edit this narrator script. Keep all the essential details, don't shorten it too much. but make it crisp and flow well.

So how does USPSA work? Let’s dive into it! Each stage starts with a “stage briefing”, given by the Range Safety Officer. This outlines the course of fire, starting position, and any stage-specific rules. 
For instance, your starting position may differ from stage to stage. Unlike, In steel challenge, where you will always engage from the shooter box.
In USPSA, for every stage, you will be told during your stage briefing where your starting position will be, and in what nature you will start the match, it may be “hands relaxed at sides” it may be “seated with hands on table” it may be something like “hands touching X’s” where two X’s will be displayed on the side of a barrier. Or any other starting position the stage designer has determined. 
In any case, once you are in position the Range Safety Officer will give the order to standby, on the audible start signal, you may draw and engage targets. Typically the order in which you engage targets is up to you. But on classifier stages, you may be given an order in which to engage. 
And now you’re probably wondering “What the heck is a classifier stage?”
Well, in USPSA, because stages come in various shapes and sizes, the way to determine your classification is through classifier stages.
Remember when I mentioned in Steel Challenge there were 8 standardized stages? Those stages determine your classification, which ranks you against other shooters on your speed and proficiency. If you’re still confused don’t worry, I will break down classifications here shortly.
Typically, a USPSA stage will have what are known as fault lines. These fault lines delineate the shooting area, from the non-shooting area. You move across the stage in any manner you choose, but you must engage targets from within the shooting area. 
That means, if you want to step out of the shooting area to get to your next shooting position, you may do so. But you must step both feet back into the shooting area before engaging a target. 
For each paper target, two rounds must hit the target to receive pull points. If only one round has hit the target, then you will not receive full points and in fact you will receive a penalty. For steel targets, one round is all that is necessary.
Now, you might be thinking that some of these stages look complicated, and it may be difficult to track how to best engage all the necessary targets. Lucky for you, there will be a period of time where you may perform a “stage walkthrough” before running the stage. During this time, you and the other members of your squad will take turns walking through the stage to best plan your strategy. 
Use this time to think about efficiency of movement, and to get a sight picture of each target to plan the best position to engage each target from. 
If you would like a more in-depth look at USPSA let me know in the comments.
Now, I want to go over different divisions and classifications. Both Steel Challenge and USPSA have a set of divisions that break shooters into different groups based on the gear they run. If this didn’t exist, people who shoot pistol caliber carbines or 5k dollar race guns would dominate the sport. So to make things more competitive for different types of shooters, the sport has been broken up into the following divisions:

Open – This division is the catch all. It allows any gear setup, and type of firearm that is allowed within the sport. People who run this division competitively normally run custom built “race guns” these are typically 2011 style guns with things like flared mag wells, frame mounted optics, gas pedals, and the like. If all of these terms are foreign to you, don’t worry. It’s something you can learn about from avid shooters of the sport. If this is your first match, you will likely start in open division until you determine what division works best for you.
Next, is Production- Production division can be thought of as the stock division. This division does not allow for most modifications. Things like flared magwells, optics, and compensators are not allowed. Essentially, this division is reserved for shooters who want to run a factory handgun with iron sights. 
Carry Optics – One of the most popular divisions today is Carry Optics. Carry Optics can be thought of as a division for production guns with a slid mounted optic. This is my division of choice for a few reasons. First, I love running an optic. Having a red dot optic allows for greater speed and better clarity when getting a sight picture. It also doesn’t require a fancy custom gun, and there are many manufacturers who sell production guns that are optics ready. This division also has a large pool of competitors and you will see where you stack up against a wide variety of shooters.
Other divisions include Limited, limited optics, revolver, single stack, Pistol Caliber Carbine, and others. If you would like another video going over each of the divisions in detail, once again, let me know in the comments.
Now for Classification, Classification can be understood as your rank against other shooters as a percentage of the best possible scores for any given classifier stage. They include D, C, B, A ,M, and GM.
Now that you understand the basics of these two competition styles I want to go over gear considerations. You will see a lot of shooters who have fancy competition style belts, holsters, and even high-end race guns. Don’t be intimated by any of that. As long as you have a belt, a holster, a handgun, and some mag pouches you can compete. If you decide you are really enjoying the sport and want to become more vested then you can look into each division and determine what kind of gear is allowed, and what division is best for you.
