GunBugBit

It doesn't take many Mikes and/or No-Shoots to zero out the Hit Factor, even though you might have had some other good shooting within the stage. The technique foundation advice is good and to be taken seriously. The goal as you apply all of that is to get to a place where you can, at will, get just about every point available in a match, without a lot of strain. Once there, your accuracy foundation is in place. Not that you can't start working on efficiency, it's just that it won't do you that much good until you have the accuracy foundation. Notice I did not suggest slowing down. Shooting better does not necessarily mean going slower, but it does most likely involve a change in approach and technique.

I disengage it late, just before the first trigger press.

Good sights. I like a red FO front and a no-dot U-notch in back. Trigger job of course, unless yours was great out of the box. Ambi thumb safety. I like EGW's. Extended mag release button. I use the Wilson. Ledge-style slide stop lever. The Ed Brown is nice and the one that comes stock on DW Valors is even better. The Gen 2 from 10-8 looks very nice, have never tried one. Frontstrap checkering or grip tape. Nice aggressive grip panels that accommodate the mag release button. Can always carve out a recess for that. A mag well. I use the Dawson ICE no-gap. Recoil spring that's right for your load. A good extractor such as EGW HD or Aftec or Wilson. A correctly fit firing pin stop.

Thanks 02doooce!

What about the A's and M's trying to move up?

No, I don't necessarily shoot better with better shooters. A couple of my best matches this year were with, trying to be nice here, not-better shooters. And I have gotten a bit nervous at other matches where shooters I really look up to were RO'ing for me. I'd say I shoot better when with a squad, regardless of their shooting skill level, who aren't creating distractions.

Definitely. I know shooters who do very well with Glocks and the other polymer-framed guns. I recently set up a G22 for competition and will be shooting it on Thursday nights once in a while. I'm a 1911 man to the core but I like Glocks for what they are.

I agree. With my last USPSA match, the published stage descriptions ended up being the actual ones we saw in the match (wasn't always the case). So I was able to dry-fire mock-ups of every stage for a few days before the match, which among other things allowed me to burn in mental movies of me shooting the stages. These were simple stages so doing this wasn't hard. With bigger stages, it's more challenging to formulate the mental movies, but it's possible. Those with more match experience can more easily form an accurate mind picture of what the printed stage descriptions will be like in real life.

Heck yeah I've missed some too, especially when it's 115 and the sun is baking me.

My own journey with classifiers, especially my first ones, was wanting to shoot them too precisely. In this game there is definitely such a thing as being too accurate. Obviously it slows you down. It seems great to get all A's on a classifier, but guess what, that guy over there shot it much faster and almost had all A's with only one C and his hit factor is much, much higher. He obviously can be plenty accurate while shooting quite fast. Hmm, what has he figured out? His grip? The way he processes his visual input? Whatever the case, he gave himself permission to shoot fast after building a solid technique that lets him get hits at that speed. Is slowing down the answer for you? I don't know, but it might be if your technique remains unchanged. I would just say consider the approach of not slowing down but instead addressing your technique. For sure you have to dry fire for a big part of your foundation. And you have to train yourself how it feels to get hits on target at this speed you're shooting at -- exactly how you arrive at that, I don't know, but very likely there is a path involving live fire practice to get there. Maybe you'll find you can shoot faster and get hits, or even that your current speed is nowhere near your potential speed. For the shooter who has not experienced getting most or even all of the available points in a match, even if slowly, I would say perhaps the accuracy foundation is not yet there. But an initial focus on accuracy isn't necessarily the golden path. The people I'm aware of who made GM very fast (less than two years), pursued speed with tremendous energy, first and foremost. One person I'm thinking of would get very frustrated and angry with his accuracy problems, and worked hard to correct that, and he did. But his emphasis was on speed, first and foremost. Everyone starts with their own preferences, strengths and weaknesses. Improvement comes fast when weaknesses are turned into strengths.

Last Steel Challenge, I cared about my performance quite a bit and expected to have a good match. There ended up being several distractions, the details of which I won't go into. In retrospect, the extent to which the distractions affected my shooting was under my control. I can't blame anyone else. Everyone has to deal with this at some point. Interested in reading examples of distractions you had that you feel you didn't deal with well, and what you mentally would do differently if you could have a do-over.

