You Don’t Have a Shooting Problem—You Have a Movement Problem | Kita Busse

Most shooters spend years chasing better accuracy… faster splits… cleaner gear.

Kita Busse took one look at the sport and asked a different question:

What if the problem isn’t your shooting at all?

Coming in as an outsider with a medical background, she saw something no one else was talking about… the massive inefficiencies in how shooters move, see, and process information under pressure.

What followed?

National champions. World champions. And a complete shift in how elite shooters train.

In this episode, Kita breaks down:

• Why “dead time” is silently killing your performance
• How movement—not marksmanship—is often the real limiter
• The science behind vision training and “Quiet Eye”
• Why your eyes move faster than your brain can process (and how to fix it)
• How top shooters eliminate distractions you didn’t even know you were seeing

This isn’t about shooting more.

It’s about thinking differently about how you shoot.

Explore innovative movement and vision training techniques in competitive shooting with Keita Bussey, author of Smart Move. Learn how physiological and psychological insights can dramatically improve shooting performance.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Oh, you mentioned cicades earlier. I wanted to make another point about that. Um, so cicades are when your eyes jump from one spot to the next, and we use these for transitions between targets. And uh smooth visual pursuit is when your eyes are tracking a moving target. And the smooth visual pursuit is actually the slowest eye movement there is. And this is what I want to put out there is this is why people tell you not to follow your dot between targets, because that becomes a smooth visual pursuit, which is the slowest eye movement that exists.

SPEAKER_00 1:14

Laser Ammo makes those reps possible anytime, anywhere, empowering you with the ability to train more consistently than you ever have before. Go to LaserAmmo.com to find out more. Now, what if the biggest thing holding you back when it comes to speed and accuracy at the range isn't actually your shooting? Today's guest didn't come up through the sport in the traditional way. She stepped in from the outside, looked at how shooters move, how they see and how they process information, and quietly began rewriting the rules. The result? National champions in over 10 countries, world champions, and a completely different way of thinking about the shooting performance. Keda Bussey is the author of Smart Move, Economy of Motion for the Shooting Sports, and one of the leading voices in movement and vision training in the competitive shooting world today. This one will change how you think about getting better at shooting. Keda and of course Kristen, welcome to the podcast.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Thank you. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

So we if we had a crowd, the crowd would go wild, but it's just as much enthusiasm this way as possible.

SPEAKER_01 2:25

Yes, thank you for having us.

SPEAKER_00 2:27

So, Kita, how old were you when you first started shooting?

SPEAKER_01 2:30

How old was I? Uh well, the first time I ever touched a gun, I was 17 years old in basic training in the army. Oh, really?

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Okay, great. And how did you do?

SPEAKER_01 2:40

I actually was the first female at Fort Sill to qualify expert with N60.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Nice. That's fantastic. And that was a first-time shooting.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

Yes, it was. But also, I have to put a disclaimer out there. They didn't allow females to go to basic training there before we were kind of an experiment. And after we went through, they said never again. No more females.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

You caused it and you created a new drama. Right, right.

SPEAKER_00 3:11

But if you shot well, what why was that? Was there a lot of people there that did badly?

SPEAKER_01 3:15

I yeah, actually. I well, I didn't I just did what they told me to do. Because I never did it before, so I didn't have any preconceived ideas going in. I just did what they told me to do.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

And you shot well, but everybody else didn't?

SPEAKER_01 3:31

No, that's not true at all. There were other people who shot well as well. But there were people who had a lot of confidence going in because they had more experience. And I had zero experience, so I just listened to what I was told, where the people who had these preconceived notions of how it should go were trying to do things outside of what they were told, and it didn't not go well for those people.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

So, as is so often the case, an instructor was saying, Hey, do this, and they're like, No, I already know better. I'm gonna do it my way.

SPEAKER_01 4:03

That's exactly what happened. And of course, there were people very experienced who did very well.

SPEAKER_00 4:10

Yeah. Yeah, there's always a broad spectrum, isn't there, of of individuals. At any range day, you got a few that are over here and they're like, I'm ready to learn, teach me some stuff. The people in the middle are like, I've been there, I've done that, I've worn out the t-shirt. Prove it to me that you know what you're talking about. And then there's that group over there who are completely overconfident. They're like, Yeah, I got it. I'll do it.

SPEAKER_01 4:31

I'll do it all. And I knew I knew absolutely nothing because I've never even touched a gun before in my life. So I'm assuming it was a rifle you were shooting at first. Yeah, it was uh M16. So we zeroed for three rounds at a time. And the first time I I didn't understand what zeroing was. They just told me put three shots in the middle, and I was like, okay. And then they were like way off to the side, and I said, Oh, I'm really bad at this. And they were like, No, we're gonna move it. It's just that you're um you you have to zero the gun for you, which I didn't understand at all at the time. So then we kept moving the group until it was in the center, and then I understood, oh, I'm not bad at this. The gun just wasn't doing what I needed it to do for me. Yeah. That's cool. So when was the first time you ended up shooting pistols? That was after I was out of the army. So I think I was twenty-eight the first time I ever touched a pistol. And I actually started coaching before I ever shot a pistol because I was coaching movement, the dead time, the time not spent shooting the gun. So it's it's kind of weird. I did things a little bit out of order. Yeah, you did.

SPEAKER_03 5:49

But not necessarily, because it's not like there's a rule that says you have to shoot, say, competition in order to train somebody how to move in it. I mean, especially if you're watching it, you can kind of get the gest from watching. Of course, it helps that of course, yeah. But but there's no rule that says like you can watch somebody go from point A to point B or you know, one SP to another, and you know how to get them there faster with movement. So, but yes, it definitely helps to know. And you do know how to shoot them.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Well, I learned eventually. But yes, I did come in just as a coach and just watched what everybody was doing, learned about the rules, learned what hit factor was, which was really confusing at first. Oh, yes, it is. It took me a little bit to understand all the different aspects of the sport. It's complex, and I always say you have to be smart if you're gonna shoot competition shooting, especially IPSC, USPSA, I think you have to be very intelligent. You're not gonna meet somebody dumb at a match.

SPEAKER_03 6:52

Or at least understand how the hit, like you said, you know, you can be smart and still not understand how hit factor, i.e., I still don't quite get all of like, wait a minute, is this a short one or a long one? How many points is this? Is this the one where I should be more accurate or just be fast? So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

Yeah, I would say the more movement you have, the lower the hit factor is gonna be. And a lower hit factor means points matter a little bit more. If there's not a lot of movement, you're just standing and shooting, then it's gonna be higher hit factor. So then your speed is worth a little bit more. You can actually potentially outrun a mic. Which is hilarious.

SPEAKER_03 7:32

Right, which is hilarious because it's a short stage. So outrunning, there's not much and there's no running. Right. Yeah, you're like, how can I outrun it if it's two steps, you know? But yeah. But that's where you pick up other things.

SPEAKER_01 7:45

Yeah, and then there's the area kind of in the middle, like the seven-ish hit factor, where it has to be a really good balance of the two.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

So was that the first thing you saw when you were looking at pistol shooters, particularly in competition, you saw inefficiencies in movement to make those things.

SPEAKER_01 8:03

So this was this was in 2010. I attended my first match just to see what it was about. I didn't shoot, I just watched and asked a bunch of questions, learned about the rules. And at that time, this was not an athletic sport. This was a bunch of, you know, 40-year-old white guys with dad bods, and they're moving around like they'd shoot really fast, ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-p. And then kind of slowly meander over to the next spot and then ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba. So nobody talked about movement in 2010 as it relates to smart move. It was only discussed as shooting on the move, not the dead time and eliminating the dead time as much as possible, because it's points divided by time. Well, points minus penalties divided by time. So I was like, uh, what are we doing? We should we should be moving more efficiently. We should be getting there sooner because this is dead time. How do we make that less?

