jmtyndall

I decided it was in fact a good idea to shoot the all-classifier match this weekend. I've been practicing mostly reloads and draws and I'm seeing progress. I've noticed a flinch in a few of my match videos, and my splits aren't very fast in Bill Drills because I have practiced "pin and reset" for so long. Part of trigger control at speed is going to be both pulling and releasing the trigger quickly without disturbing the sights. Also going to be spending more time on weak-hand only. Classifier Match summary: CM 99-07 Both Sides Now #1 4/7 Production; 24/50 Overall This was the first stage of the day and I shot really good points here, but I was pretty slow. I was the second slowest of all production shooters, while the points saved me. Reviewing the video my shooting pace on the second and third string seem better than the first string, but the draw to first shot was hovering around 2 seconds. Lots to work on with leans and general shooting speed/confidence. Low hanging fruit. HF: 3.6427 / 50.89% CM 18-08 The Condor 3/7 Production; 17/50 Overall Easily my best stage of the day. Turn and draw speed to the first shot was about 1.6s, not speedy at all but it was okay. I did better than a lot of shooters here, and mostly because I wasn't afraid to move fast between the shooting positions. My first reload wasn’t too bad and I started moving before finishing it. The second reload I was being very careful not to get sucked into the 180 trap reloading while moving backwards. The result is I stood still and did a reload before I started moving. Also the video shows me I’m doing some weird…tactical flip with the gun when I’m ejecting the magazine, no need for the extraneous movement so I can work on training that out. Even still I managed a B-class percentage here. HF: 3.6772 / 68.52% CM 18-03 We Play Games 5/7 Production; 23/50 Overall Another couple of 1.5-1.6 second draws. I’m much faster than this in practice, and I can see in the video that I’m moving my hands quickly, and getting the gun up on target, then I spend half a second seeing the sights and firing the shot. I think a lot of this is a confidence issue like I said before. In dry fire I’m getting a draw, sight picture and trigger pull in ~1.1 seconds. However I haven’t found a place where I can live fire out of a holster, and I don’t have a real shot timer. There’s a disconnect in my head where I don’t trust the sight picture I’m getting and then spend time refining and pulling the trigger in live fire, which I’m not doing dry. Bobbled the first reload here and it cost me a little bit of time, and then training kicked in and I went to get my weak-hand back on the gun even though it was a strong hand only string. By my estimates these two things cost me 1.5 seconds. HF: 3.8877 / 52.15% CM 18-05 No Need To Believe in Either Side 7/7 Production; 47/50 Overall Holy meltdown. I went first on this stage and I wasn’t quite ready. I’ve been trying to learn to visualize though I never really “see” anything. Currently I just kind of imagine how I’m going to shoot the stage. Anyways…in my head I set a blistering GM pace on this stage. In real life…you can call me Alpha-Mike. Draw to first target wasn’t bad, but then things fell apart. Alpha/Mike on the first target, blew through the steel okay then the last target on the first array. Had a good first shot and knew right away I missed the second, couldn’t remember if I was allowed a make-up shot so I proceeded with my reload (and bobbled it in my distraction) and moved on to the second array. Head was somewhere not-in-the game here and went Alpha-Mike on the first target (not calling my shots), second target I hit Alpha first shot then pulled the second shot low, knew right away it had to be the no-shoot so I decided to send another one which I called good but in reality it landed right on the perf of the no-shoot. 2 no-shoots on one target. At this point I slowed down for the next target and called two good shots (Alpha-Alpha) and then yanked the trigger on the last target for an Alpha-Delta. 3 Mikes, 2 No-Shoots in one stage. I could make excuses all day, but this stage isn’t acceptable to me. I was way too close to zero’ing this stage and that makes me want to do better. Next time I see this classifier I’ll be telling you a different story, I’m sure of it. HF: 0.4919 / 5.44% CM 99-28 Hillbilton Drill 5/7 Production; 30/50 Overall This was a fun stage, and I felt pretty good about it in the moment. Amazing how running 6-pieces of steel in less than 3 seconds can really skew your memory of the stage. Another 1.6+ draw where I was on target in about 1 second and spend another 0.5 refining and taking the shot. Consistency is key right? Also took a reading of my splits here, seem to be about 0.5 seconds so that should be an easy thing to fix. Oh yeah, and I had a super impressive flinch on the second target. HF: 5.0388 / 48.33% CM 99-47 Triple Choice 3/7 Production; 20/50 Overall I need to work on transitioning to weak-hand only. This skill slowed me down on several stages. I also need to work on weak-hand only precision. According to the scoring here I only shot one hardcover mike. Another shooter pulled me aside and told me that he thought I shot 2 additional mikes on the center "head-box only" target but the tape came off so it looked like 1 A, 2C. I tried to review the video to see the hits but the quality doesn’t allow me to zoom in enough, and the background is dark so the hits don’t show through the target. I specifically slowed down those shots to make the hits and don't remember calling bad shots. I’m really not sure how to feel about this. Anyways, it never hurts to practice these shots so I probably will. HF: 2.1658 / 38.19% Match Take-Aways: 1) Quit forgetting the hand-warmers! 2) Confidence. If I'm doing honest dryfire I don't need to spend an extra half-second confirming sight pictures on draws. I need to find a range where I can draw from a holster and a timer so that I can practice this live in a non-match environment and either confirm my dry-fire is honest or else FIX my dry fire. 3) Splits and transitions, they say these should be about the same time. Well they are, just slow ~0.5 seconds. I'm going to start working on these items in dry fire by doing trigger control at speed, and also setting up some random targets to transition between. 4) Weak hand only. Not only the transition to weak hand, but also learning to pull the trigger. About 50% of the time I can pull the trigger without disturbing the sights. The other 50% the front sight breaks left as the trigger breaks. I've tried adjusting hand position, trigger position, hand tension, focusing on my one finger etc. Can't find the "secret sauce" to fix the issue. I probably learned to pull the trigger straight with my strong hand by firing a few thousand repetitions, so I'm hoping some weak-hand only practice will build those muscles and finger coordination that's needed to do this with my weak hand too. Match Video below:

