I think there's some utility in occassionally doing the slow-motion (or, better, no-time-pressure/awareness) thing to sort out little mechanical inconsistencies. But I don't think it's useful for
most people when they're trying to go faster.
I think working down in time is a good idea, but I think it makes sense to start with a par time of your current, solid, guarantee-a-first-shot-A pace. Do a couple of draws at that pace, then knock 0.1 off the par time. Do 10 or so at that pace, then knock off another .1. Eventually, you'll get to the point where you cannot keep up, or cannot reasonably see the sights before the timer sounds. Keep trying, and keep pushing the time down, whether you're keeping up or not. I usually chase it down to 0.6 - not that I can do a 0.6 draw, that's just how short a par time I'm chasing at the end.
OK,
now set the par time back to 1.0, or another time that previously felt really, really hard to hit. What I suspect you will find is that 1.0 seconds now feels like an eternity and you are just staring a hole in your front sight by the time the buzzer sounds. Once you get "used" to working and
thinking and
perceiving at sub 0.9 paces - even if you're not really succeeding at those paces - then you realize that 1 second is plenty of time to get everything done.
Now, of course, this improvement, like most improvements, is mostly transient. You'll carry over a small fraction of your improvement to your next match. But if you pile up those small fractions often enough and long enough, you can make big differences.
As you're working through these draws, shift your attention around to different parts of the "stroke." Here are some observations about myself (which may or may not apply to you, but probably do, because I'm not that special) that I've made over time doing this drill:
- Different phases of the motion have different levels of trade-off between max-speed and control.
- Getting your right hand to the gun and your left hand to your centerline - very, very little tradeoff between speed and control. Rip your hands to the gun/centerline as fast as you can. Think of the handspeed you'd use for a game of slapjack (stupid hand-slapping game)... literally as quick as you can move.
- Getting the grip in the holster - some tradeoff here. Try to work through exactly what the order and location of contact points are between you and the gun (e.g., center of web centers beavertail first, then X, then Y)... if those are consistent, chances of a fouled-up grip go down, and you may be able to build the RH grip a little faster.
- Gun from holster to LH. Some tradeoff here, but you've got to accelerate the gun from a standstill. This needs some energy in it.
- Gun from hands-together to ready to shoot. Serious tradeoff here. Excess force in this phase will cause the gun to bounce around a lot when you run out of arms and it stops. I feel like the last foot of horizontal movement is "coasting" with nothing beyond the inertia of the gun (which I've been moving pretty hard/fast prior to this point) carrying it out to the firing position.
- My left hand is the drag as I get the speed faster. If I'm focused on the gun or my right hand, then my left hand will slightly lag, and will slow everything down. When I'm drilling in the 0.8 range and below, I really have to think about my left hand to have any prayer of staying with the beep.
- As Ben Stoeger says (paraphrasing), "if you're moving something other than your arms, you should stop moving that thing."
- Experiment a little with elbow path consciousness. The Ron Avery video where he gave the imagery of a string attached to the back of your elbows being jerked upward at the start of the draw was helpful to me in speeding up the first part of the draw. I personally find a more straight-back/up and forward elbow path is more efficient for me than chicken-winging my elbows out to the side.... I like to keep things "on plane" as much as possible. (Perhaps a carryover fixation from my golf days.)