SPEAKER_00 9:08

So for those who have never done a competition, talk through what this dead time is and why that is an inefficiency in and of itself.

SPEAKER_01 9:16

Dead time is time spent not shooting. So when you're shooting a stage, it should sound like the shooting never stops unless you have a reload or something like that. So if you are moving between positions and you have nothing you can shoot at, that's dead time. So we want to move as efficiently as possible between those two places. Anytime you leave the fault lines, you can't do this in IPSC. Well, in USPSA, you can leave the fault lines and enter back in somewhere else. And that is also dead time. The only thing you can multitask during that time is maybe a draw or a reload or something like that, but you can't be shooting if you're outside the fault lines. And the fault lines are pieces of wood on the ground that delineate the shooting area. You can only shoot at the targets when you're within these lines.

SPEAKER_00 10:03

So any movement that has to occur outside of those boxes is not a time when theoretically you should be shooting.

SPEAKER_01 10:10

You well, you could shoot, but there is a 10-point penalty per shot if you have an advantage. So another thing that creates dead time is sweet spots. And a sweet spot is when you want to shoot a whole bunch of different stuff from one spot without moving, you might be shifting your weight around a little bit. The problem is that a lot of times we'll make the shots harder. Maybe you have to lean or the targets are farther away, and you're going to be closer to them later on anyway. So if you're shooting a whole bunch of stuff from one spot and then moving to another spot, you just gave yourself nothing else to do during the time in between those two spots. Now you have nothing to shoot at because you already shot it all, and you've eliminated opportunities to shoot on the move, moving to that other spot. So I always say sweet spots are bad, generally speaking.

SPEAKER_00 11:07

So when you were kind of figuring this out and the path to whatever efficiencies you then created, did you experiment with yourself first? Did you say, okay, I'm gonna go to the range, I'm gonna shoot this course of fire, and I'm gonna see if I can clip my time down by X if I do Y?

SPEAKER_01 11:24

No, I did not experiment on myself. I experimented on Grandmasters from all over the world. So I uh you can see in my book the contributions from other top shooters in the world. So I tested theories. I came up with a bunch of hypotheses after watching a match, and then had to put them to the test to see what works, what doesn't work, what doesn't matter either way. So I did send out a bunch of drills to GMs all over the world, high-level shooters, had them try a bunch of things and send me the numbers, so then I would know, okay, this is consistently better, or this is consistently worse. For example, Eric Grafell in 2010 was using a deceleration technique from other sports where as he's coming into a position, he would stand up as a deceleration technique. And I found that doing that was costing him a tenth of a second in every position. Well, he's probably the best pistol shooter on the planet, right? So for it to cost him a tenth of a second for every position, that means it's costing a C-class shooter maybe two seconds per position. So the farther away you get from his level, the more time that is costing you. Because not only are you you either you have to shoot on the move as you're standing up, or you have to wait until you finish standing up to start shooting. So you're sh you're creating shooting on the move difficulty without actually going anywhere. So that would be one of the techniques that I was able to disprove with uh well, math. Yeah, data. Yes.

SPEAKER_00 13:16

So the people you started with are already incredibly competent shooters, arguably the best in the world at what they do. So adding one additional variable, which is a change in how they move, was is much easier, I think, to then figure out whether that's a successful strategy or whether it isn't, because you don't have to necessarily worry about all of the other sort of markers, you know, dominoes effect down the down the line.

SPEAKER_01 13:40

Yeah, and that's why they had to be the best shooters in the world. Otherwise, there are too many extraneous things affecting it. Yeah. Dependent variables.

SPEAKER_00 13:52

Yeah. It's funny though, or interesting to me at least, that you didn't practice that on your on yourself first. Like I taught a bunch of different self-defense over the years, and I never taught anything to anyone I didn't feel like would actually work, either from sparring with a variety of different people at a variety of different skill levels, or just, okay, is this something I would teach you know my own kids to do? And if it isn't a technique that I'm s I feel comfortable giving to them, then uh, you know, it's probably something I feel is not gonna work, or it has too too many risk factors involved in it. But I did experiment along the way with, okay, well, I'll try this. I'll spar with, I had a couple of guys that were either semi or pro fighters, and I would take the techniques in and go, okay, we're gonna try this today and have a go. And did it work? No. Well, that I found out before I would then start necessarily teaching with somebody else. But that's just that was my thought process along the way.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

Well, first I had to do the experimentation to figure out what the best methods are. Once I learned what the best methods are for movement, then I did teach myself those methods so that I can demonstrate them in classes and teach them to other people by showing them.

SPEAKER_00 15:01

Yeah. That's interesting though, isn't it? Something so small as do not stand up as a deceleration technique as you come to a stop. Which sounds completely logical. Yes, as you increase mass and decrease speed, one will help you do the other, whereas staying in a sort of compact position could maintain momentum.

unknown 15:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Just knowing physiologically how the body works and how it moves at speed.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Yeah, and then after you stand up, now if you have to go somewhere else, the first thing you have to do before you can move again is get down low.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

Yes. Yeah, you've got to change your center of gravity. Yeah. Brilliant.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

Well, and Kristen, you took Smart Move. Did you also take Train Smart?

SPEAKER_03 15:47

I believe I did, because I've taken two, or it's either that or I took the same one twice. Because whatever you taught over in East Texas, I thought they were different classes.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

Yeah, I think you took Smart Move and Train Smart.

SPEAKER_03 15:58

Yep. Yeah, because I remember you talking about HIFA and I was, you know, one of those I'm smart, but that still didn't the math didn't math for me quite yet. But you're also talking about higher level, and I was like, because we ha I was still a lot more into IDPA than I was into USPSA, so I didn't have the experience to actually as much.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

So yeah, the trained smart class is more for well, I designed that class based on how I taught the people who became national champions. So the techniques that I used to train them to be a national champion is what I used to make that curriculum.

SPEAKER_03 16:41

No, it really makes sense. It's just, you know, some people, you know, need to hear it different ways or, you know, uh absorb it a little bit longer to make it make sense because hit factor is freaking hugely different than you know, time minus points down equals your total time, which is IDPA.

unknown 17:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 17:01

I mean, while there's not as many times, you can't you can't outrun a Charlie there, but you can outrun a Charlie, you know, in USPSA. I mean, obviously ideally to get an alpha, but it's whereas one whole second is if you get a a Charlie in IDPA is one point down, where one point down is one whole second. Well, how fast can you shoot? I mean, an average average competitive shooter easily what 0.2 seconds. So we can shoot like five shots in a in a second, but if we miss one, you know, one one uh zero, then we're a whole second down, and it would have been more important to either take slowdown on that shot or throw an extra shot.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Yeah. For hit factor for USPSA, you would take the points down divided by your hit factor, and that will give you the amount of time you would have had to prevent that bad shot from happening or to make it up.

SPEAKER_03 18:01

Right. So yeah, the guys would tell me, like, if if you're feeling that it's a Charlie, don't make up a Charlie because you're wasting too much time and probably, you know, mental space, because you're thinking, oh, you know, having that conversation in your head versus just keep running past it and continue off to the next one versus having to now go back and hit because usually it's gonna most likely it's gonna be that second, well, not most likely. A lot of times it might be that second, that second hit versus the first. So then now you're having to go back to the target and now just redirect your brain and everything else.

