Ogre

This is a generic sheet I've bastardized from Mike's for my purposes. There's some new info and other info left out to suit my needs. It's not drill specific, but it does have info spots for "clock" drills and separation of upper and lower a zone times for easier metric tracking. Year in Training.pdf

Looking back over my Range Diary I've noticed a couple things. I'm not updating it as much as I thought I would. I've also accomplished most of the small things I set out to do in my first post. The tennis elbow has been a pain, but after yesterday's range session, I'm going to get back into the swing of things full bore. Nothing's sore the day after, and my arm feels pretty good. General comments about yesterday's range session: 1. A 44 Magnum is a truly wonderful beast. After shooting a Ruger Redhawk 44 mag, my appreciation for Dirty Harry has risen immeasurably. As a bit of a recoil junkie, the experience was intense and awesome. Shooting it at an indoor range magnified the experience, I'm sure! 2. It rained about 5 inches over the course of 5 hours before my range trip so I had to use the newly available indoor range to shoot. It was fun and I'm glad I stayed dry, but I do like shooting outdoors much, much more than shooting indoors. I can't practice nearly the amount of skills indoors as I can outdoors. 3. For some reason at distance my G34 is shooting slightly high and a bit left at distance (25 yds). I'm almost positive it's the sights since shooting the same distance with a G21 shows no left push. I'm going to wait until I have a different shooter shoot it before adjusting the sights. I wanna make sure it's the sights and not me somehow changing my grip on a small frame Glock vs a large frame Glock. I'm also going to start posting up my drill times again, too. I realize I'm keeping track of them, but it would be nice to have them up here to look at, too. I really enjoy shooting groups at the beginning and end of practice. I should probably be shooting the same gun I'm using to compete, but I really like using the 22 conversion. Maybe I'll compromise and shoot a couple groups with my production gun and the rest with the conversion and try to gradually transition between the two. Speaking of transitions, I really feel like this is a weak point in my shooting right now; but there are so many weak points, I can't focus on all of them in each practice. I've decided an all encompassing approach is probably best until I've got fundamentals down a bit more. It's helped me quite a bit to write down what I plan on doing during my next practice, I get a larger variety of skills practiced. Until I can identify a weakness that appears to be causing me much more lost time/points than others, I'm going to continue practicing a wide array of skills. I read a thread about intermediate skills here somewhere and I'm gonna try to integrate some of those drills into my own. I'm also going to continue to do dot torture left handed to keep the increased left hand proficiency from my tennis elbow practices. About a week and a half before the next competition, so we'll see where I end up. Hopefully when I time my standard drills next week, I'll see some improvement from the previously posted times.