I am not insinuating that they do. I'm suggesting that averaging 10 throws is adding precision to a measurement that was not precise to begin with. Some may remember back to high school chemistry when we dealt with significant figures? Reporting 4.61gr when the scale only reads to the tenth would get you marked down points. To add to that, I've also never seen a powder measure as consistent as people are claiming when they report powder charges to the hundredth of a grain. If 6 kernels of powder weight 0.1 grain then each kernel weighs 0.017gr right? Reporting a measurement to the hundredth place seems to imply that the measure never varys even 1 kernel of powder which just isnt true. So sure, someone can report a load of 4.61gr, but it's still +/- 0.1gr. We could argue powder drop consistency and accuracy of measurements all day. In the end it doesnt really matter if 10 round averages make people feel warm and fuzzy (in fact I set my charges this way, but I note every increment along the way and drop the non-significant figures). All I'm saying is someone asked about people being able to measure to the hundredth of a grain. The answer is they can't with the equipment most of us have on the bench. They can make it up though, and if they like doing that I dont see any reason they shouldn't. Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

You're probably right. The method below: Averages out and removes all the variance while giving the illusion of precision. 4.50gr could actually be 4.6, 4.4, 4.3, 4.7, 4.5 etc. Very few of the affordable instruments for reloading can accurately measure to the hundredth of a grain. Most powder kernels probably weigh on the order of 2-3x that anyways Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

