo I shot in 2013, I’m a much better shooter now. What changed? (continued in link below)

https://primaryandsecondary.com/bad-reps-dont-count/

 

[BassFlats&Beyond]

I dig it. I think a cool thread would be some limited ammo and/or limited time practice routines.

 

[MojoNixon]

I remember my training sessions from a few years back with Bourneshooter, he was always about quality of the shots taken rather than the quantity. We did the FAM test frequently. To this day several years later I still text him after nearly all of my sessions reminding him of how he would stand behind me yelling "Front Sight, front sight. front sight". He has an ability to nearly instantly see what I'm not doing to make my shots count. More often than not it was loosing track of my front sight. So now when I go through a bad stretch I picture in my minds eye Bourne standing behind me yelling "Front Sight, front sight. front sight". It nearly always works or at the least gets me back on track.

 

[ggammell]

I fixed a grip problem with one good draw every day over the course of about 6 weeks. Every day when i put my gun up, i made sure I made one good draw to take it out of the holster for the night. It doesn't take thousands of reps.

 

[leozinho]

75,000 rounds (and all the range time required to burn that much ammo) to go from C to A in three years? That is not a good return on investment.

I'm glad he saw the light, but, holy cow, he was doing it wrong before.

 

[Bedouin2W]

Earlier during this deployment my team was on a pretty austere site. The "range" was really just a shooting area but the biggest constraint we faced was resupply. We pretty much had a designated 1/2 day per week allocated for training, and not just shooting but medical, foreign weapons, SERE refresher, new equipment familiarization, and MOS cross training.

Although we were still allocating a 1/2 day per week for training, the limited ammo kept us from having a lot of trigger time. We had an advisor visit the remote sites and he saw our lack of ammo was keeping us off the range and he understood that the logistical realities would not suddenly change just because he reported it to our higher command.

He suggested having a dedicated class room portion of weapons training followed by dry firing and to maximize the quality of our reps to have each shooter be paired with a coach and practice on a specific focus each week. This allowed for us to see, do without ammo, do with ammo under one on one supervision, then observe and coach what we just covered for final reinforcement. Even with limited ammo, everyone on the team seemed to gain more from this regimen opposed to the "ok we're going to go shoot some paper to work on X" training plan we previously had.

We were improving faster while using less ammo. You really can have your cake and eat it too if the training is planned and implemented properly.

 

[Ridgedaddy]

Earlier during this deployment my team was on a pretty austere site. The "range" was really just a shooting area but the biggest constraint we faced was resupply. We pretty much had a designated 1/2 day per week allocated for training, and not just shooting but medical, foreign weapons, SERE refresher, new equipment familiarization, and MOS cross training.

Although we were still allocating a 1/2 day per week for training, the limited ammo kept us from having a lot of trigger time. We had an advisor visit the remote sites and he saw our lack of ammo was keeping us off the range and he understood that the logistical realities would not suddenly change just because he reported it to our higher command.

He suggested having a dedicated class room portion of weapons training followed by dry firing and to maximize the quality of our reps to have each shooter be paired with a coach and practice on a specific focus each week. This allowed for us to see, do without ammo, do with ammo under one on one supervision, then observe and coach what we just covered for final reinforcement. Even with limited ammo, everyone on the team seemed to gain more from this regimen opposed to the "ok we're going to go shoot some paper to work on X" training plan we previously had.

We were improving faster while using less ammo. You really can have your cake and eat it too if the training is planned and implemented properly.

This right here can do A LOT for general shooters. You don't always have to sling lead to get proper time behind the gun