DoubleA

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BurningS- I understand every gun breaks, it's the frequency that worried me. Don't get me wrong, I still want one like you wouldn't believe, but with my income and a family with two kids, how I invest my hobby money is a big deal. Justaute- I appreciate the offer to try out your sp01. I desperately want to shoot one to the point I would go to a particular match just for the chance. I'm not sure what matches are part of the DFW circuit. I live 2 hours east of Dallas just a few miles off of I-20 so maybe we can figure out a good one to meet up at. As far as area 4 goes, I kinda shot myself in the foot in that I forgot to get time off work for it, so I will just be practicing and pouting this weekend.

Ok, so I had pretty much decided I was going to get a sp-01 shadow custom for my next competition gun after coming from shooting a Glock 35 for last 2 years or so. I was "advised" against it by a much more experienced shooter than myself, but I stuck to my guns claiming that although few (in USA) shoot them, they all seem to love them to death. And then I came upon this post. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about reliability now. Granted, this worry is coming from never having a back up glock because it has never let me down. Most of my views about the cz is based on these forums and from picking up a cz 75 at a local shop and loving how it felt in hand.

Today I shot Session C/Phase 2. I got out there at about 8:30 this morning so the sun wasnt trying to kill me yet. I felt pretty good despite another night of less than adequate sleep. Ready to train! Multi-Position Drill with target at 15 yards. For the prone position I put a plate down bellow the main target so bullets wouldnt go over the berm/hill. I averaged 12.25 for time and hit %20 Head A's and 60% Body A's with 2 mikes on the head. I rushed my sight picture for the headshots and kept pulling my second shot to the left when kneeling. I think that may have something to do with thinking about standing up and not following through with an accurate shot. Strong Hand/Weak Hand X Drill at 7 yards I averaged 9.16 for time and 55% Head A's and 72% Body A's with 1 D and 3 maybe mikes on the heads. I say maybe because there were a couple ragged holes in the head Azone and I couldnt really know for sure if they went through there or not. I didnt call any misses, but you know how that goes. I do know that I need more strong/weak hand practice for consistency. Long Range Challenge at 40 yards I averaged 8.26 on time and 43% Body A's with 10 d's. Man I need more long range work. I think it is a matter of smoothing out the trigger pull for those long shots. The sights dont need to be off much to be way off out there. Off Balance Shooting at 10 yards I averaged 1.78 on time and 98% Body A's. I did pretty well on this. I maybe should have pushed out of the comfort zone a little more to pick up speed towards the end, but I was able to call every shot with confidence so that was an accomplishment. Overall was a good practice that pointed out my need for more attention in the long range department. Im looking forward to the next training session!

I shot Session B/Phase 2 from Mike's book last Sunday and am just now getting it put in here. Ive been running short of sleep lately and working in the heat is really taking its toll on me, but non the less I have to keep going if I really want to reach my goal. Here goes... Short Movement into Position I averaged 11.38 on time and 94% A's. This was the first time I have done this drill, and from the video it is evident that I have a lot of work in acquiring my target A zone and firing in timely manner. There seems to be a lot of hesitation in finding the target, settling the gun and firing. Long Movement into Position I averaged 11.09 on time and 90% A's and 1 D. I noticed that when entering the box from side to side it feels aggressive and smooth, but going forward to the first position seems to take forever for my gun to settle. I need to work on stepping into the box smoothly while going forward by moving my center of gravity back a little so I step into the box under control instead of stomping in and coming to an abrupt halt. I also noticed that my C hits where happening as I was shooting and leaning out of the box to move to the next. Multi-Directional Movement I did not time this and instead just concentrated on getting my hits. I got 79% A's and 1 D on this one. My reloads where smooth, but I am still tilting my head down just a little instead of just using my eyes. I think I also need to get a little bit lower and work on rolling my steps more for smoothness. The ground I am shooting on is a little bit bumpy but nothing horrible. I feel I had a pretty good front sight focus while doing this, just need to time my shots with my steps a little better. I felt I did a decent job of calling my shots during this session so that is a small victory. Again, I shot without expectation and had the mentality that I am there to learn, not be a badass. I think this will start to become a problem as I do the same session again and the desire to do better than I did the last time will threaten to take my focus from learning and observing to making something happen even if I am not seeing everything as I should be. Being aware of that potential and documenting it should serve to combat that particular mental hurdle. I always shoot better when I am not trying to beat something or someone.

