Glock26Toter

A rainy day might be a good time to go buy a video camera. Video your dry fire sessions and that will help a lot. Self analysis with video is very effective. And the pizza box idea... very good one.

That's not a problem. It's just a thing. I still get 1st stage jitters and just accept it as part of the fun. I imagine that when skydivers can jump out of a plane just as easily as they step off a curb they give it up. It's not a whole lot different for us. For me, I just choose to enjoy the "hell yes, I get to shoot again!" excitement and don't look at it as a problem. Once you can look at it like that and trust that you already know how to shoot and can trust your subconscious to take over no matter what stage you are on then that's all it is... excitement.

AH HAHAHAHAHA!

Well, another nationals is in the books. I've never been down to the Universal Shooting range and it is a very cool place. The weather could not have been better. The temps stayed around the high 80's and although pretty high, the humidity was tolerable. The only rain we got was at the end with maybe 10 shooters to go, and my squad had finished so our shooting was unaffected. So the match was a very difficult one from a shooting perspective. The wide open targets were few and far between and the match had "far and partial" as an overwhelming theme throughout. Unfortunately, this created some low morale for most of us. Racking up 3 and 4 mikes per day does not lead to someone having a boat load of fun, or confidence in where they might finish. I too found myself in a pity party and I sort of started to complain to Ron Avery at dinner after the second day. This is something that I normally don't do, complain about the stages at a match I mean... well, or go to dinner with Ron. Anyways, his response can be summed up as "Quit your bitchin and shoot the damn match how you need to shoot it." His "shoot the match no matter what they present" attitude was just the kick in the ass I needed to have a lot more fun on my last day. I still racked up 2 mikes and a no-shoot that final day, but they affected my mental game less and I posted some pretty decent scores. In one case I was able to finish 6th overall for the stage. (Here's the link) So I learned a bit about mental management, from Ron and from just having run such a tough match. Some of the things I saw were good and some were obvious areas for improvement. Looking at the positive first there are a couple of things to note. First is that I did NOT miss on all the hard shots. I railed 1 for 1 on steel that was in another zip code and popped A-Holes in partials without hesitation. I scored alphas and charlies on ALL swingers with maybe 1 make up shot. YAY ME! The second was that I was very happy with my stage planning. In a couple instances I had a different less conservative plan than my squadmates and in those cases my plan was verified by someone saying they should have run it my way. That's quite a boost to my confidence moving forward. On to areas for improvement. My squad was a lot of fun to shoot with and I would shoot with them again in a heartbeat. However, in the future I'll try to stay more positive and not get affected by their performance mentally. I honestly get upset when I see someone trash a stage and I think this can affect my attitude and therefor, performance. I once read in a book that you should actively avoid watching other competitors for this reason. If you watch the guy in front of you plug a hole in no-shoot, that can cause you to do the same... I get it now. I'm going to have to work on the balance between being a dick by not watching my squadmates shoot, and watching but not allowing their performance to affect me. As an example I shot with the guy that won TOP MASTER. I had no idea until his name was called. How did I miss it? I know who ran crappy and who got DQ'd because I was focusing on the negative. I missed him because he was he was not getting wrapped up in negative talk. He was keeping his mouth shut and doing what he had to do. He was still personable and a great guy. But in retrospect I never heard him complain or even get too involved in simpathizing with someone who had just bombed. Now that I'm reflecting on it... I learned the most from the guy I spoke to the least. The other area for improvement is shooting related. I'm looking at the fact that my mikes were on bullshit targets. I gave up my points in the spots where there was no reason to. Wide open "bridge" targets, or partials that were 10' away were responsible for every single mike. Why? Because I lost focus and didn't perform all the steps necessary to ensure my hits on every target. I showed myself that I'm capable of doing everything I need to get through a stage at a GM level, but at the same time showed myself why I'm not there yet. I'm not sure I can put this performance into another goal other than "the A zone is the only zone" but I now have a new understanding of what that means and hopefully will move forward on that one with what I learned. One final note is gun maintenance. I had 2 severe malfunctions that cost me bigtime, and after the first malfunction I didn't do a damn thing. I threw some oil on it and went "huh, that was unusual." I tiny guy in my head told me to break it down and check the extractor and everything else but I ignored that guy. After the 2nd malfunction I checked the gun out and found a broken Aftec cap. OOOOPS. Check your gun thoroughly after each malfunction. They are caused by something. Especially when you've reached a point where it's super reliable as I have with my guns this year. I think this is the only major match malfunction I've had and maybe 1 or 2 all year. These guns run well. Goals moving forward. The A-Zone is the only zone. I must call that A hit on EVERY target. Stage plan like a GM. Flow through the stage. Analyze, optimize, execute. Work on POSITIVE mental management all the time.

