Ace Member Spotlight: Q&A with Justin from Controlled Pairs
This week, we caught up with Justin from Controlled Pairs Gaming to find out how Ace supports his training and skill development goals, and how he sees skills gained from dry fire training systems translate to real life and live fire. Justin runs the popular YouTube channel Controlled Pairs Gaming, with nearly 150,000 subscribers, as well as the Controlled Pairs training channel focused on firearms training, drills, and competition shooting.
Justin’s background is in shooting; he served in the US Army for 12 years and was an infantry officer by trade. His first 10 years were in Special Ops, and then he moved into the simulations arena. Currently, he’s a graduate student focusing on how simulations and skills development in realistic simulators impact human performance.
Q: How long have you been shooting with Ace?
Justin: “I’ve been an Ace user for about a year, joined just after it opened to the public and I’ve used it frequently ever since.”
Q: How often do you run drills with Ace and any idea how many rounds you’ve fired?
Justin: “I was completely obsessed in the beginning, playing it every morning. You can just chew through reps, no reloading mags or rehabbing targets. Now, a year in, I’d say I balance it more with live fire and a little traditional dry fire. I probably shoot with Ace 3-4 days a week now, anywhere from 30 to 90 minute sessions. I don’t know my exact round count, but I recently passed 200,000 rounds!
Honestly, I’m really impressed with how these Ace handsets hold up to all that use. I’ve had zero issues with any of my handsets.”
Q: Which Ace handset are you using today?
Justin: “I started with the Arctus like everybody else, then swapped over to the Staccato P, and now I run an aftermarket Glock 17 unit that was 3D printed for me. I compete with the G17 and at work we carried the Glock 19, so it’s a closer match to what I’m using in the real world.”
Q: Let’s talk about how you use Ace and the specific skills you’re focusing on and goals you have. Fill us in on what you’re training on and how.
Justin: “I’m doing some sort of handgun training at least 6 days a week. It’s either Ace or dry fire or live fire at the range. It’s usually Ace or dry fire because none of us have unlimited ammo and very few of us can shoot in our backyards.
With traditional dry fire training, I am focusing more on draw and trigger control. I use my competition firearm with a dry fire mag for trigger reset so I can get a string of fire. Having the exact ergonomics of your trigger and your handgun and your holster, dry fire is the approach I use for those things. I also use dry fire to confirm what I’m doing in Ace is working. If my training goals for the day are vision and transition focused, and I do 1,000 rounds in Ace across several different stages and courses, then I will confirm that it is working in dry fire with little USPSA targets in my garage and work from the draw, and work transitions in the traditional sense.”
Q: What are the metrics that you’re measuring yourself by and how do you set your goals, what are you chasing, and where are you looking to improve?
Justin: “So, I’m a new competition shooter. The key metric for me is my performance in a match setting. You have the high pressure of competition, other competitors are watching you perform. The clock doesn’t lie and all your hits and your misses and no-shoots are there for the world to see. I find that to be a great barometer of my performance. Am I shooting a classifier at a level that is where I think I should be? Am I improving where I said I was going to improve over previous matches? I’m pretty ruthless with myself and I record all of it and go back and rewatch it. I do look at other simple metrics, like draw to first shot, 10 yards and in, in under a second.
The other thing I pay close attention to my index - Ace has been helpful with - my draw to presentation to index, putting the red dot exactly where I expect it on the target, at a very high percentage. When that feels off, I know something with my performance is off and I need to go back and fix it.”
Q: Can you share some specific examples of where you’ve wanted to improve, where you’ve practiced that in Ace, and then seen those gains on the range or at a match?
Justin: I had competed in 0 USPSA matches prior to Ace and have now competed in 4 in the last 2 months. Ace was a gateway drug that showed me practical shooting as a sport and took me from tactical veteran guy with experience in outstanding units, and showed me the benefit of competition and the sport. That passion isn’t necessarily a skill, but certainly did transfer. I saw the obvious application in shooting performance in the simulation and was eager to go do that live.
From a performance shooting standpoint, Ace’s greatest benefit is vision and transitions. Getting the gun on the target and breaking rounds, getting your eyes to the next target just ahead of the gun, gun gets to the next target, breaking rounds, and controlling those muscle movements in your eyes to transition… and the fine motor skills to control those transitions and feeling what it takes; how hard can you really transition and not overdrive the target. I’ve seen a huge, huge increase there.
It’s amazing for the sport, it’s objectively good to have something fun that will motivate shooters at all levels to train, which is what Ace does.”
Q: What are your favorite stages or drills to run in Ace? Which ones do you enjoy the most?
Justin: “I like “Don’t Miss” and “Don’t Miss 2” - shoot / no shoot scenario, with transitions, slow, then fast. I love Mover, there’s a bunch of different ways to shoot it and find the most efficient way to do it. And now with the collaboration with USPSA, I’m hitting classifiers constantly in Ace because I know they’re going to show up at my matches, so I’m getting those reps in prior to ever having to shoot it live, and that’s huge.”
Q: What advice would you share for new shooters, or new Ace members?
Justin: “Ace is, by nature of its design, extremely fun. It’s gamified, it’s addicting, you’ll dump a ton of time into it early and that’s good - let that happen. I saw the most skill development in my first 3-4 months with Ace… being disciplined about how I use it and making sure I wasn’t creating bad habits. Allow that skill to rapidly increase. From there, figure out what’s slowing you down the most and hyper focus on those things, go back and adjust. Just dive in and commit to the discipline. Don’t be afraid to go shoot a match in real life. The community around competition matches is welcoming and eager to have new folks. Whatever anxiety is holding you back from competing fades quickly.”
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