Jake Di Vita

Yeah for sure. I'm definitely not saying don't wrap your wrists. I'm saying don't settle for only wrapping when you can work on correcting the cause of the problem. I have a whole series of mobilization exercises I use specifically for the front rack that I make everyone I teach go through before doing work sets. Takes about 15-20 minutes, but it makes a profound difference both in the short term and long term if done consistently. The weight may be totally on your shoulders when standing, but at the bottom of the squat (unless you have a superbly upright torso) is where the weight of the bar will shift to the wrists. Forward inclination of the torso at the bottom of the squat effectively lowers the elbows even more and makes the movement real harsh on the wrist.

Got a picture of your front rack position? Your pain is more than likely caused by either crappy front rack flexibility (which is shockingly common in men) or crappy bar position (also very common). As soon as your elbow/upper arm is pointing downwards from horizontal, you're immediately vastly increasing the load the wrist has to support. A proper front rack puts no stress on the wrist whatsoever because the bar is fully supported by your shoulders. All the hands do in this situation is keep the bar tight to your neck to ensure the weight is in line with the frontal plane (the plane that bisects your body front to back). Common flexibility issues that cause front rack wrist pain are elbows that don't have full range flexion, tight shoulders or lats that prevent the elbow from being raised high enough to create a proper shelf on the shoulder for the bar to sit, and wrist extension flexibility although I hardly see this. I'd highly recommend you try to sort out any/all of these flexibility issues rather than relying solely on the compression support of wrist wraps. A good place to start for learning how to mobilize this position would be to youtube search kelly starrett front rack mobility.

Yeah. Dryfire. Every day.

The vast majority of the deficit between CO and Open is minor scoring. I've always felt the dot is by far the most important equipment advantage of Open. I don't think comps mean much if your grip and stance fundamentals are solid. Big sticks save very little time over the course of most matches, depends on stage design. If someone shot a match in Open, then executed the same match equally in CO, I'd expect the CO run to be around 10% behind the Open run.

Time to trade her in for a new model? I'm kidding....mostly... If Hell froze over and I somehow found myself in that situation, my first solution would be to dryfire while she's sleeping or not home. While there are some people who have gotten pretty good with no dryfire, it is exceedingly rare and requires an ammo budget and range time that I would drool over. You're either going to have to educate her or do it behind her back. Wouldn't recommend that 2nd option, but desperate times call for desperate measures.

Especially when squatting heavy.

Sure you can. Anyone can that has access to their gun. You just aren't willing to do what is necessary to make that happen. Discipline is 1000 times more valuable than motivation.

A long time ago I was talking to a well known pro about this drill, to which he remarked that he had ran it in a time so unbelievable that he didn't like telling people because they'd hardly ever believe him. After some pushing he said the attempt was a .49 draw and .50 reload for a .99. I don't wanna put him on the spot here by naming him, but he's never given me a reason to doubt his word before.

I think Doug is great and everything, an Area match win where the highest class in your division is A is probably not an accomplishment he would hang his hat on. His Bianchi work is clearly more impressive...at least to me.

You must allow yourself to make mistakes in training. If your technique is 100% perfect in training, you will not improve.

The explanation wasn't only for you. If you don't like the length, feel free to skip it. I decided on what I was trying to accomplish, then the change I was going to make to do that, then I installed the change into my regular practice. I paid attention to what I saw and felt in dry fire from making the change and made further changes on the fly as I felt necessary. I spent about a half hour at the onset of the change figuring out the exact positions I wanted my body to be in, then I threw it to the wolves and forced myself to adapt. I slowed down when I needed to, but rarely did I ever go slower than match pace in dryfire (my match pace tends to be around 80% of my maximum speed). I recorded my mistakes for every rep and drove more of my attention towards the common errors that appeared out of the data over time. I did not reduce anything down to practice it individually.