I was able to shoot another match at Aurora Gun Club this weekend. The weather tuned out to be very nice and we were darn lucky since it was forecast to be quite a bit colder than it was. I think I may have taken my recent aggressiveness a bit too far into movement and I lost visual patience in several instances. This lapse in patience led to several deltas and 2-3 mikes costing me the win. I can remember each one and it was a "good enough" attitude on several engagements that I have worked hard to overcome. So I guess that means I need to get back to some basic visual patience goals. While this match exposed some pretty major areas for improvement there were some things that I feel like I did well. There were several reloads that I couldn't even remember doing afterwards. This tells me a couple of things that are positive. First would be that if I didn't remember anything about the reload it must have been exactly as planned.. and the second is that part of making it a non-memory event is that I did it exactly as rehearsed in my walk through. I really felt good about my stage plans and how automatically I executed them and have been doing that quite a bit lately. Some good improvement considering how insecure I was about my stage planning last year. So now its off to Nationals as part of a crazy busy schedule for my wife. I haven't had time to even think about Nationals other than from a scheduling perspective. I've been out of town for the previous two weeks and I'm currently in Phoenix. I packed everything I need for Nat's this weekend. I fly home tomorrow night arriving at 10:00pm, swap out a few clothes, grab my gear and head out to Florida a few hours later for a 5:30AM flight. I pull the same routine on Sunday night after nationals and head back to Phoenix. To add to that my wife leaves on Oct 17th (the following day after I get back from Phoenix) for a week long trip. At least I'll be back just in time for the contractors to start construction on our house on the 17th. Yeesh. Things have got to calm down soon. On a positive note this project is the biggest and coolest I've ever done. Anyways, aside from that my goals moving forward are this: Nationals is just another match. Shoot like you shoot. the Alpha zone is SERIOUSLY the only zone. You've shown yourself how to move aggressively... it's "normal" movement now, so just worry about the Alpha Zone. Keep thinking like a GM by making stage plans with optimization in mind.

"Pretty cool" is an understatement bro. That's super badass! Congratulations.

I shot a match on Saturday at Aurora Gun Club. This was my only match for the weekend since the remodel is still in demo-phase. The weather was great, and I was on a squad with some people I don't usually shoot with so it was a good time. Last week my GoPro was dead and the fix of course, was to NOT plug it in so this week it was even deader. For the record, I plugged it in this time. There were two stages requiring quite a bit of running and and another stage that had some major 180 transitions allowing me to really test my aggressiveness with respect to getting out of positions and the, "attacking transition" that I recently learned in Manny's class. I felt myself pushing very hard out of these positions and reached my maximum running speed within 2-3 steps. This showed in my overall time as I had the fastest time on both stages. With respect to my transitions I saw the same results. The one stage that had major 180 transitions I also had the fastest time. So, although there may be reasons I didn't see anyone with faster times, I know I saw MY fastest time. I felt like I made progress on all my goals this week and that's about all I can ask for. There will be one more shooting opportunity before Nationals next Sunday and afterwards I think I'll do a bit of strong hand only at a 75' plate to warm up. That's the only stage that worries me for Nationals. Goals: The Alpha zone is the ONLY zone. Wait for the A and the splits will be fast enough. (only 2 deltas this match) Aggressive transitions. (yes! not one that felt sluggish) Strong grip and keep extending the arms. (becoming much more automatic... need more vids to confirm) Keep thinking like a GM. (for all but 1 stage.)

