Glock26Toter

Well, a hell of a weekend was had. This is the match that has always put a mile on my face for a while and this year was no different. On Friday, it rained on us a few times, but nothing major. Saturday and Sunday was nice and warm. I was an RO at my first major match. I'm going to be WAY MORE thankful of the RO's at the big matches now. That's a hell of a lot of work and I was surprised how the all day routine of standing right next to shooters takes it's toll on your body. I swore that my teeth were loosening up by the final shooter. Now, on to the performance review. I was very happy with my performance and I really believe that I shot at the top of my ability for the entire match. I watched the videos over and over again and I'm not able to identify an instance where I should have or could have moved faster. (nothing individually linked, but Youtube channel here.) Each time I left a shooting position I didn't forget to do it as fast as I could. The stage plans were solid (not too challenging and in almost all cases the most obvious was the best plan) I only lost track of my dot for a few shots and obviously could have picked up some more points had that not happened, but when each stage is 60 rounds I think I can afford to give myself a bit of a break. Could I find something to improve on?... YES. BUT, in order to maintain the positive reinforcement aspect of this journal and match performance I'm just not going to do it. I feel good right now and would encourage anyone that when you do feel good about your performance ride the wave. You don't always have to find areas for improvement. If you had fun, and landed somewhere you've been setting a goal for forget about the negative and just enjoy. Whether that's to have simply placed, or got first, or just shot a clean match but landed at 50% doesn't really matter. If you've made something happen that makes you feel good than enjoying it can only lead to more fun. Some things of note that I feel really helped me in my "thinking like a GM" goal. Stage 2. Unloaded start. Every other shooter that I saw, loaded and engaged some steel, then crouched to shoot through a port, then stood up to shoot next to the port. So what I did, was to combine my loading time with my crouching time. I loaded and crouched into the port. When I was already low with my legs spread wide, it was a slight lean and transition to the targets next to the port. Then, a slight lean the other way (putting my weight on the outside leg) was the ticket to get me into shooting the steel. After that I again combined my standing up movement with leaving the position. This went especially well since my weight was already on my trailing leg. I the exact opposite on the other side of the stage. The net gain was 4 seconds faster than the GM that won the stage. I pulled 2 mikes in the middle section somewhere and still got 2nd place on the stage. I was very happy with my thinking like a GM on that one. Another spot where I did a similar time saver was on the all steel stage (stage 5... no video). I'll bet the GM's did this, but only saw 2-3 shooters do it while ROing that stage all day Saturday. There was a starting array that had you stuck in a single position and then a 180 turn for the second array that took you downrange quite a bit. I was careful to back out of the first position slightly while wrapping up the first few targets so that when I turned I could change direction to a downrange angle (clearing a wall) and shoot the second array on the move. This put me 1-2 steps away from position #3. Shooters that didn't move during that 2nd array were 5-6 steps from position #3. What saved me even more time, putting that run into territory that I could hardly believe was some "in the zone" moments that I'll forever try to duplicate. On the first Texas star I accidentally shot the 3:00 plate first. In a moment of panic, I just said "quick! Shoot it before it moves" and was able to clear it before the star moved. Then, I did it again on the other star. I went into the final array clean and by this time, as you can image, was slightly amp'd up. I missed twice on it, but made them up quickly. This meant my time only included 2 extra shots and some movement that didn't leave anything to waste. So, to wrap up this review I'll say that while there are some things I could find to improve upon, I'll choose instead to focus on duplicating what it felt like to beat that star up like it stole my lunch money. The goals are simple to say... hard to do. Think like a GM. Haul Ass. Don't lose the dot.

Lots of target placement issues. We can only put targets against berms, steel can only be engaged from directly in front of and perpendicular to the back berm. Angles of engagement to side berms are limited, along with table start restrictions. The list is fairly long of stuff we can't do that we CAN do at every other range in Colorado. We try hard to overcome them and I can only hope that I continue the tradition of making stages that are creative enough that nobody even notices how restricted we really are. well... except Big Panda. He notices everything. (that's a compliment BTW)

I was able to shoot a match this weekend. The weather held out nicely and my squad was done shooting as the first rain drops hit the ground. I stuck around to help the last squad run their final shooters and clean up, so in the end it was a cold, wet ride home. But the match was fun. We had a nice mix of stages this time and one stage had a bunch of different ways to run it. Something that's hard to do at AGC. I was overall happy with the shooting and only boned the classifer slightly... but got a second chance at it, and boned that run too. times like that you can only laugh about and just move on. The first run I shot a no-shoot right in the center, then pulled a makeup shot. The scorekeepers had a problem and I wound up with a reshoot. That time I missed the magwell on the reload and my mag went flying. I reloaded and then just crapped out and miked one. I'm going to skip any links here and just wrap up this entry by saying... I'm still working on the same goals. Do everything just a tad faster, keep watching that dot and I'll add that it's imperative to always be moving as fast as possible. That means that even for an instant you can't forget to be doing whatever you are doing as fast you can possibly muster. it's not enough just to be in a hurry... you need to be pushing as fast as you can move.