Range Trip yesterday. Started off with some 5 shot groups from 25 yds with my AA Conversion and some CCI Minimags and Remington Golden Bullets. Shot 30 rounds (20 Freestyle, 5 SHO, 5 WHO) on my new mat using sandbags. 10 Rounds freestyle I used the Minimags; the last 10 I used Golden Bullets. I'm gonna have to stay with the Minimags to track my progress; the Golden Bullets were 2-3x the spread of the Minimags. The MidwayUSA mat is fantastic for the $25 I paid for it. Most of the others I looked at were in the $100-$150 range. Next time out I'd like to try some groups at 50yds. If they all stay within a 12" circle, I might just go ahead and begin using 50 yds as my standard. I worked on target transitions at 10 yds with 3 targets 1 yd apart. I did about 60 rounds Freestyle, 30 SHO, and 30 WHO. Some things that I noticed: 1. The 3 targets at 10 yds 1 yd apart is pretty standard. This might be a good standard to use to track my transition(s) only progress over a longer period of time. 2. For a fair comparison, I'll have my tracking exclude my draw. I don't want an increased draw speed to falsely lead me to believe my transitions are quickening. 3. This drill needs to be varied, preferably with more targets and varied distances between targets. With my conversion kit having a 10 rd mag, I'd like to start using 5 targets and vary distance on them, as well as having parts of the targets obscured. 4. I'm always adding things to keep track of. I've noticed some of them are definitely overlapping. As time progresses, I'm going to have to pick and choose which are best representations of progress and use those. I spent about 200 rounds going through Kyle's Flinch Breaker 101 with 22lr and 9mm. At the end of it, my eyes felt exhausted, and I did as well. At the end of the day I felt like I was trying to make something happen through pure force of will. I didn't like that. I've decided that as long as I'm progressing, I'm not going to worry about my blink for now. This was not fun or enjoyable for me. If something is not fun or enjoyable for me, I need to stop before it taints the rest of my otherwise pleasant experience. Reviewing video showed me that I'm still blinking about 50% of the time. I do need to work on calling my shots and the good news is practicing calling my shots results in a practice where much fewer rounds are expended (at least for me). I spent about 150 rounds working on pure relaxation, aka trigger speed, and got some splits down to the .14 and .13 range. My average appears to be about .18 to .20 during a bill drill. Ended my practice with standing freestyle accuracy drills at 20 yds. Results were okay, but not as impressive to me as my prone shooting from sandbags. The disparity may have something to do with my focus on trigger press only during this drill as opposed to my front sight only focus during the prone version at the beginning. Both had training value, though. After my practice was over, I joined some friends in shooting a .17 HMR and a couple revolvers. The .17 is scary accurate. Arm is getting better. Really gonna have to work on my skillz if I'm gonna make B Class by the end of this year. On an off note, I've been doodling with sketchup and stage design. This hobby looks like it might have potential to branch even further into my life!

Shot a 5 Stage match today. Did very well; only dropped 5 or 6 shots total. Put me at 21st out of 55. I did notice a curious thing, though. While I was emphasizing accuracy with my shooting others were emphasizing speed. Those that emphasized speed placed significantly higher than me despite dropping a bunch of points (at least more than me). I'm really going to have to do some reading up on scoring and figure out a good/quick way to decide whether I should focus on speed or accuracy during a stage. Next time I shoot a USPSA match, I think I might shoot with a target focus for the most part and see where it puts me. I hate to concentrate on speed, but I'd also like to try something different. I'm in this for the long haul, so it shouldn't be a big deal, right? Highest place on a stage for me was 9th, and that was the classifier. Overall, I've gone up about 18% since May if I compare myself to the overall winner. Definitely making progress! Shot 4 Texas stars in one stage, it was a heck of an introduction to them. They were fun and I hope I get to shoot them again. Love the G34 with the WTS sights. Been able to do a little bit of dryfire work over the last week and it's been fun. Arms is getting better but still sore. Still working on my blink, but the 9mm is really helping out. Off to dryfire for he September match!

Short but beneficial range trip today. Tennis Elbow has been getting more aggravated as I up the intensity of rehab; I'll probably back off a bit for a week or two and try to increase intensity again. Still not dry firing as much as I'd like. While Dryfiring, I'm doing a small amount of work transitioning from strong hand to weak hand; drawing aggravates the elbow, so that's not included. I've been putting in a lot of work trying to make my weak hand stance more consistent. I've also done some dot drills which seem to really help improve gaining familiarity with normal tasks weak handed. Gonna run through Burkett's Timing Drill at the next trip and see what I find out. I did find out I'm grippinng my gun way too hard. Using the G34 Strong hand, it only took about 2 magazines to figure out why the slide wasn't locking open after the last round was shot. When I'm able, I'm planning on shooting a lot of one and two round magazines to relieve my death grip. I wouldn't have know I was death gripping without the G34's extended slide stop. I'm giving partial blame to the death grip for my tennis elbow. Got my Sevigny sights put on the gun. Hoping I can zero them in the next week or so.