I adjusted the sensitivity on the app to eliminate the dropped mags registering. I discovered....I'm just slow. I live in a world of 1.2s reloads lol. I spent half an hour on reloads yesterday and managed to get a handful down in the 1.1s range and two in 0.9x second range. Did another half-hour session later yesterday evening focusing on draws, grip and trigger pull. Draws went fine, no major progress but seeing some improvement and more importantly times which used to feel "out-of-control" fast are now starting to feel normal. I worked a bit on dry fire group shooting and trigger pulls and had a minor breakthrough on weak-hand only shooting. I noticed I was very focused on trying to pull the trigger straight and smooth and I was neglecting the rest of my hand. Namely grip strength. When shooting freestyle I grip the gun hard and it helps keep everything stable. Decided to focus on choking the ever-loving crap out of the gun when shooting weak-handed only. The harder I gripped, the more stable the sights were as I pulled the trigger. I'm going to play with this some more but it seems to be reinforcing the need to grip the gun HARD. Today my hands are tired and sore, so I'll do what my body wants (and not what my brain wants) and take the day off. PS, I hope my desire to dryfire stays this high for a long time. I'm already seeing progress in my shooting and I'm excited to see where a couple years of consistent practice might land me. Sure, I won't be a badass like Ben Stoeger and classify as a GM right off the bat, but it seems possible to get there eventually. Edit: Just found out a range nearby is running an all-classifier match this Sunday. Debating if I want to rush through getting classified, or just let it happen organically. We'll see how I feel at the end of this week.

That's the same timer I've been using. I'll try it without the mag in the gun and see what I get. I definitely see several time entries when I do a reload. I wonder if the falling mag is giving me my 1.2s entry. I'll also mess around with par times again. I found it hard to keep myself honest with the start of the ending beep instead of allowing myself until the end of the end beep.

Thanks. I have been trying to move at the beginning of the beep, but I guess I have not been very successful at that. Also I've been using a phone app as a shot timer. I did some testing last night and it won't pick up any time quicker than 0.55 seconds which I'm assuming to be the length of the start beep. I think it's time to bite the bullet and spend my birthday money on a Pocket Pro timer, I just might be working harder than this phone app is capable of supporting. I'll try isolating those parts of the skill as you mention to see if I can find any low hanging fruit.

Two updates in one day! Tonight I did about 45 minutes of dry fire. Spent the first 15 minutes on trigger pull and accuracy. Freestyle and strong hand as usual were good. Improvement has come on weak-hand only. Still seeing the sights move and struggling to nail down any one particular cause. With that said, I'm getting to the point where I get 5 or 6 good pulls for every one bad pull. I think I may need to just keep at it without wasting energy searching for a red herring. Moved on to surrender draws. My "cold draw" was 1.3s today. Much better than my usual 1.5-1.6 cold. After just 3 attempts I was hitting 1.1sec and even had a couple successful runs around 1.0x. Focusing on keeping my core straight and shoulders relaxed has majorly helped prevent me from hitting my palm. Hopefully these bruises eventually heal. Finally I came back to reloads. Reloads are really not coming along how I would like. I have all kinds of issues here. Average time is coming in at 1.2 seconds for a smooth reload without issues. When I get to the part of my practice where I try to push the speed envelope, I just dont get anywhere. Technique falls apart, I start missing 75% of my attempts and the ones I do make are no faster, and mostly slower than my "technically correct" speed. I'm dumbfounded. Feed lips keep hitting and getting stuck on the frame, I have to adjust and reseat. Reload times when I try to go fast are mostly in the 1.5 second range. Then I slow down to try to "build momentum" by hitting 5 correct reloads in a row. I hit them in 1.2-1.3 seconds. Speed back up and it all falls back apart. I tried to break it down and look at where I'm slow in order to identify which part of the reload I need to focus on. Going to my trusty Dryfire Reloaded book, it says the par time for a Burkett reload is 0.6 seconds. Decided to try that a few times and couldnt get anywhere near that time. Set the timer by my mag pouches to register when my hand hit the magazine. 0.6-0.7 seconds. I'm either not reacting to the beep fast enough or I'm not moving to the mag fast enough. I'm not sure what a realistic reaction time is but my head tells me 0.4 seconds should be plenty. And would bring me within spitting distance of a 1 second reload. Not sure where to go from here. Maybe I'll spend some time just slapping a magazine. Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