So now the biggest barrier to the sport, in my opinion, is understanding where to find competitions and where to register. I’ve had a lot of people tell me they are interested in competing, but don’t know how to find a competition in their area.
For that, we have Practiscore. Practiscore is the website used for almost all competion registration these days all over the country. 
Just go to practiscore.com, create an account and you will then be able to start searching for competitions in your area. In my experience it helps to do a google search of the gun clubs in your region beforehand. You can then search for and follow them on practiscore. That way you will get notifications of upcoming matches on your dashboard. You can use practiscore to look up scores from previous matches you’ve attended, and plan out your schedule for upcoming matches for the season. 
At the time this video was made Practiscore is working on revamping the site to make it more of a social media experience for competitive shooters. I haven’t started to embrace some of those features yet. But I like where they are headed and I would love to be able to track and follow some of my friends and my favorite top shooters.
One other thing that I think would be extremely valuable for new shooters is to become a member of the USPSA. Last I checked the yearly membership rate was $40. And it allows you to receive a classification and to track your performance over time. 
So far we have covered a lot of different topics ranging from the basics of steel challenge in USA to the various divisions as well as some of the more basic rules now I want to talk about the why.
If you've made it this far in the video it's likely that you are already a shooter with some experience and are curious competition shooting. There's a long standing debate among gun owners as to whether or not competition shooting reinforces bad habits or improves training. 
I can tell you what my motivations were. I had taken a job as a range master and firearms instructor and I wanted to find ways to become more proficient and to see where I stacked up against other shooters. I saw competition as a way to test my skills under time in a variety of scenarios rather than performing the same drills over and over that I had been taught. 
However what I found was competition shooting does not mimic real life. There are many aspects of competition such as not utilizing cover that make action pistol shooting like USPSA unrealistic
Rarely do you reload at slide lock in USPSA because you can plan your magazine changes during your stage walkthrough. Also, you see a lot of shooters lean way far out, or shoot while balancing on one foot around a barrier. In a defensive setting this wouldn't make any sense and you would be overexposing yourself. 
So with that being said, why? What’s the benefit? well I have a couple reasons.
Reason #1: the skills that you are practicing in USPSA are steel challenge are valuable skills. the best way I've heard it put is a football player doesn't run through tires during a game but they'll still run through tires during practice I think this is a really great analogy because things like engaging multiple targets as quickly as possible learning to manipulate a handgun while exerting yourself on the move, speed reloads and a crisp fast holster draw are all still very valuable skills. 
Reason #2 for a lot of people they don't have the opportunity to do dynamic shooting on the move at the range that they frequent and having that opportunity is extremely valuable too many people get into a flat range mentality and never practice getting off the ex shooting on the move learning how to manipulate a handgun while moving and I think that those are all invaluable skills. 
Reason#3: It's a lot of fun not everything involving firearms needs to be no-nonsense training. Sometimes it's OK to go out and have some fun in a safe manner. Anytime you spend on the range pulling the trigger is time that I believe is well spent. I have certainly become a better shooter because of competition. Now, there are things that I will do during competition that I would not normally do during my training sessions but I can differentiate between those and I can still practice effectively. I like to put it this way. Not competing in competition because I think it will reinforce bad habits is like saying “I don’t want to learn how to box because I think it will hinder my Juji tsu.
Reason #3 community matters and I think this is an excellent way to get out and meet people within the firearms community that live in your area. Over the course of my lifetime I have tried a lot of new things and gone to a lot of different events and I have never met a friendlier crowd then you find at shooting competitions. When I first got into competition shooting I didn't know anybody that was doing it. I went out and did it on my own and I never once felt lonely or out of place.
People immediately will strike up a conversation with you. you'll talk gear, strategy, and you'll just talk about life and what it is that you do outside of shooting it truly is a really great community to be a part of. Maybe competition shooting isn't for everyone and maybe in your case you go out and do a single competition regardless I think it's great that there's people out there who are looking to get into the sport I think it benefits all of us if the sport continues to grow and more people continue to join.
That being said thank you for watching and sticking around until the end. I haven't taken a stab at doing something as in depth as this video before. so if you enjoyed this please like and subscribe let me know in the comments what you thought was good and what you think could be improved upon. if you would like to see something in a future video perhaps going more in depth into a particular subject that we covered here or different topics entirely maybe I'll make a video about IDP a or the tactical games regardless whatever it is you'd like to see let me know in the comments thank you again and I look forward to hearing from you and I'll see you next time.