I shot the position on the left as a single position. If you went hard into that wall while engaging target one to gain an angle on the port you could get both left targets through the port and transition to the final target. The port basically disappeared. Live and learn.

Also, I just watched that Stage 10 run. Panda smash!

Dude. Why do you think I use ProGrip all the time? I usually put a small amount on both hands at the beginning of the match and then just in my finger tips before each stage. Just a tiny drop for the finger tips. I see people using a lot of it and then, when you get moisture on your hands it can get sticky, but used sparingly I never have any issues. If you only put on your trigger finger a bottle will probably last you the rest of your life. I've never felt like I have a specific issue without it, but I just feel like I can feel the trigger and mag release a bit better.

I shot a match on Sunday at Weld County. This was a section qualifier so I was surprised by some low attendance, but I'm glad I went. I heard several comments about the stages being "major match" quality and I agree. They seemed particularly interesting, challenging and fun to everyone. The first stage was a long course with a truck, two steel arrays, and lots of running. The start position was on one side of the truck, and your gun was on the other side. I gave it my all with an explosive start. I remember thinking just how hard I had all my weight on my trailing leg just before the buzzer. It was a concious effort and felt like I was overdoing it, but I really took off and owe it to my aggressive starting stance. Into and out of the remaining positions was the same level of effort and I was rewarded with a stage win that was about 5 seconds faster than 2nd place. The main point about that stage from a positive perspective was the steel engagements and movement were all very deliberate. My aiming was not rushed and I only missed once for 12 steel hits. That coupled with my aggressive acceleration was a very positive outcome and a good start to the match. For the entire match I felt that same level of confidence in most of my stage plans and movement. I felt like I was finding the best way through the stage and deciding on the most efficient movements without too much effort. There was only 1 time where I had obviously picked a poor plan and since I was first up, I didn't get much time to review it and discover a better plan. Well, I found them in the execution and it was a good lesson in when one should just move into a position and do some hosing as opposed to stay back and do the hokey pokey trying to see everything through a port. Still, it wasn't a disaster and I still had a win on that stage. So although I'm making a lot of headway in my stage planning it can still take me a while to get there and I have a plenty of work to do in that area. The classifier was a tough one and I didn't do very well on it. I'm not sure if I was on my way to GM territory or not, but I pulled a mike on one of the targets and wasted about a second trying to decide if I should make it up. Once that moment was gone I just had to finish and did NOT give it a 100% performance from that point on. This gave me a 68% on the stage and reminded me that if I'm going to perform well on these types of stages I need to be doing way more practice with one hand. Since I'm aware that a GM performance must be flawless any obvious mistake sends "I'm boned!" throughout my head and I'm finding it very difficult to keep going at 100% pace after that. So overall I really feel good about my progress. Although small steps, I'm gaining a bit of ground with each match. I guess I can say that for the last 10 or so years, but saying it is helping. Especially the positive aspect of reviewing what I LIKED about my performance before identifying problems. Sometimes, I just give myself a break and only mention positive stuff and leave it at that. If I had a good time and did well for myself then yay for me and screw anything negative. I still recommend that to anyone trying to use a journal for performance analysis. So, I had a goal a while back that was "think like a GM" and I really feel like I'm getting there. Even though it hasn't manifested in full blown GM performance yet, I feel like I'm getting closer than ever before. For a guy that's never put "make GM" specifically on a goal l list I sure am talking about it a lot. haha! I guess I'm having one of those "how do you eat an elephant" moments where I'm looking back realizing I've eaten a hell of a lot of elephant meat. Goals for next time: The Alpha zone is the ONLY zone. Wait for the A and the splits will be fast enough. Aggressive transitions. Strong grip and keep extending the arms. Keep thinking like a GM.