Took a couple days off to rest my hands. It was rough, I wanted to dryfire the whole time but in the end it was good for my body. Came back and tried practicing reloads. Started in the 1.5 second range and managed to work down to 1.2 seconds with some consistency. Whenever I tried to force myself to go any faster I either fumbled the reload or actually went slower. Not sure where to push to make gains here, maybe I need to get a few thousand more reload reps in to build consistency. I discovered something that seems to be the source of my problem on surrender draws. Two things really. First, I was putting my hands up then pulling my elbows in close to my body. By leaving my elbows in a more natural position my arms are more easily able to track down towards where they need to be. During last night's practice I also hit my palm against the beavertail a couple times. I recorded myself drawing and noticed that I tend to take an aggressive shooting stance while making ready. When I do that it changes the body mechanic of my hand approaching the gun. Bend the knees and lean forward at the waist...hand hits the beavertail every time. Stand more upright, hand falls exactly into place behind the beavertail every time. I'm going to work on this some more to see what I can find Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

The real question may be how anyone could shoot anything other than a double action M&P. Maybe if you reprofile the sear the striker wouldn't move back during the trigger pull. Anyways, it's not exactly the scope of this thread. As for the others, I've seen some improvement just from practicing not tightening my hand and just doing dry fire repetition. Certainly still not great and I'm seeing some sight movement on most shots. I think sticking with the ideas above will lead to long-term success.

Live fire today. Some improvement in weak hand only shooting and shot some groups which were okay, but could definitely use some improvement. It's really hard to focus on the front sight with indoor range lighting. I'll work on that. 500 rounds was too many. My hands hurt, I had a preignition push by the end, and my grip was coming apart during bill drills. I think I need to develop a lot of hand strength before I make much progress. Splits during bill drills were quite slow. Ended up shooting Ben Stoeger's dots at the end and trying to push speed by starting the first dot slow then speeding up each dot. At some point I'll need to get to an outdoor range and try ripping some fast splits into the berm. Lots and lots to work on Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

Still dryfiring away. The last two days I've only done surrender draws because I'm tired of bruising my palm by coming down on top of the beavertail. Decided to slow down and figure out where I'm going wrong. I decided to reverse the draw stroke and felt two things. First, right as the grip breaks off the gun only my hand moves up, the upper arm all stays still. Then as the arms come up, my elbows drive forward. So I did that a few times then played it all forward. Massive improvement by focusing on driving the elbows backwards. Still hit my hand a couple times though. Using this technique and focusing on moving my support hand to my chest quickly I was able to break sub 1.2 second draws from a surrender. I'm looking forward to really burning this in because I'm sick and tired of bruising my palm. Working on slow fire weak hand only. Definitely seeing some improvement (a higher number of successful trigger presses without sight movement). Tomorrow I will go do some live fire. Planning on shooting groups with strong and weak hand, shooting bill drills while focusing on a strong grip, and checking zero with 124gr bullets to make sure I never look like an idiot at a plate rack again. Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

Loaded some up at 4.0gr and they felt to be in the right ballpark. I'll post back here my chrono results when I get a chance so they can hopefully help others Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

RAP: Planning on finishing off the 4lbs of N320 I have open before breaking into the Sport Pistol Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

Looks like in going to be able to get some practice time at a local indoor range Monday. Won't have time to chrono and won't be able to chrono at this range. Looking for input from others who shoot a similar combination. Currently have ACME 124gr RN bullets and have plunk tested them at 1.150" in my M&P. Shorter loads are okay, I just want something that's in the right ballpark for an impromptu practice sesh. Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

