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superluckycat

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Must have been some serious sandbagging going on in last week's match.  I shot the sixth highest score on the classifier out of 51 shooters and it was only good for a 62% in Limited according to the calculator.

 

Had a good solid week of dry fire practice.  Just working through Ben's book.  Tennis elbow is still acting up in my right arm.  Drawing my heavier limited gun seems to irritate it more so  I stopped drawing with the mag inserted.

 

One problem I'm still having is establishing a good weak hand grip consistently after the reload.

 

Any tips?

Edited by superluckycat
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3 hours ago, MemphisMechanic said:

What kind of rehab are you doing on your elbow? Working on it with weights can work wonders, without backing down your dryfiring.

I've been a lifter for years but have been hitting forearms hard the past couple of months.  Barbell wrist and reverse wrist curls 3-4 times a week.  Hammer curls on arm day.  Hit the Captains of Crush at work when I remember (need to do more of this.)

 

The pain is better but some days are worse than others.  I haven't really slowed too much on dry fire but I don't do the 1 hour marathons I used to.

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5 hours ago, Shmella said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32qOtbSkY_c

Listen to the latest episode of PPS and that is the first question covered. Was that you? lol

 

Wasn't me but Ben nailed it.  It really only happens when I'm trying to do light speed reloads.  I don't have the problem in matches.  Most likely because it's a 1.7s reload. :lol:

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300 round range session today.

 

2 targets at 10 yards 5 yards apart.  High ready position.  Two shots on lower A of T1, 2 shots lower A T2, 2 head shots on T1.  I really like this drill.  Getting better at the head shots.

 

Accelerator from draw.  L to R:  T1 at 11 yards, T2 at 3 yards, T3 at 18 yards.  Engage L to R.  I really surprised myself with good hits on the far target at speed.

 

10 yard moving Blake Drills.  Forward, Backward L to R and R to L.  

 

25 yard Bill Drills.  Need to do more of these.  I'm much less accurate with the G35 vs the G34.  

 

Again sloppy grip really shows up with .40

 

My draw still needs work. 

 

On the plus side I'm calling quite a few shots.  Now I need to get in the habit of making them up.

 

My cold runs are pretty good.  My speed improves as I warm up but often the points go down.  First run HF isn't far off last run HF.  Looks like all the dry fire is ingraining itself.

 

 

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Still keeping up the 5 day a week dry fire and weekly live fire sessions.  For DF I've been rotating through the drills in Stoeger's book.  Doing a couple from each section for 5 minutes a piece.

 

Live fire today.  Did three drills out of Seeklander's book.  I'm really starting appreciate his drills.

 

1.  L-R Prep and Press with 2 rounds on each target.  60 rounds.

2.  Shooting and moving forwards and backwards with a reload.  120 rounds.

3.  Long movement into position.  120 rounds.

 

Getting faster and more accurate on prep and press.  No mikes at all today on this drill.

I did shoot a few mikes on each of the last two drills at the beginning.

Once I started waiting for the sight to settle my hits got better.

 

Today was good for learning visual patience.

 

 

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Today was my 13th match since I started shooting last year.

 

A lot of the local talent showed up for the match today (myself not included).  Lots of no-shoots, hard cover, and 25 yard targets.

 

Again, no fricken consistency. 

 

Stage 1:  Had the jitters and took me 5 rounds for two 25 yard poppers.  Too slow.

Stage 2:  A little better, starting to get into the groove and speeding up.

Stage 3:  Best stage.  Felt good on this one.  15 out of 62 shooters.

Stage 4:  Good stage until I ran right by an easy target.  FTE.  That one hurt.  Would have a good HF otherwise.

Classifer:  Back to my old bad habit of choking on classifiers.

Stage 6:  Table start and gripped too high with my weak hand, hit the mag release and whoops.  Got it reloaded quick but threw me off.  Had a light strike too later on.

 

I will get good at this damn game!

 

I will learn to call my shots consistently.  Period.  And grip the damn gun.

 

I also need to respect no shoots and long steel shots more.