Looks like you are doing some pretty objective analysis of yourself and not just beating yourself up. Remember to always pick some positive aspects of your shooting to review as well as identify areas for improvement. I watched your vid and although POV is hard to judge by, it looks like you have some solid basics. Nothing for me to add to your own assessment just yet.... well, except get some 3rd person view vids. They are quite a bit more valuable than POV. If you haven't already ready Lanny Bassham's book, With Winning in Mind. List your goals out and repeat them regularly. I list mine at the end of each journal entry. I've had times where I taped my short goal list on the inside of my shooting box so I would see it when I was reloading mags during the match. Also, remember the "good shooters" are always willing to help. Pick your questioning time carefully and keep it light and they'll always be glad to drop advice your way. Have fun and good luck on your goals

I went to the range today. Had to sight in The Hulk since the scope was broken. I sent the scope to C-More for repair and thanks to my spare I'm still in business. I sighted both guns in, and the green gun is dead nuts on at 15' and closer. About 2" high at 30' and I can really get some tight groups. Shiny, not so much. Dead nuts at 15' and closer, but out at 30' I just can't get as tight of a group and it's about 8" high. I also ran my new rounds through the chrono. They shot a 163pf with both guns so I know I need to bump up a notch. I also ran my old rounds and strangely enough, they only made 166 pf in the green gun and 164 in shiny. I don't know what happened since I haven't changed anything since the last major match and I made 170pf. I'm VERY worried now, but since it was 5:00pm and the sun was super low I'm actually thinking that the chrono may have been whacked because of that. I'm going to chrono again this weekend and make sure. If I'm worried it's not too late to load up new ammo for Nationals and ship that down there instead. The price of shipping would be well worth the assurance. So after I got all sighted in a chrono'd I ran a few draw drills to see how my updated draw is sinking in. I watched an old vid of my draw and the gun is exactly in the same spot it was with the same cant. Apparently at some point my cant had moved and I didn't notice. Manny Bragg mentioned that the way I draw I should run my finger up my holster as I grip... I was like "I used to do that, but not sure why I'm not now." So anyways, it sure felt good and at about 20' I was able to get a .90 draw with a .17 split and get 2 A's mostly. Pushing a bit harder I was able to get .88 with a .12-.14 split but accuracy started to suffer with mostly AC or CC. A few times I got a .81 with a .12 split and even as low as .79 with a .11, but I was just plain lucky to hit paper as I really didn't effectively watch both hits. I saw some wood fly from a few deltas during those runs so that's not something to train for. Bottom line is, the draw felt super smooth and I could easily make a sub-second draw without getting tense so I think I've made some headway recently in that area. I also found that I think my splits could be optimized at about .15 or so as any slower than .17 feels slow, but any faster is just too rushed at aiming distance. So, I'll get the chrono running again this weekend to make myself feel better about the ammo I just shipped to Nationals and dial in the latest keg of powder. I'm NOT going to shoot the green gun anymore since I need both the accuracy and the assurance that it made major with my chrono.

Need a vid or pic to see really what you are talking about, but I think most might agree that it would be very difficult to show you could have consistent recoil control with the gun canted in either direction.

Our game is a constant balancing act. We are balancing at the same time we are moving forward. Much like a tightrope walker. Too much right or too much left and we are in deep shit. Also, if we concentrate on the balance too long and forget to take a step we are in equally deep shit. We constantly go back and forth. Sometimes when we feel like we are moving fast enough we need a boost in accuracy... other times we feel we are shooting fine but must concentrate on movement. The only reason someone says one is more important is because they are currently struggling with that one. It takes both and one NEVER stops being as important as the other.

