dwkfym

Hi guys, I've been out of the scene for a while. Shot my last comp (IDPA) in 2013 or so, shot well enough to win sharpshooter class and kinda hung up the hat for a bit. I went shooting with a few friends recently and noticed a bunch of dudes cant their guns. Especially single handed shooting. I asked them about it and I guess E. Langdon teaches that. I always did a classic vertical grip. What is the rationale on this? I get the biomechanics part, but does it really trump predictable recoil, drive to next target, better/more accurate sight picture? Obviously it works for Langdon, could work for many others. Thanks in advance.

I thought the BUG rules should be written more specifically. As its written now a Beretta Cougar qualifies as a BUG due to rotating barrel length.

Welcome from the tampa bay area!

What I've hated teh most is an overly authoritative attitude. I understand that tehre are a lot of morons who go to ranges, but there are a lot better ways to do it. Once I was asking about specific range rules; that was written on the waiver and release. Of course, I skimmed over it and signed it. One of the employees were explaining them to me, but the owner snapped "its in there. you agreed to it." I decided not to go back to that range.

Hi guys. I'm dwkfym from the bay area in Tampa, Florida. I was attracted to this forum due to its non-bull**** discussions on competition shooting. Oh, and also the abundance of famous top shooters in the country . I was getting sick and tired of regular firearm forums, where all this clutter about politics and ideologies cloud the discussions I really wanted to participate in. I started a forum a bit broader than ones such as this, one that encompasses all shooting disciplines: www.shootersquest.net The only other serious pursuit I've been a part of is martial arts, which I have been doing all of my life. Every time I go practice or participate in a match, I am amused and enthused to discover the parallels in developing the participant in each of the disciplines. Forgive me my plug. I have much much much to learn and I feel privileged to be able to partake in this forum. Thank you for having me here.

I'm 25 and my 1RM was 190 when I was lifting. 250 is definitely impressive

I always felt like a lot of these programs are only a little bit more than a way to keep people interested and committed to some* sort of workout regiment. If you ask me, sport-specific excercises are the best. For instance, if you want boxing stamina you need to run, do all the boxing training, and most of all spar a lot. If you want to get strong/big/both, weightlifting. There must be some sort of specific workouts that is good for shooting. I'd think it would have to do with stamina and muscle endurance, and "footwork" excercises. For that running, mobility drills and things like P90X might be pretty decent. As far as losing weight goes, I've honestly found nothing better than running and dieting. For many the magic number is 3 miles, once you can do that every day you'll never be overweight.

Sorry guys, if I come off as a know-it-all please point it out. I coached kickboxing while I was still at university so I'm basing my opinions on that. I am not always right and I'd appreciate any corrections or pointers that is shooting specific that I may not be aware of. In your case, you may want to start with this very simple polymetric excercise before moving onto weights, calf excercises and such. As with any workout, preventing injury is the most important. Its great because its hard to injure yourself this way. After you feel your joints and muscles are more loosened up after walking for a few days or weeks, try this: 1. Doing it right after a walk would be great as it is a great warm up. After the walk, stretch out a little bit. 2. Very simply put, go from squatting (a** to grass) to standing. The exact form can be however you want, but pick one that puts the least strain on your knees and ankles. Start very slow for the first few reps then work your way up in speed. Its hard to tell how much you should do but if you have athletic experience from previous walks of life you can use it to determine how many to do. Once you feel your legs work good (whether that takes a session or weeks), move onto this 3. Do 3 sets of 25. If this is too easy, feel free to add sets. Start by taking few minutes of rest in between sets, but you should be able to do all your sets with only 20 seconds of break in between. Once you can do 5 sets no problem, move onto the following: 4. Here is where you start building explosiveness. You will work 20 seconds, then rest 10 seconds. That is 1 round. You will do 6 rounds, so total will be 3 minutes. When you work, you should do them as fast as possible, as much as possible. Every single set. Don't pace yourself and push push push. Record how many you did your last round. This is called the Tabata drill. You can find a timer online, or you can get a friend/spouse/etc to time you. You should set yourself a goal, but if you can't, a good goal is to be able to do 15 on your last set. Sounds easy but if you are really pushing yourself through all of the rounds, the rep count will drop very quickly so its harder than it sounds. 5. Once you reach your goal in the above exercise, its time to make things harder. Once you master this step you should start seeing improvement in your mobility, given that you supplement it with an exercise that actually causes you to change direction (wind sprints, etc.) For this step, instead of just standing up, explode up and jump with your arms in the air. Turn your head up and look at the ceiling when you do it, as if you're reaching for the sky. When you can do 50 jumps without stopping or taking too long, you're ready for the next step. Note, through all these steps you need continue your walking routine and stretch before starting your leg workouts. Many names for this excercise. Jumping squats, or monkey s*****rs, etc. 6. Okay, as you can guess, once you did step 5, its time to do the Tabata with the jumping squats. This will feel like hell. It will burn out your legs and make you limp the next day. I've never seriously done this exercise because I'm a wuss, but my record is 17 on my last set. I'd like to note I was 24 and in decent shape at the time. You should do this excercise often, but don't need to make it a super-regular thing. By this time you should be doing other things like wind sprints and other polymetric excercises recommended in this post. Remebmer, tabata rep counts don't count unless you're absolutely pushing yourself to do as much as possible. Note: at any time, if you feel joint pain, slooooooow down. really really slow down. If pain persists then stop. Give yourself a day or two to recover before trying again. If you haven't been very physically active, you need to approach this like a rehab excercise. Take your time, you have all the time in the world to meet your goals and there is no need to rush. Feel free to repeat your previous rep count, or go below if you're feeling sick or otherwise bad. Get plenty of sleep, lots of milk, good diet. Make sure you give yourself at least one day out of the week of complete rest. After you hit about 7-8 jumps on your last tabata, your joints and muscles in your core and leg should be good enough for weightlifting if you choose to progress that way. Second note: right around the time you are starting tabata jumping squats, you should start doing agility excercises like wind sprints. All this muscle strength you are developing is nothing unless you put it all together through those excercises. Be careful, much like basketball (which is hell on your joints) its really easy to get injuries doing direction-changing excercises, especially if you are a tall person. If you like this routine, may I suggest you to start a thread keeping track of your progress? Once you are satisfied with your performance, you can try jump rope (must to more than 25 mins if you want to call it a workout), running on the balls of your feet, etc.. fitness is a lifelong dedication! The whole routine should only take 5-10 minutes out of your day, not including your walk. The biggest challenge will be coming up with a routine and sticking to it.

