Glock26Toter

I'll throw in a few things I've experienced with this same type of load. I had two guns, one with a 24 in 1 twist barrel, and one with a 32 in 1 twist. It's been a while so forgive me if I have something wrong in the barrel specs and also can't remember which was which. Anyways, both are shorties with no holes. I was shooting 7.3 of WAC in one of them and when I got the other one it was super hot. With the same load I was at 185pf. All this was with 124gr and I ran them short... maybe 1.15 or so. (long story as to why I got Round Noses running that short.. don't do it) So, I tell that story as maybe you'll find the rifle twist might have something to do with you loading up that combo but getting short on PF. I've since re-barreled the "slow gun" and was shooting 7.3grains of WAC on the 124 rounds for a long time in both guns and making 170pf no sweat. I believe I still ran them very short and while I think I may have been compressed, I never blew anything up. So maybe you'll be fine getting into the 7.6 territory. Load a few up, and then unload them and see if the powder falls out. It won't if you compressed it even a little bit. (I've done that too) And one more thing. I've never personally seen an appreciable change from .1 gr change in powder. I always load in .2 increments and find that .2 gr changes nets me about 50fps (averaged out) with all other things unchanged. I don't know if I helped or just spewed, but there you go. oh, now I shoot 7.6gr WAC OR 8.3gr HS-6 with 115gr JHP's and run 170PF consistently in both guns with 1.125 OAL.

Seriously, you did a great job and comparing yourself to others ahead of you in ability is the best way to improve. That old saying "dress for the job you want, not the one you have." Same type of thing.

Well, I did go practice with Panda a few others. What a great time we had. My wife Heather came too and did a great job and reminded me to remind her how much fun she has next time she tries to bone out of a match. We ran a pretty complex 32 round stage several times and I ran it a few different ways and was happy with how I reinforced some break down issues to find the best way to run it. Panda let me shoot a few stages with my attempt to fix my arm extension issue on my own. I was just extending more and it felt "pretty good." Then he showed me the mechanics of why it's important to get those arms locked out and how that does make it easier and more comfortable to increase grip strength at the same time. (like drewbeck said) Concentrating on a hard left hand grip makes the entire grip way stronger and evens out the grip big time for me. I shot my last stage with dot tracking like I rarely see, and it was clear to me now what I need to do to take my splits to the next level. I sure could feel it in my elbows (just a feeling, not pain) and can see why when I was having lots of tennis elbow pain why I let my arms get more and more bent to make this "10% bend" the norm. I'm not sure that's what happened, and maybe the bent arms is what made the tennis elbow in the first place. Either way... Now I have a new goal to work on and really feel good about moving forward. So here's the new goal list. Analyze every step for efficiency. Always push as hard as you can. The A Zone is the only zone. Arms EXTENDED and strong grip. (Especially hard with the left hand.)

You almost caught up to him!... and then he finished opening the suit case and it was all over. hehehe.

There are two types of people in the world. Those that have shot a chrono, and those that will.

Hmmm. That's the 2nd time you've mentioned that. If you've mentioned it before it whizzed by me. So I watched several videos and thought about what I saw and how I hold my arms. This is something I've never identified as a problem. (well, until I was watching my latest training vids mentioned above) Let me see if I'm on the right track. So really it's pretty subtle what you are talking about but you basically lock your arms, Not too rigid, but quite a bit more rigid or closer to having locked arms than I've ever gotten. In a degree estimation, it looks like maybe you are at 179 where as I'm more like 170. I've never been of the opinion that arms should be rigidly locked and maybe you'll correct me here, but I need to be a hell of a lot closer to locked arms than I'm getting? In the video's that these come from I can see you actually do bump up to full, locked extension just before this frame was snapped. You bounce back slightly but not much and remain pretty darn straight-armed except for the head shot where that lean doesn't allow it. I know for sure that I loosened up quite a bit during my rally bad tennis elbow days as the more I bent my arms, the less they hurt after the match. Now that I'm over that shit it's time to make some changes. I had never really thought about that as detrimental. Yes???

