Yep, I said it, free information. In all honesty more than 90% of the people who read it will ignore it.
If you want to improve marksmanship outcomes at your events and you are serious about it, there is one free thing that you can do that will bring results. Can you guess what it is?
Dryfire!
Before you start running AQT's, get your line to spend some time and focus on dryfiring a complete AQT. It works.
When I attended my first Appleseed event (which was a mini Appleseed, a 4 hour Sunday afternoon event, that included history and shooting). VAShooter taught us about dryfire. Before we shot a course of fire, we dry fired it with him watching and coaching. That first AQT with a barely zeroed rifle, I shot a 191. I say barely zeroed because it would be a while before I realized that 5 hits in a 4 moa square did not equal a zeroed rifle, a good position, or a good grasp of the fundamentals. Five hits in the center of the square in a ragged hole was a zeroed rifle.
We dryfired the first square, then we shot. We dryfired Stage 1, then we shot. We dryfired stage 2 , then we shot. I'm sure you get the picture. There are alot of reasons why this works. One of the main ones is that certain errors can be corrected BEFORE live rounds are fired. That is a very good thing, since the student gets the benefit of going through the system without the issue of reinforcing bad shots.
But you need to make sure that the students are taking it seriously. For this reason you should consider a demo aqt where the instructor really focuses on dry fire during his prep period.
Any of you that have ever heard or read Lanny Bassham's "With Winning in Mind," will realize that this is a variation on what he calls progressive training. What you may not realize is that it is one of the best ways to improve shooting performance at an Appleseed for the same reasons that it works to help make better Olympic Shooters.
In the end, it is up to you. Do you want to keep doing the same things and getting the same results, or do you want to try something different that has been shown where it has been used to produce better results? Remember that people learn by seeing, hearing, and doing (add in reading as well). The more they follow the shot process without shooting bad shots, the better their live shots will be.
Mike
Sounds like an ammo saver to me and a good opp to reinforce skills in a quiet environment. I'm in. O0
The club in Charlottesville doesn't permit live fire on Sunday until 1:30 pm. We have been using dry fire practice in the morning, to give students an opportunity to experiment with getting their positions solid and find NPOA. I plan to structure this practice more rigorously in November.