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shooterDrew's progress journal


shooterDrew

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So I guess I will get started with this range diary in hopes that it keeps me honest and pressing towards my goals!

A little background on my shooting so far. . . First I got started in IDPA around 2009. Initially IDPA was a blast, though it did not really push me to improve. I had a lot of fun even though I was shooting pretty casually. By "casually" I mean I'd be able to make a local match maybe once every other month or so, probably 4-6 for the year, and generally zero other practice. That is not to say I did not shoot at all, I was an LEO and received some training and range time through my job, however, almost any LEO can tell you that the amount of firearms training provided to LEO is ridiculously low and over the course of a year amounts to about 1 good USPSA practice session.. if that. Seriously.

Anyway, I continued on this pace (occasional matches and zero practice) until mid-late 2014. I knew others who had shot IDPA with me and then moved on to USPSA, Usually they raved about how much fun it was, but for whatever reason I never tried it. Summer 2014 I made the jump and shot a local USPSA match. Awesome. I was pumped up, even though I got my ass kicked. I found that it added all the things to an IDPA match that I thought were lacking.... mainly additional round count, faster and farther movement, and the ability to figure out a stage yourself, rather than have it dictated to you before you got to shoot it. I immediately signed up for a USPSA membership and then signed up for the Indiana Section match last Sept. Between my first USPSA match and the IN Section I was not able to get to any more matches due to work schedule so my very first classification score came from that match, 68%. I was pretty happy w/ my overall performance, even though I struggled to understand scoring and had a really bad habit of shooting to slide lock constantly (thanks IDPA). My initial classification came from a special classifier match in april this year where I was able to sneak into B class production.

This year I set the goal for myself to make A class in 2015. I bought some dryfire books (stoeger's), a shot timer, and upgraded my reloading set up. Side note: going from an old Dillon 450 to a 650 was the best money I have spent. I picked up some quality belt gear and decided to hit it hard w/ my M&P9 pro that I had shot for a couple years in IDPA. Thanks to a very supportive wife I was able to travel to matches this year and really up my shooting and dryfire practice. I recently retired early from my job as an LEO, made possible by a business we purchased several years ago growing beyond what we had hoped. This has allowed me to shoot and practice even more. This last classification update I reached my goal of making A class with 78.88% in production!

On to new things.. My goals for my future in this sport:

Ultimately make GM in production. This, I assume, is the goal of a lot of people on this forum (for their division). I am sure this will NOT be easy, and the progress from this point will likely slow and I will need to keep my focus and continue working hard. To reach this goal I think I will need to meet several performance goals that I already have identified, and I'm sure many that I haven't even figured out yet. Even when I'm able to accomplish this goal I realize that there is a significant difference between someone who is able to attain a GM card and being able to compete at the highest level. It is my goal to achieve both.

Moving on to next year my hope is to keep motivated with my dry fire, I see a huge benefit when I put the time in. I also hope to improve my consistency in matches. My overall finishes would be dramatically improved if I could manage to cut out the penalties! I would also like to keep up with my live fire practice pace, currently I'm getting out 1-2x per week for about 300-350 rnds per session in addition to a match each weekend. I hope to be able to make 10 majors (level 2 or higher) next year and at least 2-4 locals per month. I need significant improvement in stage planning and match execution.

I will try and keep up with this range log to keep track of my practice and match performance as well as hopefully my progress towards GM!

Edited by shooterDrew
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Local match yesterday. 6 stages with a classifier, and as a bonus today was my first match with a new gun. I've been shooting M&Ps for a few years and have no major issues with them. I can control the recoil pretty well, and the M&P9 pro I used to get into this sport has been absolutely reliable. That being said, I'm a bit of a gun nut and around 6 months ago a bug started eating at me in the form of CZ-itus. Shooting production nationals was the last straw. I was able to see a boat load of people shooting CZ and observe how reliable they were (cant recall any witnessing any malfunctions at all over the various guns in my squad and a 20 stage match). Then I got a chance to get my hands on one at the Automatic Accuracy booth. Holy crap, the guns feel good in the hand, this was not a surprise, but the triggers on the tricked out guns were amazing. I came from carrying a sig 229 on duty for about a decade and there is nothing in common between the stock sig trigger and a tuned CZ trigger. I had been standoff-ish to the idea of a DA-SA gun for competition mainly because of my experience with the sig... this opened my eyes. So anyway I read up on the guns and options and settled on a custom Accu Shadow from CZC. That gun will be here tomorrow (wooo hoooo!). In the mean time I was able to find a used Shadow (wanted a back up and a gun that I could also use in IDPA) in the classifieds and once it came in I got to dry fire a little and about 1 week later took it out for my first club match.

My match performance was mostly decent. 4 of the 6 stages executed reasonably well. I dropped a mike on the classifier (03-18 high standards). No matter how many times I cringe when I see WHO strings in classifiers or other short stages at local or major matches I still fail to give that skill adequate attention in my training. This shortcoming hit me again at this match.. My dropped shot was WHO on the far right target at 10 yards. I didn't smoke the stage regardless of the mike, but my confidence walking up to the line could not have been lower. With the mike my run ended up a blistering 62%. I am very confident in my ability to shoot freestyle, not bothered by SHO shots.. but as soon as I see WHO on the stage briefing I immediately go into survival mode and all I can think about is trying to limit the damage inflicted on my score by the WHO. This has got to change for me to have any hope of excelling at a higher level. My other poor performance came on our last stage of the day. It was a complex field course with 35 hits, 4 of which were steel at a decent distance (10-15 yards). I got distracted while watching other shooters and failed to adequately prepare for my run, which resulted in me feeling half lost during most of my run and slowly searching around trying to find targets rather than driving between the targets and charging into the next position. Another issue I found on this stage was that I rushed my sight picture, or failed to even get one, and walked away with 4 mikes. 1 went into hard cover the other 3 were just off into the oblivion. I feel these had something to do with me not being well versed yet with the new gun. The trigger I ran on my M&P was an apex sear and stock springs, which resulted in about a 5lbs pull all the time. I got used to it and really never thought it was an issue until I was able to feel the trigger on the CZ.. now that I've got the CZ I think that some of my poor accuracy on this stage can be attributed to me failing to use the gun correctly. Rather than using the excellent trigger to help me by making quick work of good sights on targets at distance, I was just trying to shoot it quicker without cleaning up the sight pic, add that to my generally wandering stage plan and I got bit on this stage pretty hard. For the other stages I felt pretty happy with my shooting and the gun. Had zero malfs and the DA pull seemed to have no ill effects at all. In fact I would venture to say that I got better hits on my first shots because I was so aware of the 1st shot and wanted to make sure I didn't yank it. On one of the stages, a fixed time stage with 8 targets I was really impressed with the SA trigger. The stage required you to engage 8 targets (some obscured with NS and some w/ hardcover) with one round each then move to a new shooting box and re-engage w/ one round each after a reload in between.... in 7 seconds. I shot this about as fast as I could muster, didnt plunk any NS, and still failed to get all the shots off. My transitions were fast and the new gun really shined, I think I would have dropped more shots with the MPs heavier and less crisp trigger. Trying to get so many tight shots off so quickly was not easy any every little bit helps. On the other field course stages I felt like I did a decent job of managing the trigger and the sights. I got pretty decent hits, striving for no D or M, but this is always something I need to keep working toward. I've set a major match goal of 95% of possible points and zero penalties.. yet to achieve it but hopefully will soon. Got another opportunity coming up at the KY State Handgun Champ.

