“I want athletic problem solvers with guns in their hands.” - Sam Garner

“Ego is not your amigo.” - L.S.

“Competitive Shooting is quantifiable. It is easy to identify your deficiencies when shooting competitively.” - Frank Proctor

Prelude: Action shooting encompasses all the principles of short range marksmanship (turns, movement, transitions, holdovers, weapons manipulation, and engagement criteria) simultaneously while in a competitive environment. Competitive shooting is highly beneficial for any infantryman in order to develop fundamental marksmanship skills through conscious repetitions. These conscious repetitions need to be performed enough so that they are developed into subconscious. It is important to understand that under stressful conditions an individual’s ability to utilize cognitive channels is cut in half. If we develop skill level one tasks into sub-conscious, we leave cognitive channels open so that we can solve the tactical problems with our mind. Think about overwhelmed by events (OBE). This situation occurs because individuals don’t have the repetitions essential to conduct engagements, either through lack of training or lack of experience. It is critical to execute as many repetitions as we can under stress to realistically simulate combat scenarios and to burn these proper repetitions into our subconscious. Marksmanship proficiency, or the lack thereof has the potential to be life or death. 

USPSA Competition Considerations:

How it is scored:

Hit Factor = Points

                      Time

I’ll try to go in sequential order as if I were to show up at a match and prioritize tasks and strategize. Personally the most important aspects of competition is transitions between targets and movement. If you want to start placing better, work on those things and you will see significant increases in your score. Start covering ground immediately. You start at point A and the timer only stops when you get to point B. Try to get as close to it as possible as quickly as possible.

Planning and Due Diligence: Show up early in order to conduct walkthroughs. For majors I will show up a day prior. I will divest more attention to stages I will shoot first. Read the Written Stage Brief (WSB) and identify the start position. You can’t plan efficiently if you don’t even know where you’re starting. 

Identify ALL targets on the WSB, and then start formulating your plan. There is no worse feeling than shooting a stage and realizing you missed a target during your walk through simply because you failed to read the WSB. 

During your walk through identify anything high risk:

• No shoots

• Hard cover (zebras or slashers)

• Far shots (more refined sight picture required, or shooting while planted)

• Targets that get cut off early because of angles, or movement. This has the potential to anchor you in place when you should be moving. Consider engaging targets that fit this criteria early during in an array and then moving out on available open targets (even if they are not able to be engaged in sequential order within the array)

*Caveat: Obviously with no shoots involved I will be a little more cautious, however with hard cover, I will shoot at these just short of total disregard. There is no additional penalty for hitting hard cover other than the miss on target.

Conduct walk-throughs as many times as you are able. Occasionally I will notice something on the last walk-through that is a significant advantage. This is an angles game. Make sure you look at targets and target arrays from different angles within the shooting area to identify if you can engage it from elsewhere on the stage. Use targets to shoot into position in order to engage the remainder of an array. The main thing here is to try to eliminate as many stops (shooting positions as possible). If I can cut 3 shooting positions into 2, that is a large advantage. 

Once your walk-throughs are complete, take the necessary time to commit this to memory. Rehearse it in your head as many times as you can. One or two shooters prior to my turn, I will move off to the side and rehearse the stage in my head using mental visualization. Try to rehearse your stage run in as vivid detail as possible. Your brain cannot tell the difference between you physically shooting the stage and you mentally rehearsing the stage. I will do this as many times as I can. And I will pay close attention to particularly difficult or technical portions of the stage. 

*Caveat: Hard rules on stage plans. I will not change my stage plan last minute unless a new one is similar and easily committed to memory. If a new plan cuts out a whole position and is therefore much more efficient I will change it. With that being said, a less efficient plan executed perfectly is better than a good plan executed poorly.

 Make Ready Prep. Are you ready is a question, not a command or statement:

• Optic (red dot on, brightness setting sufficient for all lighting conditions)

• Mags and subsequent mags full? If my stage execution requires I load into a big stick, I will always carry a back-up big stick as a contingency

• Mental game

• Active visualization 

• Positive affirmation

• Focus (initial start off the buzzer, explode)

Ensure you have all your equipment and gear in serviceable order. You don’t want to basically sabotage yourself mentally because you were distracted while having to fix equipment issues. I conduct the same routine every time. I have a routine and I do this every time to ensure success. 

