[Seth]

I'd love to here some criticism of my most recent match performance. The stages I had video'd were all medium to large field courses and I completed all of them, except the last one, with zero mikes/ NS. The last one had a NS/M.


Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5

Stage 6

Stage 7

[JThompson]

Doesn't work for me...

[Seth]

Odd. They're all Window Media files and I've tried them all on both Firefox and IE.

hmmm.....

http://www.offroadma...s/swgc609s3.wmv

http://www.offroadma...s/swgc609s4.wmv

http://www.offroadma...s/swgc609s5.wmv

http://www.offroadma...s/swgc609s6.wmv

http://www.offroadma...s/swgc609s7.wmv

[Bigpops]

they work for me...both at home and work.

(Nice meeting you Seth)

[JThompson]

I had to do a Firefox association... strange. ah well I see them now.

[SA Friday]

Seth, get that reload up in your face. It takes time to drop your hands, reload, raise your hands and find the sights again. I would also suggest you are burning too much time on really close targets.

You appear to be aiming at targets that are very close. Some of the arrays were close enough you could have looked over the gun with less of a sight picture and shot a lot faster with the same results in less time.

Try bending your knees more and getting more on the balls of your feet when shooting. You are very upright and it looks like the recoil is pushing you back a little. You're not fighting the recoil which is awesome, but you will get to the next shot faster if your stance is more solid.

Very accurate from what the vid shows.

[jkrispies]

Seth, on Jun 8 2009, 02:25 PM, said:

I'd love to here some criticism of my most recent match performance. The stages I had video'd were all medium to large field courses and I completed all of them, except the last one, with zero mikes/ NS. The last one had a NS/M.


Stage 3

Stage 4

Stage 5

Stage 6

Stage 7

First of all, none of these runs are anything to be ashamed of! However, here's what I see from my comfortable armchair...

Stage 3: Rather than taking the backwards babysteps that aren't moving you too fast at all and are probably messing up your aim, I'd just fire the string and then RUN out of the box (keeping the gun pointed safely downrage, of course).

Stage 4: Looks like a decent moving reload from my perspective.

Stage 5: I'm guessing that there was something mandated about having your toes on those white lines at the start??? If not, get your drawing position correct before the buzzer. Halfway through, it looks like you forgot your plan, started a reload, stopped, and engaged some targets that you forgot to shoot, then did your reload; I'm wondering if you would have had enough rounds in the magazine to have just continued with the reload and plowed on. If so, it would have been faster than the hesitation. Also, if you watch your path of movement, you go from the window, towards the papers, reload and move back to the next corner: it would have been a shorter path of movement to have just moved directly from that window one or two steps over to the left and engaged the papers all from there. Remember that the shortest path is generally the fastest path, and the few yards that moved you closer to those papers probably wasn't enough to improve your accuracy much.

Stage 6: Again with the feet at the buzzer: even if your toes are supposed to be touching the lines, you could have positioned them in such a way that altering your foot position after the buzzer wasn't necessary. I'm wondering why you stopped engaging the targets in the middle, shot that one at the end, and then went back and re-engaged the ones in the middle? Probably faster to have saved that last one to finish with rather than having to swing the gun back and forth. Again, try to eliminate unnecessary movement.

Stage 7: Kinda hard to see where the targets are, so not much to say, except that you have a pretty big firing box to work with there; no need to hug that wall if you don't have to. I probably would have asked the RO to step back a bit so that I could move away from the wall as I was transitioning from one corner to the other, reloading at that point, and then stepped forward into the window engaging any targets I could during that movement. Again, though, it's hard to say from that angle.

[Seth]

Thanks guys. I realize is extremely tough to critique without standing there.. but the couple of notes:

Stage 3 had 2 swingers that activated with the steel at P1

Stage 5 I got confused. I had figured out 2 ways to run the stage and got myself crisscrossed mentally. Didn't cost me a week, but wasn't my smoothest move.

Stage 7 had a peek-a-boo target and a swinger that were activated by the same piece of steel. I made the mistake of going first and not seeing how to time it. Could have done the activator then the 3 pieces of steel THEN the peek a boo... but instead I waited.

This post has been edited by Seth: 08 June 2009 - 03:19 PM

[CHA-LEE]

In addition to the good recommendations that have already been mentioned so far…..

You need to work on better stage planning to make things more efficient. For example on stage three, you shoot stuff in the middle, then move to the left and shoot, then you move to the right. We can’t see the target arrangements of the first two shooting positions but on the third shooting position you engaged the targets from left to right, needed to back up and then had to swing far to the left to pick up the last targets. On the last shooting position it would make more sense to shoot the right side targets from right to left as you enter the shooting position that way you can be advancing forward towards the last targets.

The same goes for stage 4. You go left and engage the targets down range and then choose to engage the far right targets on the way towards the second shooting position. Why not just wait to engage the far right targets after the second shooting position as you are moving forward to the end of the COF? You would be closer to the targets on the right doing it that way. You also should think about target engagement order. For example the string of targets that are just past the wall before the end of the COF you shot them from left to right and had to stop to shoot them because you would break the 180 if you advanced while shooting. If you engaged those targets from right to left you could have been moving towards the end of the COF while engaging the targets.

Lastly, when you move while not shooting MOVE!!! Don’t half jog around as that kills a lot of time. RUN like there is a wild bear on your heels.

[MemphisMechanic]

Stage 3:

FIRST POSITION:
It sounds like you engaged a paper target static, then backed out on the steel. Steel is less forgiving, and if possible, take the steel while stationary, and back out on the paper. A near-miss on paper is a C. A near-miss on steel is a mike.

