EatMeerkats

Whoops... either way, it's still the best!

Just came across this over at XDTalk: The IPSC Song (or, direct link to the song)

8/23/08: 1 hour dry fire. I mixed things up a bit today and did some of the awareness exercises from PS: BF, which inspired me to do some reloads with my eyes closed. It's amazing the things you notice when your eyes are closed. Once I went back to eyes open reloads, I started seeing more too. As soon as I knew the mag was going in, my eyes snapped to the front sight and I saw the arc it made as I pointed the gun back on target. 8/24/08: 1 hour dry fire. 8/25/08: Final League Night I shot one of the Ball family's Paras (16-40) today, and it was a great experience. Being unfamiliar with the gun really made me back off the speed and go for accuracy, and it showed. By the end of the night, I had mastered the head shot on my favorite no-shoot + target configuration. Actually, these were even worse because only the head was exposed, and none of the lower A-zone. I did have some difficulty getting a good grip on the gun, because my weak hand kept hitting the oversized mag release, and I also wasn't riding the thumb safety with my strong hand, which allowed my weak hand to bump it up as the gun returned from recoil. Because of where the slide stop is on my XD, I've trained myself to keep my strong hand thumb off the gun to prevent the slide from not locking back on an empty mag. That didn't really work so well here. Shooting Limited was a nice change because I didn't have to reload every 2 seconds, and only had to worry about where to shoot from and what order to shoot things in. You Limited/Open guys and gals have it easy! The next time I shoot a match with my Production gun, I hope to shoot at the same, slightly backed off, pace I did today. I think the results will be pretty good if I can resist the NEED FOR SPEED! Also, a BIG THANKS to Coach, Jane, and Dave for inviting me to their homes to shoot with them and teaching me so much this summer. I've sure come a long way since Spring, and I hope to continue to learn and improve. It may be time to implement Pharaoh Bender's insane daily dry fire schedule.

You're not the last one standing... school may "start" for me next week, but I'm just doing research and am not taking any classes, so I really only have 2 meetings a week with my advisor and do whatever I want the rest of the week. I have been known to take mornings off to go shoot instead of doing work. Lately, I've been starting to feel guilty if I go to sleep without having done any live/dry fire that day... You look to be in good shape for Nationals, and I'm sure you'll do great! Btw, if you happen to run into Jessie Abbate, can you get me her autograph??

Is it just me, or does he look a lot like Rick Astley? Every time I watch the show, I think of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu_moia-oVI (it doesn't count as a rickroll if I warn you in advance, right? )

Wow, what a profound way to put it... I never thought of it that way! I need to stop shooting C's LOL

Oh, that's easy. I'm becoming a Grand Master. I don't know what this journey has in store for me, or if I'll ever get there, but it's gonna be one heck of a ride. 8/18/08: 1 hour dry fire. I usually shoot with my shoulders rolled up and forward a little, which results in some noticeable tension in them. I spent this session trying to focus on keeping them back and relaxed. 8/19/08: League Night - Steel Match We shot steel, but with some movement mixed in on a few of the stages. Shooting steel on the move is quite a bit harder than shooting (most) paper targets. One thing I learned was that no matter how simple a stage looks, VISUALIZE EVERYTHING. I had planned on shooting some targets in a certain order upon entering a box, but I ended up shooting them in a different (and slower) order because I didn't visualize it like I would a normal USPSA stage. Throughout the evening, I had what I thought were rounds not going off, but it turned out that my trigger wasn't resetting. Eventually, it started taking a few seconds to reset. I hadn't cleaned the gun for just over a month, and I guess 1,855 rounds was too many... When I went to take the slide off once I got home, it took more effort than usual to slide it off... okay, so I'm guilty of gun abuse. I won't wait so long to clean it next time! I'm sort of surprised though, since I've read stories of people shooting 5,000 rounds between cleanings when using Slide-Glide. Shooting steel is really good for your accuracy, and I'm definitely going to start shooting steel matches again. It'll make the first weekend of the month a full weekend of shooting, but it'll be good for me. I remember making great strides in accuracy when I first started shooting steel last year. 8/21/08: 1 hour dry fire. There aren't any local matches within an hour's drive for 2 weeks, so the next couple of weeks are going to just be practice. I look forward to it.