Yeah, I saw the salient glock work stuff in a magazine a while back. Apparently they do some extensive stippling, throw in some trigger parts, sights, and machine the crap out if an already light slide. Oh yeah, they also "fix" any reliability issues and throw an insane price tag on it. If people are really buying these things, maybe I need to start a rip off company of my own. I mean, it does look great, but so does a stack of money next to regular glock.

Thanks man. Hopefully when the heat backs off a little and money catches up I can actually go shoot more matches again. Im sure Ill be seeing more of you starting around Sep-Oct.

Im working on Phase 2 of Mike's book right now. It really does fix a lot of the "what do I work on" stuff that causes doubt and second guessing. Because of ammo use I had to cut back from 2 sessions a week to just 1 and in doing so ended up drifting into changing the drills up and so on. That just lead me back to what I used to do with training sessions which was changing my focus from this to that and being wishy washy about what I wanted or felt like I needed to do. What this program does is turn pistol training into the same kind of effort as a weight training or physical fitness program. You may "want" or "feel" like you need to do one thing or another from day to day, but in the end you never gain any real ground in anything. However, if you plan it out and just do it whether you feel like it or not, you will progress. This program makes it easy to just go an DO instead of over thinking it. It allows you to put your focus into the shooting alone. After wasting ammo trying to figure it all out myself again, I switched back to doing 2 sessions a week and cannot be happier. Im just going to have to bite the bullet( ) and figure out a way to afford the ammo to finish the program. Btw, I currently have a range diary in that section that has my times and percentages and all if you want to compare and see just how much better you are than me

Ok now for a fresh start with Mike Seeklanders Phase 2 in his program. I didnt get to shoot until 10 am and it was already in the high 90's and ended up at 104 before I quit. Jeez its hot! After it was all said and done, I realized that I did NOT make a conscious effort to call each and every shot. I did call probably 60-70% of them, but I should have and could have done better IF I had reminded myself. A lesson for next time! Today was Session A I started off pretty rocky with the 1 Shot X Drill. I averaged 8.39 times and 33% Head A's and 79% Body A's. I realized I was not prepping or even feeling the trigger which means I must have been jerking it. I also had one round where I dropped the mag on the mag change and had to pick it up so that really hurt my times. Next: 2 Shot X Drill Averaged 11.12 for these with 50% Head A's and 90% Body A's. I also had a graze the headbox mike for this drill. I focused better than I did on the last one, but I really should not be pulling mike's at all. Oh well, onward. Next: Accelerate/Decelerate Drill Averaged 7.07 with 84% A's and had 3 make up shots on the steel. I called my shots ok, but I didnt find my target spot well for the 20 yard shots. This cost me both time and A's. Next: Multi-Hardcover Drill Averaged 5.98 with %82 A's and God forbid it 3 mike's into hardcover. I called these and knew exactly what caused them. I jerked the trigger and pulled the shots low and left. It shouldnt be too hard to do much better than this next time around I videoed this session and reviewed. Things I did wrong. Not bringing the gun into my facebox for the mag change enough and causing me to look down instead of bringing the magwell to my line of sight with the target. Not leaning into the gun enough/knee bending to ensure repeatable recoil management. Not listening for the B in beep. Jerking the trigger at times. Didnt call enough shots. Things I did right! I stayed positive the entire time I shot without expectations which really helped my positive outlook I powered through the heat! A good practice that left me with plenty of room to improve quickly! I cant wait to shoot again

This is the range report from 8/14 I ended up shooting later than I expected and light was already fading on my range. This I knew would slow down my vision abilities, but practice is practice. I made a conscious effort to shoot with the desire to call every shot today and that definitely effected my times, but I think it is well worth it in the long run to instill this skill. As Steve Anderson put it, score while your shooting. I started off by shooting Tight Squeeze classifier today that landed in the 78-79% range. This wasnt bad, but of course I would have liked better. First I shot 15 yard groups on steel for 4 10 round strings. My accuracy is failing again and the best group I could muster was 3". More flyers than normal today too. ack! I then shot Benos's Transition drill for 6 strings of .22 and then 8 strings with my glock. I averaged 6.36 on this due to several charlies. The targets I was using were pretty shot up and had been taped with plain masking tape so it kind of threw off my target spotting a little. All the charlies were very close, but a charlie is a charlie. Next I shot one of my favorites, Mike's 2 shot X drill without a reload(have to save ammo) for 7 strings. I averaged 5.28 for this and ended up with 53% A's for headshots and 100% A's for Body. I really want to get that percentage for A's in the headbox to rise, but I keep pulling down a little for the second shot and getting a B. I ended by shooting groups at 10 yrds. I have to keep having to remind myself to look at the "sights", not just the front sight for maximum accuracy. All in all I did well in calling most of my shots. The failing light played a part in making it hard for me to focus on target spot and sights, but I still pulled it off for the most part.