Did you continue to isolate after you worked your issues out? That's what I think doesn't make sense. Going to isolation as a normal part of your training rather than using it for specific problems that come up just to get them to the point where you can train them correctly with a higher intensity. My goal when I make a mistake is to correct that mistake on the next rep without slowing down at all. I think that is a more valuable form of error correction that translates itself better to your overall game. If I make the same mistake 4 or 5 times in a row I'll slow down for a couple reps just to reemphasize the correct movement pattern. Then I speed back up and try to hold that correct movement pattern. So isolation is really not something that I ever put a lot of time into, it's just a means to an end to facilitate aggressive practice with the correct lines of action. I think that's an appropriate way to use isolation effectively. On the other hand, if you do 20 minutes of practice that is just isolating a certain movement, I feel that is at best an inefficient use of time. I also don't want my practice to be executed flawlessly. I'm sure you notice when you do something in isolation that it's relatively easy to execute flawlessly, then when you do the whole thing at full speed, it gets a lot more difficult to execute flawlessly. If I'm practicing something and I do it 100% correct 100% of the time, that practice isn't really making me a better shooter. In order to cause a favorable adaptation to stress (which is the goal of all training) you have to provide enough of a stress stimulus to cause that adaptation to begin with. I want to practice at a pace/complexity where I'm doing 80-90% of the reps perfectly, then force myself to correct the mistakes at the same intensity that caused the mistake to happen to begin with. If someone tends to revert back to isolation whenever they run into problems, they miss out on this incredibly valuable aspect of training. The requirements of technique increase with intensity, which is why doing something slow or isolated is never going to be equal to doing it as a whole or at speed. If you're doing 50% of the reps incorrectly, I totally see isolating the problem area for a limited time. But, once you're doing 10% or fewer of the reps incorrectly, you aren't pushing hard enough to really expand your capabilities. Another way of putting it is once you've executed in isolation 9/10 times correctly, I think it's time to move on from isolation and add more stress.

Yeah I've heard Ben suggest it before. I think it has a place. If you just can't execute something correctly, are very inconsistent with it, or are just learning for the first time, I can see narrowing your focus to one piece at a time. To me, the focus at that point is to get that skill to a point where you can full out practice with it and still execute it at least 90% correctly consistently. Once you know how to do it though, I think isolation becomes a poor substitute for full out practice. I don't think it's going to make you regress, but I don't think it's an efficient use of time. In my experience, ability to execute something isolated tends to not translate 100% when you add other things to it. For example from weightlifting, being able to deadlift, clean, and overhead squat doesn't mean you'll be able to squat snatch effectively. The sum of the whole is greater than the parts.

Except then you have to teach yourself how to pull the trigger without moving the sights, draw properly, etc with the new grip technique. Is it really that difficult to squeeze hard in addition to the other normal aspects of your practice like pulling the trigger or drawing? The no trigger pull thing for any form of practice has never made logical sense to me. I get practicing with a bias towards something to shore up a weakness, but trying to isolate aspects of technique in practice when they will always be used together when it matters seems somewhat counterproductive or at least less than ideal.

I feel a little stress in my support elbow, but I feel a good bit more stress in my support wrist. This is because most of the torque into the gun is being generated by my wrist while my elbow is in a stable externally rotated position which is generated from the shoulder. Fatigue usually means you haven't yet conditioned your body to this particular action. Don't be surprised if it takes a few months of practice before everything "feels" right. You started the post off mentioning shooters elbow. Is your elbow causing you pain? It's important for you to know the difference between the kind of discomfort you can push through without causing damage and the kind of discomfort you need to heed as a warning to rest.

I've said for years that Open is the easiest division to shoot but the hardest division to win. The extent to which you are penalized for mistakes is certainly the largest in Open. I think competing under those constraints gives you an appreciation for consistency that you might not see as much in other divisions. The sooner you gain that appreciation, the faster you'll mature in your ability to execute at matches. As has been said many times before, the biggest advantage by far is the dot. Instant exact feedback that is easier to visually digest than irons. The advantages to that seem self evident to someone trying to improve. Even if you don't have any fire around you for competition, that shouldn't matter. If you're a GM and the next highest class locally in your division is C, you should be trying to bury that poor C shooter to 30% of your score.