This thread has a good discussion about reloading while moving right to left. I think it can be done safely as long as you're extremely aware of your muzzle direction, and I've done it several times during matches.

http://sports.espn.go.com/outdoors/general...;source=OUTDOOR To shoot someone else's target and miss out on a gold is bad enough, but an AD on the last shot this time?!?

You are doing great for your 4th match. Even if you can't make it out to a range, keep up the dry fire and it will take you far. Just ask Pharaoh Bender There are also plenty of great books I'd suggest reading too... Brian's is an essential, and Steve Anderson's two books give you some great dry fire drills. Lanny Bassham's With Winning In Mind is good for the mental aspect of the game too (and it's cheap from amazon.com). Keep up the good work!

Yes, I always double plug and I can stand next to someone else who's shooting (even a .44 Magnum) without flinching, so it's definitely the recoil. I know there's nothing to be afraid of, but it happens anyway. 8/17/08: WVPPS Match The good: I felt like my movement was very solid today, and I had my most consistent match ever... I had 0 clean stages. My stage plans all went off without a hitch, and I'm happy about calling and making up several bad shots. Although my time spent group shooting this week didn't completely cure my flinch, I know and see it when it happens now. The not-so-good: There were quite a few no-shoots in my favorite configuration, and I hit a couple of them. I called several of them and made them up, but I did have an Alpha, Mike, 2 No-Shoot on the last target of an array as I was leaving. Actually, I have several Mikes on the last target of arrays. My mind was racing ahead of the task at hand and thinking about getting to the next position ASAP, and I totally didn't call any of them. Interesting observation: I think I see the sights lift more clearly while shooting on the move, because it requires such a hard front sight focus. I can distinctly remember shooting a target on the move and seeing the sights lift from one corner of the target and then the other. Didn't shoot 2 A's, but I knew it as soon as it happened. On a somewhat unrelated note, while getting through the section on awareness and focus in Brian's book, this mental image of Luke in Episode IV popped in my head. He's flying though the Death Star trench fiddling with his targeting computer when Obi-Wan's voice says, "Use the Force, Luke. Let go, Luke." Then of course, he turns the computer off and blows up the Death Star. Maybe the key is to let go and just shoot. Looks like we're doing a steel match at League night this week, so it should be good opportunity to work on accuracy.

I keep track of exactly how many rounds I bring to the range, and how many I come home with. I make a mental note if I lose any live rounds while unloading and showing clear or otherwise, and I'm pretty sure my logged count is very, very close to the actual count. I just keep my log in a text file on my computer, although I suppose you could get fancy and use Excel or something. The downside to keeping track is that you know exactly how much money you've spent on ammo

8/15/08: Group shooting @ 25 yards again. 100 rounds .22, 29 rounds 9mm, 25 rounds .40. My groups are getting better with the .22, but I still flinch when I switch to any centerfire cartridge. I hit the range with a friend and had him watch me while I shot, and he said he could see the gun dip down just before the shot broke. I don't think group shooting is the solution, because even if I shoot really slowly and concentrate on not flinching, I still do it. It almost seemed to get worse as I went on. Next time, I'll try shooting a few shots into the berm as Jake suggested in this post. Experimentation continues. I also started my 2nd pass though Brian's book, and it's making much more sense than it did a year ago. 8/16/08: 30 min. dry-fire. My arms were still a little tired from the slow group shooting I did yesterday, so I only did a short session. I noticed that during my draw, I bring my weak hand all the way across my body to meet the gun as soon as possible. I tried bringing it only to the center of my body (like slapping my belly, as Brian puts it), and it doesn't seem to be any slower. I'll do this from now on to eliminate the extra weak hand movement movement. Shooting Goals Originally, my goal was to make B class by the end of the year. While this is still something I would like to happen, I've come to realize that it's not a very good goal. Whether or not I make it this year, I'm constantly becoming a better shooter and that's the important thing... as long as this continues, making B will happen when it does, and it'll hopefully be just a stepping stone to A and beyond. What really matters isn't where you are now, but where you're headed. I really enjoy reading Ben Stoeger's range diary because he's a GM who finished 5th at Nationals, yet he still tries to get better every day (and is nice enough to share his journey with all of us). I think I'll be in good shape if I can get that flinch thing taken care of and shoot accurately.