My take aways from this match were nothing new. I need to work on getting a better sight picture on longer targets. I have the ability to make tight shots, but when I get it in my head that shooting faster is more important, I lose on the accuracy. I need to improve my speed on longer stages, but not necessarily by way of faster splits. My stage times are slow because I am taking too long getting into position and getting my first shots off, and then exiting positions and starting toward the next one. I also need to focus on going 1 for 1 on steel. Way too much wasted time making noise at steel rather than making hits. My reloads were fairly smooth, this is another place where I really like this gun. I was not terrible at reloading the MP but after having switched to this gun I feel like I'm immediately at the same level as the MP with a lot of room for improvement. This gun just seems to take a magazine easily. Back to areas needing improvement: WHO shooting! Always. Its not sexy and its hot high speed... but I need to put some time in shooting weak hand only. This is obviously something that most people at the very least are not comfortable with, so making it less of a liability (possibly even a strength) will be a big area to gain ground on other shooters. Stage break down and planning is not one of my strengths at this point either. I am at the point that for now I just settle for making sure I actually find all the targets and shoot them... frequently I find myself seeing another shooters plan, identifying that its OBVIOUSLY better, and changing mine before I shoot. And by better I don't mean more tricky, I mean has less shooting positions maybe takes longer targets from a better angle etc... I really need to work on dissecting a stage.

Plans for improvement: get to the range and get work with the new gun. I need to continue working on obscured targets, especially at distance. Position entry and exit are major areas where I'm giving up time. Setting up some steel, maybe even in a steel challenge type setting might not be a bad idea to work on my steel engagement. And of course... WHO shooting. The day when I walk up to a WHO stage in a major match and feel confidence, and even maybe that I've got an edge on the competition, is the day that I know I've made some solid improvements and that I'm competing at a higher level. And finally stage execution... this is something I can work on in practice, but the real gains will be made by shooting more and more matches. . . I need to keep an eye on good shooters and how they attack a stage and start to figure out what they're looking for and why. Then I need to apply that knowledge.. the more matches I am able to shoot the more opportunity I'll have for this.

Match video posted below. The first stage shown is actually the last one we shot, and the one I bombed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJvbVNRx8gk

Edited by shooterDrew
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Looks like you are doing some pretty objective analysis of yourself and not just beating yourself up. Remember to always pick some positive aspects of your shooting to review as well as identify areas for improvement. I watched your vid and although POV is hard to judge by, it looks like you have some solid basics. Nothing for me to add to your own assessment just yet.... well, except get some 3rd person view vids. They are quite a bit more valuable than POV.

If you haven't already ready Lanny Bassham's book, With Winning in Mind.

List your goals out and repeat them regularly. I list mine at the end of each journal entry. I've had times where I taped my short goal list on the inside of my shooting box so I would see it when I was reloading mags during the match. Also, remember the "good shooters" are always willing to help. Pick your questioning time carefully and keep it light and they'll always be glad to drop advice your way.

Have fun and good luck on your goals

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I appreciate the feedback. Hopefully I can get some 3rd pers vid sometime soon to post. I've got Basshams book, just haven't finished it yet!

Good call on not forgetting the to look at the positives. . . Its easy to get into the habit of just ragging on errors and mistakes, but there are always (almost always!) positives to be acknowledged as well.

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Had a short-ish live fire practice session today. Took a couple hundred rounds out with the intention of getting some practice with my #1 enemy.... WHO. I snagged a 12" steel plate from the steel challenge equipment at the range and went back to about 21-22 yards (not that specific distance for any reason, just happened to be where I set the steel and how far back I was able to shoot). This was a little bit of a confidence builder. I did 6 or 8 WHO bill drills at this distance. Obviously looking for all hits on the steel and no worrying about anything else. I dropped a few shots. Happily only 1 or two on the runs where I did have a mike, and I did have several clean runs. These were NOT blisteringly fast, nor did I want them to be. In fact I was more hoping for all clean runs even if it took me a day or two to complete. Unfortunately that didn't happen, and I pulled a few shots off steel to the right. Most of the mikes were pretty tight misses and I could knock them out entirely if I would be a little more patient with the sight pic rather than squeezing off shots early. I think my worst runs were 4/6 hits.. and I only had a few of those. Most WHO runs took me between 8-10s. I also used this opportunity to shoot a little SHO as well as freestyle. I was able to get 6 of 6 hits just under 5 seconds without feeling very rushed while freestyle, however, I was not able to consistently get this done several times in a row. I found myself accepting a less than acceptable sight picture a few times and this caused a mike. This was almost exactly what I noticed during the last match and my misses on steel. Its not that the shots were overly difficult, I just caught myself starting to press the trigger before I had the sight pic I wanted, and rather than slow up and get it, I just go ahead w/ the shot and it ends up a mike.

I also ran through a short 2 position stage a few times. This was a little work on position entry and exit. Started off with a close target (3-5 yards) and then a longer target (10-12yrds), two on each then move laterally to the left about 10-15 feet and engage the steel plate from before as well as a short paper target (3yards). I ended shooting both positions near then far and probably cheated myself a little by not moving and going straight to the steel-which was the harder shot. I opted to go for the close target first, which I was able to get away a lot more because it was so close. Next time I do something similar I'll probably force myself to go for the harder shot right after I get into the position, thats got to be a little more demanding of me, and therefor better use of practice time.

For now I'm going to keep working on the DA trigger of the new gun. I've got a club match coming up this weekend and not sure if I'll get back out to live fire before then. I will work on some WHO dry fire as well. For now the focus will be less on the speed, and more on just getting lots of reps pressing the trigger while not disturbing the sights.

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Local match near Indy today. Overall I'm not unhappy w/ my performance, that's not to say there weren't a LOT areas needing improvement.

First I'll pick out a couple things I think I did fairly well:

I was satisfied with my stage plans and tempo. I tried to keep it fairly simple and just focus on a straight forward plan of attack. I did not get too tricky, and despite keeping everything fairly easy I felt my stage times were decent. My overall match time was within 1 second of a solid M class limited shooter, and our hits were almost exactly the same. This was only a problem for me because he was shooting major and since I'm in production, I was not! That leads me to one of my areas needing improvement..

Improvement needed: Accuracy! Speed shoots!

Ugggh. While I felt I was moving, shooting, and reloading at a decent pace, my accuracy on target was lacking. My shots werent terribly inaccurate (I only had one mike and it was on a speed shoot stage), but I was settling for a lot more Cs than I should. I will blame some of this on the NS plastered on everything! haha. While this makes things difficult, its great practice for majors where the shots tend to be a lot harder than some club level matches. Next, speed shoots. If I was able to keep up with an M level shooter overall on stage navigation, then I was barely able to keep up with a low B class shooter on the two speed shoots. The classifier smoked me, not the other way around. Disaster Factor 13-01. I managed to finish with 31 of the 60 pts in 6.85 with a mike. For this classifier it starts facing up range and you turn and shoot either the upper 3 targets or the lower 3 targets, do a reload and then engage the other 3. My first two shots were low and right deltas, followed by A/C A/A I think. Reload wasn't great but wasn't terrible and then my shots to the top (NS obscured targets) were terrible. Not sure if any of them were As, and on my first target I had one in the C and the other was never found.... Next speed shoot was a similar set up but with steel on either side, and after the draw shots were free style, then reload and move forward about 5 yards and shoot the remaining targets SHO. I plunked a NS on the 2nd target. Thankfully I called the terrible shot and made it up without much delay, saving myself from a mike on that stage as well.

Skills to focus on: Stand and shoot type stages. Continue working on cleaning up my sight pictures at speed, as well as SHO and WHO shooting.