I find that classifiers measure consistency very, very well. You won't move up until you are ready. You can get spikes into the next class, but the "average of averages" system won't generaly let you move up until you can consistently make that class. Don't let those "almost" times bum you out. You'll make it!

At the risk of sounding redundant. Check the mount, check the screws, check the gunsmith. If all is working as it should you should never be even a full turn out of adjustment. I've installed brand new scopes and/or mounts and been 2-3" off at most.

I use a 7. What the... you ask? it's a 6 with two 357 batteries instead of the 1/3N battery. I think it makes it slightly brighter and I'm always worrying about that. Same as everyone else... 6 or smaller washes out, but 8 is just not accurate enough for me. I probably swap batteries out too often even with the 357's but I like this setup. I get batteries about 24 at a time from cheapbatteries.com OH, also, I have the CMore Dot Hood installed. I'm happy with the setup.

You are on a steep improvement curve. We can all see it very plainly. Keep it up.

More videos of practice and matches. Identify areas of improvement and limit that list to 3 or 4. Work on them and watch the videos and post the videos for others to look for improvement in those areas. When you feel like you've got the hang of something you can leave that goal out and add a new one. This keeps you from doing the "I just suck" attitude and keeps improvement on track. When you practice work on one or two goals ONLY. Don't just shoot for the sake of shooting. If you are working on movement work on that only for a while, then go home. I personally cannot think of any training scenario that would use up 400 rounds. I shoot 200 max in a training session. I'm no expert.. just saying what I think. Someday I'll let you know if it worked. haha!

The weather has been terrible lately. Constant rain has really put a damper on the shooting. Luckily Boulder Rifle Club still had an indoor match. There's not a lot to this match. Only 3 stages in a pretty restricted, low lit range where the stages have a tendency to lean toward awkward movement and noshoots everywhere in order to bring the challenge level up. I personally like shooting it just as much as any other indoor match. I beats the hell out of Not Shooting! I shot the classifier first and it was "Nuevo El Presidente." I hesitated right out of the gate and this translated into too much rushing during the shooting. I miked and deltad my way to a very poor score. But the positive was the reload. The other Master (GM Limited/M Prod) shooter just shrugged his shoulders when I asked him if he remembered seeing my reload. This tells me that it was very smooth, as I don't really remember doing it, and neither does he. Smooth and unmemorable I suppose is a good thing. The next stage was a stage that you needed to keep moving on to get it done efficiently. I liked the shooting OK, and scored a LOT of Alphas on it, including 2 on the swinger. The timing was tight and I fell short on that big time. I ran out of shooting window and ended up leaning way over as my feet just went beyond the window. So the last shot was very slow since I had to come to a complete stop and aim in a position I never should have been in. I went into the next window and basically, the same thing happened. The final position I did the opposite. I started engaging way too early and was shooting head shots while stepping on an activator pad. After making the headshots up I cleaned things up nicely but when I looked over at the RO he asked "what the hell was that?" I answered with the truth... "my feet were doing one plan and my eyes were doing another!" hahaha! Finally was a doorway stage and when I opened the door it didn't open. We aren't sure what happened but after fighting the door I thought the RO said stop and I turned around to see. He stopped me then and said that someone had yelled something like "you dumb shit" or something that I thought was possibly a stop. In retrospect there's no reason he should have given me a reshoot, but to make everyone feel better I caught the door on my toe while opening it so the net effect was the EXACT same start as the first time. This time I didn't have any excuses and just kept going. I earned a mike on this stage, but the rest of the hits were good. Again, lots of alphas. Including two on the clamshell behind that door. I very calmly shot the alphas like it was an open target even though I had just botched the door so I was happy for that. The overall lesson for the match was "must have smooth movement."