SPEAKER_00 18:32

So for those of us who have not competed very much, explain to Charlie. Do you want well?

SPEAKER_03 18:39

Well it's basically you have a you have a target and your target has zones, and you know, like a pie plate center for for IDPA is the zero zone, and there is a small box in the head, which is your zero zone, then there's another zone right outside that, which in IDPA would be the down one, minus one zone, and in USPSA, I'm assuming also Ipsec, would be the Charlie, which and then the zone outside that would be minus three in IDPA or Delta D zone. So then it's all about for USPSA, it's points as well, whereas and also as IDPA, but it's one point down or three points down, which points equals seconds in IDPA, where it's all the math in USPSA.

SPEAKER_01 19:26

Yeah, basically the closer you get to the middle, the more points you get, the farther you get from the middle, the less points you get.

SPEAKER_00 19:33

Perfect explanation. But for so many people who have not ventured yet into competitive shooting, understanding the zones, understanding how they're gonna get, at least having a rough idea at this point, you know, how the point system works, how they're gonna lose points, particularly. But also understanding the balance between the speed they're gonna need shooting, the speed they're gonna need moving, and the acceleration and deceleration on either end of that movement. So I want to talk to you a little bit about what is a textbook position for entry and exit from these shooting zones? Is there such a thing? Uh you mean are you talking about So let's say you're entering into the you're you're running into the box where the wooden parameters and the wooden planks outline where you're going to shoot from. Is there a textbook way to do that? Or is there a little bit of a different way for everybody and you just have to figure it out?

SPEAKER_01 20:24

It is a little bit different for everybody based on your body type. And you kind of mentioned before mass times acceleration. So yes, there are differences. There is kind of a textbook way of doing it, but everyone's different in you know their height, their weight, their stride, their stature, and injuries, age. There are a lot of different factors that come in. So I'm I might have one guy do their position entry and tell him one thing, and five minutes later another guy does it and I tell him something completely opposite because their body types are different. So if I have somebody with a lot of mass, then it's gonna be harder for them to stop and start. So I'm gonna have them shooting on the shift more. And if I have a tall, lanky guy, it's he's also gonna have to shoot on the shift more because he's not gonna have, or she is not gonna have as much explosiveness with those sort of elongated muscles made more for marathons than for short sprints. If I have someone with a lot of explosiveness for speed, like um Sam Callahan from Double Eagle in Pennsylvania, he's very compact, has a lot of explosive power, he does a lot of weight lifting, works out in the gym. For him, he can get away with more stopping and starting and still be just as fast. So the answer, as always, in this sport is it depends. It depends.

SPEAKER_00 22:01

It's true. But I I can't help but compare it to the movement I would utilize with someone who's boxing or doing martial arts. Right, there's a there's a fundamental element to soft knees. I want them to have a little slightly lower center of gravity. I don't want them to get crazy into some you know Pilates yoga squat position or something, but there's some softening of the knees, there's transfer and weight to the balls of the feet. There's a little bit of that, what I just think of as sort of an athletic stance where you put it that dominant leg or the that uh lead leg forward a little bit. That would be a fundamental or a foundational element. Then I would add in the physicality. Okay, this person is a top heavy, they got little chicken legs, it's gonna be hard for them potentially to get you know from stop to a full sprint. And then sometimes you'll have guys, you know, really all guys, girls with strong legs, you're like, they're gonna have no problem picking up the speed and moving. You'll have people that struggle moving laterally. Yeah, people are good at moving forwards, usually not so good at moving backwards, but has a lateral movement because so much about martial arts is about getting off the X, as it is for defensive shooting. So it's just it's just interesting to see that there are always tweaks that need to happen, I think, physiologically, based on that individual's, you know, put that person's physiology. But there are some fundamentals I think that sort of hold true at a core level for each person going into any type of sport, especially anything that requires movement.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

Yes. And when it comes to injuries, I come from an RN background. So I worked in the hospital for years teaching people how to move their bodies after surgeries and things like that. I also work with people in wheelchairs and people with prosthetics in addition to injuries. But what I found is the way it's always been done is causing damage over time, causing these micro-tears, because they're not people are not moving their bodies the way they're made to move. They're fighting against their bodies, which makes them move more slowly and also creates damage over time, like using your low back muscles versus your quads. Yeah. Things like that. Or moving laterally, applying lateral pressure to your knees, your ankles, your hips, things like that. They can do that, but they work a lot more efficiently front to back if you just rotate your hips. It will it will really decrease the amount of damage done over time.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

So in that instance, are we talking a little bit like the tank turret, the feet and the toes are pointing in one direction, the upper body can sort of pivot around on top of the hips to align with the target?

SPEAKER_01 24:49

That would be for shooting on the move, yes. But if you have a longer lateral run, just face the direction you're running and run that way versus trying to run sideways. You'll see a lot of people kind of doing a crab run sideways. They're so worried about the 180 with the muzzle. So I teach a very specific technique for lateral movement in either direction to get you as close to an Olympic sprinter as possible with the 180 and a gun in your hands.

SPEAKER_03 25:19

Which is amazing, by the way. It's just a simple bend that it's just like, huh, that just makes so much sense because of how your how your body moves. You know, when you start pumping those arms, if you just, you know, bend that wrist, it'll make a huge difference. And you're like, oh, well, I just didn't even think about some of these things.

SPEAKER_01 25:37

Yeah. Yeah. Moving to the right as a right-handed shooter, you'll see a lot of people going like this across their body. But a sprinter, an Olympic sprinter, would never do this with their elbow. They would rotate that elbow down and pump forward. So now if this is my 180 and that's my targets, then I can just hold it exactly like I would do a reload, and I know it's safe. And all I have to do now is pump my arms with gun high, pumping arm low so I don't sweep myself. Then moving to the left, I tell people set the gun on the table. If you had a table in front of you and you set a gun down, that's exactly the position you want it in. And then you can pump your arms totally normal, and you're not going to sweep yourself because you have it rotated toward the 180. I mean, off the 180. Yeah. You know what I mean. Anything else?

SPEAKER_03 26:34

It's mind-blowing. Just a matter of just, you know, instead of running this way, you know, it's like crazy how how simple that is. But, you know, sometimes too, from you know, all the physiology uh stuff that you've done and watching from the outside, even as not a shooter, I think sometimes that actually probably helped you as well to see more flaws in it because you already didn't have those bad scars. Yeah, the preconceived notions of this is how it's always been done. Yes. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:02

And I also came for like I've played all the sports. So I know how your body should work and how to do things efficiently. So when I see something inefficient, it just it's glaring to me. So when I came to that first match and I saw people moving from point A to point B, I was like, why are they doing that? I thought there was something I didn't understand. It turned out just nobody knew.

SPEAKER_03 27:31

So that's the way it's always been done. Yeah, it's the way it's always been done.

SPEAKER_01 27:35

And I didn't know that because I never saw it before.

SPEAKER_03 27:38

Right.