Start Positions: Remember this game is about economy of motion and eliminating wasted time. Do multiple things at once. If you can step into a nice wide and stable shooting platform during the draw, do so. No matter the positions covered below I will always step so that my natural point of aim aids in engaging the entire 1st array. Additionally I want my focal plane on the first target to be engaged. I never understood why some people don’t look at it! When picking a start position find one that will allow for fluid movement throughout all subsequent shooting positions. 

Relaxed at sides: Most common. To ensure I am fast as possible I focus on the first portion of the buzzer going off, I drive my firing elbow back, simultaneously moving my support hand, and I rip the gun out of the holster as fast as possible, while minimizing any upper body movement. I don’t want to change planes by moving my upper body and eyes and having to bring my dot into a moving line of sight.  

Hands above/hands touching marks: If it is any other start position other than hands relaxed at sides, I will look at the gun. We mitigate recoil by establishing a good grip on the gun. So ensure that you get a good grip on the gun.

Unloaded off belt: I will usually look at the magazine. The most important thing is getting the mag in the gun. If I can soak up the time it takes to conduct a load in movement I will

Unloaded off table (mags and gun on table lying flat un-propped): Orient the bullets skyward, with the magazine pointed towards the rear sights or back of the slide. When you grab the pistol and index the magazine, roll the gun over, and the magwell is pointing to the magazine like you normally would conduct a mag change.  

If the stage requires two magazines then set two of them parallel to each other with bullets facing skyward and generally point toward the slide of the gun. Grab both at the same time with your index finger between them, stow the first mag, load the one that is still in your hand. Rack. Go. 

Retreating off the start: Dragging the gun: if you’re facing down range and you’re backing out to your initial position to your back left, you can move diagonally while keeping the muzzle down range. This is usually fairly time consuming because you have to break your grip and run with it one handed and then rebuild your grip while coming into the next subsequent position. 

Over the shoulder: If you’re right handed and need to move to the back right, you can bring the gun high over your left shoulder while you run rearward. 

Movement: Because your score is heavily dependent upon time, movement is critical. You need to move in between shooting positions as quickly and aggressively as possible to minimize dead time. Minimize time, increase your hit factor. It’s that simple. Push off rear leg, gain ground. When moving into positions set up with a wide stance, with hips and feet so that you can efficiently transition through an array. Don’t come into a position bladed off to targets only to have to readjust your stance during an array. Set up in a stance where you can engage all targets in an array. Your plan needs to flow smoothly from position to position. The more you can shoot into position and out of position the better. Shooting while moving laterally or forward is far better than shooting while retreating. Shooting a lateral movement stage left to right as a right handed shooter is normally better. 

When low stay low. Don’t come into a position low after a sprint, only to stand up to engage the targets. 

Use open targets to blend positions and shoot into arrays on the move (attack versus control targets). Obviously if the presentation doesn’t allow for this then you gotta let it ride and shoot in on high risk targets (partials with no-shoot penalty potential)

Transitions and transition time: Ride recoil. Typically you should have an additional sight picture during follow-through on the second shot. However, we need to shoot more predictively based on our good fundamentals (properly point the weapon, and pull the trigger without moving it).  This means we don’t gain an additional sight picture after the second shot. Upon muzzle rise on the second shot we need to be already transitioning to the next target. Eyes move to a refined point on the target, and then the gun and optic come into our line of sight. Drive the transitions with your thighs and hips. This is predictive shooting based upon many reps and proper fundamentals.  

No Penalty Mikes (NPM) how do I calculate if it’s worth it or not? You need to be accurate at estimating the hit factor of the stage. Its easy to determine this if it’s a multiday match and shooters have already shot that stage. Look at practiscore competitor. Or estimate the hit factor of the stage. Look at the potential points gained on that particular target. And then divide those points by the time it would take to engage it. If the HF (points per second) for that particular target isn’t equal to or higher than the overall hit factor of the stage then it’s not worth it. Remember, hit factor is points per second. So you need to gain more points per second on that one target to make it worth it. 