1000%. People don't appreciate how important posture is. It sounds funny, but sitting and standing in the best bio-mechanical positions are actually high skill activities. I knew a lady that had a horrible habit of running tons of miles with her head hanging down, then one day she sneezed and blew out two cervical discs. No history of problems before that. The body doesn't just fail like that for no reason, it likely takes years of abuse and neglect before something like this happens. A DPT friend of mine told me once that 98% of injuries are preventable with unpreventable ones being 1% catastrophic (car crash, lineman rolling into your knee) and the other 1% being pathological (knee cancer, etc). Here is a good explanation of what's going on with the sitting position and posture.

I pull the trigger very aggressively and all at once whether it's DA or SA. If you can hone your ability in practice to pull the trigger this way without allowing the sights to leave your desired target area, it transfers very well to match shooting where adrenaline and nerves tend to make fine motor skills like trigger staging a bit more sloppy. A well developed grip is what keeps the gun on target through aggressive trigger manipulation. There are tons of posts on this subject on this forum that I suggest you read through.

Hair on fire in practice is a good thing. Also, if you are shooting matches and feel like you are shooting with an overabundance of caution, that's just about a perfect place to be. If you're doing your job in training and pushing on the ragged edge of speed/control, the speed in matches will take care of itself. I don't think you should ever feel like you are trying to go fast in a match. When it's match day, just go hit the center of the targets as quickly as you know your sights are there. I know that feels wrong while you're doing it and watching other shooters outpace you. You just gotta have faith in the process. Also, when I read back your own thoughts on the DQ. I can't help but think trying to go fast had something to do with it.

Yeah I have a similar experience. I find that the extra pressure towards the barrel axis more than makes up for the slight loss of contact at the bottom of the grip. One thing you may want to double check is that your squeeze with your support hand is being done with roughly the same intensity as your inward pressure. You don't want to be in a place where the up and inward pressure causes your pinky/ring fingers to peel open much.

I think you should learn to call your shots 100% of the time before worrying about mental training. That is not something that someone else will really be able to teach you. You could have the strongest mind in the world, but if you can't call your shots consistently and accurately the strong mind isn't going to make a hell of a lot of difference. Remember you've gone from C class to what you are now in a little over a year. It's extremely unreasonable to be upset with your progress in any way. This crap takes time. You've already been to classes. Keep your nose to the grindstone.

This isn't what is happening. After all this talk, if you still think this is what I'm doing and what we're talking about, we're just going to have to agree to disagree. Looking back I didn't really specify one beyond the basic parameters, so I'll detail one I've done in the past. 3 targets each spaced 1.5 yards apart from each other. Target on the right is 3 yards away, middle target is 1 yard, left target is 5 yards. Start facing targets gun loaded in holster hands at sides. On beep 2 on each. Alternate between aligning the front sight in the rear notch for all targets and going off index or some less detailed picture of the gun. I did a relatively small sample size of 100 runs, 50 of each. My average with aligning my sights for every shot was 1.65 while my average of going off index was 1.42. Draw average for sights only was .82 while the average for index was .79). This was done with an iron sighted gun. Points for this drill are irrelevant. The goal is to see if you have a speed difference between using your sights vs. a coarser sight picture/index. When I noted the clear time difference I decided to work on figuring out how to call my shots using the faster method. It took a year and a half or so before I was consistent enough calling my shots to use it in a match.

Can you give me the science behind your position? I can give you my results, but that hardly qualifies as science. Try it yourself. I recommended a drill to you earlier, I'd be interested in your results.

I agree with pretty much everything you said except this excerpt. I can switch between seeing the sights on partials and seeing my fist on open targets without any trouble whatsoever. I'm not consciously deciding anything in the same way that I don't have to consciously decide to use a more refined sight picture on a 20 yard partial than a 10 yard partial. I already know what I need to see to hit each target before I do it, with or without the sights. Operating under the conditions you listed I can understand why you feel the way you do, but I did not have the same experience as you. My testing has led me to my methodology, as yours has.

What I've been saying the whole time is it IS possible to call your shots without seeing your sights. A well developed index with a coarse sight picture (the example I used earlier was fists in front of brown) and experience. I freely admit that there is a higher margin of error, which is why I don't do this for all targets. When I do engage targets I deem appropriate in this manner I'm able to call an acceptable shot a good bit faster than if I were forcing myself to use the actual sights. I'm still letting my vision drive my shooting and I'm calling both shots.