LEFT SIDE:
Could you have fired all your shots from the spot the last ones were fired in? If so, go directly there, and do it. Find a spot that lets you hit everything without time-wasting leaning and foot-shuffling, and shoot everything from there. Taking a target as you enter or leave that spot is great, but that's not what you're doing. You're using the targets to find the needed position, which is slow.

(In general:) You never look where you're moving to - eyes are always downrange as you find your position. Find a spot in the dirt on walkthrough. See that spot, and get the correct foot there when moving during the stage. Bring your eyes back up as soon as you know you that foot will land in the right spot, extend the gun, and fire as your sights stabilize. Same as moving into a box. Think of it like a reload: Doing it blind can work, but looking the mag into the magwell lets you do it faster, and more importantly, it's smoother and consistent. No shuffle-steps required.

RIGHT SIDE:
Your movement at the end (right side) wastes time. You should have engaged those three paper targets from where your sixth shot was fired: Should have sprinted directly to that spot. There was no reason to move while engaging them, unless you change it up, and advance forward to expose hidden targets, like CHA-LEE suggested. Moving forward to expose hidden targets is almost always faster than backing up to do it.

This post has been edited by MemphisMechanic: 09 June 2009 - 09:03 AM

[MemphisMechanic]

Stage 4:

LEFT:
Other than moving to your spot faster... looks good. This is a perfect example of what i said above. If you had seen a patch of weeds or a rock that was exactly where you wanted your left foot, you could have SPRINTED over there while staring at it. 2 steps out, look up and extend the gun. You always have to brake earlier if you're using the targets to figure out where your foot needs to go. It's faster to already know.

MIDDLE:
Take those four downrange while moving. Not much, obviously, but keep your body moving nice and smoothly across the doorway. Stopping and starting burned time. Do it right, and you'd have been 5 feet closer to the end of the stage as you fired that eighth shot... THEN turn and engage the two down the 180. They'll be closer.

FINAL POSITION:
Take the two targets smoothly on the move to the barricade (closest first, so you don't push the 179.5) or sprint to the position you engaged the final one from, and shoot all 3 from there. You ran, stopped and fired 4 shots, turned and moved again, and engaged the last target. If the 180 isn't a concern, get the the end position and tag them all from there. If chalee was right, and it is, take the first two moving if possible. Just don't overrun them so you have to stop next time.

This post has been edited by MemphisMechanic: 09 June 2009 - 09:06 AM

[MemphisMechanic]

Stage 5:

Weird beginning stance has been covered. Looks like your feet had to be somewhere specific. Whatever.

Look at the 0:25-0:26 timestamp on the video. I would probably not have gone any closer to the next 3-4 targets than you were at that point. Since your next position was diagonally opposite this location on the stage, running right up to the fault line just added more ground for your feet to cover when you left.
Remember, winning is simply getting to the final position as fast as possible, with good hits along the way. Even if the shots are longer, walking down a straight path usually beats jogging a zig-zagging one... Although there are exceptions for 180 concerns, ports, swingers, etc.

You ran across the right port at 0:32 - only about 8 feet away... Why not reload as you move to the right port, then left port, THEN go to the left end of the curving barricade to finish? All the steel was in the right port, and you would've arrived with a full mag. So if you had thrown several mikes that ruined your round-count, adding a reload before or after the left port would have given you a safety net, without adding much time. From the video, this appears to be a faster AND safer way to attack the stage.

This post has been edited by MemphisMechanic: 09 June 2009 - 08:51 AM

[MemphisMechanic]

Stage 6

Take the tight noshoot target first, then the left one as you back out. Reload as you RUN to the spot where your mag landed, and finish everything left from there. Just stand and deliver.

Would that have worked? If you had the capacity and wouldn't break 180, I think it might have been faster.

This post has been edited by MemphisMechanic: 09 June 2009 - 09:08 AM

[MemphisMechanic]

Stage 7

What on earth is your left hand doing during the draw? It should be waiting near your right hip or belt-buckle to come in under the trigger guard, not hovering around on the wrong side of your body. This was the only draw that looked slow. None of them are GM-speed, but this one hurt you. Your hand appears to be on the gun in the holster for over half a second.

Getting directly over to the right side and engaging everything with planted feet would've been faster. Watch your feet: You basically shot a target on the move in 2 feet of space. A 1.5-second change in position became 3-4 seconds. Taking a target while entering a position is different from shooting on-the-move really close to it, which is what you did.

I don't know if going left-middle-right would have been faster than left-right-middle. Can't see anything.

I will say that I would have looked to see if it might have been possible to find a spot that let you set your feet, lean really far around the corner shooting inside-out down the right side (opposite of the order you used), straighten the torso as you shoot, and simply swing the gun into the port without changing anything from the waist down.

Loading after the left side, instead of after the right one, would probably have made more sense. It's a longer movement, and I think I counted 16 rounds after the left position.

This post has been edited by MemphisMechanic: 09 June 2009 - 09:21 AM

[Seth]

Thank you all for your time. The MD here likes to hide targets to force shooters to go to the ends of the course. I like that and there's occasionally a reason for some little shuffle. On stage 3 there was a 180 discrepancy on the 3rd array that we sorted out after I had shot. I didn't need to move any further than my first position, but felt that I would break the 180 had I not shuffled.

Thanks again for the insight. I'm working hard and sometimes feel like I'm not getting better.

[jkrispies]

Seth, on Jun 9 2009, 11:05 AM, said:

Thanks again for the insight. I'm working hard and sometimes feel like I'm not getting better.

We should start a team. All we'd need is a name and logo for the T-shirts.