Jimgabelbauer

From what I understand they award first place (presidents medal) in each division that there are 20+ competitors in.

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Here is my take as an A class. Read Lanny's book. I was right where you find yourself. Yes, I would get so nervous I'd shake, literally. That's part of the addiction, it's adrenaline pumping fun for me. Has kept me coming back for more 9 years. Here is where I'm at: I'm about one oscillation back from the goldilocks zone. I know if I completely SEE what I need to SEE, no more, no less, I'm golden. I know that for me, I never think "speed", it's a killer. I think "shoot A,s at your natural pace numb nuts". But when I practice, I try to bump my natural pace up. Practice is for my "trying", matches for my natural A's. So if I've trained correctly, in I match I might be thinking at the buzzer, "go collect your A's". Because I've trained it for quickness at home, it happens. It's how I shoot. It's who I am, the "try" is gone. It's simply, " Go get your A's" Didn't mean to take over the thread, but I love this stuff. It's becoming art to me. I think this describes where I'm at perfectly. I'm an A right now, but I'm working on speed/control/accuracy in practice. Matches/ classifiers are just about shooting A's. I think once you become convinced that the only thing that matters is shooting A's, everything comes together. Anytime I find myself "trying" I read the wanna b speedy thread.

I have continued to do a lot of dryfire daily, and also weekly live fire and shooting around a match per week. Today I went out with intentions of practicing, and discovered that my striker broke. My gun at this point has 19,850 rounds through it, and is a little over a year old (G34). Fortunately I just took my striker out of my 19. Ordered a new one from lone wolf. I'll replace it along with the striker spring/trigger spring before the pro am just to be safe.

Yeah my 34 has 19k through it and has the same thing..

Monday- Weights for an hour, dryfire Anderson drills 1-20 10x ea. Live fire 22 practice 300 rounds. Dryfire in evening for an hour, movement drills from stoeger 15 min program

Today I woke up, worked out for an hour, dryfired Steve Anderson drills for an hour. Then i went to the range and worked on 25 yard groups, table draws, and shooting a 3" circle at 15 yards strong and weak handed with my 22. Freestyle was ok, I was a little shaky from earlier. Strong hand and weak hand are improving..

Got bumped up to A class today! I've been training hard the past few days to get ready for upcoming matches. I Plan on shooting: July- pro am August-Florida state championship September-ipsc nationals October-monster match November- south Florida custom gun sectional December- factory gun classic I live about 2 hours from universal shooting academy so there are a bunch of upcoming major matches close to me! Over the next month I plan on dryfiring an hour a day, going to the range and doing a lot of accuracy drills with live fire. Last week at the square range I started working on a 50 round accuracy drill- load mag to 5 rounds and shoot 4 strings into the lower a zone at 50 yards.. Load 5 rounds and shoot 4 strings at 25 yards, upper a zone. Then finally 5 rounds weak hand and 5 rounds strong hand at 25 yards in the lower a zone. Last week I had: 17 A 16 B 9 C 7 M. The 25 yard head shots are the toughest part for me. I have also been putting about 4-600 rounds of 22 downrange each week and this has been helping a lot When I got a chance last week I shot a 10 yard bill drill in 2.22 with a 1.02 draw and .22-24 splits. I was pushing it for where I'm at but back in Dec I was at 3.50 with a 1.30 draw and .35 splits. Now that I know I can shoot that fast I need to get to where I can consistently do it cold under match conditions. I know I need to gain more speed on distant targets also. I have also been continuing my strength training program with weights, and am now adding some plyometrics and cardio. I've been shooting open (with my production gun and a 170mm mag ) to work on keeping the gun up, entering and exiting positions, shooting on the move, seeing wha I can get away with etc..it seems to be working for me! My goal is to make master and shoot like one by the end of the year..or sooner

I am on a similar situation, what I do is practice dryfire at home and shoot matches. For live fire practice at the square range I make up things I can do to compete with myself..example set up standard uspsa target at 50 yards. Load magazine with 10 rounds. Shoot as quickly as you can get away with.. Make it a 20-50 round string. The most important thing for me is to keep track and compete with myself. Make every shot count. Another thing I'll do is get standard B8 bullseye targets and shoot 50 rounds on it at 25 yards and score it. Keep track of what your scores are. You can do things like this with strong hand weak hand etc. You can also practice different trigger techniques; just because it's slow fire doesn't mean you have to practice shooting the way you would slow. You can also work on hot calling. A lot of people will tell you you can't get better with slowfire practice, but I think there are ways to make it interesting and useful. Especially if you can't keep them all in the a zone at 50,or in the a zone of the head at 15

