How much do you shoot?, Weekly/monthly round counts Options

[CHA-LEE]

Don't focus on the quantity of rounds used in practice but instead the quality of your practice. I use to burn through 400 – 600 rounds in a single practice session shooting the same stuff over and over mindlessly. With the shortage of primers, powder and other parts I decided to make my practice more focused. With the new focused practice sessions I have been shooting about 100 rounds per session but making sure that I learn with every round fired. These 100 round practice sessions are WAY more effective than just blowing through a bunch of ammo for the sake of burning through it.

If you stop after shooting your string of fire or stage run and really analyze your hits, movement, and efficiencies or lack there of, you will be able to find holes in your skills a lot easier and faster. That and pausing for a little while between shooting strings/stages really puts you in the same mental situation as shooting a stage at a match. You don’t get to shoot the same stages back to back one after another without a break at a match, so why practice that way? You are in a different mental state when you shoot stages or strings of fire back to back verses taking a little break before shooting it again. I like to setup a stage with aspects that I know I need to get better at, shoot it, analyze my hits, calculate my HF, then pin point the areas that I could have done different or better. Then I will change the stage so it isn’t the same, but still incorporates the aspect(s) that I am wanting to improve my skills on. Then go through the process of programming the stage in my head the same way I would do for a match, shoot it and go through the whole process again. This to me is the most effective way to practice for competition USPSA/IDPA match shooting.

[Steve J]

Weather permitting which is most of the time in Central Texas, I shoot two matches each weekend. That's about 150-200 rounds plus 100 rounds on Wednesdays but that's not every week. I try to make the most of each match and I MD two matches each month, so I have the ability to set up things that challenge me and that I need to work on.

[Ramas]

Found an interview with Todd Jarrett. He shot 1,7 million rounds in 3 years. Quite immpresive. http://www.handgunsmag.com/tactics_trainin...jarrett_200807/

[Houngan]

Good interview, and I had a little epiphany when he said that 99.9% of being able to draw a gun and fire under a second is manipulation, not shooting. And that's true, all of our major crashes come from manipulation, not something that goes wrong between sights and trigger press.

Practical shooting is the art of moving yourself constantly with brief periods of unmoving, unthinking shooting.

[Walküre]

At least 100 rounds a week.

Pins on Tuesday nights (~50 rounds), and then a local match every Saturday (50+ rounds).

[mildot1]

I started USPSA in may, made C in limited on my first classification.

I am fortunate that I can open the garage door and look at my range, makes picking up brass easy!

I thought that just by shooting every day I would get good quick. That was the wrong answer!

Best money I spent was taking a Max and Travis class at the end of august.

Burning up large amounts of ammo with no idea of what to be working on is futile, only results in bad habits and a hole in the wallet.

I now believe that dry fire is equally as important as live fire, though obviously not as fun. It is cheaper though!

About 9000 this year.

[Field]

oh for a few weeks now its been around 750 rounds a week. but.....its only 9mm so were good with the money.

This post has been edited by Field: Nov 4 2009, 09:32 AM

[badchad]

Found an interview with Todd Jarrett. He shot 1,7 million rounds in 3 years. Quite immpresive.

According to the article it was 13 years. Still impressive, but not insane.

[CHA-LEE]

1.7 Million rounds over 3 years would be an average of over 1550 rounds a day, with NO days off. Is it doable? Sure, but that would be a grueling pace of shooting every day. Especially if you skipped a couple of days and had to make up for it in the next practice session. Think about the cost of all that ammo its self. If you took a conservative approach to say that each round cost 20 cents that would be $255,000 in ammo alone. If you added in the cost of the up keep of the guns, mags, targets, etc that’s a SERIOUS amount of money to invest into shooting for a 3 year period. Not to mention that if you were shooting that much you wouldn’t have time to do anything other than shoot and reload for the next day.

So unless someone was an independently wealthy millionaire you really couldn’t shoot that much in a three year period. If you had a fully auto firearm it would be a lot easier, but to shoot that much through a pistol, that would be insane!!!

[Field]

I started USPSA in may, made C in limited on my first classification.

yeah when i got my 2nd card in the mail for an actual classification i see a big stinky 'c' on my card and then i go 'UGH'

[bigstick0000]

I started shooting open about 6 months ago or so and am at c class. I thought I was doing good at about 300 rounds a week practice with one or two matches a month at the most. But I also had no routine and felt like I was going through the same old thing every week with no progress. All that changed about a month ago when I started shooting with a grandmaster. All of a sudden I am shooting about 1500 rounds a week with5-7 matches a month and feel like I am starting all over. The progress I have made in such a short time is unbelievable. He corrected things I had been doing wrong, not only showing me what to do but why to do it a certain way. He also established numerous drills for me to do to help me with things like target transition, reloading, shooting on the move and tons of other procedures. I wish I had hooked up with him long before now but live and learn. I also went from 50 dryfire a week to about 3 sessions a week until physical failure.

[Tzygä]

"Jarrett says that between 1988 and 2001 he shot about 1.7 million rounds in practice. “I had a gun in my hand for two hours every day for 10 years to develop my skill level. Now it’s not so much practice anymore, it’s more of a maintenance thing. I wasted the first million rounds just learning how to shoot,” he says with a laugh."

Well, I don't get to shoot the first million in my life time. Is there something wrong about me?