SPEAKER_00 27:38

Right. And nobody took the time to break it down into its component parts. It's so funny to think that when somebody is shooting tendency is cognitively and psychologically, if not physiologically, they're focused in on that one thing, right? Put no shots where they hope they're gonna go, where they want them to go. But then the movement is sort of extraneous to that. It's not it's not necessarily something that's a cohesive part of okay, my shooting and my movement are all sort of tied together. I just have to get from point A to point B so I can shoot again, rather than thinking about the potential for efficiencies between those two points. I people don't think about it.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

It was the first thing I saw, and to me it was glaring. And nobody had ever brought it up before, and I didn't know that. I was just I thought there was something I didn't understand. Yeah. It was so obvious to me, and I was like, there has to be something I'm not getting here. And it turned out it was just a need that hadn't been met yet. So then I started teaching movement and inadvertently created a buzzword, and now everyone says they teach movement. But like I said, at that time, the only way movement was talked about was shooting on the move. Same thing with vision training. I inadvertently created a buzzword with vision training. Nobody ever talked about vision training before, but I was a neurology nurse. So I had a lot of experience with vision and kind of how the brain works and things like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:04

Well, I'm so glad you brought that up because I definitely want to go down that rabbit hole as well. Because one of the things that I started when I was teaching personal safety was explaining to people how their vision worked. And because we do the vision thing every day, people are like, what can there possibly be to learn? And I'm like, well, how about sarcadic suppression? What about this? What about this? And it was like, oh, I've never even thought about that. And I'm like, exactly. There are efficiencies you can find even in how you process visual information. So go from wherever you want to go from, because I'm excited about this. I really am.

SPEAKER_01 29:40

Okay, so in my smart move class, the first part of my vision training is actually, Kristen, I didn't do this yet when you took the class, but I do it now. I will actually look at people's eyeballs and I'll see if they have any strabismus or amblyopia or anything weird going on with their eyes that we that may need to be corrected for. And then um I'll check the curvature. A lot of times, especially as you get older, one eye will be a little more flat and the other will be a little more curved, or maybe they're both flat. And I'll I can see if you've had cataract surgery or if you have cataracts, I can see all of that stuff. And sometimes people don't know and they haven't been to an eye doctor in years. And I let them know, okay, you need to update your prescription because I'm seeing this. Um if you have strabismus, and let's say you're right-handed and you've been left eye dominant and you're cross-dominant, all you have to do is put a little chapstick or something on your lens or scotch tape, and that will force this eye to straighten out. So let's say your left eye is straight and your right eye is over here, now your convergent your convergence point is not at the right distance. So then you see things blurry. So if you cover with scotch tape that left eye, suddenly with strabismus, the right eye will straighten out, and now you can use your right eye and your right hand. But if you are cross-dominant, it's not a huge deal. You just do this. Just rotate your head slightly to line up the dominant eye with the sights. Um let's see. So another thing I say is if you're on the shooting range, you have to wear protective eyewear. So there is absolutely no reason to wear contacts. They just bring problems. If you're wearing contacts, they can get dry and stuck to your eyeballs, and you know, it just doesn't feel good, and then you see blurry stuff, you get dirt in them. It's just not a good idea. You have to wear the glasses anyway, just get them with a prescription. I personally really like the Hunter's HD gold. And they have the gold that I think is really good for more green areas, and then they have the rubies, which are great for more arid areas, and the active blue are more for like riding your motorcycle, flying a plane, that sort of thing. Just for activities that aren't related to shooting. And then I use the flying eyes optics frames right now because they bend like they're not gonna break, and I can have my muffs on and they just slide right under without having to take off my muffs first. Um, let's see. After that, once we sort out any vision issues, I've even had a guy who um had a chemical spill on his eye and couldn't see anything out of one of his eyes. So a lot of weird stuff. Yeah. And then talking about how he can get around that and what that does for his peripheral vision. Oh, that's another thing I should mention. Um two eyes open versus one eye open. People get all in a tizzy about this. What I have found is it doesn't cost that much extra time to close one eye. And it some people have no choice. Like somebody with strabismus, they're not going to be able to shoot with both eyes open. They're gonna have to cover to straighten out that one eye, or they're gonna see blurry. There's for most people, I will say two weeks of dry fire and that double vision is gone. But if you have a medical condition with your eyes, that's not gonna go away. And the then you have no choice. But really, it doesn't cost that much extra time to close one eye, and I think people make a much bigger deal out of that than it is, and you still are going to have some peripheral vision, just not quite as much.

SPEAKER_03 33:57

So, and I'll say too, I know that's a big thing with I've trained women, they'll they'll always say, Oh, but Tactical Dude X said that, you know, I need to keep keep both of my eyes open at all times. And I'm thinking, you're first of all, you know, if you're point shooting, which somebody is gonna be closed because that's when a lot of this shit happens, you're not gonna really need to, you don't need to pinpoint, you know, get that zero zone for that. You need to, you've got a bigger target. It's just crazy. But then the other thing is I close an eye. But then half the time I'm like, what's my what's my eyes even closed? So the only times I really notice it, because again, it's a lot of things are muscle memory. I've been shooting a while, and you know, I'm a competition shooter. I, you know, there's certain ones that you really don't have to because it's like you're leaning around, it's boom, it's right there. You know, it's the ones that I notice that my eye is closed is are the farther targets that might be a a hard, you know, hardcover headshot only, or you know, maybe a small popper, something like that that's a little bit farther away. Those are the only ones that I physically know that my one eye is closed. Other times it's kind of like, well, freak, I don't know.

SPEAKER_01 35:02

That distance, it really doesn't cost you any extra time because it takes 0.2 seconds for your eyes to accommodate to a different distance. So if you're going from a near target to a far target, that accommodation time is about 0.2 seconds. So if you're two eyes open for that closed one and then you're closing one eye, it's going to be closed before your accommodation muscles are even able to change for the target distance. That's awesome. Good.

SPEAKER_00 35:32

Well, I think a lot of good instructors give their clients a license to do what works for them within the confines and the parameters of what you're trying to teach and improve, but there's latitude there, and there should be. You should be saying to them, okay, this is a way to do it and try it, and if it works, fantastic. But if it doesn't, let's go back to this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:51

Yeah, and I'll not say that to sorry, I'll say that to ladies that have said so-and-so said this. And I was like, well, this kind of debunks that. However, it's whatever you feel comfortable with. If you can't close your eye and you're doing one of these things, it's like, just see what happens, and I'll watch them when they shoot. I'll kind of like peeking it, you know, looking at seeing, knowing which eye they close, I'll get on that side to see if that eye actually closes. Because sometimes they don't close it. So whatever it's natural, you know, sometimes they close them both. I mean, hey. Well, when they're thinking about it, I suppose. The training, first-time shooters. Yeah. Yeah. It's like they're like, I said, Did you close your eye? Well, I think I closed them both. And I was like, Well, pointing in a safe direction, we're in a safe place. I'm here for you. That's okay. But let's not make that a habit.

SPEAKER_01 36:37

All right. Get some tape out and tape their eyelids open. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_00 36:46

You're like, this is one strange class.

SPEAKER_03 36:50

It's usually one-on-one, by the way. So yeah, I don't have to worry about that. Yeah, that's good.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

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SPEAKER_01 37:54

Um, yeah, with the dot, there is going to be some scribbling. As long as it's scribbling in the area what you want a bullet to go, then that's totally fine.

SPEAKER_00 38:04

But I haven't heard that before, scribbling.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

That's good. I like it. But if you get down low, then you can shock absorb your sights with your hips, knees, and ankles. So when you're coming into position, you don't want this happening with your dot up and down severely. We want that to get a little bit more smooth. And it's still going to be scribbling around, but as long as that scribble is within an area you're willing to send a bullet, then you're good. But if that scribbling is outside of that area where it might be a delta or a mic or something like that, then something needs to change, or you need to have that visual patience for that scribbling to be in the area you want it to be.