I shot area 6 this last weekend. So far this has been my best match to date. I had a very solid consistent performance. I ended up 28/119 shooters. This was my first area match and was a lot of fun. About a month before the match I had acquired a ruger mark 3 and have been doing a lot of 22 practice. I think it really paid off being able to go out 3x a week and work on the fundamentals. The two months prior to the match I had been dry-firing a lot, but then eased up on that and did more live fire the 2 weeks before. It helped me to really get a lot of As and minimize the mikes, but I still have a long way to go. With penalties I ended up shooting 88.72% of the points. It was good feeling like I was capable of making every shot there. I'd like to be this confident about the shots at the Florida open next year! Practice practice practice Biggest things I need to work on: Accuracy- right now I'm confident on head shots at 15 yards, I want to push that out further to 25 and be able to consistently get all my hits. I need to do more 50 yard a zone practice too. Reloads-I can do these pretty fast in practice when I'm warmed up. but at a match I'm not as consistent and fast, probably losing .4 per reload compared to what I know I'm capable of.. Movement- I really need to be more aggressive/efficient moving from position to position, and work on shooting on the move. Looking ahead, the next major match I plan on shooting is the pro am. I am pretty busy with work right now, so I will be dryfiring a little less. (15 min a day instead of an hr) From the middle of may through all of June I will really be working a lot on dryfire and live fire though. The pro am will be the first major match that I am returning to, so I will see how much I have improved in a year.

Good idea to compare hit factor..however, I think saying it would take 2 seconds longer to get an alpha vs a Charlie at any distance is pretty unrealistic. I'm only a B shooter and I would say even at 25 yards the time difference between A/C and 2 A would be a tenth of a second..maybe two. Even if you said a half second, which would be forever in ipsc..that's A/C in 4 sec (2.0 hf) vs 2 A in 4.5 sec (2.2 hf) I have the sites and think they are great, I can keep all my hits in the A zone at 50 if I have a perfect trigger pull.. I actually think at that distance having a lot of light on each side helps you aquire and align the sites quicker because the target is so small that far out. Also, try shooting 35-50 yard shots on steel.. If the front site were wider or rear notch thinner, it would be harder to acquire steel at that distance. I think if you dryfire and shoot a lot with them, you'll get used to that site picture and it will become automatic..just my opinion

Swfps.com is the website for the club in pt Charlotte..

I'd like to be added.. Production A71912

Two and a half weeks until the Florida open, and I'm ready and shooting better than I ever have. I've realized through practice that a state of total relaxation is necessary to shoot accurately. I feel I've reached a whole new level. Re-reading brians book has been more helpful at this point than any other thus far. I think it's been six months since I last read it. I was reading through it after I wrote my last online journal entry, and the things I was describing were right there (page 128). I've noticed that for me, instead of using a mental picture, thinking of a "feel" puts me in a state where I shoot totally relaxed, subconsciously, and consistently! I've really noticed through dryfire that certain tensions in muscles will cause me to be far less accurate. I'll call a d, and think back to what I did and notice I had tension after a reload or movement and it caused me to jerk the gun. Or today, I shot a stage that had an unloaded mags on person start. I was so relaxed and smooth, it didn't affect the shooting at all. In the past it would cause me to be tense on the whole stage. I also read the part the other night about floating the gun, and definitely could think of a couple of times shooting steel matches where I felt "it". I noticed that I did it today on two arrays of steel during the match. I say noticed because I almost wrote that I was able to do it. But, I didn't try to reproduce it or anything..I just saw it happen. (just like he says in the book) I just smoothly saw the gun go from target to target, and called my shots. I also shot very well on an array with steel 2 paper and a dt. I usually get tense shooting these kinds of stages, but not today. I shot the steel, paper, dt and called 2 a on the dt. I usually am not relaxed enough to call shots on swingers/dt's. So, this has all been great for me. I've been dryfiring daily, about 45 min to an hour. I plan to continue this week! I also shot my first "a" classifier last week at a monthly match at the WAC(which I shot well at), but whoever entered the score put my time as 29 sec instead of 7.34. I contacted them and they said they'd see if the stats guy had the sheet and entered it wrong..said if they could they'd send a correction to uspsa. Kind of annoying, but oh well..I'll just have to shoot more A classifiers..

I have been averaging about 45 min to an hour per day of dry fire..I'm learning a lot. Lately I have become very aware of shooting without tension, and have been doing much better at matches. I got the book 10 minute mental toughness, and have been working on the program. I've kinda combined it with winning in mind. With dryfire I've really been working this drill from bens program -Start standing outside the box with at least one foot touching any part of the box. Draw, and from outside the box engage the center target with 2 shots. Move across the box, reload, and from outside the box on the opposite side engage the center target with 2 rounds. Hands may be at sides or surrender. Be sure to vary start position. 5 reps at a Par time of 4.0 seconds (novice), 3.2 seconds (laid back), 2.6 Seconds (expert), 2.3 seconds (crazy) It's working great for me, because, I need to work on moving and reloading. I've gotten to where I can get the reload and be on target right as I arrive, so I just need to speed it up and get to the point where I can do it consistently in matches. The big thing for me though is practicing it without tension, and calling the shots. I've also made a conscious effort to really work on shot calling during dryfire, and so far it has made a huge difference!