I went out to AGC today and practiced a bit. I wanted to work on watching the dot closely to see exactly how it tracks plus work on some movement. I setup a 3 position stage, and just shot one target, moved to the next position, shot two more, and into a final position for a final target. I was concentrating on getting out of the position with the "two large" steps that I seem to have forgotten recently. Cha-lee pointed out that he could see I was missing that in my videos. I was happy with what I saw and was able to get that feeling back of pushing hard with both initial steps to get that momentum up quickly. I also realized that I'm not seeing what I used to describe as static and I am watching the dot track. When I'm really in the zone this "static" will stay in the A-Zone, or darn near it and I really feel like I'm controlling the recoil. I saw it during the RM300 shoot off also. It's the "wow, the dot stays there no matter how fast I pull the trigger" feeling that I wish I had all the time. The issue I'm seeing now is that I can see a track, but it's not predictable. I'm seeing some movement in my body causing me to have to fight to get the dot back. It moves up, then down in an arc to the left or right and down past the target (into the D Zone) then bounces back on target and I'm correcting left or right depending on how it came down. Not a huge left/right margin, but a delta is waiting for me if I don't get that sucker back into an up/down motion or into the "static zone." This reinforces what I thought about trying some equipment changes and maybe modifying my stance a bit to be lower and more aggressively leaning into the gun. I think this will help recoil control and make sure that my head or body isn't what's adding this movement in. I also ran a bunch of one handed drills and I'm convinced now, that moving the opposite leg back slightly DOES HELP with recoil control. I was doubting it and talked with Cha-lee about it while at the Area 1 match. He doesn't see a need for it, but I can clearly track the dot better and was able to shave about .5-.8 seconds off my time while maintaining good hits with a step back while drawing. I'll keep doing it. Of course this will require lots of practice to make certain that the draw and step remain coincidental and even more important, to make sure it's automatic. So, no match this weekend but I'll likely get a bit more practice in to prepare for the Great Plains Sectional next weekend. I'm excited to get another opportunity to hit a big match and remember to kick some ass this time!

Yo. You are onto something now! I purchased his Journal and then moved onto doing it here. the format was... 1. Details about the match. Weather, range conditions, what match, what range... 2. What I did well today. 3. What I learned. 4. List goals. Notice how there no, "I screwed this up" section? Identifying areas of improvement I would put under what I learned, but it's not about identifying screw ups or hashing them over. This is from memory so maybe I'm missing something, but fit all that into your journal and you'll find that you are having more fun than ever, and the feedback will be constructive from yourself and from others.

Ah, hahaha! Mile High Haze. That's good stuff. But aside from the pun I think you are correct. Maybe we'll smoke Area 3 like... oh... I mean. Maybe we'll do well at Area 3 in a month or so.

Nice work bro! All your training is paying off for sure. You are reloading lightning fast now. You will be GM soon and hopefully you can give me advice to catch up to you soon after.

