Slow is not Fast

[penguinofdoom]

I came across this article and wanted to share. http://www.shootingillustrated.com/8014/slow-is-slow-fast-is-fast/

This guy breaks down the saying, slow is smooth and smooth is fast. Basically, we say to slow down in order to increase your ability. That's good, when we go slow we pay attention to our motions and take the time to get them right. However, once you have the motions down you need to start practicing a speed increase. That's how it works. I think the author had a good point. I've always heard slow down but rarely hear speed up. Maybe that's because we have a natural tendency to increase speed on our own and don't have to be told. Dunno.

[SteveZ]

To be honest...I've never heard anyone recommend that you slow down in practice...so I don't know where Caleb is coming up with that.  Practice is where you explore the edge of the cliff so to speak...you drive yourself over it...then back up just a bit and thats your limit for right now.  When you shoot a match, you back off a bit more from the edge of the cliff to give yourself a bit of a margin.  Pushing yourself over the edge of the cliff in practice can be very difficult because your mind wants to resist danger and you are literally asking it to do something its not going to be happy with.

In regards to the statement... Slow is Smooth and Smooth is Fast.  Lets break that down.

Slow is Smooth :  when you are learning a new skill....lets say reloading.. you intially do it very slow to learn the process often from a "feel" standpoint. You want to keep it slow initially so your mind can process every detail of the task your doing (whether its by feel or by seeing) this is the slow phase of learning to be smooth...to eliminate wasted motion in the task.  After you've learned the task using this method, then you start to push faster without letting the technique fall apart because of poor fundamentals (this is the part where you explore the edge of the cliff).  If you go to far..you pull it back a little and work on refining it...then turn it up again and find the new edge of the cliff. This is an iterative process.

Smooth is Fast : this is outcome of learning to be smooth.  Watch someone who blazes through a Course Of Fire and the one thing you'll notice is that they almost glide through it...they don't have exaggerated motions...they make it look effortless.  Wasted motion and wasted time is removed through the process of being smooth.

You will never be fast until you are smooth and you won't be smooth until you learn to eliminate wasted motion (and time, which often is a byproducted of wasted motion) and learning to eliminate that wasted motion is easier to learn when you can see/feel it...and its easier to see/feel/analyze when initially going slow.  This is where you REALLY need to turn up your mental awareness when working on a new skill.  Your awareness will tell you everything you need to know.  If you try and work on a new skill without letting your mind be aware of whats happening, you'll never learn smooth.

[jmstevens2]

To be honest...I've never heard anyone recommend that you slow down in practice...so I don't know where Caleb is coming up with that.  

New shooters, IDPA, Steel challenge, Cowboy action shooting.....

It is done in other fields too. Practice doing it right and doing it over and over, speed will come, and when it does, you will have the procedure down cold. "Muscle memory" is a ridiculous term, but the concept applies.

[Damian]

When I shot the "Real World Gun Match" with Bob Mayne last weekend.  I was going slow because I had no idea what I was doing.  I will eventually get comfortable with the process and I hope to get smooth.  Once I am smooth, I hope to speed things up gradually.

Can't tell you if this is working for me yet, but this is how I am going about it and after reading what Steve Z wrote, I have a good feeling it will work out for me.   

[CR Williams]

I've come around to thinking of it as working to get efficient and quick instead of smooth and fast. An efficient movement will often look smooth but sometimes not. An inefficient movement can be done very smoothly even though it's still inefficient. So I work on 'efficient' and let the smoothness come out if it happens, but I don't focus on smooth like I used to.