Jump to content
Brian Enos's Forums... Maku mozo!

Trung's Training Journal


itlogo

Recommended Posts

No time better than the present to start my training journal.

 

I've been shooting USPSA for about six years, and a casual shooter before that for just a couple more.  While you would think that I should be further along in my shooting, I think the first four years were sporadic involvement.  I started out strong, going to range days, dry fire, talking to shooters, watching videos, etc., but that lasted just a few months before I settled into a routine of about one or two matches a month, and hardly any practice.  It's only been in the last couple of years that I've really been motivated to get serious about improvement, much more so this past year.

 

I've taken a quite a few classes, and all have influenced me in my shooting one way or another.  The first one that I ever took was from Cha-Lee here in Colorado.  I didn't know what to expect leading up to it, but as is Cha-Lee's routine, he communicated a lot prior to the class (have you seen his diary??) on what to bring and expect of the class.  The main emphasis was that we weren't going to retain everything he was going to teach that same day--it's important to take copious notes!  After that, I attended both of Manny Bragg's intro and advanced classes, Bob Vogel, Paul Clark Jr, and JJ Racaza classes.  Throughout all of them, Cha-Lee's advice to take detailed notes stayed with me, and I still go back and review them today.

 

This past year, I've been steadily shooting at least one local match a week, all of the major Colorado matches (about 2-3), and about 3-4 out-of-state majors.  I haven't attended Nationals yet, but maybe in 2018.  For the better part of last year, I was practicing more than I was attending matches, which was helpful in that I was able to work on fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.  But I think I also lost the urgency in my shooting because my practice sessions were too laid-back.  It's easy to fall into a relaxed routine when you're practicing by yourself.  BTW, I find it strange that there's shooters (some of them VERY good) who say that they don't practice at all--they just shoot a lot of matches, and still do quite well.

 

So speaking of practice, a couple of years ago, I finally got my membership into a local gun club that's close to my house.  The club doesn't allow shooting into side berms and steel is very restricted, but it's a huge step up from, well, no shooting.  When I went to practice (once every couple of weeks), I'd bring as much ammo as I could and blast until I got bored.  It wasn't very focused training, for sure.  In retrospect, I wasted a lot of ammo and gained very little.  This past year, I took Manny Bragg's advice and started bringing only 100 rounds at a time.  With a limited amount of ammo, the importance of every shot placement goes way up.  Where I had been throwing out targets after a single session because of holes all over them, now I reuse the same targets for weeks even when the A zone is completely shot out (BTW, I've also got a set of Action Target Evil Roy steel targets, which are one of the best shooting-related purchases I've ever made).

 

My practice sessions are a bit more organized this year than in the past.  I have a list of about two dozen different types of drills for various skills, and I'll pick one (sometimes two) of them to practice that day.  I sometimes take notes as I'm doing the drills, but it's pretty sparse.  I don't really review them that much, which is part of the reason why I'm starting this journal.  For most of the drills, I know my par time to run them cleanly, so I figure if by the end of the session I've improved upon that time, then I've made some progress.  The problem is, I don't always improve on the times, or I can't do it consistently.  I just figure that if I run the drill enough times, I'll get better at it, which is true to an extent, but it could also be true that all I'm doing is consistently practicing bad habits.

 

The other realization I've recently had about my practice is that I've been lacking a critical element--doing things just beyond my level of competence.  As I said, I only bring 100 rounds of ammo, and I try to put every one of them into the A zone.  When I miss [the A zone], I'll try and assess why, and then usually slow down a bit to ensure I don't miss again.  Of course, if I can properly diagnose what really caused the miss, I'll try to fix that, but slowing down is inherently part of the reaction, too.  My mindset going into it is, "How much can I push before I start to miss?"  Instead, I want to start asking, "How much can I push to make me start missing?"  It's a subtlety that boils down to this--I've flip-flopped my match/practice mindset.  I push beyond my abilities during matches and shoot within them during practice.

 

Oh, and dry-fire.  I usually dry-fire about 30 minutes for 3-4 times a week.  It's repetitive, mundane, and more of an afterthought than purposeful (much like this postscript).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 hours ago, itlogo said:

My mindset going into it is, "How much can I push before I start to miss?"  Instead, I want to start asking, "How much can I push to make me start missing?"  It's a subtlety that boils down to this--I've flip-flopped my match/practice mindset.  I push beyond my abilities during matches and shoot within them during practice.

 

 

Are you saying that ^^^ is your current mindset and are then wanting your new mindset to be:  Push beyond your abilities during PRACTICE and shoot within them during matches? 

 

Congrats on starting your training journal!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

9 hours ago, AlphaCharis said:

 

Are you saying that ^^^ is your current mindset and are then wanting your new mindset to be:  Push beyond your abilities during PRACTICE and shoot within them during matches? 

 

Congrats on starting your training journal!

Yes, that's right--I need to get in the habit of pushing more during practice.  Thanks for the read.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I should've named this thread, "Trung & Hieu's Training Journal," because my son and I almost always live fire practice together.

 

This past weekend, we were out practicing side-to-side movement between two arrays, specifically, entering positions from the side.  For a long while, I've entered with my trailing/braking foot inside of the shooting area.  For instance, if I'm moving left-to-right into a shooting area, I'll aim to plant my left foot just inside of the shooting area, drop my weight to brake heavily on it, then bring my right leg in.  I tried to explain this to Hieu, but I think it just confused him and caused him to count or plan his steps the whole way there.  After some funny moments of running (and jumping) into position, I just told him to "get into position" however he wanted, but do it smoothly.  He naturally did it with his lead leg, and did it consistently, too.