My hits for the match were 95-A 1-B 43-C 4-D 1-M 1-NS ------- way too many Cs. I was able to get someone to video this match for me, it really is a much more valuable perspective for critiques than the POV.. but there is some to be learned from the POV as well, at least by me since I was the one shooting. I can see a few spots were my movement felt fluid but I really think I could have been moving quicker or a little faster between arrays.

3rd pers:

POV:

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Had a rather unproductive week so far. I was able to get up to the range on monday and do a little practice, tho at the end of it I felt like I mainly accomplished creating a pile of brass..

This weekend is the Indiana State IDPA match, which will be the first IDPA match I have shot in months. I'm eager to see how I do, and if I can avoid a huge amount of penalties. On monday I took an IDPA target and my IDPA gear to work on draws and reloads from concealment, as well as proper points of aim for the IDPA target vs USPSA. They're pretty similar, but low A's result in -1 penalties so you have to be a little careful. One thing I remembered quickly is that draws and reloads from concealment are slower.. and reloads with retention feel odd. Coming from a LE background doing "tactical" reloads is nothing new, but for the last year I've probably done more shooting than I did in the 3 or 4 years (combined) prior so the USPSA "tactics" I've been picking up and teaching myself have taken hold well. When I started USPSA last year I remember having to work at stopping myself from shooting the gun to slide lock all the time. Now for this match putting in some time going back to that stuff has thrown me for a bit of a loop. Unfortunately I will not get much more live fire time before Saturday, but I will make sure to do at least 2 more dry fire sessions with the IDPA gear to help me get ready. I think I will be best served in the match to make a point getting my hits in the -0. That definitely doesn't sound like much of a revelation, however, I'm still working on controlling the throttle in USPSA to maximize my points, and I think its even more important in IDPA as any shots outside the -0 generally cost you way more than it would have taken to clean up the sight pic and get it right the first time. In USPSA you have the chance to pick up speed or stage time somewhere else if you end up dropping some pts (not usually enough to justify, but potentially make a dent) however with IDPA the stages are all pretty much dictated in how they're shot, so not much hope of that. I need to get my hits, and focus on shooting stages in a way that avoids procedurals. If I can do that I think I will perform ok.

In an effort to continue to work on my SHO and WHO shooting I used some large steel plates that had been left out. They're pretty big 18"x18" or so, to make them useful I did my shooting back at about 40 yards. I did a 4 or 5 magazines at this distance, doing a little SHO WHO and freestyle. One thing I've noticed about switching to the CZ is that the front sight is much larger. I'm not sure the measurement, but the dawson front sight on my MP was .090", this one seems considerably bigger- its stock as far as I know.

Speaking of the CZ.. my accu-shadow arrived today! I actually took initial delivery last week, however, right after taking it out of the box and checking it over I noticed that it had not gotten the competition trigger job I ordered. The rest of the gun was just as spec'd, but the trigger was still pretty heavy at 8.5lbs DA and 3.5lbs SA. I emailed Stuart at CZC and he responded promptly with a label to get it sent back. Gun went back and was tricked out and returned to me within a week(which is still a few weeks ahead of quoted build time), cant beat that customer svc. I ran out to the range this morning to try some test loads, ended up buying some Montana Gold 124 JHPs for the new gun. I've been loading coated lead all year and figured I'd give these a try. Since I spent so much on a gun I should probably feed it some good ammo. Seems like 3.9gr of TG under the 124 at 1.095" is gonna be the load. It fed fine, and chrono'd at 129.5pf. I'll load a bunch up and put it through its paces next week and then at the Kentucky Handgun Champ match in mid Oct.

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Well yesterday was the Indiana IDPA State Championship. I haven't shot much IDPA for a few months, and switched guns since the last one I did shoot. Last week I had one dedicated practice session with IDPA gear, then I went back to USPSA gear for a session to break in my new AccuShadow.. side note, the accu is badass. Anyway, lately I've been haunted by WHO stages showing up in big matches and costing me mikes and NS hits... so at each practice I've been doing at least a few magazines of WHO, usually focusing on head shots or at distances beyond 15 yards to keep it tough. In doing this I've noticed that one of my issues I believe has been grip tension with WHO shooting. I tightened it up and started gripping a little harder and notice that I'm a little more in control. This practice paid off at the IDPA match when the dreaded WHO standards type stage with targets plastered with non-threat targets showed up. I was a little less nervous and performed considerably better. A few points down on 6 targets but no NT hits and that ended up helping me win Stock Service Pistol overall.. yee haw. I haven't been able to shoot a classifier since early (like in the snow / february) last year and I went in to this match as SSP-expert, so I got a match bump to SSP-master! Overall I felt my performance in the match was pretty decent. I went in with the plan to give up on trying to go fast, and focus instead on avoiding procedurals and shooting accurately. I anticipated getting a few procedurals just because I've almost completely switched over to USPSA shooting and IDPA stages can be extremely specific in the way they're supposed to be shot, however, when it was all said and done I did shoot it without penalties, mikes, or hits on NTs. I did not feel like I moved very quickly, and at times bobbled my draws and reloads, but shooting at the pace that I did allowed me to keep my points down to a minimum. My raw time in the match was almost 8 seconds slower (over 10 stages) than the 2nd place shooter, however, he had almost 2x the amount of points down, which is TOUGH to come back from in IDPA scoring.

Moving ahead, I'm now looking forward to the Kentucky USPSA Handgun Championship in a couple weeks. This will be my first match with the Accu, unless I can find a local USPSA somewhere in the region next weekend. I was able to get a load worked up and after a 400 rnd practice session last friday I feel pretty comfortable with its accuracy and confident in it feeding reliably. Another side note, loading jacketed bullets is great compared to loading coated lead.. too bad the price difference is so much. For now I'm shooting the Montana Gold 124 JHP over titegroup and I like the recoil as well as the reduced smoke from coated bullets. This week I intend on working on transitions in dryfire and live fire, as well as distance change ups. I want to speed up how long it takes me to go from a close hoser type shot to a longer precise shot. Also continue work on position entry and exit, as well as keep pressing the WHO and SHO shooting.. I'm sure it will continue to show up so I better keep working on it.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'm still not in the habit of typing into this journal.. so I've got a couple matches to go over. First off, practice: Haven't been doing enough lately. We recently put our house on the market and that has caused for MUCH less time to be able to dry fire and get to the range. Unfortunately earlier this year I was doing a much better job of making time. Anyway..

I found a local match to hit before the KY state, it was a 6 stage monster match (all stages 35-40 rounds) a couple of hours from home. I felt like I did alright, tried focusing on accuracy. Would have been successful in that, except that I completely spaced a wide open target on one of the stages which resulted in me getting 2 mikes and FTE. ouch. Other than that the match seemed to go ok. At the end of it I looked back and really noticed how much reloading was involved. I found it hard to get into a groove on such a long stage. The bays were fairly small too, which made for a 18 targets being squeezed pretty damn close together, thus lots of nearly standing reloads for production. I am having trouble finding a good rhythym and keeping my plans in tact on larger stages.

Moving on to KY state. I went in to this match again with the goal of shooting cleanly, even at the expense of "feeling fast." I say that because I know that what feels faster isn't necessarily faster (and almost ALWAYS isn't worth the loss of points), and I'm trying to get myself to understand that a little more. To start off, this match was a 10 stage no steel all field course set up. Every stage was 32 rounds and there was a mix of hoser stages and longer more complex stages. I started off in the hoser stuff out of the gate. This was ok, however, I again found myself getting caught up in the reloads and losing track of my plans. Over the course of the match I felt like I had a significant (not for the better) plan departure on at least 3 of the stages, with probably another 2 or 3 I had minor unintended variations that did not seem overly damaging. I really took my time and waited on the sights all day. Came close on at least one no shoot where I was touching the paper but failed to break the perf, WHEW! and a couple similar hard cover hits. My resulting 92.6% of possible points w/ zero penalties tells me that this approached worked out in the end. My overall finish of 13th (production), being middle of the pack in A class at 83.4% of the winner was satisfactory. This is my highest percentage finish at a major so far, and to walk off the range feeling like I really put the brakes on all day tells me that my priorities in other matches were clearly out of order. . .

