If you’re anything like me you spend a lot of time practicing to shoot accurately, but you secretly want to get faster. For many of us, shooting quickly is very difficult, as it’s incredibly hard to diagnose the problems that are slowing you down. This article is going to cover some excellent tips from World Champ Ben Stoeger on how to speed up your pistol shooting. You’ll be surprised at what is holding you back.
If you don’t follow practical pistol shooting you may not know who Ben Stoeger is. It’s safe to say he’s probably one of the top five or ten pistol shooters on the planet, and he’s won just about everything there is to win, both in USPSA, and IPSC style practical shooting competitions.
More importantly, he is actually a good instructor, and he teaches practical shooting classes all around the world. This is important to you because being a good shooter doesn’t always translate into being able to help others improve their shooting.
This article is going to cover some concrete tips to improve your shooting, based off of an excellent hour long Youtube video that Ben posted up several weeks ago. This video covers several drills and lectures he gives in his practical shooting classes. If you want all the details then check the video out below.
Without further ado, let’s get into the tips and techniques that will improve your speed shooting. First, we are going to cover the two types of speed shooting, predictive and reactive shooting.
Predictive and Reactive Speed Shooting
In the video, Ben demonstrates several drills that differentiate between two types of speed shooting. The first method he covers is reactive speed shooting. He defines this type of shooting as letting your sights dictate the pace of your shooting. In other words, you are acquiring an acceptable sight picture, for the difficulty of the target, each and every time you pull the trigger.
Predictive speed shooting is used for targets between 5-7 yards, that are less difficult. In this method, you will acquire an acceptable sight picture for the target, and shoot two (or more) shots while watching the sights for feedback. The crucial difference is that you are not waiting for the sights to settle before shooting your follow on shots. Check these key tips Ben covers in this section of the video.
- Accuracy doesn’t solely depend on aligning your sights. Grip pressure can drastically affect accuracy as well.
- Don’t fight the recoil. Maintain a firm grip on the pistol, and let it do its thing under recoil.
- Fighting the gun and pushing into it (before recoil) can cause low left hits for right hand shooters.
- High right hits (for right handers) can be caused by insufficient support hand grip.
- High right hits can also be caused by riding the sights up, or firing before they return to your aim point.
- For righties, 9 o’clock hits can be alleviated by loosening grip on firing hand.
- Acceptable sight picture for a target is a shooting process
There are a lot of nuggets of shooting wisdom in this section, but I want to highlight a few things that really stuck with me while watching this video.
We often talk about acceptable sight picture, but we rarely define what that means. Ben explains this type of sight picture as a process of visualizing what exactly you will see and where exactly you will be aiming, based on your relationship to the target, and current skill level.
The difference is Ben expects you to understand, before you shoot, what type of sight picture (reactive vs. predictive) you will be employing and use that on the target. You can’t just classify targets as easy and hard.
Ben also emphasized that you can’t fight the recoil of the gun, as that is very likely to causing the dreaded low left shots. Specifically, that is caused by pushing into the gun before the shot is fired. Instead, he recommends that you maintain a firm crush grip on the gun, and simply let it recoil. Don’t try to make it stay perfectly still during recoil.
Next we are going to cover target transitions. This is one area where Ben’s advice goes against the majority of what you will see Instagram heroes doing. Let me say it was eye opening.
Fast Target Transitions
Ben made several great points in this section of the video. The most important point he made was that aggressively driving the gun toward your target is not the fastest way to transition. This isn’t to say that you should slowly transition. He is pointing out that over driving a gun isn’t productive, and is actually slower. Here’s and example of over driving a gun.
You can see in this video that over driving a gun looks cool, and fast, but it isn’t. Lucas is a pretty good shooter, and he does compete in USPSA, but let’s just say that he isn’t going to be winning nationals any time soon. Check out these tips for speedy transitions.
- Physically driving the gun does not make your transition faster.
- Fast transitions rely on shooting as soon as you see exactly what you need to see on a target, and no more.
- Use your gun the way you use your computer mouse.
- Look to where you want to go and the sights will come to you.
- Avoid excess upper body tension and throwing the gun around.
- You hit where you look, for better or worse. If you’re off on the target, you may be looking at the wrong spots.
- Pick an exact spot on the target to aim for. Don’t just aim for the center.
- You can’t divert your vision off target until all rounds are fired on it, or else you drag rounds off target.
- For targets around 5yds and in, draw an imaginary line from eye to target, once the gun hits that line shoot.
In this section, Ben makes the analogy of driving your gun like you use your computer mouse. You don’t see something you want to click on, and then whip the mouse that direction as fast as possible. Instead you look where you want to click, and deftly move the pointer.
This sounds simple, but if you spend any time on the interwebs, you will see a lot of fairly good shooters over driving the gun for the camera, because it looks cool. If you watch any match video, you’ll never see a top shooter drive the gun like that. They move it with speed and control. Personally, I’d rather shoot cool than look cool for the “gram.”
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Moving and Shooting With Speed
This is one area of performance shooting that many folks gloss over, to their detriment. If you actually look at the amount of time you shoot on a stage, versus the amount of time you are actually moving, you’ll find that you spend a lot of time running, and comparatively little time shooting. These are Ben’s top tips for shooting and moving.
- Your feet and body need to be positioned to move, not just for stability.
- Use a wide shooting platform with feet set in a fighting stance.
- When you move, do so at max speed.
- Be ready to shoot as soon as the target is available.
- It’s not enough for the gun to be up, the sights must on target as well.
My biggest take away from this section was having the gun ready to fire, with sights on target as you enter the position. I often enter a position with my gun up, but I’m not ready to shoot. Ben highlights that you really need to be ready to fire once you have an acceptable sight picture on target. In the video, he highlights both right and wrong methods, and it is definitely worth a watch.
It sounds obvious that you should move at max speed, but I can tell you that almost no one actually does. Check out this match video from one of my first two gun matches. I can tell you that during my movements I felt that I was blazing, but when I compare my actual speed to top competitors, or even myself now, I’m crawling along.
Speed Shooting for Tactical Applications
While Ben isn’t a tactical guy, he does teach tactical guys, but he sticks to what he knows well, shooting mechanics. He leaves the tactics and specific application to others to teach.
I think it’s important to point out that these fundamentals of shooting aren’t just applicable to USPSA or practical pistol shooting. They are applicable to self defense, and tactical realms as well. Don’t believe me? Check out this analysis of self defense scenarios, and tell me if explosive movement to cover, or understanding the different between reactive, and predictive shooting wouldn’t help the shooters.
Additional Resources
I’d like to leave you with some additional resources so you can continue to improve your shooting game. Ben has written many books on shooting, both live and dry fire, and I can whole heartedly recommend them. I’ve used them with great results. Here is the one I’m currently using.
You can also listen to Ben’s podcast. If you want personal training tips remotely, you can join Ben’s Practical Shooting Training Group (PSTG). Lastly, you can take a class with him, but he is normally booked up many months in advance so I hope you’re patient.
I hope these tips help you in your own quest to improve your shooting performance. Now it’s time to get out there and start training!
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