Is Your Shooting Sport Holding You Back?

If you want to get better at something, measure it. This has been a long understood principle of human performance, and is why so many shooters use timers these days. When I started shooting in the 90’s I was the only person I knew who had a timer. Schools I went to used them and the shooters there often had them, but out in “the wild”, timers were not seen in normal shooters hands.

Timers, in conjunction with an appropriate target, are generally all you need in terms of measurement tools to improve your shooting. Almost all sports use these two tools, and it would be literally impossible to find a good IDPA/USPSA/Steel Challenge/Action Pistol shooter who doesn’t own and use them.

Adding to your basic practice sessions, shooting a sport can really improve your shooting ability. This is because not only are you measuring your shooting, you are comparing it to others. Whether it is peer pressure or embarrassment, comparing yourself to others is another long understood principle of driving improvement. It is a vital aspect of basic training in LE and the military, but our soft culture wants to do away with it. That’s a discussion for another day, we will just stick to shooting today.

The problem with the shooting sports is: are you improving the stuff that really matters? First we have to define what matters. That’s entirely up to you, but for me, I want to be able to draw fast, shoot fast and most of all, shoot accurately. Another way to say that is speedy gunhandling and high accuracy. Not bullseye accurate, but I define accuracy as being able to hit anything the gun is capable of hitting under field conditions. Sometimes that is an 8″ vital zone, but often it is smaller. Sometimes that is close up, but often it is further away.

Let’s look at four common sports to see how they shake out. If you want the same things I want, you might think USPSA is a good way to go. In the 90’s, I think that was true. 50 yard standards and lots of partial targets beyond 15 yards made it a well rounded sport. The masters of the day preached group shooting as a vital part of their development, even shooting from a bench! Today, it seems the emphasis is on pure speed and athleticism, with relatively few shots at any distance or difficulty. I’m sure some clubs do it differently, but that’s what it looks like to me in general. Don’t get me wrong, the speed today is faster than in the past and that is a good improvement. Now we just need the harder targets again.

So if USPSA is not quite as well rounded as it used to be, what about IDPA? Truthfully, I gave up on it some years ago with the ridiculously subjective calls. People back then used to bash USPSA as being “unrealistic”. Ok, fine, but no sport should involve subjective calls. I’ll take “less realistic” over subjective any day. Since IDPA today has different rules, I should really try it again and see how it goes. It is a bit of a blind spot for me since I don’t shoot it and none of my friends do. Regardless, I’m sure IDPA will still teach speedy gunhandling and decent accuracy.

Steel Challenge also teaches speedy gunhandling and decent accuracy, but removes movement (almost entirely) as well as recoil control. The emphasis is on target transitions. Out of the three sports we have looked at, it is probably the least well rounded.

Action Pistol is interesting. It involves more draws than the other sports, but it does not drive excellence in the draw. It involves more accurate shot placement (the most realistic, useful shot placement) than the others but it doesn’t push your ability to do it faster. The issue here is the par times. They make shooting high scores challenging (to say the least), but they are not fast enough to drive improvement in gun handling. Of the four sports we are looking at, Action Pistol shooters have the worst gun handling with the most field usable accuracy.

As I’ve written about before, combining Action Pistol and Steel Challenge is a very good way to go to be more well rounded. You could certainly substitute USPSA or probably even IDPA instead of Steel Challenge and also get excellent results.

I should also mention that I’m really not talking about the absolute top performers in any of these sports. Generally, they can do it all, with fast gunhandling and high levels of accuracy. Its the bulk of the membership who fall prey to the limitations of their chosen sport. The point here is that you need to choose a sport that will drive the development you want. None of them are perfect or complete, but all of them offer valuable benefits. Depending on your interests, you may need to combine a couple of them to get a more complete skill set.