Positives:

Good accuracy / Points - It was and still is a goal to shoot 95% of points in a major, this did not accomplish the goal but was a significant step towards it.

ZERO Penalties!- Major goal of mine was to shoot a major cleanly. I have really struggled with this so far. I'm very happy w/ my ability to stay in control all day and keep every thing on paper and off of NS or hard cover. -- This was a big accomplishment for me when looking back at my SStk Nats performance earlier in the year w/ 15 (FIFTEEN) mikes....

Consistency - This contributed to the above 2 mentioned. For the whole day I felt like I was keeping a really consistent tempo, even on some of the stages where my plans really faltered I felt like I could have ended up much worse if I had not adapted and kept myself moving.

Negatives:

Transitions- I felt very slow on transistions to close targets, especially when hard cover and NS were involved. Recognizing that I've come up short in my previous attempts at shooting a match clean probably made me move even slower on those transitions in an effort to protect myself a little more. For this match I'm ok w/ it, but its definitely something that needs improved, a lot.

Splits- on longer targets I felt like I did a fairly decent job of breaking accurate shots quickly, but then when I would transition to closer targets my shot cadence rarely sped up. I need to focus on smoking the close targets and moving on. This is not a big amount per target, but in the overall I'm certain that several seconds can be made up by a quicker cadence on open targets inside of 7 yards. I'm confident in my ability to make the hits at a faster pace, I've just had a hard time transitioning between the more difficult targets and the easier ones while maximizing my HF.

Movement- I still feel slow in my non shooting movment. This will continue to be something I will try and stress for future matches, getting from point A to B faster.

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Local match today, had a great day in the awesome fall weather. The shooting could have been better, but thats always the case. I decided to shoot my production gear and accushadow in limited division today (minor PF), mainly to give me a break from all the damn reloading! A lot of the matches I've been shooting have been long field course focused lately, which is fun, but I wanted to try running a match with a single reload per stage vs the usual 3-4. I also wanted to focus on picking up the pace a little. I successfully slowed myself down last week at the KY state match and I wanted to use today to try and prove to myself that I can shoot quick as well. I went in to this expecting my points to take a hit. The goal was to identify the pace at which I would like to be able to shoot 90-95% of points and then start working toward keeping the speed and adding the accuracy. I think I accomplished that. I shot the match fairly quickly, a little faster than some guys I know are fast A and M shooters and at the same overall time as an open GM, but dropped a lot of points and ended up shooting 75% of points after penalties (Thank you minor PF, and I had 4 mikes and a NS hit). The points are obviously unacceptable, however, the pace was decent. I had a few bobbles and stage plan hiccups (Mainly cause it was hard to ditch the habit of dropping a mag every time I leave an array). Today the classifier was Roscoe Rattle - 13-04. In keeping with my theme of the day I went for speed over accuracy, and as expected I ended up with a crappy run. Landed one shot on a NS and had a few deltas, leaving me with a HF around 5.1, good for about 40% in limited... ugh. Seems like lately classifiers are a rarity, I've shot probably 3 to 4 locals now without them and this is the first one for a while, so it stings to puke on it like that. One thing I've heard from much more accomplished shooters than I, is to treat classifiers like any other stage in the match... It seems like sound advice, unfortunately I have yet to follow through with it. I tend to realize as I'm on the line that this is the only stage that really matters outside the match and as a result I tend to push a little too much and usually end up dropping way too many points. I need to change this if I want to truly get better overall. Consistency is needed.

Moving on from here gonna work on pushing speed, but really continue to focus on points. Hopefully I see those things become less mutually exclusive.

Things to work on.. Mechanics-wise I need to think about gripping the gun a little harder, and hitting my grip better in the draw. These are things that can be accomplished in dryfire, which I've admittedly been slacking on lately. Another change I'd like to make is developing a wider stance. I tend to keep my feet about shoulder width apart and stand pretty straight up. I would like to get my feet wider. I think this will help me to move a little quicker in and out of positions as well as give me more stability when doing wide transitions.

Positives: I had a few stages where I was able to put together decent runs. My speed was decent, my splits and transitions were solid, I also felt like I moved pretty efficiently. I need to recognize this stuff as it happens and work to make a mental note of it, and hopefully it will happen a little more consistently.

Match video below:

Edited by shooterDrew
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  • 1 month later...

First post in a while.. Turns out starting a shooting journal at the end of a season, right when you put your house on the market is not the best way to dive in.. I have shot a couple local matches, an IDPA match and indoor USPSA. Other than that my practice time has dwindled in the last month. I am going down to Florida in January for the FL State Championship! Coming from Indiana weather I'm extremely pumped to get down there and hit the range. From now until then I have a goal of dryfire or live fire at least 5x a week. I'm guessing that about 4 of those sessions will be dryfire, and I'm hoping to get out to live fire 3 more times before its 2016 match time!

Because my shooting and practicing took a hit there for a while I find myself quickly gathering some rust on basic skills. A lot of my dryfire has been working on draws and reloads. When I go a decent amount of time without good practice I find myself bobbling reloads and losing a lot of speed on my draw. On the reloads I've noticed my issues are in grasping the mags. When I have a bobble I tend to not get a deep enough grip on the magazine, this becomes painfully obvious as the magazine slams sideways into the magwell rather than sliding in and allowing me to return to the target. Ive been working on slower speed reps where I absolutely make sure I get the correct grip, and then once I feel comfortable I start picking up the pace again. This is my 2nd week of hitting the dry fire hard, and I'm already seeing improvement in the reload. My biggest issue with the draw is how quickly I'm able to find that front sight. More and more reps are getting that back in order as well.

My last live fire session was positive. One thing I've noticed is with the colder weather my live fire practice sessions arent too elaborate. I set up some 18"x18" plates at 10 yards (about a yard apart) and worked on transitions. This is an area where I feel I've made some good improvement this year. Cutting down on time spent between targets has helped me pick up time in my stage performance for sure. I am doing a lot better in moving off target once I call a hit, and breaking a shot pretty quickly once I've got sights on the next target, but I can still see a lot of room for improvement in how fast I move from target to target. I need to work on pushing targets further away and really snapping from one to the next.

As far as match performance goes lately one thing is for sure, my classifier performances have been crappy (only had 1 classifier). I really have got to get my head right about shooting these. No matter how much I read or hear about making sure you get your hits, I seem to just want to hit the gas and it ends up costing me mikes. My biggest goal for the coming year is to change my approach to this part of the game. Last classifier shot was Front Sight. I had pretty fast string times, around 2.5 sec for the turn and draw and 2 sec for the facing down range string... my hits on 2 of the 3 targets were good... 4 alphas on the first and i think 3 alphas on the 3rd target, however, my hits on the middle target were terrible. I think I had 2 mikes, and I know it was because I was trying to push so hard and not give up any time that I pushed past the target as I was shooting. As much as I know sitting here that it doesn't matter if I ran the classifier in 3 seconds flat with those mikes it means nothing, once I get on the line I just wanna go fast. I think my break through will be when I can accept and apply what I'm writing currently, gotta get the hits.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The weather has unfortunately gone "winter." While the last few months were wonderfully mild we're now experiencing some chilly weather, oh well it was fun while it lasted.

