Ace Shooter Spotlight: Q&A with Tim Herron
Continuing with our Ace Shooter Spotlight Q&A series, this week we had a chat with Tim Herron, from Tim Herron Shooting. Tim is a renowned firearms instructor, trainer, and coach. He travels around the country providing single and multi-day performance and defensive shooting classes and clinics. He’s also an avid Ace shooter!
—
How long have you been shooting with Ace?
Tim: I started with Ace the second week in January, right around SHOT Show 2024.
How often do you use Ace? Any idea how many rounds you've fired in the VR app?
TIm: “I try to shoot Ace at least once a week, no matter my schedule. When I’m home and not traveling, I’ll be on multiple times a week. I think since January, I’ve fired around 300,000 rounds in the app. It comes out to about 2,850 rounds per hour I’ve been using it. I shoot a lot!
Certain times I can have a brief 10-15 minute session in Ace, and other times I’ll turn it into an hour long sweat fest, and say OMG I shot 5,800 rounds in an hour! I think that’s the most I’ve ever done in one session.
What are your favorite 2 or 3 drills within Ace and also at a live range in real life?
Tim: “That’s a tough one to answer, the Tim Herron bill drill (head box only) of course - really cool that you guys built my drill into the app! I also like Both Sides Now #2, and the Eric Grauffel stage. I also love the zeroing range, since I use it for coming up with new shooting drills.
In real life, I shoot a lot of sequencing drills, targets at 5, 10, 15, 25, 30, 35 etc, and again, I like to make up my own drills. The tried and true well-known drills are good to run, but coming up with new movements, shoot / no-shoot scenarios, and drills that aren’t already ingrained in your memory helps keep me sharp.”
How do you use Ace as part of your training routine?
Tim: “I use it just like normal pistol shooting with dryfire. I like that it doesn’t require a lot of setup and range bags, loading ammo, I can just pick it up and go. It’s good because it eliminates a lot of barriers to get into shooting and to stick with it.
In my time shooting Ace as a pistol training tool and to continue developing my shooting skills, I’ve used it to push my visual processing speed… see how fast I can go, while still maintaining accuracy. I use it to supplement other parts of traditional dry fire training.
Another thing I like is that I can immediately reset the stage, the steel targets, whatever it is, and run it again, but with dry fire you have to set par times, you can maybe end up cheating yourself. As a supplement to live fire, how often are you going out to the range and shooting 2,850 rounds in an hour? Probably never!”
Do you train with any traditional dry fire system?
Tim: “Primary just normal pistol stuff. I’ve tried a laser shot based system, but it was a PITA, setting up the paper targets and my phone and all that was counterproductive and took too long. I believe in dry fire training as a way to build skills, but Ace is a way better way - and it’s actually fun. I can dry fire at night when I have time, without waking up the family!”
How often do you shoot live fire? How many rounds per year?
Tim: “My job and what I do with Tim Herron Shooting basically has me living at a range 3-5 days a week, so I shoot as part of my classes with students, and just to keep developing my own skills. I’d guess I probably shoot 20 - 30,000 rounds a year.”
Any advice for new Ace members just getting started?
Tim: “If you want to get the best benefits from Ace, you have to approach it like any other training tool and situation. You have to be consistent. Know what you want to get from Ace, and adhere to your conviction for that use session.
I don’t recommend treating it like a video game; I feel like that can hurt how serious you take it and what you’ll expect to get out of it.”
What feedback would you share directly with the Ace team?
Tim: “I’m still hoping for a custom stage builder.. I want to create a self-involved training scenario, and be able to replicate what I want to in live fire. I think that’d be really beneficial.”
Ready to elevate your dry fire training experience?
