Glock26Toter

Good to hear you reading the Brian Enos book. That book changed my life. Seriously, I think about things in the book in my professional life as well as the shooting. I read it and by the end was like " what the hell?" but as time goes by you keep relating back to it and especially as you move up in classes you will realize different things in the book and go back and reread it. Don't give it away. Keep it where you know you can find it again.

I went out and practiced today. I took my wife and worked with her to get her up to speed again. She used to shoot revo back in the day and with a bit of coaching she was back to understanding the full routine of commands and gun handling. It was a good time and I'm excited get her back on the range again. This time, with her shooting the spare Open gun it should more fun. The one thing I've got to be careful of is over coaching. She's already pulling the "I'm so freakin' slow" routine and I'm trying to remind her that we ALL started out at D class and it's important to just enjoy the shooting. She'll do fine. Meanwhile, I just did some speed drills. Focusing on very fast shooting at simple open targets I wanted to see if I thought the dot was A. Dimmer with one gun than the other and B. difficult to track. Negative on both parts. I'm now positive that this "can't see the dot" thing and "it was in fact dim" is a bunch of horse shit made up by my unreliable nugget in an effort to explain shooting faster than I can see. so I'm officially going to change "I couldn't see the dot" to "I shot faster than I could see" and run with that mentality for a while. Who knows?... maybe I'll still shoot that fast, but see at the same speed one day. hehehe. so another thing I did in order to increase the need to watch a very jumpy dot was to shoot a lot of one handed drills. Besides achieving that goal I verified something else about my stance... In the past I've previously subscribed to the notion that my stance should remain the same whether freestyle or one handed. The general public prefers to step back with the off-foot in order to better control recoil. So, recently I've been doing that (stepping back) and until today didn't feel it changed anything. I tried it both ways today and I did notice a slight difference in the actual ability to control recoil, but also noticed a huge difference in my first shot time. I never hunted with the step-back method, but with my stance staying the same I could not seem to get on target nearly as fast. So I'm sold on the step back routine and will work at making it a subconscious act from here on out.

I shot a match today at BLGC. It was a very nice day and we had 6 stages to shoot that had a little of everything. I've been blowing off the video camera for a while, and even when I do record I haven't been doing anything with the vids. Well now I've decided that if I'm going to get to GM I better start looking at them and analyzing them properly. The first stage (Vid) was a bit of a downer for me. I litterally could not see the dot thanks to the suns angle. When I came up on the first target it was all washed out with red and I took a long time to get the dot on target. After that, it didn't do much better and failed to find a rythm. Next was the classifier. Just plain slow. I was too careful and wound up with a 69% on it. Not a terrible run, but I've really got to get in touch with my inner HULK to start making GM scores for classifiers. I'll get a lot of 0's along the way, but it's got to be done. Hulk shoot angry classifiers now! Stage 3 was a great stage for me. It was a "memory" stage and I'm always confident with these stages. I found solid anchors and just executed the plan as rehearsed. I landed on my plan so quickly that I was almost excited to tell everyone about it. It was just plain simple (in my head anyways) and helped a lot to boost my confidence in stage planning. The only part that I messed up a bit on was the far right target. I didn't ease into that position very gracefully and after engaging it, I was too far over the line to just ease over and shoot the last set of targets from left to right as rehearsed. Once I corrected and realized I was not in the optimum position I just engaged the first target I could. This lead to a right to left scenario and I just went with it. Nobody was the wiser and I was rewarded with a stage win. This highlights the importance of removing the memory component from so-called memory stages and breaking them into shooting positions. I knew I was safe to shoot everything I saw from that position and I wouldnt miss anything. In the spirit of positive reinforcement, I'll just skip to Stage 6. Here is where the dot situation has me a bit puzzled. I did great assaulting the hoser targets, and then when I hit the first array down the center I thought "you've got one target to hit the breaks and lock onto that dot." Well, I did just that. I warmed up on the first target, and then just watched the dot and broke each shot on the sight picture I knew I needed. All the way down to the last target. I'm not sure why I fired 3 into each of the close, laydown headshots, but I was pretty amped up and I think tension just took over a bit. I won the stage and am quite proud of this one. It was an excellent stage for skills building with pace, patience, and movement. I was excited to have nailed it. As far as the dot goes... well, it sure seemed bright when I really needed it. hmmm... am I losing the dot because it's dim or is something going on with my concentration? It's my original diode and they do fade. I also didn't have this issue with the Shiny gun at Area 2... I've only noticed it when back on the Green gun last two matches. It's got new batteries so I believe it's time for some testing at the range tomorrow. For now, I think I'm going to lay off specific goals until I see something that's not the usual list of Alpha getting, and hauling ass.