Awesome to be posted alongside those big-name Florida Open shooters. Thanks for the kind words. Definitely. I think I'm going to get my 124gr load dialed in to about 135PF and see if it shoots point of aim. If it does I will start using that for matches and just use the last of this 147gr stuff in practice. Otherwise I'll shoot an email over to Dawson and find out about a taller front sight Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

They're on the website under the special order section I think. Same price ish as the 0.355 ones Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

Shot my first match today. Start with the positives. Didn't get dead last, didnt get DQ, didnt hit any no shoots. I'll do a small stage breakdown here, and at the end post a link to the match video. Stage 3 - First stage of the day. Virginia count scoring. I don't know what happened here, but I know what didnt happen. I didnt see my sights for every shot. Slung lead down range and ended up throwing 3 mikes. Not happy with how I shot this, I know I can shoot better than this. Stage 4: CM99-11 El Presidente - My first ever classifier. My draw today is much slower than it usually is in practice. I have to reconcile that. I feel like I slowed myself down, maybe to be 100% sure I was being safe. That's not the worst thing in the world. Anyways, also wasted a lot of time on the reload by reaching to rack the slide (IDPA habit). Ended up shooting in 9.8 seconds, 52 points. Hit factor 5.2738, according to the USPSA app this is a C-class score. I'm on-track Stage 5 - This hurt...a lot. A 15ish yard plate rack absolutely made me its *****. I think I shot 30 shots on 12 pieces of steel. At first I thought I was yanking the trigger, so I slowed down. Then tried to breath...which fogged up my glasses. Then I focused so hard on my sights I couldnt see the splashes. Turns out i was shooting over the top of the plates. By the second plate rack I figured out I had to aim at the black support to hit the plates. By that point I was so out of it I just couldnt pull it together and get my hits. Stage 6 - This stage was actually fun. There was a piece of steel that I shot from the second position (which I planned on) but when I got to the third position my brain just could not figure out why one piece of steel was already on the ground. Stage 1 - I liked this stage because it allowed several different strategies. I'm proud of the stage plan I came up with here, though when I was engaging targets from the third position I went for my reload one target early. Other than that the stage went relatively smooth. Stage 2 - Last stage of the day. Threw a couple mikes on the first steel array. I was able to (mostly) keep my focus and get back on track. My reload was not per plan. Intent was to shoot the steel, reload while moving to position 2 and shoot 8 shots there, turn around and hit 2 on the target behind me, then reload on the run to position 3. That...didnt quite happen. The last steel array I managed to shoot clean, fairly happy with that. Things I want to work on: -Lots of Charlies, Deltas, and Mikes. I get it, everyone is probably always working on this but I know I can shoot better than I did today -Grip the gun harder. I realized that I wasnt thinking about my grip that much, and it wasnt as strong as it has been in practice. Need to fix this -Gun shoots high. I think this is a well known thing with 147gr ammo in an M&P. I have some 125gr I'm going to switch to once I finish off these 147s. Hopefully that's enough to fix it. Otherwise...sight change -Move faster. Watching the video I see how slow I react to the beep and draw the gun. I can go easily twice as fast. It's got to be a mental block. I'm going to look for ways to address this, but probably more time in matches will help. -Recovering from errors. Yeah...it sucks to waste 30 seconds whiffing 20 shots over the the top of a plate rack. But those 20 shots already happened and I can't change them. I need to keep my head in the game and just fix it. -See the sights. This was less of an issue later, but on the last stage I missed some shots on steel that should have been easy. The first stage had several misses that aren't acceptable to me. More accuracy, less accuracy by volume. Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

My first match was today. Successes? I didnt fall, didnt get DQ, didnt get dead last. Got my ass handed to me by a plate rack. Didnt realize until I whiffed about 15 shots that my gun was shooting several inches high Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

I'm brand new to USPSA and I would generally expect that match stages get tested before they're run in a major. And since stages are released before the match, I expect that a fair number of clubs may mimic those stages in their club match leading into the major. I mean...maybe that's not the case, but that's what I would expect to happen. Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

Holy necropost batman Welcome to the forum. PS: You will likely have to trim your brass after a couple firings. It's not usually the first firing that causes the issue. The brass stretches through the firing process and over time the web area thins and the neck will get longer as you resize. General advice, unless you're chasing precise accuracy or crimping into a cannelure, only trim when the length exceeds the reccomended maximum.