 

I'm not going to force him to do it my way, but for me, braking with my trailing leg is usually smoother and I feel like I can scrub off a lot of speed quickly.  When I try to aggressively enter with my lead leg, I sometimes end up having to shoot on one leg (the lead one) because the momentum is still pushing me outward and I can't plant my other foot.  I don't have any specific timings to compare, but they both feel about the same to me.  I've done trailing-foot braking for a while so it feels more natural to me.

 

 

As a side note, I really like setting up the targets as steel-paper-steel because it forces you to enter and leave on steel.  I find this really emphasizes shot calling vs entering/leaving on paper, where it's easier to get a bit sloppy with where your sights are in the A zone (or just in brown).  I know you'd say that I should always call my shots, whether on paper or steel, but if I always did what I should do, then I wouldn't need to practice :)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Maybe an easier concept for your son to understand is focusing on where the toe of the leading or trailing foot is pointing when it is the first foot to step into the position. Watch the video of your son trying both methods. Every time he steps into the position with the trailing foot its pointed at the side berm instead of down range where it should be. Every time he steps into the position with the leading foot its pointed down range like it should be. That is likely the primary reason why he is able to deploy the leading foot entry better than the trailing foot. Do some dry fire foot work drills with your son to try to mimic the toe pointing down range when entering a lateral position regardless of what foot is being used. Once he gets the proper toe pointing process down then entering the position with either foot will "feel" the same.

Edited by CHA-LEE
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ah, good observation, Cha-Lee.  It didn't occur to me to point it out during practice because I normally start turning my entire body towards the target as I'm approaching the position, which in turn, turns my feet.  And since I was trying to explain just the entering part to him (without emphasis on facing the targets), he was only thinking about footsteps instead of body/foot direction.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

With the weather and holidays, it'd been nearly a month since my last match.  Instead of the usual 3-field courses, 1-short, 1-classifier, the BOD decided to just do four field courses.  During this month's practices, I'd been working on my transitions, specifically getting my eyes moving to the next target as soon as I broke the shot.  While I think I did that (mostly) during this match, another thing I noticed about my transitions is that I'm still swinging with my arms/upper body instead of my hips/legs.  It's apparent throughout all of the stages, but probably more visible at 2m08s where you can see my arms swing towards the left target, and then my hips follow.

 

 

This is one of those bad habits that's really hard for me to break.  I know that I should transition with my legs and hips, and I do it during practice, but not in the match.  It seems that I'm standing too upright during transitions, which would make it harder to use my legs, even if I had consciously thought about it.  Maybe it's easier to do during practice because I'm only working on that one skill and can start out with a wider/lower stance.  Maybe the practice ought to be entering into position and getting setup wide/low enough before shooting?

 

As for my other goal of shooting within my abilities at matches, I think I was able to maintain a steady performance throughout and didn't feel rushed in my shooting, but I did have one penalty for a no-shoot.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I just started reading Ben Stoeger's, "Dry-Fire Training," and while this may be old knowledge for some, I hadn't really considered my dry fire sessions to be the main practice sessions, with live fire to reaffirm what I'm doing at home.  I had always thought of dry fire as a time to work on things that I could do without live ammo--consistent draw times, reloads, movement, etc, so that I didn't have to focus on them during my live fire.  With the book in mind, I'm going to dry-fire one or two drills throughout the week and then do the same drills at the range to confirm.

 

To me, this seems like a very good way to ensure that my dry fire is effective.  If my live fire times are close to my dry fire, then I know I'm simulating the drill properly in dry fire, and I can continue improving upon it every day.  It also makes dry firing a bit more interesting now that I'm doing something that I'm purposely measuring at the range.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...

Now that shooting season is here, I'm grateful for all of the dry-fire practice I've been doing during the off-season.  I've been working pretty much exclusively with transitions during my sessions, and can start to see some areas of that skill improving during my match performance.  Most  notably, I've realized that I've been tracking the sights from target-to-target much more than I thought that I was.  While I knew that I wasn't supposed to do that, I wasn't quite sure how to get my eyes to the next target ahead of the gun.  The two main things that I now pay most attention to are 1) am I seeing the target first and then the sights moving onto it, and 2) can I feel my legs pushing instead of my torso rotating?

 

For getting my eyes ahead, a couple of things that seem to have helped: calling a good shot on the last target, and picking a specific spot on the next target at which to aim.  Being able to call a good shot frees up my eyes to move the next target, and picking a specific spot on the next one makes it easier for me to tell when it's "close enough" to break the shot.  As I started consciously paying attention to these things during my dry-fire, the skill of noticing when they didn't happen transferred to my live-fire and match runs, too.  It's almost like that uneasy feeling you have when you get a bad grip on your draw--you know it right away that something's off.

 

The other thing I've been working on is using my legs to transition instead of swinging my arms or twisting my torso.  I'm starting to get a better idea of how far apart my feet ought to be, the feeling in my toes as they dig into the ground, the slight delay of my arms following to the target (instead of them leading).  I'm still puzzled about how to simultaneously enter a position, shoot early (before I'm fully settled), and setup my feet for transitions.  Often times, there seem to be extra footsteps that result in delays shooting or transitioning.  In my latest match video, you can see that for almost every position with multiple targets, I enter and then take an extra step to move my feet further apart.

 

 

As for this match, though, I'm mostly satisfied with my mindset throughout--I didn't try to go beyond what I felt comfortable shooting, and I shot 96% points (not counting the steel behind the barrel that I completely forgot about).  Instead of feeling like I could've shot faster, I'm learning to critique the individual skills that'll eventually lead to lower overall times.

 

Also, shoutout and free plug for @CHA-LEE on finishing his first book, Path Of Focused Effort.  Many of us spend a lot of time thinking about this sport; few can break down the qualities needed for effective training like Big Panda.  Hit http://www.bigpandaperformance.com/ and get your copy of the book!

Edited by itlogo
Grammar
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...