Going out to the range this morning before it gets so hot you cant breathe. Ive decided to get back onto the drill regiment of Phase 2 in Mike Seeklander's book. After getting distracted and going about it my own way, I noticed a lack of overall improvement and figure I should at the very least finish the program as it was designed before trying to change things up so much. I am phsyced to get back on these drills and complete the program. A range report will follow today hopefully and I will also enter in the range report from last weekend. Its time to get back on track. LETS DO THIS!

I agree on how regular par times can actually damage your skill. If making a certain par time is your main focus, then you are taking away from the correct goal which is to do the rep correctly. This has forced me to go back and reprogram certain skills so I would do it correct repeatably instead of just fast. I feel the par time should be more of a quiz/observation and used sparingly throughout a dryfire session. I also feel that 80% of a session should be used to reinforce 100% correct repetition and 20% of the session pushing just past the edge of control to gain ground in speed. If you spend your whole session pushing it then that is what you will do in a match. That is how mikes and deltas show up on your score.

Maybe the most important thing is to shoot with the desire to know where every shot will land via shot calling. I've noticed that when pushing my capacity for speed and accuracy that the place that I try to speed up is my placement of the target spot. This results in charlies, deltas and, heaven forbid, mikes. However, if I don't skimp on calling the shot I can make it up and see that I need to increase my visual patience to prevent further hiccups during that COF. I would think that shooting with the desire to know the end result of every shot fired would mean shooting with the desire to collect information via sights, target, feeling and everything in-between. The subconcious will then feed off this information and be allowed to do what it is trained to do absent conscious thought, such as make up a bad shot.

Make it a general rule to consider the perception of others before acting on your own.

Just a little info to go along with this range diary. Im 31 I currently am shooting limited using a G35. I have been shooting USPSA for a little over 3-4 years. Currently A in limited After I get an M on my card with my G35 Im am most certain that I am going CZ. That is kind of the condition. I cant buy another competition gun without making M.

