Blackeagle

It is, but it's also a double edged sword. In real life, we generally want to move and shoot very quickly when confronted by a an assailant. However, when we aren't actually being confronted by an actual threat, I'd say it's often more appropriate to be more careful and deliberate.

One of the stages at the match I shot today provides a good example of this. You start at one end of a long hallway, behind a piece of cover, facing two targets about 20 yards away. After engaging those two targets, you move down the long hallway to a shorter cross hallway, pie the corner, and engage two more targets. Then you move down the short hallway, pie another corner, and engage the last two targets.

Now, while you're actually shooting these three pairs of targets, the pressure of the timer produces an appropriate response: shoot as quickly and accurately as possible. The problem, is that same time pressure gets applied inappropriately to other parts of the scenario: moving down the hallways and pieing the corner. Because everyone is trying to get a good time, they go running down the long hallway to try to get to the corner as quickly as possible. In real life, an assailant could pop out around that corner at any moment, and rather than sprinting down the hallway, it would make a lot more sense to move down the hall at a walking pace, probably with the gun pointed in at the corner where a threat might appear just below line of sight.

Similarly, rather than pieing the corner slowly and carefully, exposing as little of themselves as possible and watching and listening for any sign of a threat, shooters know exactly where the threats are and they just pop out far enough to engage each target. They 'pie' the corner only in the sense that they don't expose themselves to the second target before engaging the first.

I like timers for drills and relatively straightforward stages where all you're doing is shooting. You're there, the targets are there, and it's just a matter of shooting them as quickly and accurately as possible. I'm much less of a fan of the clock for longer scenario type stages where you're doing things like slicing the pie, moving, opening doors, etc. that may best be done more carefully and deliberately, rather than racing down hallways and careening around corners. Having shot a lot of untimed scenarios, I can say that just shooting while people are standing there, watching and judging your performance gets the stress level up there even without being on the clock.

Oh, I agree. As I said in my first post in this thread it's a good place to get trigger time and to get some exposure to something other than a square range environment. It's particularly good if you approach it with the idea of shooting it as much like a real defensive encounter as possible, rather than with the aim of winning the game. Throw in some good self-defense training and do some practice outside of IDPA that fills in the gaps that IDPA doesn't cover and it's even better.