I shot the Colorado State Championship this weekend. I had a heck of a good time, got on a great squad and performed pretty darn close to my expectations. I had recently taken the Manny Bragg class and while I appreciate Cha-Lee's warning not to try anything new the analogy to new equipment vs learning some new movement or mindset isn't something that I think can be put on hold. You can't un-learn something and there was none of that during this match. I was aggressive with my transitions and in some cases was able to make my splits and transitions relative to one another causing a smoothing out of some engagements that really helped me. I did trash a stage and racked up 4-5 mikes and very fortunately for me, the stage was thrown out. It was a considerable bonus and re-affirmed how important it is to change your cadence when dealing with mega-aiming stages. I would have gladly put another 3 seconds on the stage to keep those hits on paper by properly calling them.... and should have. Obviously we don't get that lucky more than once or twice in an entire shooting career. This was my mulligan. So anyways, back to the positive aspects. Comparing my times on some of the stages against the GM's I was very happy to be among those times. I believe that at this stage in my game the overall times are not what I need to worry about. The real "reach-GM-killer" for me is the fact that I'm actually still a bit hectic in movement and need to give up a bit of time while shooting and ease into the movement with more grace. In effect, I need to shoot with more patience and do the non-shooting stuff a tad faster by doing it more gracefully. In looking at some of the mistakes I made this match they were all related to coming into a position a bit clunky and shooting before I was ready, or just not exploding out of a position like I know I can. Stage 1, was a pretty good one for major transitions. I was very happy with my initial engagement and was very deliberate about my footwork. This is reflected in the fact that I shot the instant my foot left the ground coming into the shooting area. Several 180 transitions gave me the opportunity to go as aggressive as possible on them and I wound up with a pretty good run. The place I see some improvement needed is still getting those arms extended out 100%. Watching in slo-mo I can see my elbows at 90% extension causing extra gun movement. Stage 7 has a decent example of my draw and first shot. I still have a slight hesitation that Manny and I worked at getting rid of, but it's very minimal and that first shot is broken without too much movement from my body. The rest went well with some transitions and footwork that I'm happy with. Stage 9 was a hell of a thing to navigate. There will be a time when kids in a cave recite "the tell of Captain Price's memory stage." I've often said there's no such thing as a memory stage.. and this one was no different when finding a way to shoot it. What made it unique was that there was in fact many ways to shoot it and they were difficult to nail down because of the targets all looking exactly the same at first glance. You can see from the run that I some serious doubts about the plan, but just "stayed the course" and came out of it unscathed. I was one of 26 shooters out of about 139 to shoot it clean. I'm not too worried about some sluggish movement I see in the vid. It's hard to be aggressive leaving a shooting position when you are pretty sure you forgot something. It's also not a good idea to allow yourself to get things out of order and that's why I'm glad that I reset my position in #2 before I started shooting. So the match was a success from the results standpoint in that I took HOA Open and 1st Place Master Class. There's still work to do before I'll be moving up in class. New goals for moving forward are: The A Zone is the ONLY zone. Wait for the A's and forget about how fast the splits are. Transition aggressively and keep your grip unless moving a lot. Strong grip, arms EXTENDED... all the time.

I'll be damned. I've always loved shooting optics and have enjoyed the hell out of shooting open for quite a while now. Astigmatism, Cross-eye dominate here also, but never put it together that my condition may be why I prefer optics. And I thought all optics had irregular dots... you mean to normal eye sight people the dot is round and clear????

I'm finally moved and had to miss TWO weeks of shooting to get the move done and start the major tear out portion of the remodel. We moved into a house that will become my wife's art studio over the next few months. When we are done with a serious cash outflow we'll be rewarded with a new kitchen and a studio in the house that will allow her to stop paying rent for her current commercial studio space so the net gain will be.... More money for ammo! For anyone interested here's a link to HeatherArenas.com so you can see why we are building her a studio. So the shooting I got done this weekend was actually Tuesday's Manny Bragg class. I took the advanced class and learned right away that my focusing on trying to get faster splits is not only futile but not necessary. The top shooters aren't shooting any faster than I am. They are doing everything else faster than I am. Without getting too detailed I learned a lot about transitions and other aspects of movement that are costing me tenths of a second per target and when you add all that up I'm giving up just a second or two worth of time per stage. With a new take on transitions and some fine tuning in my draw/reload I believe this will prove to be the boost I needed to get me to the next level. Maybe that next level will be GM and maybe not, but one more step is one more step. I'm excited to get back on the range for this weekend's Colorado State match and at least attempt to employ some of the things I learned!