I was able to shoot a couple locals last week, one indoor and one outdoor. I've found that indoor matches are a little more difficult because its considerably harder for me to find the front sight. Like most, I use a fiber optic front, and when indoors it gets zero light and really doesn't pop at all. That being said, after having shot a couple indoor matches since my last outdoor match, I definitely noticed my front sight yesterday while shooting outside!

A few observations from the last couple matches, I feel slow. I feel like my splits are slow, unnecessarily slow on closer open targets, and I move slowly. For the most part I've been making a point to speed up my transitions, and I'm happy with my progress so far, but my overall stage times need to come down, and I think being able to work with some faster splits will help, as well as quicker foot movement. Now I know that chasing screaming fast splits is generally not the best way to speed up a stage, I'm more just looking for a small improvement in my times, which of course like all things will add up over the course of a full match. I've found that I'm about 2-3 seconds slower than where I want to be on most stages.. sometimes more, sometimes things click and I end up with a decent pace. One things I've noticed lately is when making up shots, which I need to stop having to do, I've come up after a reload with an empty chamber several times. Due to my grip the slide release on my CZ does not engage on an empty chamber and if I've made a couple make ups that I didn't expect, or have a make up on a 10 shot array, I am not picking up on this and end up costing myself a couple seconds by way of dropping the hammer on an empty chamber and then having to rack in a round and then continue on. Eliminating this frequent mistake is probably going to be the easiest way of getting my overall times down, and will be something I'll keep in mind moving forward, but I'd also like to get myself moving faster.

Recent classifiers, Eye of the Tiger 09-14 and Disaster Factor 13-01.

So classifiers have given me fits lately.. I've not been approaching them with the right mindset and its cost me in the form of quick times littered with mikes. I'm trying to change my approach and work on consistency vs trying to blaze away. Eye of the tiger was a tough one, I thought, for minor scoring especially. I looked at this one before shooting it and decided I wanted to keep my pace between 3.5 and 4 sec, but knew I would be dropping some points no matter where I ended up, as this classifier essentially is the first half of El prez, except with ridiculous no shoots and hard cover making headshots the only option at 7 yards. I ran this classifer 2x, this is because I shot the local match 2x, once in production and once in Lim10- Minor (with limited off season shooting availability I want to shoot as much as possible so I signed up for both flights of this match). My first run at it was 3.69 and my 2nd was 3.80. Both were right about the pace I was trying to keep. Unfortunately I called a mike on the middle (headshot only / hard cover) target on my first shot. I did not let my sights settle and broke the shot high. The rest of my hits were there, although about evenly split between A and B, which kills the HF. With the mike this one was smoked. Next was my Lim10 run. I slowed down enough to ensure I wouldn't make the same mistake and added a little time to my overall, but got all my hits. Again, minor scoring smoked me and 4 B's ended up with a 65% run for Lim10. Next one was Disaster factor. I didn't push speed at all on this one and ended up shooting it about a 1-1.5s slower than I hoped. My hits were ok, but tight NS's on the top row of targets contributed to a few more charlies than I wanted and I ended up with a 65% run, which I'm ok with, because it did not involve mikes, and at this point thats an improvement.

On a positive note I feel like I'm having more confidence in where my shots are going. Only occasionally do I get surprised by a hit on target that I did not call. I still get the odd Delta that I didn't quite call, but for the most part I'm confident in A's or close Cs. No to start eliminating the close C's and be confident in As!

Heres match vid from yesterdays outdoor match (all but one stage that got cut short due to phone storage issues). I ended up 1st in production, of 18 shooters, including a couple A and M's. I'm not sure about overall placement because practicescore was jacked up and they only got posted to uspsa. I shot the match clean, albeit with a few more charlies and delta's than I would prefer. 86% of possible points which isn't terrible, but isn't good enough either.

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  • 3 weeks later...

First major of the year is in the books! I got the hell out of Indiana weather and went down to Frostproof to shoot the Florida State Championship. Thankfully I was able to avoid any of the terrible weather that showed up Friday morning. So I went in to this match with a little less live fire practice than I was hoping to have under my belt. The weather got rainy and cold for a few weeks before at home and it really put a damper on my ability to get to the range. I did, however, make a point to set aside more time for dryfire leading up to this, though still not as much as I probably should have.

I started off on the classifier stage, Window Pain. This is the first time I've shot this classifier, its a much more movement oriented classifier than I'm used to seeing. It was a decent stage to start on, and I was ok with my performance. Something that plagued me this match was make up shots. I clearly wasn't waiting and seeing A's on each target. While not a good thing, this did point out how much better I'm getting at calling my shots. I made up a lot of shots quickly, however, still ended up with 11 deltas and 1 mike for the match (the mike I did not call at all), which is an area that needs improvement. One thing that I think needs improvement to help my accuracy out a little is grip strength. I catch myself with a lazy grip on the gun frequently, and that translates to the sights jumping around a lot more than I would like. I need to work on my grip strength and tighten up my hold on the gun to really see some improvement in accuracy at speed.

On a semi positive note one thing I tried to focus on this match was setting straightforward stage plans. I have found that the more I try to game something or get tricky or push limits the less it seems to pay off. For this match I tried to shoot everything as straight forward as possible. I failed on a couple stages where I could have thrown in an extra reload to allow for make ups on tough partials or longer steel shots, and it definitely bit me. On one stage in particular, the 7th I think, I got a little ahead of myself trying to scream past a small piece of steel and it came back to bite me in the form of about 5 missed shots and a reload before I was able to hit it. ouch. After looking back I see a few things I could easily keep in mind and potentially cut about 7-10 seconds off my overall time from this match. (Obviously theres a lot more to go, but there are some time adding errors that are glaring)

A good take away for me is that I felt like I had a better approach to this match mentally that I have in the past. I had some struggles and put up some shitty stage performances, but I was able to stay positive and not let it affect the next stage. Thats a big win for me, as I have struggled with the positive mental aspect of sports in the past. Another positive is that I feel much more confident with SHO. I've made a point to incorporate that into each live fire training session, at least a mag or two, and I am already seeing improvement. This match had what I'd consider a fairly tough freestyle / SHO stage, and I'm happy to say I ended up shooting it clean. I could have turned a couple deltas on long targets to C's or even better A's, but one step at a time. I did not feel nervous about the SHO when stepping up to the shooting area and that certainly helped me perform better.

Overall my match performance was acceptable. I shot 86% of points after penalties (1 mike and 1 NS). I finished 6th overall at 77% of the winner Shane Coley (he's a beast) and finished first of 11 A-class shooters, as well as finishing above 6 of the 8 Master class shooters. My goal going into the match was to finish at 85%, so I was unable to achieve that, but I did come away with some positives and I think it was a good start to the season.

For upcoming training I am going to focus on improving grip strength and tightening up my grip, continue working on SHO and WHO, as well as movement and position entry / exit. Thats a long list of stuff to improve on, but I feel like if I rotate and pick one at each practice session and just hammer on it I might see some gains.

pov match video (3rd pers video is getting compiled and will be added)

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  • 3 weeks later...

Another "off season" match! Thankfully the weather calmed a bit and a nearby (2.5hr drive) local club hosted a February USPSA match. I'm very happy to be able to get out shooting a little.