Congrats on the B Class status. It sure feels good to move up. Good luck making it to A!

I think you are well on your way to making Master. I saw some great shooting. Your review looks very objective and if you work on those areas you identified you'll improve quite a bit. Nice work man!

Bingo bro. Thanks!

I shot this weekend at the Colorado Rifle Club match on Saturday. Before I talk about the match I wanted to review my last entry. It was pointed out to me that I sounded like a douche with my "not crazy about my squad" comment and feel like it's worth clarifying for several reasons. First for anyone that might have read that. That comment was meant to reflect on my insecurity at stage planning and that I was thrown off by being on a squad where there were shooters that have different strategic goals. In no way did I mean to sound like I was not happy with they guys I squadded with and especially didn't mean to sound like I thought I was "above" anyone. This has happened before and I had the same feelings of insecurity and may have expressed that by saying "the only master" but what I really mean is "nobody to follow" and that's a reflection of my insecurity. By the same token I don't want to make it seem like it was that big of a deal. It's not like I'm thinking about that during the match, or not having as much fun. It's just a reflective comment about what may have prevented me from finding the best plan possible because I didn't have the potential discussions about the stage plan with a closely related shooter. I could have blown that comment off, but in the true nature of what this journal is about I think it's important to drill down to the real issue from a communication standpoint AND from a self improvement standpoint. Now, onto the shooting. Well, the day was warm and sunny, and the stages were fun. However, at every turn I was struggling with my aiming. I was performing OK, but had to hunt for the dot a couple of times and felt like I was "not seeing the dot" almost the entire time. I got about 3 mikes and some of the farther mini-poppers just seemed to jump out of the way. By the last stage I became aware that it wasn't me... it was my dot. It was, in fact very dim. When all was said and done I wound up 3rd overall and was shocked at that, since it felt so clunky while shooting. After all this "worrying" about squads and having a day where I was not in tune with my gun I'll need to work on channeling a bit of Cha-Lee's attitude and concentrate on just having fun shooting with friends.

I've been very unhappy when progrip and water mix as well. I did much better when I just left them wet while shooting in the rain.

First a good positive note: You look like you don't get too up-down with your draw and almost achieve a "scoop" That's good. The smaller that up-then-down action is, the faster your hand gets on the gun. This "scoop" draw is just an elimination of the up-then-down action to zero. You are well on your way to that. Now, for improvement areas: You have a deliberate 1 and 2 and 3 procedure. Even if you are getting used to a new gun/holster make it smooth. The only reason we talk about steps in a draw like 1,2,3 is to teach someone how to draw from the start. After that we must smooth it out and don't make hesitations. I think the main thing that would help is less stomach rubbing. Again.. too much leftover from when you first learned and someone said "put your hand on your stomach so you won't sweep yourself." Forget that crap and make it one smooth motion from when the timer goes off, to when you fire the first shot. You have all the steps down very nicely. Use them. Act like you are getting a beer out of the fridge. We all know it's like "open the fridge - pickup beer - pop top..." but we do it on one fluid motion. Do that! One last thing. When you are done shooting don't bring the gun into your chest. When you are done with the gun you put it all the way back into the holster in one fluid motion... exactly reverse of the draw. Great videos, keep up the good work.