SPEAKER_00 38:49

So as far as the actual physical the physical element of movement, I was uh taught the military it's heel-toe, you roll through the foot, you keep the knee soft, your upper body's a tank turret, the hips go in the direction you need to move, does that still work?

SPEAKER_01 39:07

For the most part, uh one caveat I would bring to the table is um so if your targets are straight down range and you are moving to your right, we want our hips pointed at our targets, but we also want our hips pointed in the direction we're moving. And we can't do both, so instead we need to split the difference. So instead of straight down range and instead of on the 90, we're gonna go to 45 with the hips. And then your upper body is going to rotate like the turret on the tank. So your shoulders will be square to your target that you're engaging, but your hips are gonna be on that 45, splitting the difference.

SPEAKER_00 39:49

I'm trying to visualize now in my head where my feet are in this equation.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

What happens?

SPEAKER_00 39:55

It's very difficult sitting in my chair going, hold on, where do my feet end up in this?

SPEAKER_01 39:59

So what happens is if you keep your hips square to your target, now you're going to be crossing your feet as you're moving sideways. And I don't have a problem with crossing your feet. That happens every day as we're walking around. But there is a better way for lateral movement, shooting on the move where your feet don't have to cross. But if you're there's another step I teach that is literally called the crossover step, but it's to help you get moving or to shoot a target while you're shifting. Different situation. What I'm talking about now is shooting on the move, moving your feet. Yeah. Typically, we don't want to be crossing our legs when we're doing that because that's lateral movement. And our we want to be moving more front to back, less side to side whenever possible. So rotating our hips from here to here versus having them straight this way and crossing our feet sideways. Now we're getting our hips slightly off from the targets, but our shoulders are still square to whatever target we're engaging.

SPEAKER_00 41:06

It's funny, isn't it? How much coordination? Like if you can dance, you've got to be halfway there.

SPEAKER_01 41:11

When I first started shooting matches, that's what people always told me is it looked like I was doing a choreographed dance. And when I'm doing my walkthrough, I'm kind of showing my body what to do when I'm actually shooting. So I'm thinking about the sights and the shooting part, and the movement just kind of happens because I show my body what to do, and then when the timer goes off, my body does the thing I showed it. Same thing with picking spots on targets. I pick a very small spot on each target, the spot that I want to be shooting during the walkthrough. And then after the timer goes off, my eyes just go to that spot because they're going where I showed them to go. And then if I have to reset targets, I won't let that be the last thing I see. Let's say they hit a no-shoot or a delta. If it was anything that's not my spot, I will excuse me. I will then let the last thing I see be the spot I actually want to shoot before I walk away after resetting that target. So there's definitely a correlation here.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Yeah, there's definitely a correlation here between your visualization, the walkthrough, the practice, but also telling your body and your brain where and what you want it to do through each of the stages or through as much of the walkthrough as you can do. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Yeah, and I don't like using words. If you're thinking about how to move your feet while you're shooting, nothing good is gonna happen. So you kind of show your body what to do during the walkthrough, and if it happens, cool. If not, that means something else happened that prevented that movement you wanted to happen from happening. So maybe your sights just weren't there. And you planned to shoot this target on the move, you know you can do it consistently, but something happened and your sights weren't there. Your sights dictate your movement, not the other way around. You can't just pick what you're gonna do in movement and do it no matter what, because your sights dictate that.

SPEAKER_00 43:19

So there's definitely a delineation here between what you are cognitively or consciously focusing on and what you are leaving to the subconscious and the part of the brain that has facilitated movement your entire lives, so that there is a disconnect. Where you you for most people, the minute you start saying, okay, left foot forward or right foot forward or any type of movement where they're having to cognitively, consciously decide on a thing to do with movement, it's gonna get complicated. They're gonna screw it up, they're overthinking it, and they've been moving you know their entire lives, and yet the moment they feel under pressure or they have to think about. That movement.

SPEAKER_01 44:00

Or you put a gun in their hands.

SPEAKER_00 44:02

Yes. Yeah. It tends to complicate things because we're trying to introduce conscious thought to unconscious or what should be unconscious movement. Well, subconscious.

SPEAKER_01 44:13

I would hope they're conscious.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

Fine. Split hairs, yes.

SPEAKER_01 44:19

We're not doing CPR here. Yeah, if I tell you, okay, pick up your right foot, move it forward six inches, set it down, pick up your left foot, move it forward six inches, set it down. You've been walking since you were a year old, and that's gonna feel really weird. And that's kind of how it feels when I'm first teaching you how to move with the gun in your hand, because your body is not used to moving that way. It's as close as we can get to how it's used to moving, but it's not something you're used to doing yet. So it is kind of like that lift your right foot up, move it six inches forward, set it down. And it does feel really weird at first, but then you get used to it, it becomes subconscious and it just happens on its own.

SPEAKER_03 45:07

Well, it's just like the, you know, bending your wrist when you're moving from the right to the left. We're used to pumping our arms with our hands pointed forwards, and then all you have to do is kind of rotate it out, which is uh natural, but you know, our body's capable of doing it and it doesn't hurt anything, so it's not like you're doing a pretzel, but it's just not normal. You know, we've been running the same way all of our life, and now you're saying, flip, flip your wrist.

SPEAKER_01 45:33

Instead of this, we want to pronate that one wrist, and the other one can stay normal.

SPEAKER_03 45:39

Yeah, we're sprinting like this, and then going the other direction, you can go that way, but you gotta you gotta get that left one so that you're not sweeping your left hand right, too.

SPEAKER_01 45:48

So yeah, so it's which we're not used to doing it's a little bit abnormal, but again, it's the closest we can get. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 45:57

So I read that vision training can improve your ability to aim efficiently 12 to 18 percent. Yes. What is it that you're actually training there? When we say vision training to improve accuracy, what are you referring to? And how are they achieving that?

SPEAKER_01 46:13

One thing you can do is strengthen your accommodation muscles so it doesn't take you as long to get your eyes from a spot on a near target to a far target and back again. And you can get some broca beads. So it's a bunch of wooden beads on a string in all different colors, and you can space them out differently, and then you you can tie it to a doorknob or something, and then hold it up to your nose on the other end, and then your eyes move between the beads, and it doesn't have to be in order, they can jump around too, and that strengthens those accommodation muscles. But make sure after about 30 seconds you kind of gaze off into the distance to give those muscles a break, because it is an exercise, it's like eyeball push-ups, you have to take a break in between, and then the other thing you can do is focus on a small spot. So all things being equal, let's say we all have 2020 vision. The focal point size is the smallest size spot your eyes can see at a given distance. So at five yards, it's about the size of a four MOA dot. At 18 yards, it's about the size of a paster. At 50 yards, it's a two-inch diameter circle. So if I put a pin on the ground in front of you and you look down, you could see it. But if you backed way up, you would not be able to see that pin on the ground. So if I tell you to shameless plug here, if I tell you to take a look at my book, your eyes are automatically going to jump between a whole bunch of different focal points all over the place on that book to take in the image. But now if I say only look at my face, now they're still gonna jump around, but in a much smaller area. And that's what Joan Vickers, the kinesiologist who uh invented this, called the quiet eye, because your eyes are more quiet, they're more still, they're not moving as much. Well, then the elite athletes who aim just go straight to one spot. So to practice this, you can I actually have in my dry fire kits these little dots that you can use to move your eyes between the dots. And um you can also, when you're driving, look at the license plate on a car in front of you. Now, let's say you pick the letter A. Now pick a smaller spot on the letter A. Now pick a smaller spot until you can't get any smaller and keep forcing your eyes to see things smaller and smaller and smaller. And as a training wheel, you can actually you don't want to do this all the time because you're not going to have this guide in a match, but just as a training wheel, so you learn the actual size spot you want to be seen on a target, you can mark that spot based on the distance of the target. And this is why those um like half-size targets aren't the greatest thing, because let's say you have a simulated 20 yards, you're just making a smaller target, but your focal point size, if you're standing at five yards and simulating 20, your focal point size stays the same. It you're not adjusting your focal point size based on the distance, because the distance is five yards. It's just a smaller target. So your focal point is just taking up more of the target. But having partial size targets, uh like half size or whatever, is better than not doing anything if you don't have room in your uh dry fire space for full-size targets and you don't have that distance, simulating it is better than nothing. So I'm gonna look up the formula for you. So focal point sizes, it's the number of feet to the target times 0.4433, and that will give you the millimeters of the focal point size. So five yards is seven millimeters, seven yards is ten millimeters, ten yards is fourteen millimeters, and so on. That's the smallest size you can see at those distances. And this formula is what you can use to measure the size spot you are drawing on your target based on the distance of the target. So if you're using a scaled target, just understand that the focal point size on that scaled target is the distance you are standing from it. You're not going to be able to scale the focal point size because that's how close you are to the target.