I ended up ok overall for this match. No major disasters, but nothing overly good either. The stages were fairly straightforward and planning wasn't a big concern for the most part. During some maintenance on my primary gun recently I swapped out my red fiber in the front sight and thought I'd give green a try.. that did not last long. I just could not see the front sight at all like I can w/ red. I ended up hitting a safe table about half way through the match and putting a red fiber back in. Last few matches I feel like I've had some real trouble seeing the front sight like I want to, I feel like I was much better at the end of last season so I'll chalk that up to less trigger time and work on getting more dry fire done in the future. As for this match, failing to see the sights like I know I should cost me a couple hits on NS and a mike, it also resulted in me having several make up shots.. and again entering a position with an unknown empty chamber- I think this is my biggest pet peeve currently. Another issue I noticed is that I tend to take a while, several stages, to really get warmed up. I can usually get through the first couple stages without a major disaster, however, my performance seems considerably lower than toward the end of a 6 or 7 stage local match. I think I would be well served to figure out a way to get the blood flowing before the first stage, and find a safe area to do a little dry fire as well.

Another poor score on the classifier.. I wont really complain too much about my performance on it, even though I ended up with about a 65%. It was 13-05 Tick Tock. This is an unloaded table start with a reload from the table. My initial start wasn't perfect but not terrible either. I did not smoothly load the magazine, but once I got it seated I found the sights and shot pretty quickly. I had a little bobble on the reload, grabbed the mag fine but missed the insert and took a few extra tenths to get it seated. For the stage, which is 16 scored hits, I had 14 Alpha and 2 Charlie in 8.91 sec, unfortunately on my first run through the array I nicked the NS while shooting at the top target. perfectly bisected the perf so I still got my A hit, but cost me 10 points. On a short classifier like that the score was killed. It wasn't going to be a blazing fast run, but it would have been a solid 80% or so and right now thats where I need to be consistently. Oh well. For the match I ended up with 87.5% of pts before penalties, and 84.3% after penalties. Thats not horrible, but its no where near what Id like to see. Obviously I'd like to get those two %'s to be the same... and closer to 90-95%. Its all a work in progress.

My next major match is the battle in the bluegrass in early april. I'm going to be shooting single stack for that, as well as A6, Indiana Prod/SS and SS nats. I'm still waiting on my custom SS gun to be built but just aquired a used Springfield RO that should get me through until thats done. After SS Nats I will continue focusing on production, and I will likely still shoot some here and there with the production gun through the spring. I will try and hit some classifier matches to see if I can't work through this classifier tanking issue I've got going on.

Match Video:

3rd Pers:

POV:

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So, I made the switch to single stack for a few months. I am shooting the Single Stack Nats and want to perform a little better this year than last... Last year was my first year jumping into USPSA. SS Nats was one of my first major matches and I made the mistake of shooting production gear literally up until a few days before I left for Illinois. That did not work out. I shot terribly, I planned the stages poorly, I had a lot of mikes, and I failed to follow some of the stage instructions, it was a fail on every level. So following that match I told myself I was going to shoot SS Nats again this year and make a point to actually be ready and prepared to shoot my gear. I think in the time since last May I have made considerable strides in my shooting, I have shot in numerous major matches and learned how to plan and execute a stage a little better. This year I will also be shooting a major caliber gun rather than the 9mm I shot last year.

The last couple days I got started with dryfiring the single stack gun and gear. I have a belt set up for my SS thats almost identical to my production set up, so the change there should be minimal. Unfortunately SS does not allow the holster to be as low as in production, but that should not take long to get used to the new belt. Right out of the gate I noticed that the SS gun is a lot harder on the hands! I prefer aggressive grips and this gun has similar VZ grips to my CZs, however, the gun itself has a lot more sharp angles than the CZ so that will take a bit of getting used to. At the end of a 20 min dry fire session it seems my hands feel a lot more worn out and scraped up.. I'm such a wimp.

To start with I've been focusing on draws and reloads, which tends to be a lot of my dry fire. Not necessarily working to get super speed but more trying to get confident the gun will index with my eyes on the draw, and after a reload. I can definitely say I have a lot of room for improvement in my practice methods.. hopefully I will get in a better groove..

My first match in single stack will be on Weds at an indoor local match. Hopefully all goes well and I start down this path in a good way. I'm looking forward to some major scoring!! haha, but really I plan on taking it easy and making sure I get through these first few local matches without too many huge manipulation bobbles due to the new platform. Upcoming for me is Battle in the Bluegrass, Area 6, the Indiana SS/Prod, and SS Nats. After that I am still debating if I will go right back to production or if I will shoot SS in the Buckeye Blast, I guess that will depend on how I'm doing and whether or not I feel like I'm in a groove.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I can not complain one bit about how many matches I've been able to shoot this Jan-Feb.. its great. I just had a couple more this last week and another coming up on Wednesday. So far the last two matches are my first in my build up to Single Stack Nationals. There will be a bit of a learning curve.. Happily it seems the 1911 seems to index to about the same position as my CZs.. however, I feel much slower on my splits. My hand strength and recoil control need improvement it would seem. I am finding that this gun has considerably more muzzle flip than my CZ with minor loads (not a shocker) so I'm having to learn to wait on the gun a little more for follow up shots.

First of two recent matches I was actually able to shoot 2 times. This particular match runs 2 flights, and its possible to both flights in different divisions, I opted to shoot first in single stack and 2nd in production. First go round in single stack was not great, but had some positives. Most of the targets were about 10-12 yards and several had tight no shoots. I tried to make a point to see my sights as much as possible but ended up with a mike on each run. The shots are mine and I obviously did not see enough of the sights on those, but I will say that indoor matches like this tend to have very poor overhead lighting and seeing the sights is not always as fast as when shooting outdoors. Another issue I ran into is something that I'm guessing all single stack shooters have to deal with, slide lock reloads. . . I found that the penalty for make up shots tends to be running the gun to slide lock and then that continues through all the 8 shot arrays that follow. This makes accurate shots (the first time!) even that much more important. Also I still have a lot of work to do in my dryfire. I have been making a big focus to do reloads a little higher up closer to my shooting position. I keep catching myself bringing the gun in and down to far, this causes the occasional bobble but more importantly it takes more time, and causes delays in me being ready to engage the next targets. Classifier for this match was 99-13 Can You Count. Its a super fast close range classifier that doesn't allow much room for error. In the first string I smoked it.. 3.6ish time and 48 or 49 points. My second string was not quite as clean. I bobbled the reload and ended up adding .75 to 1 second. Overall I ended up with 12.1hf which should be about 83%.

My overall takeaways from this match are a need to make sure all my shots count so I can avoid slide lock reloads (especially in SStk), keep my reloads up a little higher.. and I need to improve my recoil control and speed up my ability to make accurate shots.

On my 2nd run through the match I actually had quite a few more issues while going back to my production gear. Overall performance was a bit less than in SS, but my classifier run in production was smoking. I chalked that up to going from major to minor recoil, and reloading double stack mags as opposed to the single stacks. production classifier run was 13.8hf and almost 93%. Finally broke my streak of bad classifier scores...

Single Stack vid:

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Outdoor in february! In Indiana.. thats the crazy part. Well this one was my most recent match experience, single stack.

Unfortunately I was the first shooter and our first stage was the classifier 99-13 Quicky II. This one features some SHO and WHO shooting at about 10 yards on open targets. I did not perform well, and actually plunked a hit on the NS on the WHO string and had a mike on the back target.. oh well. The rest of the match was a little better. I was slow to get moving and for the most part felt like I did everything slow. I ended up shooting about 92% of points before penaltlies (30 of my 40 total penalty points were on the classifier) which is not bad. Man do I like major scoring compared to minor... but again I noticed an issue with recoil control, which cause me to really take my time finding the sights, which of course lead to slow stage times. Decent match overall, just needed to be a little quicker. I still found myself needing make-up shots and running to slide lock several times.. kinda frustrating.

match video:

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  • 1 month later...