Well, I just got back from the Berry's Area1 Match in Idaho Falls, Idaho. The range was a very nice range and the staff did a great job at taking care of us. The weather was hot and luckily we did an AM rotation for both days so by the time it started to get crazy hot, we were wrapping up. I posted both days as well a recap of my best four stages on my YouTube channel. I was the first shooter on the first stage and it was a double-mover stage that required some careful timing without a huge amount of skill when shooting. I executed it perfectly and only got 1 charlie on the stage and felt pretty good starting off the day. Unfortunately that seemed to set the tone and I ran the remainder of the day in a very careful, deliberate mode that I just couldn't seem to get out of. I was very conciously watching the dot and not being very aggressive. I can see it in my split times and total times never matched up to what I thought it might be coming off the line. I think I took the "shoot all aphas and I'll be fast enough" to a new level and was just not moving aggressively. By the end of the first day I think I had 1 mike, but it wasn't one of the "it was worth it" situations and I had already given up all the top spots for Master. The second day I tried to move a bit better but the mood and excitement was just not there and I managed to rack up 3 more mikes and times that just weren't on par with a the top M crowd. There was one steel that I came in hard around a wall on and broke the shot instantly when I saw my dot on it. It litterally surprised me so much that I missed the next steel 2 times before moving on and making it up later, adding back any time saved by that bad-ass hit and then some. In my effort to always come away with a positive note, I did have some very nice runs that scored me 6,7,7,9 in placement. Judging by the top 10 Open guys at that match I'm VERY happy with my ability to get there 4 times and it does prove to myself that I'm capable of getting into GM terriroty. I just need to take away these lessons and re-inforce them for the next time I'm up against these guys. I also had a talk with the guys I was traveling with about my equipment and although I'm usually reluctant to change equipment I do feel that I'm missing something in maintaining upward momentum and I think it's time to make some significant changes. I shot a steel grip rig on one stage that had been kicked out and was amazed at how different the dot tracked. I've ordered a steel grip and will see if I can get my dot to settle down a bit, or otherwise bring a more aggressive shooting style. There are some other changes in store, but the first thing I want to try is that steel grip and concentrate on increasing my grip stength as I know that helps a lot. So goals moving forward. Analyze every step for efficiency. Always push as hard as you can. The A Zone is the only zone. Grip hard on the gun.

You absolutely cannot move on until you see what you have to see in order to make the shot. The one thing that helped me a lot was to stop practicing movement. I move every day and don't need a whole hell of a lot of practice. What I don't do every day, is shoot accurately. Sometimes I would go to the range and just setup old-school, with a single target and shoot real live groups... keep moving farther back and map out the rise and fall of the bullet as the distance changes. Other times, I'll practice kind of a bill drill... but with no timer. Just see how quickly I feel I can get 6 alphas. What I mean by "how quickly I feel" is just shoot them without extra stuff like breathing or conscious trigger squeeze. Shoot the instant you see the sight picture and move on... but don't speed up or convince yourself a charlie sight picture is "good enough." You are showing yourself what an Alpha looks like so you'll know it when your whole body is yelling "Hey eyes, stop screwing around. We gotta go!" Your eyes have be like "Hey dumbass, hang on a sec.... almost... there.... GO!". What your eyes can't do is be like "Uh, what was I doing?... brown what now? Aw, just go!" Not to say I haven't practiced movement or concentrated on it at times. Just save it for when you feel you are doing fine on accuracy. Its... like pounding a target stand into a berm. If you pound on one side too much it's all crooked. You have to go back and forth to get it in straight.

I'm glad you are going to a big match. Despite what some may feel, they are for EVERYONE. You'll do just fine. Maybe we'll run into each other. You can't miss me... I'll be the only one with a cowboy hat on.

Another great time this weekend shooting the Mile High Showdown at BLGC. The weather cooperated nicely and it was sunny the entire time. I shot the entire match on Friday and it was a very tiring day. The stages were challenging in many respects but once again I found myself without much issue when trying to come up with the best plan. I'm starting to think that I'm actually starting to get some skills in this area and have more confidence than ever that I'm running MY best stage plan rather than guessing or waiting to hear what someone else is doing. I'm still all ears and consider that more of a strategy than a crutch now. My next match is the Area 1 match in Idaho so that should really put my skills to the test to see if I'm full of shit or not. I've posted a video on my channel of a few runs, but didn't get much on vid. Paul Clark Jr, was using some big ass shade umbrella and completely blocked my view on one stage, I didn't bother to set the camera up on a couple more and then left the damn thing on over lunch and the battery was deader than hell for the afternoon. I'm not too heartbroken since my journal here is relying less and less on video and more about just taking the time to think about what went well and making sure I'm still on the path to improvement in tiny increments. That's the biggest overall change in tune that I'm seeing recently. Not only are the skill improvements at this level very tiny, but they are largely in my head or not really noticeable on video unless you were there shooting. For instance, my time on many of the stages was the same as the GM's and several instances I beat them on time, but dropped on points. This means that all the things you can see on a video are a positive aspect. I'm moving quickly, easing into positions, and not wasting time with extra motion. What I'm not doing is waiting for the sight to get into the alpha zone, or sticking around for that second shot. I racked up a good number of Deltas for this match and although I was rewarded for shooting better than quite a few Master shooters, I can see what needs to happen if I want to get into GMville. I can say without hesitation that by far, the biggest thing that I think has gotten me this far, and will take me over the bridge to said GMville is focusing on the positive aspect of my shooting and keeping my eyes focused on the GM's. The attitude of "hey 'GM', I almost got past you today!" not only makes the GM's I know root for me but makes it even more of a possibility. It's the same way that rehearsing and visualizing a stage works. I can make a list a mile long of people that would do exactly the opposite and say "damn 'GM', I'm not worthy. You gave me the beat down AGAIN... I suck!" So, anyways. I like what's been happening and will continue to strive for improvement. Goals to continue working on: keep analyzing every step for the most efficient way to execute it. Always be pushing as hard as you can for every movement. Track the dot all the way into the A Zone. It's the ONLY zone.