You look like you are rockin' it man. Keep it up. Looks like you could move a tad more aggressively... push HARD when leaving a position. Work on that same thing with transitions. Push hard and drive toward the next target. The thing I noticed is that van looked to be in pretty good shape. Like some RO was all "yeah, I drove my wife's van today... I'm sure she won't mind if we use it." HAHAHA!

Dude. You said it yourself. Stop doing One. Do Two. You need to be trying to get the shot off as soon as you enter the position... but you can't break the shot until you see what you need to see. Always be doing both. What I see you need to work on is your smoothness coming into the position and that's the key. You are not "easing into" the position. You come in OK, but just stop and do a lot of extra upper body preparation to finish moving into the position. This puts you way forward of the position. Feet were there a while ago... now the rest of your body is getting there. Watch this video of me where I come into that far left position on the back row of targets. ( I started it at .12 and is the best example at .25 speed.) My legs are just doing whatever they have to do in order to bring my upper body over, into the position smoothly. Watch my hat (you can't miss the damn thing.) and notice it doesn't move up or down from the point I'm entering to the point I'm exiting the position. I'm doing this BEFORE I can see the target and as soon as I see it, I'm ready to break the shot. No extra lunging or prep work... that's been done as I'm easing in. This includes the height of my head. Meanwhile, the grip is awesome and you did a great job at analysis of yourself. You are kicking some ass man.

Oops. Didn't know that. They were put in the ammo boxes randomly. And I picked the 8 from the first 2 rows. I didn't load up a secret sauce chrono load and submit those or anything like that. Yeah, I wouldn't say you were actually cheating. I just wanted to bust your chops! And there's a bit of a warning that the chrono should be a "random sample" so anything you do to make is less random could be problematic if a range official saw.

I've seen the same thing with respect to different brands being different lengths. I think that the longer the brass, the more crimp and therefore higher velocity? At any rate, I began sorting all my brass and even with that was never able to achieve the trouble free results from only using once-fired brass. If you are going to re-use your brass make sure it gets sorted. But I've had the same thing happen where I had to creep up loads... maybe it's the barrel breaking in or some damn thing? Of course, I've had a replacement barrel since then and it didn't happen this time. Maybe it's something happening with some barrels? When it happened to me it leveled out and while some people thought it sounded high (if memory serves it was 7.9gr of AC) others were like, "that's what I shoot." When I got a new barrel it was a different twist and I made 170pf with 7.3 grains and it never changed. I don't know man... I just shoot 'em. Also, you freakin' cheater! Picking out particular rounds for chrono is the very reason we have to chrono in the first place. I'm thinking you need to buy me a D.P. Burrito for me to maintain my silence! HAHAHA!