8/12/08: I started my second pass though With Winning In Mind, and also ordered Brian's book and Steve Anderson's 2nd book. WWIM is good stuff, I really should have bought it last year. 8/13/08: Group shooting at 25 yards. I started off with 100 rounds of .22, then shot 25 rounds of .40. I had originally planned on shooting 25 more rounds of .40 as well as some 9mm, but I started to get tired and lose focus so I called it a day. I spent this session only loading 2-3 rounds per magazine and focusing on really watching the front sight lift. What did I discover? I haven't completely gotten the hang of the trigger on my .22 (that I've only had since the end of June). Either that or my sights are off (front sight came loose once, and I haven't checked it from a rest since)... I shoot slightly to the left with it. Will check next time. I need to put my red dot on it anyway. Dry fire has really developed my index. Every time I raised my .22 (Ruger Mark III 22/45), the front sight would be slightly low. I kept doing this, and started to wonder if the grip angle was different from that of my XD's. Stacked the guns on top of each other and lo-and-behold... it was! The Ruger's is a tiny bit closer to a 90-degree angle, so no wonder my normal index resulted in a low front sight. I'd probably go crazy trying to shoot a Glock right now! I HAVE A FLINCH!! .22 is no problem, but when I step up to something bigger, I push the gun down just before the shot breaks. It's very subtle and I really have to be watching the sights to see it, but it's there. I now know what it feels like in my arms, too. Now that I've gotten to the root of my accuracy problem, I can take steps to fix it. I started off with a not-so-good group and ended the same way, but during the middle of my 25 rounds with the XD-40, I shot 5 rounds in about a 2" group from 25 yards. I've never, ever shot a group even close to that size from that distance. I could feel the lack of flinch on those shots. I don't even like shooting that gun much since it has stock 3-dot sights (with a fat front sight) and a stock trigger. Progress! Also, the scores from this past Sunday's match are out, and as I suspected, I had too many Mikes/no-shoots to be competitive. HOWEVER, my classifier score should be good for a 60.9855%. I played a little "what-if", and if I hadn't dropped 12 points, my 8.08 second run would have been an A class run. I'm starting to see that as a couple of people have told me, I need to shoot more accurately! I had 2 A's on the middle (far) target, yet not a single 2 Alpha on any of the 4 closer ones... even though it sure sounds like I shot similar splits on all of them. 8/14/08: The books I ordered 2 days ago arrived today. What great service from Brian's store! I wish I had gotten in some dry-fire today, but I spent 9.5 hours in my office doing research and ended up watching CSI: Miami when I got home (a horribly unrealistic show, but I like it anyway). While reading Steve Anderson's 2nd book, I came across something about confusing speed and accuracy that really hit home: DING DING DING! When I see a tough target, I do think about slowing down and consciously being careful not to miss. I will experiment with just thinking of shooting 2 A's at my natural speed the next time I see one. Lately, I've also been thinking about where I want my shooting to take me, and it seems to be a moving target. I will post more about this tomorrow, along with my range report. I'm going out first thing tomorrow morning to do some more group shooting. I leave you with a picture of the awesome group I shot yesterday... this is from 3x the distance that the target in my previous photo from 3 weeks ago was! The thrill of distance is beginning to call my name...

Thanks Jane, it's great having the combination of dry fire to work on technique and league night to practice stage planning and try things out at. Thanks Ben, now if only I could discover the secret to becoming a GM within "a month or so" of starting to shoot USPSA. 8/11/08: League Night Jane and Dave hosted a stand and shoot themed League night, and we also did a couple of longer field courses too. My stage plans all went well, without any hesitation. Although I threw out a few Mikes, I HAD NO NO-SHOOTS! I didn't do a great job putting in the new fiber in my front sight last time (cut it a little too short, so the ends weren't very big after I melted them), so it fell out again today. Thankfully, Nathan came to the rescue with some of his extra. When I got home, my new 1 meter piece of green fiber was waiting for me in the mail. I still need to work on my long distance shooting, since we did some 20 yard standards and I was hitting a little low. I've noticed that I shoot long distance just fine if I take my time, but I get sloppy and start hitting low when I try to go too fast. I hope to get out and shoot a lot of .22 to tune up my accuracy before this Sunday's WVPPS match.