SPEAKER_03 50:56

You seem like Yeah, I think I I think I lost you a little bit. Y'all need to watch this on YouTube because Terry is his facial expressions are priceless, I'm just saying.

SPEAKER_00 51:08

I'm trying to Yeah. Here's what I'm trying to do. I'm sitting in my chair in my office, trying to visualize myself at the range. And what I'm getting from this is if I pick a point of focus at one distance, that point of focus can be as small as I as small as I can make it and still see it. But as the targets go out in distance, so my focal point it doesn't shrink any, it actually increases in size and covers more of the target. Yes. Okay. Because there's definitely a discrepancy between sitting here in the uh cold light of day, trying to visualize all of those steps and not doing it in a class where we can kind of walk through and see it firsthand. Because for those that have never taken one of your classes or even thought in these types of concepts, the imagining of that can lead to what and like, well, the answer to that is you need to take a class, myself included. Like I would enjoy trying to figure this out in in real life rather than sitting here trying to just visualize it in my tiny aging noggin.

SPEAKER_01 52:23

Well, have you ever shot uh three dot iron sight? Yeah. Have you ever had that front dot completely cover your target? Oh yeah. Yeah, so that's kind of like the scaled targets. Your focal point might be bigger than the entire target.

SPEAKER_00 52:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 52:44

And that's why it's better to use normal size targets if you have the space to do it. But again, scaled targets are better than nothing.

SPEAKER_00 52:53

So with those eye exercises you mentioned earlier, is this something that someone should be doing every day? They should be doing it for a couple of minutes every day, 20 minutes every day, every other day. What do you recommend?

SPEAKER_01 53:04

Uh the you won't have the tolerance to do it for 20 minutes. Um so your longest field course you're going to shoot is probably about 30 seconds. So 30 seconds is about the longest you should have to do this for. I do recommend 30-second intervals. And depending on what you're doing, you can do it for 30 seconds, take a break, and do that two more times. So three sets of however many reps you can get into 30 seconds.

SPEAKER_00 53:38

Yeah, which actually, if you're thinking about those colored beads, that's quite a few.

SPEAKER_01 53:42

That's a lot. And you may have to build your way up to that. You might not be able to do 30 seconds at first, and your eyes get very fatigued. Oh, you mentioned cicades earlier. I wanted to make another point about that. Um, so cicades are when your eyes jump from one spot to the next, and we use these for transitions between targets. And uh smooth visual pursuit is when your eyes are tracking a moving target. And the smooth visual pursuit is actually the slowest eye movement there is. And this is what I want to put out there is this is why people tell you not to follow your dot between targets, because that becomes a smooth visual pursuit, which is the slowest eye movement that exists. Instead, we want to use a cicade, and that is why instructors will say get your eyes to the target first and allow your sights to enter into your line of vision. Because the cicade is the fastest eye movement. That's what we want, unless we are actually tracking a moving target. That's absolutely gold right there.

SPEAKER_00 54:50

Because so many people do exactly that. They try to go smoothly from target to target to target rather than the ballistic movements that are saccadic, getting there ahead of the sites, letting the sites come into the picture after you've already settled visually on.

SPEAKER_01 55:03

Yeah, and some people are so afraid of losing their dot as they enter onto the next target that they think they have to follow it. But if you have an index, it's going to be there. And I find this a lot as well is that um your perception has to kind of catch up to your eyes. Everybody's eyeballs can do pretty much the same thing within reason. It's not that Eric Grafell or J.J. Ricasa are superhuman, they don't have superhuman vision. Your eyes can do what their eyes can do in most situations. It's just that you're not perceiving what they are perceiving. So my eyeballs are seeing my sight. I see my optic, but my brain doesn't know I see it yet. So if you do things faster and faster and faster where you feel like you're not seeing anything, and then write down what you actually saw, what happens over time is eventually the list of what you saw gets longer and longer and longer because your perception is catching up to what your eyeballs physically are able to do.

SPEAKER_00 56:07

Have you heard of the stopped clock illusion?

SPEAKER_01 56:10

Stopped clock illusion.

SPEAKER_00 56:12

Uh-huh. That's where you take your vision, let's say from a point somewhere in the room, you look to a clock, and in this particular case I'm talking analog, and for a second it looks like the second hand is not moving, right? It looks like the clock has stopped. And then that second hand starts to move, and there's this perception, and it's literally our brain, catching up to that circadic jump. It backfills that visual data. Which is fascinating because if you ever looked at a clock and you're like, I caught that thing sleeping, and now it's moving, and you're like, no, you didn't. This is your brain filling in that mid that missing visual data between those two points of you know visual fixation.

SPEAKER_01 56:50

During a cicade, it's like a blink. We are visually suppressing irrelevant information. So you're not taking in any visual input during a cicade. That's why a lot of times, if you watch the videos of some of the top shooters in the world, they'll be using a cicade and they'll blink because it doesn't matter. And people are like, How can you be blinking? You should have your eyes open the whole time. Well, it doesn't matter because you're not taking in any visual input during a cicade anyway.

SPEAKER_00 57:18

Yeah. And it's a great way to prep the eye, get the eye moist again so that you are ready when it finally arrives on that fixation. This is a complete side note, but it's worth mentioning here. So I was out for a run. I don't run very often, but when I do, it looks probably a little bit more like a stagger. And I'm in a zebra crossing. No, what do you call them? Uh pedestrian crossing, right? Same thing. Bloody stretch, right. A zebra.

SPEAKER_03 57:40

Are you mean a zebra?

