Arizona Blockers continued

Don't misunderstand, we shoot for fun. I think the AZ Blockers were a lot of fun.  My perception is that the matches were more competitive than they would have been otherwise.  The scoring opened the door for some shooters to compete with some super fast competitors.  They were still talking the next day about how that .330 got beat by a hit in the black. "Well, you should have been in the black too!"

 

Bias! The Arizona Five has a gunfighter bias. The 10 foot target has a speed bias.  Some would say the scoring has a accuracy bias (a myth).  It all balances out.  "It just practice, man, practice, what are we talking about, practice, man, practice."

But even if you are having fun you might as well be getting better. 

 

Perception vs Reality:   I did a spreadsheet to verify my perception that shooters improved, however it only dealt with hit percentage and "in the black" percentage.  To further verify what I perceived, I have calculated the gunfighter rating for all of the matches.  Generally, the rating of all of the shooters improved  significantly from round 1 to round 7 except for Shady. He started at 1.590 and maintained that near perfect rating in every round.  

 

Improvements:  If we ever do this again one change I will make is to record the fastest actual time as the fastest time on the score sheet.  That will be easy to do and then the fastest time report and bracket report would be available for data analysis.  I think I can modify my spreadsheet to input the fastest time for each match and the computer would automatically compute the rating for each match if I get the formulas correct.  Might be useful.

 

Heh, those obsolete 24 inch targets may be of use to you and you might get better too.  Remember:

Never ever slow down;

Never ever worry about where you are going to hit; you are going hit where you are aligned.

Never ever worry about speed; what you got is what you got, worry only slows you down.

Never ever practice missing;

 

Arizona Blockers

 We tried Arizona Blockers again on the mountain. I think it was very successful for a practice session. I do have some data that would indicate that it does help shooters get better.

The format: We shot Arizona Five which sorts better and put pressure on the shooter to hit right away.  It has a gunfighter bias. There were no matches resulting in a double loses and only one match resulting in a double win out of 27 matches.  We shot two shooter matches, if we had had more shooters we would have shot three shooters matches which have a speed bias.

Targets: We used 24 inch targets set at 10 feet. Target height was 45 inches. The personal target height of the shooters ran from 44 inches to 46 inches so we set the height at 45. The larger targets at a closer distances creates a speed bias.  

Scoring:  The targets had a 10 inch black area with the balance being a different color, red or green. A hit in the colored area resulted in the time displayed. A hit in the black including thumb nails resulted in the time being divided by 2.  A clean hit in the light resulted in the time being divided by 3.

The point of Arizona Blockers is to motivate the shooter to care about where they hit on the target.  This motivation and the practice should result in the shooters getting better as the event progresses.  With several of the shooters it was obvious that they improved significantly during the event.  The final match of the shoot off really showed the results with both shooters hitting 100% with 50% in the black.

Group Data:  My perception was that the shooters improved significantly as the event progressed.  However, perceptions can be incorrect so I put the data in a spreadsheet to confirm what I thought happened.  The group as  whole shot 72% with 24 % in the black in round 1.  Generally the group improved as the event progressed with the best round being round 6 at 85% and 40%.  As I stated before the final match was 100% with 50 % in the black.  There was no lollygagging all day.  Fastest times report ranges from .122 to .337, of course, the scoring affects that report.

I don't know if we will do this again, but "we don't practice missing on the mtn."