I've got a set of Dawson Precision sights, and I recently noticed that the black is rubbing off my rear sights and there's a tiny bit of rust. I suspect it may have something to do with my right arm touching it sometimes while the gun is holstered since I don't have a DOH. Has anyone else experienced this? Any suggestions for how to avoid/mitigate it? Or should I just clean them off and put a little oil on them after every time I shoot?

I decided to take the rest of the week off from dry fire since my biggest problem right now is consistency and I didn't feel like dry fire would improve that. (and I was also feeling kinda lazy) I should have taken the time to re-read my new copy of With Winning In Mind, but I didn't do that either. Dry fire will definitely resume next week! 8/10/08: ACC Match I originally wasn't planning on shooting this match, but a friend of mine saw one of my shooting videos on facebook and asked me to take him next time. I planned on arriving about 30 min. early to make sure we made the new shooters meeting, but the combination of an unexpected ATM stop and my accidentally missing an exit on the interstate foiled that plan. Fortunately, Jane and Coach saw me right as I arrived and asked me to shoot with them. It turned out that our squad was made up of mostly new shooters, so my friend fit right in, and I'm glad we were able to help them though. My friend was able to get all my runs on video here. I started the match off with a couple of misses on steel, a few Mikes, and a no-shoot. I escaped the next stage with an Alpha, Bravo, no-shoot. I had a few rough reloads on the 3rd stage... you can see the mag sticking and my belt getting pulled up a little in the video. I had my mag pouches adjusted pretty well after dropping 2 mags off my belt at the Indiana State sectional, but it may be time to re-adjust them again. I had a really solid run on the classifier (Works For Me), but I think I shot too many C's to make the B class cut. Based on what I remember, it should be in the upper 50% range, according to the classifier calc. I didn't feel rushed at all on the classifier, and it's definitely a step in the right direction. I tried to be clever on the last stage by not activating the swinging no-shoots that covered the 2 side ports and shooting all the paper first, and I also took a risk by trying to take 2 poppers with 3 rounds in the gun in order to avoid a standing reload before running back. Well, I failed and ended up having to do a standing reload back in the box AND I hit a popper low and didn't knock it down. Jane told me to call for a calibration and the "range master" missed on the first shot. Coach and I had a bit of debate about whether or not the range master got another shot, but in the end I checked the rule book and he was right. Overall, I think my stage planning definitely showed improvement this match (minus the bungled plan on the last stage). I'm not too thrilled about hitting 2 no-shoots and having a couple of Mikes, but I definitely saw some positive things. Strangely, I went one for one on every small popper we had, but I took multiple shots on several of the big poppers. I think this may have to do with the fact that we shot a ton of little poppers at League night last week. Now I just need to transfer those skills to the bigger and easier ones! The best part of the day was getting another shooter hooked on the sport though! Tomorrow: Jane is hosting League night, with a stand and shoot focus. I expect some tough shots, but the learning will continue!

Yikes, that makes me kinda glad I accidentally missed the 37 exit from 69 and showed up late... It was good to help out the new shooters though, and it brought back fond memories of my first few matches last year when I was "the new guy". I still remember shooting with the Ball family at my 2nd match and being rather impressed by Jane's skills!! (which is still true to this day)

Yep, that's exactly what I need to improve. It's really no fun to win 2 stages and still finish in the bottom third! On the trigger freeze, once was on a close target I was trying to hose, but another time was on a far target. It was kind of strange, since the only time in recent history I can remember this happening on was the Can You Count classifier. One other thing I forgot to mention in my last entry is that I need to work on my grip a little. The way I grip the gun right now, my weak hand thumb touches the rear of the XD's takedown lever and gets beat up by the recoil. I've got a small blister on it from last night's shooting. I think I either need to switch to a completely thumbs off grip like Brian Enos, or cant my wrist more so my thumb rests in front of the lever. 8/6/08: I didn't dry fire today, but instead watched volumes 1-3 of the Matt Burkett DVDs and Shooting USA's coverage of the IDPA Indoor Nationals. I found volume 1 of the Burkett DVDs pretty basic, but picked up some things about entering boxes from volume 2. I really enjoyed the volume 3 interview with our host Brian though! That reminds me... I need to pick up a copy of his book and re-read it, since it's been about a year since I first read it.

