Abandon & Control

“If you abandon the present moment, you cannot live the the moments of your daily life deeply.”  
-Thich Nhat Hanh

ABANDON and CONTROL 

USPSA shooters fall into two categories: Fast or Accurate.

Fast shooters shoot poor points, resulting in a low final score.

Accurate shooters are conservative. They consistently shoot good points, but their final score is low because they could have shot the same points, faster.

Accurate shooters must force themselves out of their comfort zone. In practice, push yourself to shoot faster than you normally would. 

The Bill Drill is excellent for that: On a USPSA target at seven yards, your score is the time required to draw and shoot six A hits.

USPSA target

To emphasize speed: Instead of shooting six A’s, shoot as fast as possible with the goal of having all your shots hit anywhere on the target. (If that sounds crazy, this drill is definitely for you.) 

Shoot the drill with that goal until you know your average time for how long it takes to shoot six hits on the target.

Then do the drill with a new goal. Keep all six shots in the C-zone, in the same time it took you to get all six shots on the target. Keep practicing this version until you can reliably shoot all C-zone hits in your all-hits-on-the-target time.

After mastering the C-zone version of the Bill Drill, return to the original drill. 

At seven yards, you can shoot six A’s as fast as you could shoot six shots anywhere on the target. 

Rob Leatham has abandoned the effort to control.

Regardless of your skill level, this is what you must do and see. Before firing the fist shot, see the sight picture stop on the center of the A-zone. For each consecutive shot, you must see the front sight as it is coming back down into the rear notch. If you see that, each shot will fire itself. Review Keep Your Eyes Open.

If you tend to shoot quickly but have poor hits or misses, then your job is simple. Learn what you need to see to know you shot all A hits, before you look at the target.

Abandon the effort to control, and in the lack of effort is perfect control.

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A new topic will arrive each Friday, in one of two categories. One will be on shooting, and the other will be on living, or: “how I learned to live from what I learned by competing.” 

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