I shot a local match at Pueblo West Sportsman's club this weekend. It was the only match available since the Saturday match was cancelled due to rain. Not to mention it was a super classifier and I'm not interested in that at this time. The weather turned out great for the match and only the first few drops of rain started falling as we were driving away from the match. The stages were fun but not too challenging as most were pretty low risk targets and I couldn't identify very many ways to shoot them. I still had a great time and even ran the "optional" stage as did my entire squad. The "optional" stage came about because it was thrown out as illegal. When we got to it I tried to spot why it was illegal and I don't know for sure. I thought I knew why but have not consulted the rules as yet to see if I'm correct. I think the discussion will need to be in another thread so I'm leaving the details out. The reason I'm worrying about is because I'm going to take a CRO class soon and need to be able to notice these things faster. So for the first stage to review, there was quite a bit of movement and I saw no benefit to moving first, but did practice starting to enter shooting position #2 during the 2nd target engagement. Target #3 was a high risk head shot so I knew I would not want to be either A. Still in position 1 since it was out of my initial index or B. moving. I stepped over and re-indexed on it during the #2 engagement and despite launching one over the top I scored 2 Alphas on it with a makeup. Score one for a stable platform. The next spot I liked was the step pad position where I engaged the drop-out target with perfect timing. I knew I needed to be stepping and engaging the wide open target simultaneously and practiced that many times. I executed that well and then moved into the port to clean things up. I don't see too much for areas of improvement except maybe a few more carefully placed Alpha hits. I think I had too many charlies. The next stage is what cost me the #1 spot over The Big Panda. (well and a mike on an un-reviewed stage) I just flat missed my grip. I can see an unnatural upper body position the instant my hand gets the gun out and I'm thinking about fixing it, but not doing anything about it for the entire first part of the stage. I fixed it during the reload and by then the damage is done dropping me to 5th or 6th place for the stage. The only positive to bring away from this one is that I nailed that high risk steel (backed with no-shoots) with a good cadence and called each shot without hesitation. The classifier was Fluffy's Revenge 2 CM 06-05. I really tried not to overthink this one and just "go for it." I think I forgot to push extra hard on it and performed well within my ability. Not too shabby at 86% and I do feel good about making a Master level score. However, in my current game there's no room for "just doing" a classifier. I would rather have seen a GM score or a 32% on it. Next time I'll have to try to not think about the stage, but think about my mindset and let that baby rip. Angry Hulk shooting next classifier! So, I'm going to break my current goals down a bit. This way they are more clearly defined as exactly what I need to work on. I'll change; "Think like a GM" to "keep analyzing every step for the most efficient way to execute it." "haul ass" to "Always be pushing as hard as you can for every movement." "don't lose the dot" to "Track it all the way into the A Zone. The Alpha Zone is the ONLY TARGET."

GO OPEN!

You are shooting well these days. I think your equipment issues are and indicator of some needed fine tuning and becoming one with your gun. I've had these "when my gun runs I run" moments. Once you get your gun running 100% I think you will start find acorns more often. Soon the acorn will move on you and you'll be an M looking for a GM acorn! Keep up the good work.

