My Competition Journey

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Good Ol' Boy

Good Ol' Boy

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This is inspired by 1kperdays thread. Theres a wealth of info in there but I didnt want to sidetrack.

I shot a few USPSA and IDPA matches last year about this time, wanted to get involved and life happened. Fast forward to now and I've made a commitment to get into IDPA more consistently, as I prefer that over USPSA. I'm also going to try some Steel matches and I suspect I'll add them to the gambit.

Anyhow, I shot my first IDPA match in almost a year this past weekend and improved. I shot another match yesterday and improved more.

A year ago I was placing in the last 5 or so overall. This past weekends match I was in the bottom 10 and yesterday's match I was 18 overall and 8th in SSP. I contribute the recent improvement to rigorous weekly dry practice at home, it really seemed to carry over.

I will be shooting weekly Monday matches now and an additional monthly weekend match for IDPA. Hopefully I can mix in a Steel match once a month as well. I expect that, along with continuation of my dry practice that I will see some more improvement.

I will say that for me personally, so far, speeding things up has gotten me better results. I can target shoot fairly good but these comps seem to be A LOT about movement and speed. Thus I dont have the issue right now of being obsessed with getting 0's and am instead focusing on point shooting and getting through the course as fast as possible. I think if I can get to a "faster point moving" that eventually I'll figure out the "being able to set for better shots later on".

That's not to say that I'm in a "spray and pray" mindset, but that I'm not concerned about -1s that much right now. It's more along the lines that if I can speed up moving through the course that I have a few more milliseconds to get that 0 down shot.

So any advice is welcome, although I read plenty in 1kperdays thread.


I do have a question about penalties in IDPA. Yesterday's match I had 15 PD with a raw of 87 and zero penalties, and somebody placed a couple spots above me that had 12 PD and 78 raw but with 15 penalties. How do the penalties factor into score?
 
A point down is a second.
Penalties run 3, 5, 10, 20 seconds.
I would assume that was 15 seconds, five procedurals or three Non Threats.
87+15=102
78+12+15=105
Looks like you beat him.
Is it on Practiscore?
 
IDPA is basically a bullseye match. Unless the stage is extremely difficult I wouldn't want to be down more than one or two points on any stage.
 
Jim Watson said:
A point down is a second.
Penalties run 3, 5, 10, 20 seconds.
I would assume that was 15 seconds, five procedurals or three Non Threats.
87+15=102
78+12+15=105
Looks like you beat him.
Is it on Practiscore?
Click to expand...




Yes it is and I just double checked his time was 71 not 78, so there it is.

Thanks for the info. When I saw penalties and 15 I didnt realize that was points, I was thinking 15 individual penalties.
 
Shot another match last night, finished almost exactly the same.

However, zero PD. I would have had a good run if not for major hiccups one the 1st and last stage.

First stage was 3 shots per target. Normally they always shoot 2 per target. I was beyond well advised of the 3 shots but when the buzzer went off my body just did what it was used too. As a result I had to backpedal a couple steps on two different transitions on the first stage.

Last stage I had a brain fart and got confused about a wall and target engagement. Looked like a deer in headlights I'm sure.

Both were very costly time wise. Raw was 94 seconds where the top shooter was 47.

I was moving just as fast as the last time when I had 15 PD and I think I would have been closer to the top 10 if it weren't for those screw ups.

Let y'all know how next Monday pans out....
 
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This past Monday's match I fell a few spots and finished 20th.

A combination of forgetting the course and inaccuracy were to blame.

It's taking some real getting use to these indoor matches where everything's hanging from the ceiling and you have tape where there would normally be a 2x2. Its definitely throwing me off as far as navigating a stage.

Anyhow, no excuses.

I'll follow up with this Monday's match. We've got a classifier coming up in October so I'm excited about that since I'm still UN right now.
 
We had a weird stage today.
Every regular "metric" target was paired with a reduced target, half size if not 1/3.
The full targets got 3 scored hits, the midgets one.
Everybody on my squad seemed to have it programmed.
 
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