Huh, interesting point. That makes me wonder if maybe the gun isn't aligned with my forearm, and that's causing a weird pressure on the gun when I pull the trigger. That would help explain why using a two-handed grip eliminated the issue. The 2 handed grip felt so unnatural I really had to concentrate and take time to get my hands in just the right position. I think I'll take your tip and then checkout how I'm gripping. I'll build a full grip in the "wrong hand" and then remove my strong hand without adjusting the weak hand and do a few trigger pulls, see what the result is.

Had a few snow days home from work. Lots of practice...maybe too much. My hands and forearms are telling me about it today. Par times are down ~0.2 seconds from the last post, so I have recovered fairly quickly. When drawing from the surrender I keep bashing the web of my thumb on the beavertail of my gun. So much so that I actually bruised my palm yesterday. I'm not sure if I need to work on really programming that index into muscle memory, or if I should explore moving my holster forward. I've been staring at the rule book and think I'm running my holster further back than I need to be, inducing unnecessary movement into my draw. Currently I place my BOSS hanger so that the front edge of the hanger is just touching the seam of my pants. Tonight I'm going to try mimicking the draw stroke without the gun to see where my hand naturally wants to fall, then see if I can move the gun there within Production limits. I'll get the holster move then do just a few draws to see if it feels any better, but I'll avoid an extended dry-fire session tonight and tomorrow. There's a match this Saturday and I need to give my body some time to recover.

Correct, left is my weak hand. I have tried doing it without the gun for about an hour this morning, and when pulling slowly I was able to move just the one finger. Really odd feeling staring at your finger tip for an hour trying to will it not to move. Took that exercise to the gun, used an extremely slow deliberate pull and was able to get about 70% success with not moving the sights. That does seem to reinforce that this is the issue. The only problem was that the trigger felt like it was about 40lbs and my hand actually feels tired from pulling the trigger 50 times. Looks like I'm going to need to work on this a lot. In the mean time, weak-hand-only strings are going to kill me

I am trying to dissect an issue I'm having when practicing weak-hand-only shooting. When dry-firing weak hand only the sights stay stable during the trigger pull until the point the trigger breaks. As the trigger breaks the front sight moves left and then returns to center in the notch. I tried moving my finger contact point around on the trigger and wasn't able to see much change. I believe that trigger finger placement is correct trigger falls just past the last joint in my finger, identical to the placement of my trigger finger when shooting with my strong hand. If I build a proper grip in my weak hand and shoot freestyle with my weak hand acting as my strong hand and my strong hand crushing the grip I get no notable movement in the sights when pulling the trigger. If I hold the gun strong hand only and pull the trigger with my weak hand (all other finger on my weak hand are straight) I am able to break the trigger without moving the sights. So far as I can tell, I'm pulling the trigger straight and with the correct part of my finger. I think this leaves sympathetic movement of the other fingers in my left hand? I tested this by forming a "grip" with my hand and moving my trigger finger. I can 100% see the grip fingers (specifically the middle finger tip) tightening while I move my trigger finger, which seems consistent with pushing the gun left. Doing the same with my right hand I see no sympathetic movement. Does this sight movement seem indicative of sympathetic finger movement to you? I don't even remember how I ever learned to move the trigger finger on my strong hand without doing this. How did others go about training their weak hand to pull a trigger with as much finesse as their strong hand? Background info: I'm a right handed shooter, shooting a box-stock M&P DA trigger.

Woah, I draw the line at making friends.... Actually that's a great plan. Once I meet a few local shooters I can try to get in on some future group buys