For me, I don't see a way to strictly practice seeing faster. I think the simple act of seeing faster is a bit like "reading faster." We can look over the words twice as fast as we normally do, but are we able to understand it. The way to get to read faster would be to practice all the steps that went into reading... how to read each word, and then by getting better at each word and understanding each sentence a bit faster, the next thing you know your reading rate (and comprehension rate) would double. So my point is that just seeing faster would not necessarily lead to faster understanding that the sights were on target or being able to witness the entire sight track. On our journey to "see faster" we start to realize that we can see every wiggle of the sight, watch it rise and fall, and can act in the instant that the sight hits the target by breaking the shot. So I never worried so much about seeing faster, but did dry fire hell out of the gun using a par timer. I pushed myself to draw and break that shot WITH AN ACCEPTABLE SIGHT PICTURE. I think that helped train me to act faster on what I saw and translate that into doing it on every shot. During live fire practice I always practice shooting A's. I often setup a drill (maybe 4 targets and put 2 shots on each) and with a friend we will write down but NOT show them the time. We run the drill until we can get all A's. We used to alternate and do it 3 times each. Sometimes I'll do this drill without a timer at all. I only want to watch the sight and see everything. I'm showing myself what an Alpha Hit looks like. Then when I have some runs with all A's or at least damn close I look at the times. Usually I find that in order get all A's really only had to drop a second or so, and maybe even in some cases it was faster. With that exercise I'm emphasizing the A shooting and not the time, but it shows me that I naturally break the shot the instant the sight picture looks good. That's how I learned to see faster.

Cha-Lee, you look way cooler shooting that brown-brick-shit-house of a blaster any day than that old Tanfo!

You are moving very quickly these days. Keep it up. The next thing you need to work on is removing accessory movements. Your head-dip-lean thing while reloading seems to add some time and complexity to your reload. Practice with no gun. you should be able to snag a magazine and bring it up in front of your face without moving your head. That way, gun and you stay in the game while weak hand just gets a new magazine ready. That will remove accessory movements and smooth things out. When the magazine is up and ready the gun hand will naturally meet it there, way up high for a faster engagement after the reload.

In my opinion "making it to (insert here) class" is a result. Result oriented thinking is not what will get you there. Read Lanny Bassham's "With winning in mind." It will change the way you look at your performance goals. Mostly by realizing that removing the goal of making it to a specific class and replacing it with smaller goals to increase performance is the key to waking up one day and just finding yourself in said class. Starting your journal is a BIG STEP and is key to doing just that. Keep writing about each training session, match, and keep on posting videos for objective analysis by YOU (most importantly) and others will join in when they want. You'll be fine.

The index finger is just for orientation. If you have your index finger on the front of the mag you'll point it forward naturally when you start to bring the mag up. How far up it is is not important. The only important thing I would consider is that the base is centered in the palm of your hand for a firm seat. And even more important, make the action of the reload bring the magazine up high so the gun must stay high to accept it. But don't get too hung up on these little details. Fine tuning the reload comes WAAAAAAAY after making it SAFELY through your first few matches. Welcome, have fun, and get your ass to that first match! You'll be hooked on the fun and friends immediately.