I finally hit the range again today after 2 weeks of not even getting to hold a pistol due to "vacation". I was excited to shoot, but hesitant on what to focus on. I finally decided to try Matt Burkett's Timing Drill and see what it did for me. With that I thought I should compliment it with more recoil control drills and make that the main focus for today's session. On a side note, I blacked out my fiber optic sight with a sharpie. In dry fire I am really digging the clarity in my front and rear sight that I get by not having that glowing ball on the front of my gun. It is much more evident when I dont have a proper focus on the the gun vs the front sight and target. I started out with my standard freestyle group shooting at 15 yards and used dummies again. 40 rnds fired I had only 2 F's this time around with a few minor f's. My groups where at 4 1/4" and were really suffering from the flyers. Id stack a few rounds on top of each other and then pop one off to the left. Its pretty obvious that pinpoint accuracy with a pistol(at least a glock) is a problem for me. After this I shot a classifier. I like to do this now and then just to see where I am at. I dont practice them, but I do use them for a problem dentifier. The idea is to get one shot at it and that is it, so for me it duplicates the pressure of a match. Today it was "Sit or get off the Shot"99-61. I shot for a hit factor or 4.534. This is the first time I have shot a classifier in practice or match that I made above 85%. Ok, there was one other, but honestly I count that as a fluke(a roll of the dice gave me zen for that one). This is a huge confidence boost for me. I shot Matt's timing drill next with 12 rounds in each mag for a total of 108 rnds. I dont even know what to say about this drill. Honestly at the end of it I felt like I had wasted ammo. It is now confirmed that I am all over the place at 15 yrds while firing at .25ish splits one after the other. Can I fix this? I think so, but not with this drill. Because of the "failure" of the timing drill, I decided to go ahead and do what I feel I should have done in the first place, Bill Drills. I fired 7 10 shot bill drills at an Azone sized plate at 15 yards. The first couple strings were to focus on just HITTING the plate based on my vision. After that I did time them to use for future reference and gauge any improvement. These times are only from the first shot to the last. 4.39 0 miss 3.61 2 miss 3.61 3 4.47 2 4.18 0 The misses where easy charlies and just grazed the Azone plate(or so I called them anyway). I shot a couple more 6 rnd bill drills just for the hell of it cuz they are fun and its been a while since I fired more than 2 rounds at 1 target. I kind of got into fun mode here and ended up drawing on the 15 yrd Azone plate for time. Out of maybe 15 shots my spectrum was between 1.08 and 1.28 for my draw(with hits only). What is weird is that it felt much slower. I was so afraid that the forced time away from dryfiring and such would cause me to fumble the draw, but it seems to have held fairly strong. I ended with a couple 25 yard groups. Ouch.... Maybe I can blame it on the extreme heat from trying to shoot on a cloudless day in Texas at 1pm, but man did I suck at the 25 yard groups. Something was off, Im not sure what exactly, but it just didnt feel right while I was shooting these groups. WHAT DID I LEARN? Accuracy is OH so perishable. If I focus entirely on 1 aspect of shooting, it is very possible for me to start losing another. I have spent so much effort on working on transitions that I have barely fired any controlled pairs and even less bill drills. This has more to do with losing the feeling of the gun recoiling and returning the front sight into the notch. IF I COULD SHOOT THIS SESSION AGAIN? I would drop the Timing drill and do more vision based Bill drills focusing on trigger control. I would also have dedicated more ammo to group shooting. I am desperately ready to get back on a more strict range routine like I started out with from Mike Seeklander's book. I got off of it to deal with accuracy and then had to cut my ammo usage in half. Now Im live firing once a week and am trying to focus on 1 thing per session to get the most out of my ammo. Being limited in ammo and range time is creating a huge amount of conflict in me about what drill is the best/most efficient for what and what aspect of shooting is the thing I need to spend the most range time on. If anyone wants to sponsor me and give me thousands of rounds of ammo, I would sure put it to use! Anway, enjoy my failures and revel in my accomplishments. Im here all zeh week.

+1 I'm a big fan of not dryfiring the same transition drill more than once every couple of weeks. I really focus on making the gun follow the eye after picking a spot on the target, and not having the same array often ensures my progress has nothing to do with muscle memory as far as target aquisition goes. I'd rather be able to shoot any array at a decent and consistent speed than just burn down an el presidente at Mach 3.

Sometimes I feel that I need this tattooed on my forehead. Will, for me, is a very slippery slope. I have wasted a lot of ammo trying to will something to happen.

That is what I meant, the paying for it part. I understand that shooting will always be a constant process of observation and learning. I just wonder at what level are you better off spending your money on ammo/matches vs a class or some one on one time with a high GM. This is probably another "depends on the shooter" question.

Out of curiosity, at what level is a shooter past the point of really benifiting from personal instruction like this?

I gained some relative consistency from addressing the obvious problems in the portions of stage shooting that are present in every stage. Transitions, accuracy, and the ability to stay focused yet relaxed. Sure stages require more than this to shoot "perfectly", but 90% or so is still based on these things. Master these aspects and you will see the greatest improvement in consistency as far as what you could expect from a variety of stages after your walkthrough/planning. However; never shoot with any form of expectation. Train your subconscious and let it do it's thing when the buzzer goes off. Whether it's consistently sucking or consistently tearing it up, if you can learn to fully release your subconscious to do the shooting, you will gain consistency. I may be wrong, but this has improved my game by leaps and bounds.

Mike's book is great for teaching how and why to make a structured shooting program. Brian's book is great for getting the old thinker running and teaching you how to pay attention and learn during the shooting and then turn that into progress. +1 for Cocobolo. The doublealpha clips are great for straight forward "I want it NOW" info for a new shooter. Read, watch, THINK, plan, and then execute. Its a fun trip!

