The Myth of the One Second Draw, For Me
No, I'm not saying it's impossible, and I'm not saying it's not worth doing, it definitely is. What I'm seeing in so many places is people focusing on having a one second draw when they can become better shooters by focusing their attention in other places. Let's look at the example of a major match, you shoot 12 stages, and if you have a one second draw, versus having a 1.3. Over 12 stages, assuming it's all a draw from holster, you are talking about saving 3.6 seconds, and don't get me wrong, that's extremely valuable.
Let's say that your split and transition are .28 and .40. If you get those numbers down to .20 and .30, again, both very reasonable, you have say 12 transitions and 11 splits. Those two numbers would save you about 2.2 seconds a stage, or 26.4 seconds over the course of the match. That's 22.8 seconds greater savings by getting splits and transitions down, and that's why the "cool, one second draw" isn't worth the same investment at those levels.
Excellent shooters are going to have that one second draw, and get their splits in the .12-.18 area, with transitions not much slower. That's the well rounded shooter who has all of his skills at a very high level. For me? I understand why Les started us at a 2 second draw, and as we practiced I got that number down to a fairly comfortable 1.3 second draw. At the "B" level, that was more than enough to be competitive, and it was time for me to start putting more time into all the other skills that would help me improve my overall score.
With that in mind, I'm going to get my draw into that comfortable 1.3 second draw range, but I'm going to invest more time in dry fire once that happens to keeping the dot on transitions, and running the gun faster and harder. Those have to be the skills that I work on first, because I'll see the most gain, and this is nothing new, this is really just a summary of what Les had me do before. Since Open is a game where speed really matters, the next step is going to be movement, it will be key to start shooting on the move, go point to point quicker, and handle ports even better. Gun needs to be up, and in position so I don't waste time once I hit a spot.
There has to be a level of competence in all those skills, before having that one second draw really even matters. I associate it to the same process it would take going from a D shooter to a GM. The gains you can make from D to B/A you can probably do reasonably quickly. As long as you invest consistent time you can make some fairly quick (relatively) progress. Going from a 2 second draw to a 1.3 second draw is something that I did in somewhat fairly short order. I'd expect going to from a 1.3 second draw to a 1 second draw would take me quite a bit longer, and would require a great investment of practice time. The effort to go from M to GM is immense, I mean as long as you don't re-shoot classifiers non-stop to get the score that you want.
Maybe I knew this before, but I'm not sure that I understood it. Whole point of this blog, for me, is that I'm going to need to focus my time where I'm going to get the best return, at least for now. When I'm at the point where a one second draw will matter to me, the rest of my skills should be at a close to equal level. That's an issue with Brian Enos Forums, you've got a lot of "C Class" advice being given out and taken as gospel. People are regurgitating things that they have heard, but really don't have the same application for every level. For a C or B level shooter, they don't need to be practicing to have a one second draw, those are the people who I suspect end up floundering in a class and wondering why they cannot reach the next level. The lesson at least I got out of this, is that I need to tailor my practice properly, and in stages to best achieve the level of progress that I expect.
Right or wrong, that'll be the methodology for practicing the way I'm going to set-up my practice.