I got to shoot a match at Aurora Gun Club today. The weather held out nicely and considering that by 7:00pm my street was a river and had people's trashcans floating down the middle of it I'd say we got damn lucky. I've been having much less issues with my stage plans of late and I'm confident that my "thinking like a GM" is starting to become a bit more achievable. I stand by them all today and in one case was able to pick what I thought was a better plan and many agreed after they saw it. Even if someone didn't agree my confidence and opinion that it was the best plan is what meets the goal. I put the entire match into a single video and added a canned theme to it just for fun. Today, nothing spectacular happened and well, I guess that's the victory. I didn't do anything particularly well, but by the same token nothing went horribly wrong either. I can't argue with the fact that if my "normal" routine can earn me an HOA than I must be making progress. I got a single mike on the classifier (where else?) and considering how hard I'm pushing those classifiers I'll just file that one under the "zero" category. It was 09-14 "Eye of the Tiger." A simple, turn and draw routine with all head shots. I spent a lot of time visualizing my hits on the headshots and it just didn't work out for me. I shot the thing in 2.75 seconds and the mike was almost an overlay call so it's not like a total disaster. There were a couple of times, like on the First Stage where I didn't move quite as fast as I could have. Another stage had me suffering a bit of trigger freeze reminding me that there are always area of improvement to be identified. I also lost the dot a couple of times and is especially evident on the final stage of the video where I had several makeup shots and it really caused some disruption in my flow. In summary, I was reminded that having a great match like at the RM300 last week doesn't mean that anything changes when it comes to the work. Despite a good result, I still failed to meet my goals today and I can't let them go just yet. I've been very light on practice lately and need to start adjusting my work schedule to carve out a bit of time at least once a month. Until then, it's dry fire practice and keep up my performance analysis journal. Goals: Think like a GM. Haul Ass. Don't lose the dot.

I just wrote an article for a newsletter that a local shooter does here in Colorado. If you have time to do a bit of reading, here it is. Cut and pasted. _____________________________ Take the walkthrough seriously: When it comes to the walkthrough I have learned that for me, visualization is an extremely important aspect of my game and when I started taking the walkthrough seriously my game started to improve drastically. First of all, when I say walkthrough I’m not talking about my stage plan. Figuring out the stage plan is it’s own strategy and you may have a completely different plan depending on shooting skill, physical ability, or maybe you just don’t like the plan everyone else is doing. Even if you have a horrible stage plan taking the walkthrough seriously will lead to better execution. We all know execution is key and that even the best plan can fall apart if executed poorly. By “take the walkthrough seriously” I mean, do everything exactly the way you intend. You should be holding your hands in an exact air grip, and the only thing that should move with each visualized shot is your trigger finger. Keep the same stance and keep the same grip and air shoot each shot. I recently got a new hatcam, so I was making more point of view videos than usual. In an attempt to not forget to turn it on at “make ready” I turned it on while I was on deck. This resulted in my recording my walkthrough as well as the actual run. I was struck by how closely the two matched and is really what inspired me to share this with you. The view, was exactly the same, telling me that I was in the exact stance and there was a distinctive pause for almost the same as the time it took to shoot. Also, at almost every shooting position you can see that I look down, then around to make sure I note any “anchors” that will put me in the same position next time. A mark on a wall, a fault line gap, or anything that tells me “I’m here.” You don’t know exactly what you’ll notice when your mind is running 1000 miles an hour so any observed anchor might come in handy, whether you meant that to be the anchor or not. Also, when you are the on deck shooter you need to get a clean run. You’ll find that others aren’t really paying attention while doing their work and get in the way. Just wait or ask them give you some room. It’s not nearly as important to make the running or movement paths as real as possible, but make it a point to get into each shooting position and air shoot them at the speed you intend to shoot them. If you have to wait for 10 people to get out of the way, then wait. If you do this you’ll also start to notice the need for others to do it and maybe help out a bit by brassing from outside shooting areas or walking around walls so the shooter can get through. Also keep in mind, some shooters are very intense and in a zone so when they are rehearsing. They can unintentionally come off as rude, or impatient when asking someone to scootch. If you get “yelled at,” or ignored by a shooter they are just involved in trying to complete their walkthrough so don’t take it personally. They’ll be back to chipper in no time… after the shooting. In summary, always perform the walkthrough with as much realism as possible and don’t do something differently no matter how small it may seem. You are practicing and programming things that will take over for the conscious mind and all the things you did, whether right or wrong, will be repeated.

I hope you can meet your goals. Be careful not to model yourself after other shooters so much that you lose the Chic style. Try what you see from several shooters and find the most comfortable and fastest way YOU can do it. Congratulations on the marriage. Florida Nationals sounds like a great place to honeymoon. You'll just be a bit busy during the day shooting.... she'll understand.