Also on this site if you go to topics-words and tips-Fundamentals and technique--if you haven't read that!

Google "bullseye shooting", there is a site that has the us army marksmanship unit bullseye pistol manual, and various articles. I just took that and use the concepts with my freestyle stance. Also Brians book, and if you haven't seen matt burketts volume 1-3, the third volume is an interview with brian that is the best explanation I have seen on shooting groups!

Year in review.. So my first year of shooting is almost over. I think I have accomplished a lot for my first year. I shot my first match ever Jan 25th, and placed dead last. I started practicing, got matt burketts DVDs, brians book, steve andersons book. I practiced with these resources and shot my first major match (pro am) and placed 2nd D in open. Then I classified C in uspsa and expert in Idpa. Then in december I placed 2nd C and 11/84 overall at the factory gun classic, and also classified B in production. All in all, I feel I have learned so much in a small amount of time and plan to continue progressing! Moving forward- in the first few months this year, I am going to shoot the Florida open and area 6. I know these are going to be difficult, so it should be a great learning experience! I haven't been as consistent as Id like to be with my training in the past couple months. I'm going to stick to a better plan, and work toward improving in many different areas. I am going to work on mental training daily also!

Ben, this along with your website/dryfire routine has been a great resource for me. The past month I've been working on dryfire with partial targets at further distances and wide transitions, and it has helped a lot! Transitions are smoother, match accuracy has gotten better..still have a long way to go though. Question..how much time do you spend per day dryfiring?

Got my B card in production in the mail yesterday. I am now working on getting ready for the florida open. I've started dryfiring with ipsc classic targets, and I made a few target arrays with no shoots in different positions so I can work on difficult shots. Today I also spent 2 hours with the entering/exiting positions part of Saul kirsch's master class 2 DVD.. I'll be shooting a club match Thursday, and I'm going to work on incorporating some of these techniques. My training right now looks something like this: start out with Anderson drills 1-20 10x each 6 reload 6 drills at various distances/angles. Working up close (1/3 size tgt 5 ft) on speeding up transitions, while staying relaxed. Shooting 6 reload 6 at 20 ft with head shots to work on not overswinging and getting my transitions to be more precise. Then I'll set up something like a small stage and work on shooting a couple arrays and moving to another position and shooting again. I've also been working on moving around barricades, shooting on the move, exiting hard leans, and shoot reload move. Work on trigger control daily, freestyle, strong hand weak hand I am not able to do all of this in one day, but over two days I'll work on all of these things. If I feel to sore (usually once a week) I just rest.

Shot the factory gun classic match on dec 10. Placed 2/14 in C and 11/84 overall. Overall I shot pretty consistent, I had a few really good stages and a couple not so great stages. I had 2 mike and 1 no shoot total. I also noticed in the scores you can look up what the percentage of points you shot was. This match I was at 80.8 with penalties. My next major match I have a goal to shoot 90%. That seems like the right balance of speed and accuracy, looking at a lot of top GM performances in major matches.

Squeaked into B, 61.73% production!

I actually signed up on your squad but got moved! I'll be there up there Sunday, so I'll have to sign up on your squad.. That stage with the stomp pad was tough.. Did you shoot the dt first? I ended up shooting the dt swinger paper steel, but I think I kinda panicked and lost the front sight after the swinger and got a mike on the far paper..those speed shoot type stages are a weakness for me..

Shot last night at the WAC, placed 2/46 overall and 1st of 24 in production. Overall I shot pretty good, but I did have 2 mikes that I shouldn't have. I had a breakthrough though, I'm very excited. I think I've reached a new level of awareness. This was the first match where at multiple times I saw the sight lift from shot to shot throughout a stage. It's hard to explain, in memory I feel like the shooting was in slow motion and I can recall seeing the sight lift and come back down perfectly! I work on this in practice, but have never seen so much under match conditions.

Woke up, did my weight routine. Then dryfired for 20 minutes working on transitions, draw reloads and trigger control. I've added one of the 1/5 size steel to my dryfire setup, and I am finding I really need to see a lot more from my sights on steel. I really need to make sure when I'm shooting matches that I'm patient and hitting steel in one shot every time. After dryfire I went out to the range and just shot 25 rounds, at 25 yards. I was shooting at a piece of computer paper. I would dryfire as many times as needed to get a perfect trigger pull, then shoot a live round. I ended up pulling a few, but was happy that I called the shots. I'm going to try and make it out to the range a couple times a week and practice with a small amount of ammo 25-50 rounds, and just focus on the quality of practice. I hope to have some time to dryfire tonight. I also saw the classifiers updated, but my newest classifier wasnt entered!