This chrono's at 889 fps average out of a G22. Sweet!

I like pithy sayings, but when it comes to shooting better, there is no one pithy saying that helps me. Shooting isn't about words; shooting is about shooting, with the word "seeing" in there someplace.

Here's what comes to mind if I were to go out and live-fire practice right now. 1) Draw and one shot at various distances. 2) Draw and two shots at various distances. 3) Bill Drill. 4) CM 03-11 El Strong & Weak Pres. Someone else on the forum pointed this one out. I haven't shot this classifier yet, but I should drill on it. 5) Some non-classifier stage that has movement, probably something from Ben Stoeger's Skills and Drills. I like Steel Challenge, so I would also drill on Outer Limits, Smoke and Hope, and Pendulum. Those three stages are quite different from each other and pretty much cover what you need to do well in a Steel Challenge. And next time out I'd drill on a different combination of SC stages.

Unless I’m missing something here, I tend to think the times would be similar with no big savings either way. There will be slight variations in times for draws, transitions, and splits. Which of these are you thinking would be consistently reduced by using a downloaded mag? I don’t think counting slows me down on a stage like that. I can count to five while pulling the trigger at my max controllable speed, can’t most of us?

More toward the right.

Oh got it. Still...

Four Aces with the second pair from WHO comprises a subset of actions you will actually do in USPSA classifiers. I haven't encountered drawing directly into WHO much, but I do that in dry fire. And I haven't encountered switching from freestyle to WHO with no reload in between, but I do that too. I mentioned that one because it specifically addresses what the OP mentioned; namely, "how do you recommend getting a similar grip with your 'weak' side as with your 'strong' side." You could also go from SHO to WHO (maybe even more directly relevant to the OP's post) and WHO to SHO, with or without a reload in between. When you start feeling good about yourself, put some popper dry fire targets in random arrangements, mixed with metric targets, for your Freestyle-SHO-WHO switch-off drills.

This is one place where dry fire is very helpful. I recently shot Can You Count and knew in advance I'd be shooting it. I dry-fired the classifier dozens of times before I shot it. One-two-three-four-five-RELOAD-One-two-three-four-five. That went through my head in dry fire and when shooting it for score. Downloading wouldn't make a lot of sense because it implies you're going to shoot to empty as a way of preventing extra shots. If you depend on that and do that, you'll burn time on the slide-drop reloads. The stage name gives a strong clue. COUNT. Just count.

I'm a Dawson Precision fan boy. The only tweak I'd make to their Glock adjustable rear with fiber optic front set would be to make the rear notch a U-notch, or offer the option. But, a square notch can be converted to a U-notch by the owner quite readily.

Yes I get the ATF-related concern.

I like simple, short dry-fire drills, and one of my staples is a draw into the freestyle grip, two shots, switch to WHO, and then two or more shots. Many reps of this can be done in a short time.

I wouldn't care. If he paid his match fee and it's a low level / informal match, let him have his fun, put him in the "fun gun" division or something.

I recently made B under the new classifier percentages based on adjusted HHFs. On the one hand I was happy but on the other hand I’m left wondering how I’m going to shoot any classifiers well enough to make A, based on my current HFs versus the HFs required for me to move up.

In the spirit of this being a training diary, I’ll mention my training. While I am not putting the time and energy into shooting that others do, I am nevertheless improving steadily, if slowly. A few months ago, I came up with a set of dry fire drills that I believe have a good reward:time ratio, so these are the core of my training. For me, I find it more effective in a day to do several sessions lasting 10 minutes to 30 minutes each, rather than doing, say, 90 minutes straight. In addition, as soon as I arrive at a match, I do a short dry fire session in a gun handling area, using 1-inch sections of patching tape as targets (the ones I taped to a wall a few months ago are still there), and I sometimes do more between stages. I carry two CoC grippers in my vehicle and use them during my long commute to work and back home. I do full body resistance workouts, not as often as I’d like, but I do them. So, nothing fancy, nothing innovative, just meat-and-potatoes stuff that I know for sure helps me. To make further progress, I know I will need to do more training that pushes my limits, continually learn from better shooters, and watch for any bad habits that could be creeping in. The great part is, I’m having more fun and appreciating/enjoying the guys at the club more than ever.