I'm glad you had fun and can't wait to see how you do moving forward. For me, it's fun on both sides of the coin. I like meeting people, hanging with my shooting buddies and working hard to increase my skills. It's all fun to me. It is work, but I've always said the work seems easy when you are having fun. I seems like you can get all the way into A Class without putting in a single act of "work" and just always stay in the fun zone. But to get past A and all the way to GM there's some work that needs to be done. You MUST hone your skillset and find time to ONLY work on one skill at a time. If you dread that then you won't do it. So I guess in my opinion working on skills in practice can be serious relative to matches but it still needs to be on the fun side of the coin.... or rather since I already said it was two sides of coin the whole darn coin better be a fun one.

Area 2 has been done for a few days now, and between driving an extra day home and hitting the ground running at work this is my first chance to reflect on the match and look at my performance. It was a great match, but I got on a squad that I wasn't overly excited about. I got to shoot with a couple buddies from Colorado and all the guys were nice enough. The problem was that I was the only open shooter. I was also the only Master shooter... well, I think one other guy was a master but he was limited and since I didn't know him we didn't talk strategy or skills. The gun ran like a champ and didn't malfulcion even once. My shooting in general was pretty good. Of note, I never missed a grip. Hit all my draws with darn near top speed. Every reload was flawless and I found my dot whenever I needed it except for twice on a single stage. I was purposely hard on myself for any deltas and by the end of day 1 had racked up 11 deltas and 3 mikes. Days 2 and 3 I did not add anymore deltas to my list, but did add another mike and 2 no-shoots on my last day. A total of 0 gun problems, 11 deltas, 4 mikes, 2 no-shoots is not bad from a shooting perspective. The swingers were lightning fast and were responsible for 1/2 of my deltas and all but 1 of the mikes. I feel better about this match than my "clean" Nationals last year. I was pushing hard this match and being my first major match as a Master I'm VERY happy with landing in the #8 spot of 24 Masters. however... there were some serious mistakes in my game that I'm not very happy about. On Day 1, there was a stage where you start with your hands interlaced behind your head. As I went for my draw a finger caught the back of my glasses and ripped them partly off of my head. It was like, full blown dumb-ass mode as I wondered when I should fix them and kept on the stage plan. I was shooting an array of several mini-poppers and halfway through had to close one eye and by the last target the glasses were so far jacked that I could no longer see enough to keep shooting. I stopped and fixed them and was off to the rest of the stage. WHY I didn't stop myself I just don't know. It was a clear safety issue, but I was waiting for the RO to freakin' babysit me I guess. He had no way of knowing how bad the situation was and would not have stopped me unless they fell completely off. the damage was done and I scored something like 44th on the stage. The other thing I missed on a few occasions was the best stage plan. On a squad of people that mostly took the safe route and had to reload every 3 feet it was hard to see the obvious GM Moves to get me through the stages quickly. I guess I'm just not quite proficient enough to come up with my own plans yet and rely too heavily on seeing something that someone else is doing. For most of the stages I was happy with my plan but the 2 or 3 stages where I missed the best plan it was like DUH! Why didn't I see that?? So basically I've decided to pick squads with more Open shooters when given the opportunity. This will have the added benefit of meeting new people and making some freinds that I'll see while traveling. I didn't have that choice for this match, but something to think about when squadding in the future. So moving forward I'll add another goal: 1. Call every alpha. 2. why should I stop? 3. Haul Ass. 4. Dry Fire. 5. More M/GM Open squads.

Well, I just wrapped up Day 2 at the Area 2 match. I have not done as well as I had hoped and I'm sitting here thinking about some of the stages. I haven't done anything particularly dumb, but haven't had but one or two stages that felt like I was running tip top either. One was just a dumb mistake where I knocked my glasses off and they were hanging down on my face. I just didn't have the brain power to figure out that I could have stopped myself for a safety issue and squinted my way through the array trying to wait for an opportunity to fix it. It cost me big time. The other thing I've done is allowed myself to lose visual patience and have racked up several Deltas... a lot of deltas.. and a few mikes. At this point all I can do is focus on the positive things and try to learn something about calling every alpha. That really sums up what's been going on. I'm very happy with my movement and even my stage plans have been pretty darn good. This match doesn't have lots of options for the stages but there are plenty of opportunities to add auxiliary movements and waste time.. My best stage so far, had several aspects to this and while entering the first port there was a chance to start shooting sooner, another one to shoot on the move, and yet another to take two mini-poppers while entering a port. If done on the move, but not so fast as to destabilize your platform all three of these opportunities added up to several seconds. I hit all of them and posted a score that was in the top half of the GM scores. I'll wrap this entry up with that positive note, and head into tomorrows match with my goals fresh in my mind. 1. Call every alpha. 2. why should I stop? 3. Haul Ass. 4. Dry Fire.