Been neglecting this for a while. Lots of matches since my last post, and even another major down in Kentucky. I shot the battle in the bluegrass. For the most part the last couple months have seen some improvement, with more than a few head scratching moments. If there is one thing I can do its find new ways to make mistakes.

A couple of the things I've really been focusing on are recoil control (now that I'm shooting major in SS rather than minor in Prod) and moving through a stage faster. I feel like my reloads could really use some help, and when I dry fire I find thats a lot of my focus. So I'm hoping for more consistency in that. Anyway, in the last 3 or 4 local matches I feel like I really made some strides with my recoil control. I've tightened my grip up a bit and this has helped me speed up my splits while staying in control of the gun. A problem that popped up in learning my way through this was trigger freeze. I do not recall having any issues with trigger freeze while shooting production, but a couple times a match with single stack, maybe because I'm really crushing down on the gun (for me anyway) I will find a close target and go in to hammer it, and end up feeling like I half-way seizure my way through 2 shots at a terribly slow pace. As a fix I'm working on slapping the trigger a little bit more on close targets where I can get away with it. I still tend to ride the reset on longer shots where I'm more deliberate with my trigger pull, but when attempting to smoke a close target that led to the freeze. So, that problem is on its way out the door (still hits every so often but i'm learning), my next project is decreasing stage time. Watching 3rd person vids of me I feel like I have been slothing through stages at a pace that is unnecessarily slow. Obviously the movement through each stage is a place where the truly top tier guys are very efficient, I need to work on this. I've made a point to really push my foot speed. Start moving faster after finishing an array and stop quicker. This has helped and allowed me make some strides in this area as well.

The most recent major match showed me some of my progress. Although I was shooting single stack this time, rather than production like when I shot the at the same range at the Kentucky State match in October I was still able to gauge my progress by comparing my performance with some better shooters. The overall winner in October was Russell Maskey, another top shooter was Gilbert Perez. They're obviously very talented shooters and having shot with Maskey in the past I know that he moves through a stage very quickly. Last year both finished the match with an overall time of 195. My overall time was 236 (w/ 93% of points). My goal was to close that gap considerably without giving up points, otherwise, whats the point?? So fast forward 5 months and here we go at BITB VII. This time I'm shooting single stack, so its not totally an apples to apples comparison, but with the 8-10 magazine disparity I figure if anything I'm at an overall time disadvantage to production shooters. Well my overall time for this match was 193 (w/ 85.5% of points- so not as good but not disasterous)and an overall decent match performance. The same two guys I'm looking at to compare for improvement finished at 184 and 198 overall time respectively. I was able to close a significant gap there, and while I did have a couple bone head moments- 2 mikes and a no shoot on my card at the end of the day- I felt I stayed pretty well in control all day long. I ended up coming in 11th in the overall match standings and 6th in Single Stack, at 89% of Mike Gnyra's top score, I'm very happy with that! Again an improvement over October in several areas I have been working on. This match was my best major match performance to date, and one of the things that I'm most excited about is that while I performed at my highest level so far, I can identify several things that need attention and once those are squared away I can see doing even better as the season progresses! I've also found that as I've gotten more accustomed to Single Stack I'm enjoying it a lot. I started up this year with really my only goal was to go to nationals and perform MUCH better than last year, where I embarrassed myself pretty badly, but now I'm really liking it and who knows, maybe I'll keep going with it after Nats.

One more plus from BITB VII, I was able to take my first major match stage win (Overall not just single stack!)! At a match with about 10 GMs and about 20 Ms I'm very pumped up for that!

Match results: https://practiscore.com/results/18362

As I move forward I'm looking to keep and build on the foot speed I've worked on, as well as work on limiting those costly errors (M and NS!!). My stage planning has improved, but still not a strength. Thankfully I always find helpful shooters in my squad that are willing to talk through their plans and why they do what theyre doing.

Match video below, just POV as I didn't get anyone to vid my runs for me. Still provides me with some helpful perspective, though definitely not as helpful as 3rd pers.

just the stage win run! haha like I said, I'm pumped!

Edited by shooterDrew
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  • 2 weeks later...

Couple more majors in the books. Unfortunately not my best performance at Area 6, but I followed it up with a decent run at the Indiana Single Stack / Prod / Revo Championship a couple days later. Still shooting my single stack in the run up to SS Nats and working through some issues. Overall for both matches I feel like I lost some ground on my movement. I think I let that get to the back of my mind after a decent pace at BITB and it showed by way of generally slow stage times. I just did not feel like I had much pep in my step.

Area 6: Looooooong drive for me, 10 hours on weds to shoot thursday and then drive back Friday to make it in time to shoot IN P/S/R on saturday. This was my longest shooting weekend of the year.

The match started out ROUGH. My first stage was #2, which was a pretty complex stage. Esp coming from BITB where the match design kept limit mag capacity in mind, this match threw me for a loop. I did not adjust well initially and found myself failing my stage plans pretty quickly and then getting lost in the rest of the run. Out of the gate I blew it pretty badly and ended up with numerous make up shots on longer paper and small steel, resulting in a ridiculously long stage time and very low HF- 2.8xxx... ugh. On to the next stage where it was more of the same poor execution, but not nearly as bad of a result. Finally I started picking it up a bit and got my head in the game, had a few 8+ HF runs where I felt pretty good, I even had an overall stage win! (in single stack). This was a speed shoot with 4 shots required on each paper and a couple activators and drop turners.. it was tricky. I had a NPM and still ended up winning the stage if that tells you anything. Vid for that one will be posted below. Well as the day went on I fell back out of rhythm after a couple equipment malfunctions (which so far I have NEVER had in a major).... very disappointed in the malfs and I will be replacing involved parts before nationals to make sure that does not happen again. In the end I finished 14th, won B-class, and shot about 88% of points after penalties. My overall time on this match was waaaaaaaaay too long and I need to refocus on moving quicker through a stage.

Stage win!

match video Area 6:

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Next up is the Indiana SS/Prod/Revo Championship.. This was much closer to home! I went in to this match with a little less confidence in my gun than normal. Prior to A6 my springfield RO has been flawless.. a couple malfs in a major match had me a little concerned. Thankfully I had no issues and the gun ran fine all day. That said, I've already ordered a new extractor, ejector, and recoil spring just in case those are issues waiting to pop up again. This was a used gun when I bought it and I've put about 3500 rounds through it this spring so far, so to be on the safe side I'm trying to head off any potential problems.

IN SS/P/R:

Overall I felt like I had a fairly decent day. My first stage out of the gate was a drastic performance improvement over the first stage at A6. The stage was not as complex and the plan I made was more straight forward, which helped me execute it much easier. Decent result to start the day put everything on a much better track than in GA. While the day was not perfect, had a mike on a swinger and plugged a NS later in the day, I felt like I did much better damage control when I did have a hiccup, so I didn't bleed points as much on stages where everything didn't go quite as planned. At the end of the day I still felt slow. Shot with a pretty good M-class guy who I struggled to keep up with stage-time-wise. He ended up finishing about 6% ahead of me in the overall results, and I could see it all day. I know you gotta shoot your own game, but I personally think it helps to shoot along side someone who pushes you to keep your pace up. Again, as with A6, I just need to focus on getting/staying low, and moving quicker. My hits were pretty good, altho I was still plagued with make up shots on several stages, in the end I was just under 93% of points after penalties. I finished 4th overall (out of 86) and won B-class. I still haven't hit my goal (set last year) of finishing with 95% of points at a major, but I'm getting close!