As far as what drill to do and when, I think that is up to the weaknesses of the shooter. At the very beginning you can benefit most from the basics of just establishing and index and getting the gun out of the holster and on target safely and repeatably. After that, its about paying attention to what you do in live fire to know what you need to work on in dryfire. You cant really go wrong with any drill that focuses on transitions though since that is what you are doing with most of your time on the majority of stages aside from actually firing the gun, which you cant really do in dryfire anyway.

Ive contemplated going ahead and starting an online range diary here and always had backed down from it for whatever reason. I have been keeping a range diary in a notebook for the last few months to help me in my progress from a lucky B shooter to Master(currently a solid A in Limited using a G35). Lately my inputs have gotten a little lazy in terms of what I learned and so on, so now its time for me to throw in another level of accountability. Why not grandmaster you ask? Eh, Im kind of afraid of the amount of commitment that it may take and its effects on my family. Maybe down the road I will make it a goal, but as for now, Master is realistic and almost in reach given my resources. Besides....B, A, Master, Grandmaster, they are all just milestones for what my real goal is, become better at whatever it is I do. So, on with the diary stuff. If there is too much detail for your interest, Im sorry. Today I focused on my transitions. Started off with Accuracy: 15 yard groups of 10 with 5 dummies in the mag making 15 total I did 2 strings of this slow fire and 2 strings with no dummies at speed(a 10 shot bill drill basically). I recorded my reaction to each dummy round for my records. F for a big failure as in flinch f for a minor sight movement P for pass as in no sight movement whatsoever I did alright with just 3 F's and 1 f, but my best group was 2 3/4" with slow fire for max accuracy, so that was a little disappointing. This may seem like crap to many shooters, but I struggle with the glock trigger and the flinch on a regular basis. My best rapid fire group was 4". Transition Focus: Transition Drill #1 -3 targets at 10 yards with 1 yard edge to edge spacing. String of fire is draw on first left hand target and fire 1 round into each lower A zone left to right and repeat 3 times for a total of 9 rounds. Each charlie costs .5 seconds. I shot 4 strings of this with my walther p22 first, then dryfired it a few times with my glock. 5.83+0 =5.83 4.94+1 =5.94 4.86+1 =5.86 5.03+.5=5.54 5.42+.5=5.92 5.32+.5=5.82 5.19+.5=5.69 5.56+0 =5.56 I was really trying to push what I could see happening on this one. Where I sacrificed the most visually was finding the spot on the target to aim at. I have also used this drill as an exercise in shot calling and writing down how many charlies I saw and then check the target. I called more suspect charlies than actually occurred, so this tells my I can get away with more sight variation than I thought at 10 yards. Transitions + Accuracy: 2 shot X drill at 9 yards with no reload. This drill comes from Mike Seeklander's book and I really like it because of the head shots. Set up is 2 targets 2 yards apart at 9 yards. String of fire is turn and draw on T1 head Azone, T2 body Azone, T2 head Azone, then T1 body Azone. The variation in Mike's book has a reload and repeat, but I feel that it is better to review 8 shots and correct a mistake than keep shooting for another 8 rounds. 4.89 2B 1C 5.27 2B 1C 5.41 3B 6.42 3B 6.06 2B 6.03 2B I did terrible on this one. I couldnt figure out why I wasnt getting the head alpha on the second shot until after I finished for the day. I got pretty irate at my performance on this vs the last time I did it. I had faster times and better hits... the frustration mounts. Instead of angrily trying to keep doing something Im doing incorrectly I decided to finish with another accuracy+transition drill. 25 yard plate rack. I recorded the time and any extra shots. Steel is a weakness for me in that it is so fun to hear that steel ring vs watching the sights. 8.60 + 2 7.78 + 2 8.98 + 2 My assessment from all this? My accuracy failed because I was not watching my "sights". I didnt realize until after I finished that I was paying attention to my front sight and the target, not my front sight and rear sight which is needed for the accuracy that I am after. As soon as I looked at the front AND rear sights with disregard for the target after setting the gun on the spot I wanted to hit, my flinch went away again. This was a costly lesson in ammo, but at least I learned. I think that my pushing it on the first transition drill is what primed me for failure in the more accuracy demanding drills. I have to remember this the next time I shoot. Every shot that is performed incorrectly in practice only trains me to do the same thing when my subconscious is the one driving at a match. Please, entertain yourselves with my struggles, and by all means call me out on anything I am doing wrong. Aaron C

Also, a major part of doing this is learning to relax and not worrying so much about missing.