 Engagement Criteria (sometimes referred to as shooter solution):

• Size of the target

• Distance to the target

• Your capability as a shooter

• Risk (no shoot, or the potential to miss)

Risk versus Reward: I will always evaluate this particularly on hard leans or acrobatic moves like jumping out of bounds. I rarely do this. There is always a risk your gun malfunctions. If I can shoot into arrays on wide open targets versus partials with penalty potential then I will. If I can close the distance and engage targets at closer distance I will. You’ll be able to shoot faster and gain better points. 

Ports: Hunting/pecking or close the distance? It is rarely worth it to shoot a large array from back up off a port. It forces you to shoot entirely too slow. And you have the potential to have obstacle clearance issues (hitting the port, wall, barrel, or barricade). However, do not overcommit to ports. It takes time to get the muzzle in the port, and then back out of the port, especially so while shooting carbine.

Battle Damage Assessment (BDA): Quoting Lena Miculek,

1) What did i see? Super important. Shooting is a huge visual processing game. Faster transitions, shooting more predictively, how fast you can draw and shoot 1st round shots are huge when its costing you .25 every stage for a 20 stage national event. Am I waiting for a 3rd sight picture on my second shot? Am I riding the recoil to initiate the transition from target to target? Are my eyes leading the gun? Am I picking a specific spot on the target a zone, or calibration zone on steel, middle of hard cover, slicing the pie on an a zone that’s barely visible. Am I changing my focal plane from maintaining target focused to staying sucked in my dot (am I screen watching or tv watching aka am I watching the dot dance around instead of maintaining target focus (this will significantly slow your transitions down). What’s my BDA? Did I see wood blow out of the target indicating I hit a d zone? etc.

2) What did I feel? How did the gun feel in my hand, were my wrists locked out properly, is there any sympathetic movement in my hand other than my trigger finger? How does the reset feel on my trigger finger? Am i coming off the trigger? Am i riding reset properly? Am i anticipating? Am i relaxed (mentally and physically, neck, upper body, shoulders)? Am i focused?

3) What were the results? This is a result based sport. And it is 100% quantifiable. As long as you’re using a shot timer and scoring hits. Even in practice. What did you see visually? Did you see what you needed to see? did your eyes lead the gun? Did you spot a specific part on the tgt or did you have an improper level of focus? Was the target just a brown blob?

4) What am I going to do next? What am I going to do to fix a failed run etc. Sometimes what I’ll do for a practice session is set up some drills or a small stage, and I will shoot it 4 times. Once at match pace. Second run fast as I can. Third run shoot it fast while consciously correcting the mistakes I made in the second run. Fourth and final I try to replicate that run in the last one. Or I will design specific drills to address fundamental errors. Correct them and then work to reinforce good fundamentals (physically, visually, mentally).

Fixed Mindset versus Growth Mindset: Fixed mindset is of those who are so afraid of failure they won’t try anything new or risky. Growth mindset is of those who understand failure is a part of growth, pushing it to your limits and discovering what those limits are. If you don’t take risks there is no way to achieve greatness. Shooting is a self-discovery pursuit and mistakes should be made (within the realm of safety).

Speed and Velocitization (Travis Tomasi) : I truly believe that in order for gunfighters to be efficient they need to work at speed. Every weapons manipulation has to have a time standard. Marksmanship has to have an accuracy standard attached to it as well. Use timers and par times to evaluate speed and efficiency. Use gunfighter math (each reaction and movement is about .25 seconds). 

Velocitization is the ability of your body to becoming accustomed to high rates of speed. Shooting is similar in the sense that one becomes better at processing only when they are pushed to shoot faster for extended periods of time. 

You need to constantly push the speed element so that you are accustomed to shooting at that speed. Although I think par times are a good tool, I think it is difficult for individuals to conceptualize the true concept of speed unless you use reactive steel or force on force. 

Conclusion: Marksmanship skills and proficiency would greatly increase due to having to perform in a competitive atmosphere in front of peers. The repetitions conducted during a normal match is about 150 rounds fired while utilizing a wide array of short range marksmanship principles. Shooting on the move, in and around barricades and other obstacles is common. Furthermore it is a relatively inexpensive pursuit and much healthier than the alternatives that most soldiers pursue.