Next up is Single Stack Nationals! I'm pumped. I'm glad I was able to have a good outting at the IN SSPR to distance myself from the A6 performance before Nats. I won't be able to shoot another USPSA match before Nats, but might squeeze in a multigun match next weekend- I really enjoy shooting 3gun, even though I suck something awful when it comes to reloading a shotgun. My goal for Nationals will be a solid performance with no penalties, and making sure I focus on moving my feet! Last year I was not prepared, and had a horrible showing finishing at 49%.. this year hoping to add 30-40 points to that finish and end up over 80%.

I got out this morning and did a little practice with my SS gear working on trigger speed and draws from different positions. Also backed it up and worked on shooting around a barricade from 50 yards, onto a 18"x18" piece of steel. I like working at longer than usual distances on steel, makes then feel much larger when I move up to actual match distances.

IN SS/Prod/Revo stage vid - 3rd pers:

match vid - POV:

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  • 3 weeks later...

Nationals! My first, second trip to a Nationals match.. if that makes any sense. Last year I was about 6 months into the sport and decided that I wanted to go shoot against the best.. So I signed up for the first nationals I could. I have owned 1911s for a pretty good while so I had a gun for it.. however production is my normal division. Well last year I made the mistake of not putting any time on the 1911 platform until about a week before I left for SS Nats and it showed. Add in the stress of a match of that level, my inexperience in the sport and major matches and my performance was not good. I ended up about 282nd at 49% of the overall winner. For the last year I've been telling myself that I was gonna go back and make up for poor performance. This year I did a lot more prep, since then I've shot numerous majors, and I went in to this one a little better prepared.

Well this year I can not say that I walked away from the match totally thrilled with my performance, but I can definitely say I see improvements from last year. First off I absolutely improved on my penalty points. Last year I had a rough day and ended up with 210 penalty points, and a nauseating 57.24% of points at the end of the day. Ouch. Coming into this nationals I absolutely remembered that, and I think it led to me being overly cautious all day long, especially on partials with NS (which seemed like about 90% of targets. I felt slow moving, certainly felt slow on the trigger, and in general spent most of the day with out much confidence. Thankfully the results this year were considerably better. My goal of finishing above 80% did not happen... but I was at 69.8% with 86.2% of points. Looking back over the stats and the match, I feel like I just never got comfortable. Now, while I am not overly happy with my performance I can definitely recognize that there has been significant improvement. My overall placement improved from 282nd to 61st, and my percent of the winner bumped a hair over 20%. I'll take it and move forward, hoping to see solid improvement through the next year!

Performance observations: Move my feet faster! After showing some improvement in the Bluegrass and Indiana matches leading up to this, I feel like I took a couple steps back and really lacked in motivated movement through the stages. Granted this match contained a lot of short stages and there was not a ton of movement required, but even what little movement was required, felt slow.

Be more confident with my shots. My past horrible performance at 2015 SS Nats was on my mind all day and I really felt threatened by all the white targets I saw.. I managed to get out with only 1 NS and a single Mike (still more than I'd like, but completely acceptable). I specifically recall a few tough shots that I really felt comfortable taking, and those shots were good hits and at a much faster pace, however, the majority of the match was not like this.

Show the steel some respect! One of my better overall performances was the all steel stage, 22 pieces of steel with staged magazines throughout. Although I had some issues going 1 for one on single pieces of steel scattered throughout the match, I actually did pretty well here (19th overall for the match). I think the difference between that stage and the rest of my make up shots on steel is that on the all steel stage I acknowledged what I was up against and stayed with the shots and made them. With some of the singular steel shots I think I get a little ahead of myself and start worrying about the next paper, which causes more time spent trying to get there. I think I tend to look at the steel as a quick target that I can use to propel myself to the next array, rather than give it the same attention as paper (I would say I tend to have many more make up shots on steel than I would on paper)

Well after this its pretty much back to production and a slow prep for some upcoming majors and Production nationals. I'm holding steady at 82% in production, and really would like to make Master class in the next month or two, we shall see. On thing that might change my plans a bit, I have a 1911 build that I got started last year that should be getting finished soon, so if that happens I might find myself shooting a little more SS this spring.

SS nats match video--

POV:

3rd pers:

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Had a small milestone in practice today.. Lately I've been pushing to increase hand speed a little. In my dryfire I felt like I hit a plateau and could not get myself under 1 sec for reloads. I really felt like I was chasing the beep but not making it. In live fire I was hovering around 1.3 sec and when I tried pushing any faster lots of bobbles would pop up. Well after shooting single stack all spring I transitioned back to my CZ and immediately feel faster. I like the lower holster position, so my draws are feeling good, and the bigger mags and mag opening are certainly welcome! Today I set up a piece of steel at a little over 7 yards and just worked on draws and reloads. I know there is MUCH more to quick shooting than this, but in my transition back to production I want to make sure I'm not losing any ground. Today I saw some solid gains. I was pushing consistent draws in the .91-.97 range and reloads were very consistently sub 1.1 sec. Fastest draw of the day was my final bullet fired, at .79. And fastest reload achieved my goal of sub 1 sec, just sneaking in at .99 sec.

Last year I can recall feeling like I was beating my head against a wall trying to get down to 1.3-1.4 with reloads. It feels good to see gains.

https://youtu.be/yJ_yUJC4psQ

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edited by shooterDrew
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  • 1 month later...

Been another couple months since my last post. A lot has changed for me, mainly we moved to a new house. While that is a great thing for life and the family, its certainly impacted my skill building this season! My practice sessions have been few and far between, and when I do get out it seems like I struggle to make good use of the time. Well, we're settled in now so hopefully that's all going to change.

Update: I was able to sneak into Master class in production! Whew! Just barely, at 85.11%. Pretty pumped to get this done within my first 2 years in the sport (cutting it close as the update was 1 day shy of my 2 year anniversary). This has been a goal of mine, well making GM is a goal, so this goal is in line with that. I am streaky with classifier performance and actually as of late had hit a bad patch. No matter how many times I tell myself to make sure I get my A's, when the timer goes off I throttle down and its a blur. As to be expected, ZERO good classifier performances come from this approach. Actually its the rare times I am able to shoot the stage fully controlled that I end up with a decent score. I know a lot of people, almost always people who've already achieved GM say not to worry about classification and thats fine. It makes sense to focus on match performance goals. Achieving a top classification is a goal of mine too, just like improving my match % finishes in majors.

Lately it seems like I've hit a spot where my speed has progressed a little but my accuracy was kinda left in the dust. Toward the end of last season I found myself getting much more accurate. The last major of the year had me just shy of 95% of possible points, however, my overall time was terribly slow. I was averaging 4-6s per stage behind the top finishers. This year I've made a point to pick up the pace a little. It is showing up in my stage times decreasing, but also my % of points as well. I am happy with my improvement in speed, but just waiting on something to click a little in my training to allow me to be more consistent in seeing my sights on each target. Its not that I'm running around like a mad man chucking shots all over the place, more that on several stages in a match I'm allowing 2 or 3 targets on a stage to get the better of me- not showing them enough respect and paying for it with D's and M's. A lot of times it will even be on a close target that I take for granted rather than a tough shot that I just didn't make. Heading into August I have possibly 5 or 6 more Majors this year. I am going to make a serious effort to shoot clean matches, rather than worry about keeping up with stage times.

My most recent Major match performance, Ryan Rocks Charity Blast. It was a fun match, kinda kicked my ass though for reasons mentioned above. I ended up with 4 mikes I think on 8 stages.. not great. Somehow ended up as 1st A (2nd Major this year where I finished 1st A), so that was a good way to go out of A class and start into Master.

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