I was able to shoot 1 match this weekend. It was at Aurora Gun Club and man did we get lucky with weather. It started to get windy on the last stage and due to family matters I had to take off as soon as I was done shooting, but I believe everyone missed the major wind. Heather went with me and she got to experience her first DQ. It was a bit boring for her to hang around afterwards but shes a trooper and helped tape and brass the entire time. She's just not quite 100% comfortable with all the steps involved in everything and after having some major problems on the classifier she got mixed up and dropped the hammer before she showed clear. Her perspective was that she knew she screwed the pooch as she watched the hammer fall. I think I have her convinced to work with me more for dry fire.. the whole confusion thing was caused by having to rack the slide several times trying to clear a malfunction caused by her in the first place. With respect to her joining me, we talked about the fact that I may get a bit distracted when she comes with me. I believe this is true and have yet to even come close to my top performance when she's with me. Rather than discourage her, or avoid the issue I now have a new "side goal" to work on. I should be able to reach the same performance levels whether she's with me or not. This is just something I need to work on, and I used to have goals like this back when I first started making video's of myself. It seemed that I only got complete screw-ups on video and in an attempt to not let it bother me I just ran the camera every stage rather than shy away from it. I think this "Heather distraction" will end as well as long as I take it head on. For the match, I didn't have my best performance and wound up with 3 mikes and some costly mistakes that put me in 3rd place. While not TOO shabby, there's no reason I shouldn't be able to get within a few percentage points of Bob Krogh these days and about 17% behind him is not a performance that's up to par. In true Lanny Bassham style I'll mostly review what went well here and only touch on the areas for improvement. Looking at Stage 5 there were moments of thinking that running back and THEN turning and shooting the left side was a good plan, but time and again we are shown that shooting on the move is faster in these situations. Looking at my movement I'm very happy with how I executed this. I moved back far enough before starting the engagement so that I didn't stretch that engagement out. Nor did I shorten enough to have to stop. This saved a bunch of time. On the 2nd array they key here was to engage it way sooner than you might think. I watched shooter after shooter run across that big-ass space only to have to stop completely before finishing that array and heading around that hairpin turn. While I had to slow down more than I had hoped it was exactly enough to get the job done. Where the obvious improvement note comes in is during the last position. I miked the partial target in the right corner. I obviously lost sight of my dot and failed to call the shot. I'm just lucky it wasn't in the white... it could have been anywhere since I failed to do my job on that. There's more evidence of losing visual patience by the number of makeup shots as well. Stage 1 was my design. I've been trying to design a stage with no fault lines for quite some time now and finally did it. It was nice to finally have a good run yesterday and that shooting was the best I have right now. In a stage with more no-shoots than shoots there was plenty of rope to hang yourself everywhere you looked. The stage was designed to be virtually risk free if you wanted to run, and most shooters carefully chose a balance between the "ass haul mode" and the "aim game mode." I knew that a lot of time would be lost in the standing up aspect and moved out of the chair with everything I had. Then, it was all about calling the shots and I concentrated on making sure to watch the dot like I know I can. The thing I notice about this stage compared to the others is not a single extra shot (except for the hammer follow) was fired and the splits aren't exactly lightning fast. That's exactly what was required to win this stage and I did win it for open and scored .75% shy of Bob Krogh. This was my high point and I like to wrap up these diary entries with a high point. So, while I clearly have work to do I still had a great time and look forward to more work on my goal list in two weeks. I'm moving this Friday and will miss next weekend's fun. So things to work on: Both guns at the gunsmith while I'm moving... Shiny gets a new safety, and Hulk gets the hammer follow issue fixed. I'll need to make time to test them and check zero BEFORE the next match! I'm going to simplify my goal list to try to prioritize what I feel are the ones I really need to work on. The A-Zone is the Only Zone. (Seriously... stop getting deltas!) Arms extended, strong grip. (keep training)

With several fumbled reloads lately I decided to do some dry fire practice last night on standing reloads to see of something has changed. It has. I determined that my magazine grabbing angle is different than before. I believe now, with my arms fully extended my hand comes down from way farther in front of me than before when it slaps down at the magazine. This is making two things happen. First, it's causing my gun to stay more in front of, and higher than before. That's good news. Secondly, it's causing my angle of snagging to be steeper... i.e., I'm lifting UP on the magazine in relation to my belt as opposed to BACK like before. Another bit of good news actually. Why would I want to introduce a movement in any direction that was not either directly away from, or directly toward the gun during reload? so, I changed the angle of my mag pouch and with the new angle I'm much more comfortable reloading. Now it's just about burning that in and see if my reload times improve.

Read Lanny Bassham's book, then blow the $20.00 for one of his journals. That's how I started. Later, I took that mindset and template and started my diary here on this forum. For me, moving to the forum did two things. 1. Made me write my thoughts out completely instead of making some chicken scratch that even I couldn't read later. 2. Made me much more accountable since someone else might be reading it. I honestly was shocked to find out people were reading it. Go here to buy the Journal http://mentalmanagement.com/ Get the book "With Winning in Mind" on Amazon.