You’ve probably heard the advice “slow is smooth and smooth is fast.”

This tip from Karl Rehn

Slow Is Not Fast

USPSA Production GM and multi-time national champion Ben Stoeger talks about this issue a lot in his books and in his podcasts. His approach – which I used to finally earn the GM card I started pursuing in 1988 – uses intensive dry fire practice with aggressively challenging par times, combined with slower paced drills that focus on correct technique.

Techniques that work OK for a 2.5 sec reload may be too sloppy and inefficient to allow a 1.5 sec load.

One drill that was a breakthrough drill for me was a simple draw, shoot 2, reload, shoot 2 drill. His (total) par time for the drill was 2.6 seconds, shot at 7 yards with all A’s.

The standard advice given to someone that can’t hit the par (points or time) is to slow down. Stoeger’s advice to me was to move up to 3 yards and keep the par time in place until I could shoot all As at the par time, then move back and work on maintaining the points without giving up the speed.

Those aggressive par times force you to figure out where you are losing time, where the “go slow until you can be fast” mindset never drives you to that analysis.