8/5/08: League Night Jane and Dave hosted another great league night, this time focusing on long field courses with activators. I had much fewer no-shoot problems, although I did hit a few. I also had fewer Mikes and Deltas on long targets, so I think something is clicking in my head and I'm getting over my trigger control issues. I can also be sure that I'm seeing the sights lift because towards the end, I clearly saw the green fiber from my front sight fall out under recoil! Sometimes, I just don't pay enough attention to them and therefore don't know where the shot went. I'm now on my last piece of fiber, so it's time to order some more. I think I do prefer green because it seems to stand out more in daylight. If I remember correctly, the human eye is most sensitive to green, so that's probably why I like it more. Hey, if it's good enough for those "school zone" signs... On the downside, I still don't execute my plan perfectly sometimes... on one run, I meant to run right to left into a position and shoot a couple of targets on the way in, but I ended up running all the way into position before bringing the gun up and shooting. I also had a bit of a new problem today: several times, I didn't release the trigger enough and had some trigger freeze. I also unexpectedly shot to slide lock at one point and panicked on the reload, dropping the slide before the fresh mag was in. Finally, I had some issues on a max trap that kicked my butt several times. This was because I was trying to go activator, other (thin, not USPSA legal) popper, max trap, and the timing wasn't quite there today. I definitely felt a little rushed getting to the max trap, and it showed. Overall, it was a good day of shooting, and I was pretty satisfied with how I did. I've been slacking a little on the dry-fire lately, but I plan to get back into it tomorrow.

Coach, your comments are always welcome. 8/3/08: South Central Match I began with a rough start. I was up first on the first stage we shot, which had a starting box and a shooting box... and of course, I forgot to step out of the box for the first 3 shots!! Besides my accuracy issues, little things like this seem to be my biggest problem right now. If anyone has any suggestions about how to overcome these silly mistakes and the slight hesitations I sometimes have, please share. Overall, I ended up 4th of 6 even though I had 2 stage wins and a 2nd. The stage that really killed me was one with a bunch of no-shoots (of course). I hit 2, and had 3 Mikes, for a blazin' HF of 0.3336. I'm really trying to improve my match consistency, but it's just not there yet. I shot the classifier (Peek-A-Boo No-shoots) clean because it only had no-shoots to the sides, but every time I see the dreaded no-shoot below target configuration, I'm so afraid of hitting the NS that I always head shot it. League night is tonight, and I'm looking forward to another day of learning!

Thanks Nathan, the port thing is certainly something I've been trying to work on (but keep forgetting to think about in my pre-stage visualization). I really got into the barrel on my first run and boy was it LOUD in there!! Even though I had muffs + plugs on, it was quite a shock... I can't even imagine what it would be like with an Open gun Btw, you shot pretty well yourself... way to beat me!

7/28/08: 1 hour dry fire. I noticed that my reloads are more consistent when I grab the fresh mag lower... I used to only grab about 1/2 of it as opposed to grabbing it with my index finger next to the bullet. 7/29/08: 1 hour dry fire 7/31/08: League night Jane hosted a challenging League night that really focused on my weakness: distance/accuracy. There were no easy shots, and I ended up with a whopping total of 30 penalties over 7 stages! I had my first experience shooting steel at 50 yards, and while it was interesting, I wouldn't quite call it a thrill just yet. Maybe once I get my trigger control issues sorted out. Here is a video of all but one of my runs... comments welcome. One thing I could definitely improve is to carefully pick spots to shoot from and to make sure I hit them, instead of shuffling around for position. At the very end of the night, I did a bit of group shooting on the steel from about 35 yds. away and while I started off hitting it just fine, the hits started getting lower as I sped up. So I proved to myself that I can hit distant targets just fine, I just need to be very aware of my trigger pull and not rush. 8/2/08: 15 min. dry fire. Just checking my draws and reloads before tomorrow's South Central match. Also tried to check my trigger pull, but I think it'll take some live fire to really get it figured out... I can balance a quarter on my front sight and keep it there while dry firing.

I've been meaning to take some updated video of myself too... shall we both bring our cameras and tape each other at League this week?

Thanks for the comments Bruce, I've definitely cut down on the number of Mikes since then. I've also since learned that a good stage plan can save more time than a fast draw/reloads/etc.