SPEAKER_00 57:41

I'm like, what the heck is he talking about? I'm staggering through this run. Bear with me here. And there was a woman approaching from my right, rolling up to what should have been a stop sign, but she visually looked past me on my right, kind of behind me as I was running towards where she was coming from. And then she blinked and looked to the right, went straight past me. And I knew in that moment, because of understanding cercadic suppression and blinking, she hadn't seen me. I stopped at the point where she rolled into the zebra crossing and would have hit me. Now it would have been a slow injury. And if I couldn't have gone out of the way of that, then it would have been time for me to retire anyway. But it she missed me and she jumped out of her skin. She had a window down, and I'm like, Sacadic suppression. Just an internal joke between me and someone who had absolutely no idea what I was talking about. Yeah. And she's like, I'm so sorry. I didn't see you. And I'm I know you didn't see me. I literally watched your eyes do that joint between those two visual fixation points, and I wasn't in the middle of that. I knew you were. And I said, You should look up sarcadic suppression when your heart rate comes down and you're parked somewhere safe. And she kind of smiled, and you could see her just being a little bit confused. But seeing that and being able to correlate that because of this suppressive nature between visual points of fixation, that she hadn't seen me stop me from being hit, albeit very slowly. I don't know what kind of injury may I may have sustained, but I know she didn't see me because of this phenomena.

SPEAKER_01 59:10

Yes. So if I sent you two into Walmart and I said, now when you come back out, I'm gonna ask you how many people you saw wearing a red shirt.

SPEAKER_03 59:20

Exactly. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 59:21

When you come back out, because I'm a jerk, I'm gonna say how many people were wearing a blue shirt.

SPEAKER_03 59:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 59:26

You're not gonna have any idea. Right. Because you're using those cicades to suppress visual information that is irrelevant. And blue was not relevant, so you're only gonna know how many people have red shirts. You're not even gonna see the color blue. You're only gonna see the color red.

SPEAKER_03 59:44

So it's funny because I was just listening to an audiobook the other day and it was talking about situational awareness and how we just scan and we're blank scanning. So we're scanning around, but we're not not everybody's paying attention to all of those things in between the scan. But he said, you know, be intentional in your scanning and kind of to the point of your colors. He's like, look for all white cars. So it's like you're actively looking for a thing. Next day, look for all red cars. So now you're training your brain to look for objects and things, uh specific things, versus like, I see a whole bunch of cars, I see a whole bunch of people kind of going be your to your point of red. We're like only looking for red, you know, we're scanning through. You we could be scanning past a guy that's got a gun because we're sitting here looking for a red shirt. You know?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:30

Yep. And then during your stage, you can use that sacadic suppression to get past things you don't want to be engaging. So the top shooters in the world, when they're engaging a partial target, they don't see the no-shoot. The no-shoot doesn't exist. That's not what they're looking for. They're looking for their spot on the target. The only thing that exists is their spot on the target because they're suppressing what they don't want to be shooting. And you'll oftentimes see a line of pasters where the white no-shoot is touching the brown shoot target. You'll see all the white pasters along that line of contrast because it pulls people's eye there due to the line of contrast. But the more experience you have, yeah. Yeah, and it it pulls your eye there. And a lot of times people are using that as a guide and then they adjust away from it before taking their shot. Where the best shooters in the world don't look at it and adjust away, they just go straight to their spot. And I do in my trained smart class, I do a ghost partial drill on this. So if I see you get faster when I take away the no shoot, that means you're going right to your spot. If I see you get slower after I take away the no shoot, and I have a cutout target that is the remaining area after the no-shoot is taken away. So it's just the cutout area. If you get slower, that means you were using the contrast as a guide and then adjusting away from it.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:58

I think I remember that. And that was that was a really interesting concept too, because you're the white, you're like, who you're focusing on it. You're like, okay, don't hit that, go up there. And it's like, that's and as soon as you think on the spot, what did you get in? Don't think about it. I didn't, but but that's what you're thinking about. So yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:17

And then so many times you'll see the activator cable get shot and have to get replaced at a match because somebody's eyes just landed on it and they shot it because they looked at it. And that's such a teeny tiny target, too, to hit that cable. But it happens all the time because people are not using that cicade to get past something they don't want to be engaging or a plate rack that's not in play. You'll see people shoot at the rack, even with all the plates laying down, and they'll shoot at it and go, why didn't I just do that? And then move on. Instead, we need to be programming that cicade during the walkthrough so your eyes jump straight from one thing to the next thing. And if you find them getting caught on something, keep doing that a couple of times to teach your eyes to move past it and use that cicade. What were you gonna say, Kristen? Did I get you?

SPEAKER_03 1:03:07

Yeah, did oh, I was gonna say the cable. Sometimes they put the cable in the wrong spot because I have hit a cable, but I also hit the steel target. So I think it was just in the wrong spot. So sometimes it's not the shooter.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:22

Yeah, it just gets draped across a target accidentally and someone didn't realize it before they run you.

SPEAKER_03 1:03:28

Right.

unknown 1:03:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:29

I think that the specificity of the walkthrough with the focal points recognizing where your eye was naturally drawn, which a contrasting line between a white and a brown target will often do. Also acknowledging that you may have looked at uh cable or anything else for that matter. Anything that catches your eye that isn't gonna end up being a target, taking that moment to pause and doing exactly what you just said, going between the actual points you know you're gonna want to shoot, that's where the round needs to go, is a perfect moment because you see so many people going through the mechanics of a walkthrough. And yes, physically they're going A, B, C, D through the target rundown, but they're not necessarily visualizing those two things. What do I want to hit? What do I need my cicades to jump me past so I don't shoot inadvertently in the wrong place? So that to me is a real eye-opener and something I think a lot of people could use to their advantage to make their walkthrough a little bit more purposeful.

SPEAKER_03 1:04:33

Well, and I think we all get in the habit too of like, that's why they flip targets upside down, because we all get in the habit of here's a target, I'm shooting in the middle, versus, like you just said, picking a spot on the target. I'm not shooting in the middle, because then when they throw hardcovers in there or, you know, non-threats or no shoots, you know, now it's like, now I'm not shooting at the middle. So now you have to actually think about it versus picking a spot on every target. And now I don't have to think about where I'm not shooting. I'm already picked it out. I don't have to worry about, you know, up and down and flipped targets and et cetera.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:07

Yeah, and that's another good point is when you're picking your spots, it should be at the instead of just aiming for the middle, it should be 50% of available A zone. So as the no shoot covers more and more of the target, find your A zone, find the middle point of the A zone, and that's where your spot goes. Of course, you'll have to account for offset. Oh, offset is another yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:32

Yeah, another county.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:37

It's kind of like that. Your offset doesn't matter as long as you know what it is. I usually recommend 18 yards for USPSA, just because that's kind of the average target distance, but it really doesn't matter as long as you know what it is. You'll let's well, Christian Siler, for example, zero is at 10 yards. So, okay. But then you need to know what your offset is at three, five yards, you know, when it's right in front of you, know where to aim. And then also check it at 50 yards. Because that's your maximum distance. So your minimum distance and your maximum distance to see where your bullet is going to land and where you need to be aiming after you pick where your zero is going to be. And I also like to kind of check somewhere in between. But yeah, nothing to fight about. Just do what do what you want to do and as long as you know where to aim, we're cool.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:36

But you need to know that at different distances. Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:40

And that's the thing is that the third one to test it. Yeah. And some people don't have the ability to check it at 50 yards. So check it at the maximum distance you're able to. And then if you shoot a match that has a 50-yard target, then see where it landed there.