Sounds like Will is onto something. You are collecting too much data. Your base question of time VS rounds can only be answered by asking what you are looking for in a training session. I normally only shoot about 100-150 rounds in a training session. These days I'm pretty focused on accuracy and will dry run a stage several times before firing it. I write down how many charlies I got and the total time. (assuming the rest are A's since it's accuracy training.) I'm pretty much after "how slow do I need to go, to ensure all A's" for most drills. Other times I might be looking at draw times. If that's the case, I'll just look at the first shot time, but I find that unless I'm making more than one shot, the first shot drill is not valid. So, I'll shoot two targets but only note whether I got an A or a C on the first shot, and the time to the first shot. (I've found that I can pretty easily get .80 or so with a single shot, but have a very difficult time getting .90 or better if I'm continuing on to more shots. And how often do we do that?, hence the validity question about a single shot drill) Anyways, when I'm training for split times, I'll only write down split times and A/C hits. These are all separate sessions that I'm practicing these skills and as you can guess. Some drill will use a lot more ammo than others. Then there are movement drills, reload drills and all that stuff to add in, but when I'm practicing any movement, I usually don't write any hits down and rarely time. I'm only practicing the movement and getting it correctly. As fast as I can comfortably do it without screwing it up. Wow, I kind of dumped my entire routine here. I hope it helps. It kind of helped me to write it out. To get back to the point, I don't worry about how much time or ammo I'm using... I drill for the particular skill that I feel I need the most work on, and if something doesn't present itself, I usually default to accuracy/total time. If you feel your list is too long for a "default" than just rotate drills. I think it's a mistake to practice too many things at once. And to sum things up... If I'm just trashing everything I'll either switch or go home. It MUST be fun and productive. Frustrated training is ONLY training for frustration.

Acupuncture dude! Call me and I'll give my dudes number. It's not like, stick it with a needle and you are instantly good to go, but it sure helps speed up the healing process. Also, I know you are desk jockey so make sure your ergonomics are good at work. I know how aggravating long time joint issues are. They suck! Take care of it bro.

Congratulations. Not just on the win, but for making it through a match and being able to say you performed at the top of your ability. That's really what its all about ain't it? You are moving way more smoothly than your early videos and the fact that you've identified specific goals means you are going to continue improving. Nice work.

I write stuff down during my practice session to see what the times and scores feel like during the session. For example, I would like to see that it only took adding .5 to a drill time to get all A's. It's very hard to tell if I ran faster or slower or remember what I scored when I'm the one in the shooting. But as far as taking that from session to session I don't bother for same reasons you are saying. I never do the same thing twice. With the exception of ending almost every session with a few strong/weak only drills, what I want to practice changes from week to week based on what I wrote, here, in my journal.

I shot a match this weekend at Aurora Gun Club. The stages were fun but surprisingly similar. Funny how all the designers sometimes have the same idea. There was not much steel at all, and only about 3 no-shoots total. Also, on almost every stage an up range movement was required. All rare items for us at AGC so it was funny that we all did it simultaneously. I had a great time and although there were a couple minor mistakes I mostly performed up to my ability. The first stage I shot had a pretty clunky stage plan initially and after thinking about it, I landed on an idea that felt more comfortable to me. I think I did some pretty good shooting and generally called my shots on most of the targets and don't think there was a delta anywhere on the stage. I still didn't do as well as I would have liked due to errors. My errors were some slow shooting through the front port, both in misses on the steel and slow-splits on the paper. This coupled with a complete botch on the reload made this a slower plan than Panda ran it, but had I not made these mistakes I think the plan would have been a wash. Next stage was a back-and -forth situation and I feel pretty good about the accuracy and movement. However, there are two things I feel really slowed me down. One was the initial shot. I don't remember what happened but the pause before I start shooting is way too long for what I'm capable of. I'll bet that's a full 2 second draw and fire on a no-risk target. Next was the transition from the left side to the target in front of the walls. I think I was originally going to shoot the entire right side first and then shoot left and move. This somehow got changed to an extra transition. The only real problem with that was that I strung out that transition engaging that left-front target way too soon. Next was the target in front of those walls. I shot it once, then there’s a pause as I was like “what am I doing engaging that target now?” I shot it two more times (needlessly) and then moved on. The entire time I suffered overall slow shooting because I just hadn't really married the stage plan and that showed in a clunky execution. My wife watch the vid and was like “you are shooting slowly for what you are capable of. Look how close those targets are.” The next two stages were the classifier 99-10 and a speed shoot. These, I have no qualms about. I like the way that I ran that speed shoot and remember really pushing on the movement there. The classifier was more of the same. I shot super fast splits and then exploded out of that box and ran as fast as possible to the next box. I hadn’t quite settled enough when my first shot broke. I called it a C, but it was a D. When the score came back as a 96% I was a bit surprised. I just didn’t think there was any room for even 1 D on a classifier that GM’s have been burning down for years. But I sure feel good now that I can say I’m one of the ones burning it down. Hehehehe. The obvious improvement here would be a tad more visual patience and earn way more alphas without pushing so hard on speed. Had I added a full second to my time, but turned that D and a couple of the C’s into A’s, I would have made 100% on it. So I have no particular goals still. I just need to keep on tracking that dot and trying to see faster and do everything a tad better.