Back to the range today! Brought out my new 34 and did a lot of WHO shooting. Even though I shouldn't have, I also did some Freestyle and SHO shooting too. Haven't been able to put the WTS sights on the gun yet, but that should happen Friday. Forearm is progressing much slower than what I would like, but at least it's progressing. A lack of dryfire practice has led to more time devoted to reading the forum and a few books I've picked up along the way. Starting to plan range days with much more detail and hopefully as a result get more value from my time.

Dry Firing is still out for now. Mild dry firing seemed to slightly agravate the injury. Took a short trip to the range today. Shot almost entirely weak hand with only .22lr. I was trying out some different grips and stances for my weak hand shooting. I had just watched Saul Kirsch's short youtube video on strong and weak hand shooting. His tips made a huge difference while shooting weak hand. It's going to take some conscious effort to redo my stance since it had been mostly square to targets before, where this new one has a lot of my weak side punched toward the target. It was amazing to see the sight track so much differently, aka nearly straight up and down, with the new stance as opposed to the sight bouncing all over with my old half-homie grip and square stance. I am experiencing a shortage of quality weak hand drills, suggestions are appreciated. On a side note, my G34 came in and I have my Sevigny Sights in the mail, now I'm just drooling because I'm not gonna be able to shoot it strong hand for a little while. Damn you tennis elbow! Still am planning on shooting a Bianchi match on Sunday with a 22 and see what happens.

Shortly after the above post, I realized I had developed tennis elbow. I attributed the pain in my arm to "good" muscle soreness in my arm for a couple weeks before eventually realizing there was nothing "good" about it. Now I'm almost a month into no dryfiring or shooting at all and it is driving me crazy. After talking with Chad and asking for some advice, I'm gonna pick up dryfiring at least a little to see if it aggravates the arm at all. This sucks.

I'm in! C production, U in limited and L10. A72011. Have to admit I shot production on accident and won't shoot it again until I get my g34. In the meantime, I'll participate in L10.

Range Day today! Been doing well with the dryfiring schedule, but I didn't get a chance to test it out today since I didn't do my standardized drills. I checked to make sure CCI Mini-Mags would function in my AA conversion kit to shoot the Bianchi Match in a couple weeks. They worked awesome, hitting 7" plates without fail at 25yds. I was worried since I was missing 1-3 out of every 15 with my Golden Bullet Value Pack from Cabela's. Cabela's ammo also failed to eject a bunch of times. No accuracy or ejection problems with the CCI's. Also shot my AR with the new rear CSAT iron sight. I like the sight a lot. Lets me shoot POA/POI at 7yds, nickel sized 6 shot group freestyle standing) and is also within 1 1/2" out to 100 yds; which is further than I will ever need it. Worked a bit on Draw-1-Reload-1 and hit a few in the 2.5 range, but not consistently. Spent A LOT of time working with "Kyle's Flinch Breaker 101" but basically found myself wishing I had the machine that held my eyelids open from A Clockwork Orange before the end of the day. Damn this blink! It absorbed most of the range session. I'll get rid of it soon, just gonna keep dryfiring and working on it until it disappears. With the scores from the classifiers, it looks like I'll be classified High D/Low C. Regardless of which it is, I will be a B shooter by the end of this year.

Yeah, some guys I was shooting with explained Major vs. Minor....as a result I'm hoping to see marked improvement next time out shooting the right division. Made it out to the range today and averaged a 1.19 Draw-1, 3.20 Draw-1-Reload-1, hit a 2.93 Bill Drill, hit a 5.68 FAST drill, and hit a 6.99 El Pres. I'm pretty excited because I've shown improvement everywhere except the El Pres, which I only shot clean once; although it was nice that the clean run was my fastest time. The averages get a little funky with so many "unclean" runs, but I track 'em anyway. Not spectacular times at all-but they're getting faster! Worked on a lot of narrow, wide, and varying distance transitions with the 22 and tried to keep my splits consistent throughout the string. It flowed a lot better by the end of the day, but I can certainly say it wasn't speedy. Shot some longer range groups before starting practice, and that can use some work as well. My biggest sticking point right now is blinking and calling my shots-they could be related....Besides running standard drills next week, I'm planning on working on my blink only. After I take care of this damn blink, I'll work on calling my shots. Friend brought a Browning Hi Power out, which was pretty cool, even though the hammer bit me a couple times. The magazines had mouse trap things on the bottom of them that would launch mags out of the well and they worked great! Finished 22nd out of 55 total shooters at the last match and 9th out of 26th in Production. Shooting A Bianchi match at the end of the month and another USPSA match a week after that. Plenty of time for improvement. Now to go look for some blinking tips.....