 

 

 

Capture.PNG

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  • 2 weeks later...

Live fire today.  Went back to the G17 to switch things up.  Man, 9mm is so much easier to shoot.

 

10yd Surrender Draw facing uprange:  1.65s avg. with A's and C's.  Really need to practice this one more.

10yd Draw:  1.15 avg.  mostly A's

10yd Draw SHO:  1.50 avg.  A's and C's

 

10yd Blake Singles SHO:  3.30 avg.  11 points avg.

10yd Blake Singles WHO: 3.50 avg.  13 points every time

 

10yd 4 Aces:  3.50s avg.16 points avg.  Reloading without a mag well sucks.

 

10yd Blake Drill:  2.55 avg.  24 points avg.  Last string was 2.40s and 24 points

 

Best El Prez:  6.70s 54 points.  The rest were pretty abysmal.  Turn and draw really throws me off.

 

7yd Bill Drill

2.01 22 points

2.13 26 points

2.18 28 points

 

25yd Bill Drill

4.92 26 points

4.75 24 points

 

Things to work on

 

Turn and draw/surrender position:  I find myself not establishing a good grip which throws off the whole string.

Reloading:  Same issue as above.  I don't establish a good WH grip after reload and accuracy really suffers.

25 yard Bill Drills:  I haven't been practicing these much lately and it shows.

Reloads with the Production gun.

 

Good Stuff

 

My WH grip is getting better with a standard draw just need to do it all the time now.

I'm throwing the first shot after the draw low left less.

Edited by superluckycat
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SLC,

 

wanted to thank you for taking the time to share your training log. I just read it from beginning to end and see solid progress and commitment, and a template to follow for my own improvement.

 

I see a lot of myself in your journey, my WH is a challenge and I wish I had your reloads - I need 10,000 more solid reps I guess...

Keep up the work! 

 

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14 hours ago, RMJack said:

SLC,

 

wanted to thank you for taking the time to share your training log. I just read it from beginning to end and see solid progress and commitment, and a template to follow for my own improvement.

 

I see a lot of myself in your journey, my WH is a challenge and I wish I had your reloads - I need 10,000 more solid reps I guess...

Keep up the work! 

 

Thanks for the kind words.  I hope you progress faster than I am.  I just have too many bad habits developed over years of not knowing what I was doing.

 

Dry fire this morning.  Concentrated on breaking down the El Prez into it's individual components,  then breaking down those components:  Turn and draw, transition, reload, transition.  No par times just working on the techniques.

 

It was a good practice and I learned a lot.  I revamped my hand start position and index to better establish a good weak hand grip.  Then concentrated on snapping my head around to the first target and turning into a comfortable shooting position.

 

I broke down the reload next.  I've developed the habit of always transitioning L to R.  Which means on the reload I'm transitioning back to the first target and it's been throwing my reload off.  I changed to transitioning R to L after the reload based on this.  It's going to take a while to get used to this one.

 

Did a few full El Prez's at a leisurely 7s par time but concentrating on technique.

 

Finished up with some more reloads.

 

Going to continue working El Prez for the rest of the week since it highlights two of my weaknesses:  Turn and Draw and Reloads.

Edited by superluckycat
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  • 2 weeks later...

Good live fire training session yesterday with the G35.  Last two training sessions I went back to the G17 to see if my shooting improved.  It didn't noticeably.

 

I concentrated on staying nice a relaxed, especially my arms during draw.  Definitely showed up in my Bill Drill times.  Times are now as fast as I was shooting with the G17.

 

-Started with a mag into the berm to track sights and get a feel for recoil.

-Haley slow draw where you start at 5 seconds and work down 1 second.  (Didn't get down to 1 second though.)

-Ran two mags into a target at 10 yards.  1 shot per second.  Kind of a bastardized timing drill.  Again concentrating on feeling the gun recoil and tracking sights.

-One round of Stoeger Dots at 5 yards.  Still not close to cleaning it but getting better.

-Blake Drills.  Last run was 2.40s for 25 points.

