As a new shooter, I am just now managing to shoot limited classifiers that fall into the bottom of the "B" class and I should move from C to B in the next couple of months. I am planning on A class in Limited by the end of the summer if my 45 year old eyes and reflexes will oblige. Even though I shoot C class, most of my El Pres. times are more what you would expect from an A class shooter.
In my club, we shoot the El Pres on steel IPSC targets as part of our High Altitude Steel Shoot and there is a bit of money involved, so some of us practice the El. Pres way more than the average guy. If you want to improve your shooting, then beating the El. Pres. to death over and over isn't probably the way to go. However, if you break the El Pres. into several discreet little units and then put all of them back together again, then your overall shooting will benefit as well your El Pres times. I broke the drill down into the following steps:
1. Turning around. No I am not kidding. The method that I use is to put most of my weight on my left leg and slightly bend my right knee. At the start signal I swivel my right foot toward the targets as I launch off with my left leg. At the same time my head snaps to the right to acquire the first target. Of course, I am drawing as soon as possible without violating the 180, etc. With a little practice, you will see very little difference between the time to the first shot while turning and the time to the first shot when facing the targets. My first shot is usually at about 1.4 but I have done it faster.
2. Practice target acquisition and your controlled pair with a visual focus split between the sight and target if you can do it. Get your splits below .2 and shot to shot times between targets below .4. These are realistic goals. The old routine of acquire target, look at the sight, shoot, follow through, acquire next target, look at the sight and so on works great on the Steel Challenge, but on an El Pres it can kill you.
3. Practice reloads until you are smooth as glass and never fumble, then build speed, lots of speed. The key is to release the spent magazine just after the shot with just enough follow through to make the hit. Then look at the magazine well while your other hand is going for the magazine and then look the magazine into the well. What I mean is that once your eyes and hands are working in concert, the magazine is going to go in. As the magazine is continuing to the well you can shift your focus back to the target. When you have your grip back and are on target then let ‘er rip without additional hesitation. Get your shot to shot times with a reload under 2 seconds for starters.
4. I am gonna get flamed here, but I’ll say it anyway. We all know that to make good hits on multiple targets you need to come to a complete stop. Sweeping through the targets is not a good plan, but (flame throwers on) if you really want to get fast on an El Pres. then sooner or later you are gonna need to reach out and try to shoot it with a rolling stop.
[This message has been edited by Ankeny (edited 03-12-2001).]