I went to AGC today to practice. There was a dude on my usual berm, and my jaw dropped as I watched him finish shooting and turn around, point his gun directly UP Range to unload. I considered going and talking with him and by the time I got out of my truck and said Hi to a couple friends he was just finishing his 2nd magazine, and DID IT AGAIN. I went down and had a quick chat with him about where his damn gun needs to be pointed AT ALL TIMES, and felt a bit better. So I setup a port wall, 3 targets at about 25ft and some fault line. The idea was that I would have lean pretty hard to get the outside targets and shoot the middle one through the port. I ran some drills where I started in the center of the wall and went, right - middle - left with a reload on each movement. I was shooting strictly for accuracy and was happy to get past that drill with only a couple of C's. I noticed, that I could start engaging the target quite a bit sooner than normal and the instant I saw the sight land on target I could break the shot. This created a shot that was very close the wall... quite a bit closer than normal, but I think saved a bunch of time. I need to work on engaging the targets WAY before I can see them, and basically, engage the edge of the wall and just wait for the target to appear. something to work on. I also did those same drills the opposite direction and did a bunch of strong/weak hand drills. A very interesting drill was to shoot Left only first, then freestyle in the center, over to right only. This created a complete rebuild of the grip needed to go from left to freestyle. Something I can't remember doing in a match. Maybe I'll stick it in a stage plan somehow. So during the left/only shooting I found that basically the stronger I grip, the better my control is. I ditched the wall for some real testing of this and was able to get 4 Alphas, 2 Charlies in 3.6 seconds with weak hand only on that array. I gripped so tightly that I injured my damn elbow, but that was the fastest and most accurate I think I've ever seen with weak hand only shooting. I've been working the hell out of my grip over the past few months (since the elbow quit hurting afer acupuncture) and they are doing better than ever. I think this new stronger grip strength thing is a key and will continue to work on the grip strength. I think the elbow thing is just a bit of a strain and certainly hope it's not the return of tennis elbow after all this work. I'm ready for a match tomorrow!

+1 on what Panda says. Also, video. Video yourself training to analyze if you are training well. Then video match performance to see how they compare. The comparison will reveal a LOT more than just what might be bringing on a malfunction of the gun.

A short spurt on the inside of the mag with Liquid Wrench Dry Lube (PTFE) is the trick. You can also spray the outside during a match, but I'm pretty sure it would do nothing to prevent rust between matches. I use it all the time. I use it for case lube in my case feeder. http://www.amazon.com/Liquid-Wrench-L512-Lubricant-CERFLON/dp/B000CPJLE4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1430545715&sr=8-1&keywords=liquid+wrench+dry+lube+L512

Classifiers go like this for me. It's like, some flukes... then the flukes start to be attainable if you can just avoid screwing up, then it's the average... then it starts again with the next class of flukes. Don't worry. It will happen.

I'm with TyShoots and Desmo412. I shot 124's for a long time and it seemed no matter what I did, could not get my splits below .24. After changing to 115Gr, my splits hit .17 overnight. Been shooting that weight since and have switched from Montana Gold to Zero for significantly better accuracy. Then I switched from WAC to HS6 and didn't notice any difference in anything. I'm back to WAC because of cost.

No but really... you are seeing faster, moving faster... more in tune with your movements and gun handling. It is making you a better shooter.

Hell, I've noticed that since I started shooting pistol competitions I'm a better person. Not to mention my friends are a better class of people. hehehe.

Good luck!

Hey, there are two shots right? If you are getting 1st shot well, that's half the battle. hehehe! You'll get that second shot in control soon. You are improving and most importantly MAKING NOTES OF SUCH. This will only lead to MORE improvement. Visualizing both shots will eventually lead to seeing them during live fire. Keep it up!

Dude. Your timing issue is exactly what I experienced and moving from 124 grain bullets to 115 grains is what helped me. The recoil was just too up and down to get a split faster than .20 and routinely I was at .24. Once I started shooting the 115 bullets it seemed that the recoil was more "jerky" and way less "up and down." The dot looks like static to me now, but I find it way easier to keep the static on the target during engagement and my splits are routinely .17 now. I had tried 115's in the past but saw no benefit to the difference I felt. Basically I think I just wasn't ready for those faster split times yet, and when I did become ready the bullet change was the correct recipe for improvement. p.s. I don't think you have lost your low light vision. I think you are seeing faster and therefore, you expect to pick that front sight up much faster now. Which you can't do in low light. I THINK, the low light "troubles" and "timing" issues are related. Soon you'll make Master.

Actually, there is. I missed one so I only have the zig-zag one. Here it is if you want to see me deal with a pretty serious malfunction.