-SHO Blake Drills - 5.5s for 27 points.  These are tough for me because of my shoulder arthritis.

-WHO Blake Drills - 5.5s for 25 points.

-El Prez - Last run was 5.95s 51 points.

-10yd 4 Aces - 3.2s avg 16-18 points.

-Bill Drill -  2.08s 29 points.  2.17s clean run.

-25yd Bill Drill - Avg was 4.58s-4.97s 26-28 points with one crappy run for 20 points.

Edited by superluckycat
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14th match since I started USPSA.  

15th out of 44 shooters.

No Mikes no penalties.  First match without at least one Mike.

Stage 3 I had 2 light strikes which threw me off a little.

Stage 4 I hit the mag release with my WH causing a jam and the mag to fall out.  Loaded another one in their and that one fell out.  Kind of a cluster.  Time sucked.

63% on the classifier.

My points are up there with the top shooters just need to keep on developing speed.

Still making slow steady progress shooting one match a month so I'm happy.

 

 

 

Capture.PNG

Edited by superluckycat
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On 6/9/2017 at 3:13 PM, superluckycat said:

I've been a lifter for years but have been hitting forearms hard the past couple of months.  Barbell wrist and reverse wrist curls 3-4 times a week.  Hammer curls on arm day.  Hit the Captains of Crush at work when I remember (need to do more of this.)

 

The pain is better but some days are worse than others.  I haven't really slowed too much on dry fire but I don't do the 1 hour marathons I used to.

Take a short piece of mop handle or equivalent, tie about 5 feet of para cord to it and attach a 5 or 10 lb plate to the lower end and just roll it up and down reversing direction and those muscles will wake up.  Pro golfers and tennis players do this a lot.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Still getting in 5 days of dry fire a week.  I've stopped chasing par times so much and am concentrating on execution.  Start each session with 10 yard draws 30-50 reloads.

 

Picked a 92 degree day with no breeze to take off from work early and get in some live fire.

 

All movement today so I was running in this sh*t.  Got in good hour and a half of shooting.

 

Started with Easy Entry out of Stoeger's Skills and Drills then did Easy Exit and finished with Shooting and Moving Easy.  All targets were 7 yards and my splits were .17-.18 average so that's a definite improvement.   I still throw a mike now and then when I'm practicing for speed.  Right on the edge of being out of control.

 

Picking up the brass was torture.  I was tempted to leave it.

 

Still sticking with the G35.  I love major scoring too much now. 

Edited by superluckycat
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Live fire today.  Too hot to work on movement much.

 

Tried out the SJC frame weight on the G35.  I dig it.  Really helps tame the front end and my draw and transitions haven't slowed.

 

Things to work on:

 

I just can't seem to break 1s draws consistently, even at 5 yards.  I hit .99 a couple times today.

 

My reloads are still horrible:  1.80s in live fire.  My dry fire reloads don't translate over to live fire.  I have trouble relaxing my strong hand so I can shift my grip and hit the release.  In matches during moving reloads I still revert back to shifting the gun over with my weak hand to hit the release.  This is an old training scar.   This doesn't hurt me much during field courses with one reload but it's killing me on classifiers.

 

Results:

 

I cleaned 3 runs of Stoeger's dots at 5 yards.  The other three, not so much.  But it's an improvement.  I think the frame weight helps.

Bill Drills:  Best Run:  2.18s  30 points

Blake Drills:  Best Run Left to Right:  2.35s 27 points.  Right to Left:  2.52s  24 points

Blake SHO:  Best Run:  4.79s  26 ponts

Blake WHO:  Best Run:  5.01  27 points

Moving Blake Drill Forward:  Best Run 2.90s  29 points  (start at 10 yards)

Moving Blake Drill Backwards:  Best Run 2.77s  26 points  (Start at 8 yards)

El Prez:  Only ran one:  6.81s 55 points.  Would have been a solid A HF if not for the crappy reload

 

Next live fire I need to hit reloads hard.  Going to hit them even harder in dry fire this week.

 

 

 

Edited by superluckycat
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It's reloads week in the dry fire garage! 

