One of my shooting goals this year has been to work on my footwork when moving in and out of shooting positions; for the last couple of season this has been the single area that’s caused me the most heartache at major matches. Last night while watching videos of several USPSA Grand Masters shooting, I had an epiphany.
The strike I’m taking is too long. Watch this video of local GM Yong Lee shooting several stages at a local match. In particular, pay attention to how he moves his feet. Notice that he’s not taking long strides that eat up a lot of ground, but a very short, clipped step with a very fast stride rate. He covers less ground per step than he would if he opened up his gait a bit, but makes up for it by moving his legs very quickly. Watch the pro shooters at the Pro Am, it’s the same thing. Short, quick steps instead of long, open steps. More examples with Dave Sevigny shooting a Single Stack match.
With that suddenly in my head, I went back to a bunch of my match footage from 2011 and early this season and payed special attention to the footwork when I’d launch and stop. There are a couple of good examples in this video from last August, whenever I have the opportunity I’m trying to get up to full speed like I’m stealing second base or doing a 30 yard shuttle run. The problem with my speed training is that the distance I’d run doing shuttle runs or stealing bases is around 25-30 yards, and the distance I have to run in USPSA courses is rarely more than 5-10 yards. There’s no space in there for me to get an open stride; what would usually happen is I’d take two strides at top speed and then immediately have to slow down.
I can’t believe I didn’t figure this out until just now. I’ll be refocusing my run training on shorter, quick strides with rapid start/stop so that I can hopefully start getting in and out of shooting positions quicker.
Footwork is one of the biggest time consumers in matches. A couple articles on it would be interesting as would be info on how you train for it.
Hi Caleb! Love your show!
May I recommend checking out dot drill (not the Todd Green one) for agility training? We used to do these in high school for football, and they increase overall agility marvelously! It also work on cardio as well as strengthening stabilizer muscles. The space between the dots are similar to the gait you’re looking for. The exercises will also work out both legs and help in precise, controlled turning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PR7s4nXtWSw
Enjoy, friend!
Look at their body position – short steps keep the body mass directly above the feet. With a long stride the body mass has to go forward so the long stride can “drive” the mass forward; the mass has to come back to vertical for the shooting position when the feet stop moving to get the body trunk centered over the balls of the feet, and the trunk is the greatest amount of mass in the body. Stopping it and returning it to vertical takes both muscle – abdominal, back and upper leg – and time, and while the trunk is moving fore and aft due to stride the upper body has to exert force to keep the gun platform (the area from the hips up) solid.
The effect is more pronounced when direction changes (gun platform rotation and gun platform elevation change) are executed.
More argument for high quality video with a superimposed grid pattern as a training tool. Pro video equipment can be had with a .01 second running clock as part of the display. The grid and the clock should show time between move start,move stop and shot fired, and barrel location. The barrel has to be on target before firing, so muzzle move time between shoot positions is important, splits between shots, not quite so much.
Thank’s Caleb this is a great tip. I’ve seen that the best local shooters in St. Louis do fast short steps.
When I was studying Fencing back in HS, we did nothing but perfect our footwork for the first month before we were even handed our first cutlass. We were told that our feet are our foundation and if we don’t have that and our balance, we are wasting our time. This was also somewhat true for Akido as well. Our Sensei constantly emphasized movement balance exercises. Why should it be different in the shooting sports? I’m interested to see what you learn as proper footwork is something I need to work on as well.