Shot my first 5 stage classifier today and it was a blast. Kept it slow enough to not make any safety mistakes, and other than holstering without dropping the hammer once, everything worked out pretty well. Talking to some of the guys there, I should shoot Limited 10 with a G21 as opposed to the Production Class I was put in today. Oh well. Too much stuff to work on to list, but I had a blast and got to video tape a couple people with my phone camera and am working on uploading video now.

Dry Fire program is going well. Sometimes only doing it once a day, but doing it everyday is definitely helping. No range trip this week due to Easter. Instead, my kids and I decided a target focus while shooting a squirt gun tends to yield better results than lining the sights up. Moving while shooting is also a must. Thinking about safes for my guns and some design parameters for a reloading room.

Should start by saying I've only very recently begun getting serious about shooting and competition. So I'm gonna jump in with both feet. The Range was cold. I've chosen 5 exercises to track via spreadsheet over the course of my range work to illustrate my progress; or lack thereof. The drills are: Bill Drill FAST Drill El Pres Draw-1 Draw-1-Reload-1 I'm not set up to reload, yet, so I have to limit the number of these drills I do with my duty gun (and ammo) for now. I'm taking the average of 5 Bill Drills, 5 FAST Drills, and 5 El Pres's. Drill repetitions that result in anything less than specified A Zone hits are not counted unless they are slower than my slowest clean time. Minimum of 3 clean runs for an average. Draw to first shot drill and Draw-1-Reload-1 will be averaged out over 10 reps, same penalty for dropped shots. I'm burning 150-200 rds 45 every range trip through a G21 SF. Also burning through 550 Rounds of Wally World Golden Bullets through an Advantage Arms Conversion. There are definitely advantages and disadvantages to the .22lr. Next Range trip I need to: 1. Bump most targets out beyond 25 yds. Pushing myself to go too fast too soon on close targets; gonna slow myself down by pushing the targets way back. 2. Work on long range accuracy type shooting before drill practice. Maybe do right hand only and left hand only as well as the normal grip. Might take group measurements and track them over 6 months and see if they improve. Before the next Range trip I need to: 1. Figure out how to take, edit, and post video with my phone. 2. Get an alternative to the PVC stands. They work well, but they take up a lot of trunk room and just don't fare well in the wind. 3. Send a complaint to Cabelas about their 22 ammo; which was the worst I've ever encountered. 4. Keep up the dryfire practice once or twice daily. Stuff I need to think about in the meantime includes: 1. Ordering a G34, hopefully Gen3, for tinkering purposes. 2. Start looking into 1911's. The Range Officer looked and felt awesome, despite the fact that I have nearly zero experience with 1911 type pistols. 3. Limit the number of people I bring to the range with me. Free brass is cool and all, but that 3-5 hours of range time should be work time for me more than socializing time for me. 4. Wondering if I have a blink. Different sight pictures on when comparing the 22 and 45 in my memory. Also finding it much easier to call shots with the 22. I think I'm blinking with the 45. 5. I'm deficient with everything at this point, just need to keep working on it all. Competition will eventually show me where I need to focus some more. My goals are: Have fun, enjoy the ride, and make measureable progress over time. Comments or questions are welcomed.