 

Been doing all reload drills this week.  Start each session with 50-60 standing reloads.  Then do 25 reps each of 4 Aces and 6R6.

 

Today in addition to the standing reloads I did moving reloads, 4 Aces then 6R6R6 (Stoeger's reloads).

 

None of these are on the timer.  I'm concentrating on grip, sight picture and consistency in the reload.  Trying to rebuild better habits through repetition. 

 

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Live fire today.  About 300 rounds.

 

After hitting reloads all week hard I hit them in live fire also along with other things I suck at like turn and draw and transitioning right to left.  Practicing things you suck at is not good for the ego but is good for match scores and classifiers. :D

 

1.  Gun at the ready fire one, reload, fire.  Target at 7 yards.  No time or points counted.  Just concentrating on the reload.  60 rounds.

 

2.  4 Aces:  Fastest was 2.55s with a 1.22s reload.  Average was probably 2.8s with a 1.45s reload.  Had quite a few whiffs in there where I didn't hit the mag release right and the mag didn't drop.  Didn't count points.  Ran about 25 of theses.

 

3.  Turn and Draws at 7 yards:  Fastest was 1.55s.  Only ran about five of these.  Got a new holster with the frame weight and it was binding up on Turn and Draw.  Something to work out in dry practice.

 

4.  Blake Drills right to left 10 yards:  Best was 2.46s  27 points.

 

5.  Easy Exit - Shoot 2 targets at 7 yards, run 8 yards engage one target at 8 yards obscured by barrels.   Concentrated on dismounting the gun and really sprinting between arrays.  I'd gotten into the bad habit of always keeping both hands on the gun when moving, even long distances.  Best run was 5.11s for 27 points.

 

6.  25 yard Bill Drills:  These are getting better.  Best run was 4.15s for 27 points.  I tried going for time on one and shot 3.71s for 21 points and a Mike.

Edited by superluckycat
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Rough week of dry fire.  Monday was pretty good, felt focused and body felt good.  It was all down hill from there.  Getting terrible knots in my upper back and neck.  I'm sure my shoulder arthritis is contributing to it.

 

Match tomorrow so hopefully that will help refocus my dry fire efforts. 

 

Anyone take a month off in the off season?  Like no dry fire, nothing?

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On 9/2/2017 at 9:39 AM, superluckycat said:

Rough week of dry fire.  Monday was pretty good, felt focused and body felt good.  It was all down hill from there.  Getting terrible knots in my upper back and neck.  I'm sure my shoulder arthritis is contributing to it.

 

Match tomorrow so hopefully that will help refocus my dry fire efforts. 

 

Anyone take a month off in the off season?  Like no dry fire, nothing?

Yes. Took 2 months off once.  Did one dry and one live practice before shooting a match and had a good run.  Mentally the pressure to succeed was not as precedent, I shot relaxed and had a great match.  Guess I figured I had been off for a while and just focused on shooting smooth and clean.  Speed was good and not a focus which is the way it should be.  Remember that it is supposed to be fun.  Practice is supposed to be hard and on game day just let that practice go and relax and have fun, compete, but without the pressure.  Hope that makes sense. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Live fire today and I feel like I'm finally starting to shoot at my potential.  

 

I had gotten lazy and discouraged so I spent the last two weeks forcing myself to practice at the par times in Stoeger's book. 

 

Most shooting was speed mode so I threw a Mike here and there but I was surprised how good the points were.

I had quite a few sub 1s draws at 7 yards during the different drills. 

Reloads were around 1.4s.  Still need work but is an improvement.  

 

Gun:  G35

 

Bill Drill

1.96s  29pts

 

4 Aces

2.85s  20pts

 

Blake SIngles

1.72  13pts

 

Blake Drill

2.10s  26pts  had a 1.0s draw on this one

I shot one in match mode for a 2.4s and 29 points.  This used to be my speed mode time.

 

Blake Drill SHO 

4.07s  26pts

 

Blake Drill WHO

4.27  27pts

 

 

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