Sorry, I came off rude. More specifically, I was wondering if you had any injuries or knee pain, etc. If you do, you should progress weightlifting very slowly, but you look pretty mobile in the video

I second polymetrics. How good are your legs sir? I'm a shooting newbie but for my other hobbies I've been told I have good explosiveness. I'm not good enough of a shooter to see the benefits of my physical speed..but I developed mine from doing a lot of gymnastics moves.. my first martial arts school emphasized a lot of flashy useless moves My secret? Huge legs. Polymetrics should be the main workout, but doing squats and deadlift will help a lot. A lot of people think weightlifting will make you slower. That is not true. It'll make you slower if you build a lot of useless glamour muscles but core workouts will always help. You'll probably see the best short term gains from squats and deadlifts. Jogging/Running helps a lot too, and it trims weight. Polymetrics three times a week, short but heavy weightlfiting wession twice a week (one day squats, another day deadlifts). A bulk of your polymetrics should be focused on sprints and such. Make sure you got someone who knows what they are doing to show you how to do squats and deadlifts, and adjust your diet to accomodate the weights. One of my favorite workouts to keep up my footwork speed in kickboxing was to do a 1/3 of my 3-4mile runs on the balls of my feet. Calf strength is very important to building explosiveness; you'll be able to launch off of the ground much faster, almost gripping the ground you're standing on.

I'm still a huge newbie. That being said, visualizing the course as much as possible, and repeatedly trying to empty my mind nad telling myself to be as relaxed as possible worked well. Even though it felt like I would slow down too much, the pressure of the buzzer is still there and it makes me go just fast enough. I think. lol

I was about to make some posts on how I agree/disagree with kdj's post above until I realized how old this thread was 0.o

I seemed to have missed the point of this thread. I've always wondered which martial arts is best for shooting. But down in my bones I know all good martial arts tend to merge into one style. There are only so many ways a human body can move, we all have four limbs, and limited weapons on our bodies. In a full contact environment, styles all tend to look alike and it takes a trained eye to spot the differences. But from hand-eye coordination standpoint, boxing is probably the best. You'll develop the musculature needed for any stable shooting. You'll develop skills that allow you to time and coordinate many punches into a moving target. Most of all, you'll develop awesome footwork and speed.

Bill, What are you trying to achieve through learning martial arts? Ultimately, martial arts is supposed to make you a better fighter. All of the discipline, mental training, respect and other 'special' benefits perceived by the public have been developed through history and trial to make you a better fighter. Much martial arts in modern times have somewhat devolved, and while they emphasize all of the above, have forgotten that all of that means nothing if they don't actually train you to be a better fighter. If that is your goal, I have a few martial arts to recommend you. It also helps to know what you are physically capable of, age, etc. Sorry I'm new here and don't know many of the members.. Some martial arts have become sports styles. Most of the time this has actually made the art more effective in developing fighters. Other times it has evolved into its own thing, and you should do those styles if you really enjoy the sport. Other martial arts have gone stale and kind of become stagnant. A lot of this has to do with the instructor but its more prevalent in certain styles than not. Great fighting styles: -Judo, Brazilian Jujitsu, Japanese Jujitsu (the predecessor to Judo type, not aikijujutsu type), Boxing, Kickboxing, Knockdown type Karate (Kyokushin and its offshoots, shidokan types), Muay Thai, Other full-contact Kickboxing styles Note: -Judo, Boxing are great fighting styles and also olympic sports and have developed and refined itself to very very high levels. Other than that there is Kendo, fencing, and taekwondo. I've never focused on weapon arts so I have no comment on that. My guess is that kendo, despite all the criticisms, is an excellent art. No pain no gain. Great way to tell if the particular school is going to make you a better fighter is to see how much sparring they do. The sparring needs to be live, full resistance, hard contact and continuous. This doesn't need to happen every day but they need to make it a regular thing for you to get better. There is no other way. Its like how dry firing alone will help a lot but never make you a great shooter on its own. On the flip side, you don't want to go to a school where all they do is beat the crap out of each other. There is a good balance somewhere.. When in doubt, go to a proven school. Your local famous boxing school. Your local judo schools that produces a lot of trophies. Etc..

I just have to say off topic but I would soooooo eat shi* if I tried that!!