SPEAKER_03 1:06:57

I think the simulator has something that you can do on that as well, doesn't it, Terry? I think so.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:02

Yes, it does.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:03

Actually, that was something I did because I switched to a different gun that has a different trigger, and I found that some of my second shots were a little low and to the left, which with a heavier trigger, I was slapping it. And I knew I was. But when I got home, I was just like, just for, you know, just to make sure I took my target and at the smokeless range and I got it really close. And then I kept moving it farther, farther, and farther back. And I was like, no, it's definitely me. That's exactly what I was doing. So there was, you know, the gun was not the issue, wasn't, you know, that because it it was able to shoot at the distance, you know, and hit where I wanted it to hit. So it was me slapping it with a different trigger, which, you know, that's when you switch guns. Sometimes you're doing something that was already muscle memory and doing it one way, and now I just switched it. So yeah. But good lesson learned, right? That's why we practice.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:53

Yeah, I always assume it's me.

unknown 1:07:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 1:07:56

Well, I did too, but I was just kind of like, well, just to be on the safe side, just to make sure. Especially because I was going to be taking a class, um, which, you know, soon. So I was kind of like, well, I this is probably a good idea to double check, anyways.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:10

I think it's another good point to bring up with the amount of practice people get is it's not necessarily just the practice with shooting zeros and and making hits and doing well. I think a good portion of that practice should be dedicated to you learning you. What do you do? How do you move? How do you trigger press? What do you trick how do you trigger press with a really heavy trigger versus how you may grip a tiny pistol versus a large pistol? Know yourself as well as you can so that if you find yourself in a situation where you've got a shot that's gone a little wild, you're not necessarily automatically A, blaming the equipment, or B, blaming yourself when it could be the opposite thing that has caused the discrepancy. I think the more you are self-aware, the greater the chance that you can say, okay, as you just did, Kristen, you're like, I knew I was slapping the trigger. Great, that you've self-diagnosed, right? You may have made that correction. But you've also got to know when you were not slapping the trigger, and the equipment lets you down in whatever capacity. And knowing yourself through copious amounts of practice as well as the equipment, I think it is hugely advantageous.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:17

Yeah, I think it's also important to know your numbers as far as knowing yourself. Yeah, know yourself and your equipment and how you like to move and those things, but also you need to track numbers over time, and those numbers are always hopefully improving. So the bar is always raising, but you need to know your draw times, your split times, your transition times for various degrees and various target difficulties. You need to know your move times. And I like to use the size of the most common walls. So four feet, six feet, and eight feet are the most common wall sizes. So definitely know those three move times. And you can just run and slap a timer. But of course, you know, if you're going shot to shot to measure it, then you'll want to come into an easy target, come into a hard target, leave on a hard target, leave on an easy target, do all the different combinations. And it's just like any other sport, you need to know your stats. And when you get to the top levels, not only do you need to know your numbers, but you need to know your competitors' numbers. And that's why at the world shoot, when the guys walk up to a stage at a match, the first thing the top guys will say to each other is, What do you think your hit factor is on this? Because they're trying to kind of gauge each other's numbers and see, okay, are they going points heavy? Are they going more for speed? Is it kind of right in the middle where they have to be perfectly balanced? And they're making decisions based on hit factor. Like, am I going to engage that disappearing target in USPSA? Yeah, there are decisions to be made for sure. Activator sequences. If you don't know what you can and can't do, you're not going to know if I can take one target in between, two targets in between, three targets in between for your skill level. Can I do can I hit the activator, do a reload, and then hit the swinger? You don't know if you never write down all these numbers and track your progress over time. Data.

SPEAKER_03 1:11:20

Solid. Data. Yes. And you gotta keep doing it. Like you said, you can't just do it at the beginning. You know, you gotta keep doing it because hopefully we're progressing in the right direction.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:30

Or if you have um like pro am, if you have a steel setup with a fixed time, you need to know what you can do it in. So you're not trying to rush. If you know with confidence, oh yes, my time on these transitions are this, and you can add your draw and everything. If you know you're gonna have a reload, you add that all together and go, oh yeah, I have all the time in the world to do this. I know what my transitions are. If you don't know, then you might start rushing, going, oh, I have to I have to get these done faster, and then you start missing, and then you get behind.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:05

So if there's someone listening right now and they're interested in doing one thing or maybe two things in the next month and seeing how that improves, including tracking their data, of course, what would you recommend they start doing?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:17

Uh well, I do offer video reviews, and I think that's a really good place to start for movement. So the video reviews are I I have a coaching app that I send to people. They upload three videos, I slow them down, I voice them over, I draw angles and pictures and things on the video, and then I send them drills based on what I saw that are made just for them. So if they want to do a video review, email me 180firearmtraining at gmail.com. We can set that up no matter where you are in the world. I also have the book Smart Move Economy of Motion for the Shooting Sports. That's another good thing to work in. I will say it makes more sense if you do it with the class or with the video review versus reading it on its own. It gives you a lot more context if you can do it with the class.

SPEAKER_03 1:13:14

Just like with Terry trying to figure out the the the visual thing. It's like I would really rather do this in live action than trying to read and absorb it because a lot a lot of these things are you need to be able to practice and do it in practice in you know, actual physical doing it than to try to imagine yourself doing it for it to really set in, I think, as well.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:36

Yeah, and I love the class because you get that immediate feedback, and I only let eight people take my class at a time because I want a lot of that one-on-one. You get individualized feedback just for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:50

So if somebody wants to take that class, you got a website as well with 180?

SPEAKER_01 1:13:54

Yes, 180 firearms training.com is my website. I do not post my schedule there because I am a single woman traveling alone. But I do post it to social media and then usually once it's full, I'll delete it. Uh do you want me to go over what I have coming up? Sure, absolutely. Okay, so this month, March 28th and 29th, I have two spots open in Boise, Idaho. April 4th and 5th in Pyro, California, I have three spots open. Princeton, Louisiana, April 11th and 12th is sold out. But for my sold-out classes, you can still email me and get on the wait list. Sometimes life happens and you can still get in. May 9th and 10th, North Carolina is Science and Simplicity. That's the class I teach with Steve Anderson. So you get his first day and my first day over two days. So all of my classes are two-day classes. I believe his are as well. Sometimes he'll do a three-day that has a match included. So that's with him. So he does um mental, well, he does basically fundamentals through the lens of mental management. Uh May 23rd and 24th, Linden, California. That one is currently sold out. June 6th and 7th, Augusta, Wisconsin. I have a Train Smart class. The June 13th and 14th, Double Eagle in Pennsylvania, Train Smart is also sold out. 27th and 28th of June, Vermont Train Smart. I have four spots left. July 4th and 5th, Linden, California, one spot left. July 15th and 16th, Cambridge, England is sold out. 21st and 22nd. Hull, England, I believe, is sold out as well. That is shotgun, but again, you can still get on the wait list and I can't say it. Worcestershire Norton. Did I do it? Did I do it? Worcestershire.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:59

Yeah, hey absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:00

Okay, you did great.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:02

Worcestershire still.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:04

Worcestershire. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:05

Worcestershire.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:06

So that one we are still working out dates. It's not fully set up yet, but I believe that will be mini rifle and pistol. Uh you can just email me if you'd like to get into Worcestershire Shreyer Sauce. So that's what's coming up. If you that's pretty busy. Yeah, it's probably my busiest year yet.

SPEAKER_03 1:16:28

That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:30

If you want to set up a class in your area, email 180firearmtraining at gmail.com. We can set up a class near you. I can hopefully squeeze you in this year yet. Um if you're in a more moderate climate, we can do you know in the colder months. But yeah, I'm pretty much booked up through 2027. Fantastic. We have a couple weekends here and there. We might be able to squeeze something in.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:58

That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us for today's episode. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:04

Yes, thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:06

All right, thank you for listening in on today's episode. Don't forget to hit that like button and then subscribe so you never miss an episode. Doing that helps us keep producing the content and the guests that you want to hear from. For now, thanks for tuning in, and we'll see you in the next one. Cheers.