MemphisMechanic

Quick, somone change this guy's username to "Confucius" - Because he's quotable as hell. That's perfect. The best tool for this, bar none, is a video camera. Some of the guys I shoot with give me a hard time because I tape nearly EVERYTHING we shoot. But you know what you'll notice watching yourself on video? First - Those stages where you felt like you were going warp-speed, had mediocre sight-pictures, and were literally going as fast as humanly possible? You know, the ones where you wer thinking stuff like "DONT MISS THAT! ... HIT THE SWINGER OR THIS RUN IS OVER!" the entire tine? They look bad. Often the video shows a run almost twice as long as it felt at the time. And it ALWAYS looks rushed and hectic. Second - Those stages where your mind is clear and calm, and you smoothy run the sights across the targets, breaking shots when the front sight gives you the OK? They feel slow. (No "presence of chaos" to put your brain into panic mode). But they are nearly always SMOKIN when you watch the video. It looks effortless, and what felt like a 20 second crawl through the stage is over so fast you almost can't believe it.

Brian has posted at least once that I've seen about how the thumbs should exert little or no pressure on the frame of the gun. The other day I came up with an interesting idea to test this during dryfire practice while re-doing the grip-tape on my 34. I applied some of the new super-gritty stuff I was installing where my thumbs land (lefty, obviously). I've been doing dryfire, draw, and reload practice for a couple of days. What I've been doing has been to work on NOT FEELING the grit of the tape on either of my thumbs while presenting and dry-firing the gun. Seems to be working pretty well. And if I come home after tomorrow's match with torn-up thumbs, I'll know I need to work on it. Anyway, just an idea for a drill that worked out pretty well. Thought I'd pass it along.

Take a bare cardboard target (An IDPA or IPSC target works well for this) and place it in a shady location at the range. Stand in direct sunlight 15-25 yards away. Basically, figure out any setup where you can't see the holes as you shoot. A brown cardboard target at a dim indoor range works well, too. Now fire a shot. Obviously, you probably didn't hit the exact bullsye. Can you tell us if it was high/left .... low/right...? And was it in the A-zone? A clean miss? When you can do that consistently, you're calling your shots. You won't need to waste even a quarter-second looking for holes on paper. Because you already knew where the hole would be before it was punched by the bullet, and if the target needs a third shot. Even better is shooting at steel. You can be running to the next position or transitioning to the next target as soon as the sear breaks. You don't have to wait for the "DING!" when shooting at steel. (And no, I'm not there yet.)

"Plant elbow" isn't what I've heard it called, but it's basically the same thing. Drop the mag as you pull the gun in. Brace your Bicep against your Pec, so that the strong arm is braced against your body, and the guns about a foot from your chest, then as soon as the mag clears, tilt the gun so the magwell is oriented correctly - it's directly in the path of the incoming magazine, and you won't have to bend your weak wrist to insert it. Straight shot from belt to magwell. Grab the magazine with you weak hand (index finger-tip on the nose of the first round in the mag, of course). Pull it from your mag pouch, and while keeping the finger pointed so that you whole weak-arm is a straight line from elbow-to-fingertip, feed the magazine smoothly into the gun by aiming the fingertip of your index finger at the middle knuckle of the pinkie that's holding the gun. The dot trick helped me a lot, too. (Paint a white dot on the inside of the magwell and stare at it while loading). Don't watch magazine come up, stare at the magazine's destination. Your weak hand will bring it right where you're looking every time. Just trust your body. It knows how to run the gun better than you do. Just keep thinking "SHUT UP BRAIN! LET ME DO THIS!"

Here's an interesting question: Let's say you watch a video on the web, and you're curious just how fast the shooter was. Are either of these timers sensitive enough to pick up shots through cranked-way-up PC speakers? Anyone tried that yet? OF course, you've got to try and hit the start button right as the SO did, but it would be interesting to see what Todd Jarret, Dave Sevigny, and so forth are shooting for splits, and what their reload times were. Just wondering if anyone has tried it yet.

Why are you using that part of your hand? To quickly insert a magazine, there are 2 things that really help: The first is the "brief pause" just as your first round is coming up to the magwell. Keeps you from throwing a mag across the room, or getting the feed lips hung up on the magwell opening. The second one is to draw the magazine so that the tip of your index finger is on the nose of the first round in the magazine, so you can 'point' the mag straight into the gun. To do this, you pretty much have to draw the mag from your belt and slam it into the gun with the heel of palm/base-of-thumb portion of your hand on the magazine's baseplate. That's how your ring/index fingers end up right there by the slide stop lever. So why is the other side of your hand getting used to swap mags?

I had this happen this weekend in an IDPA stage. Fortunately, the SO saw it, and watched carefully for my hits. One target had four -0 hits, the other had three -0 and one -1 hit. The previous shooter shot the stage completely clean (I scored for him), so it was pretty obvious which holes I was responsible for.

So? You roll your eyes now... But you'll be wishing you had 5 of everything on hand when you discover a broken locking block just before the start of stage 3. Personally, I love the extended slide stop and mag catch on my gun. But I'm a lefty. So my thumbs (and my on-table starts) have a little difficulty finding them by accident.

(Lefty IDPA Glock shooter chiming in) I used to slingshot, but it's too slow for gun games. Don't reach over the top of the gun. You will, when in a hurry, get the meat of your hand pinched between the barrel and breech face when the slide snaps shut. I've had the massive blood blister to prove it. The absolute best way I've found? Okay. Follow along with hand motions on an imaginary gun to picture this: 1. Bring the magazine up from your belt with your index finger on the tip of the first round like your supposed to. Begin to insert the magazine. 2. Seat it fully into place with the heel of your right hand's palm, just like always. Now freeze. 3. Look where your right-hand fingers are after seating the magazine. The index and ring fingers are RIGHT THERE by the slide stop lever! 4. Sweep the slide stop lever downward with your right ring or index finger as soon as the magazine is seated fully. Even with the extended slide-stop on my G34 to help, I can do this much more reliably on-the-clock if the heel of my right palm stays on the base of the grip. So you're basically squeezing that finger and the base of your palm together. It's a stronger motion than if the rest of the right hand were off the gun, and you were just trying to move your fingertip downward. Make sense? 5. Drive the gun back out to full extension while returning your right hand to the thumbs-forward grip on the pistol. After a couple hundred repetitions, 4 & 5 become one smooth motion, which may not be any slower than a righty's reload. Since a right-handed shooter has to adjust his grip to thumb the lever with his strong hand, and then adjust it back, it might even be a tie. We're just moving the weak hand instead of the strong one.

I think everyone has this problem. My shirt really doesn't like to stay tucked for 45 draws in a row. Might be obvious, but when I do dry-fire practice at home (movement, reloads, etc)... I do it without a shirt on. Pants, belt, holster, and mag pouches... but no shirt. I do most of my dry practice at home, so this works for me. Wouldn't work so well out in public.