x2 on that penny trick. We did that penny thing until I puked pennies back in the Army. It really helps. Of course the penny balancing on the end of an M16 barrel is much more touchy, but dry-firing your way to letting it click while maintaining that sight picture is awesome training. Keep it up.

Good to have you back! Interesting write up about the holster. I've seen the need to maintain my DAA, but for sure a labor of love. I can't imagine anything else. That said, I NEVER discount what someone says about a different way to do something. Your worse case scenario is trying the other holster convinces you that DAA is better. Best case, the new holster helps you get to Master... or beyond. See you at the next match bro... we missed you.

Despite a major snow storm that blanketed the Denver area I was able to shoot a match the weekend. I guess some of us are just dumb, and/or crazy enough to risk life and limb driving through blizzards and over mountains to get to a match. Then there are some that are willing to take those people along for the ride. So when Charlie called and said there was a match in Grand Junction that Bob Krogh runs and we should go, I said YES. (after all, there is really only ONE answer to "do you want to go shoot?") It was a terrible drive in both directions, but while there the weather held out and only got a bit cold at the end of the match. The stages were great. The club isn't that old and the designers claimed to be "inexperienced" but I saw no sign of that and had a hell of a good time shooting with some guys I've only met a handful of times, if at all. I didn't turn the GoPro on even once. I just didn't feel like worrying about that and just had fun shooting. The first stage of the day I was almost 2 seconds slower than both GM's and was a bit disappointed in myself for that. There was also a delta to be had wrecking any chance of competing with them on this stage. There were two places that I lost significant time. I just didn't get things going at full speed. I just left the positions in a hurry and failed to explode out of the positions. The shooting was fine, and I just didn't remember to haul ass. I did the same thing on the classifier. I was so busy trying to make it "no big deal" that I didn't shoot it as fast I could shoot. The next stage resulted in much better movement and that's reflected in my posted time that was .16 seconds faster than Bob Krogh. Again, I had a delta and the only reason I beat Bob on the stage was because he too, had a delta. At least I was getting warmed up and movement, other than at the classifier was much faster for the remainder of the match. The main thing that I've started doing since reaching master is REALLY looking at the GM's and trying to figure out how my performance is compared to them. I'm going to try to focus less on who I'm "beating" or whether I'm "placing well" and start really looking at how I'm shooting with points and time against the GM's. I think that this will help to focus on not only positive reinforcement, i.e., keeping an eye on who I want to be like, but it will help to point out and focus on what I can do in small actions to make it to GM. I have the Area 2 match in a couple weeks and at the rate we are experiencing winter it's possible I won't get to shoot again until then. I'll need to look at Area 2 as a place to think hard about these goals and push the entire time, and call a hell of a lot of alphas. My main thing right now is consistency and that means getting rid of the Deltas that keep showing up and working on keeping my speed up and making instant acceleration a subconscious act. Goals for moving forward: 1. Call Every Alpha. 2. Why should I stop? 3. Haul Ass. (aka Two large) 4. Dry fire.

Wow, what a week. On Friday I found out that I made my major goal of making MASTER. I'm super excited and I feel more ready than ever to take on the next goal of Grandmaster. Not sure how I'll get there, but the jouney will be a fun one for sure. I headed into another weekend of shooting on cloud 9 and although there were some mistakes made to be gone through soon enough, I really felt good about my shooting overall. I had a great time at matches on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday's match was at CRC and the weather was great. Plenty of sunshine and only a bit of wind. I forgot my Gopro so nothing to review from that perspective. I seemed to be losing a bit of visual patience and although my times were on par with the top shooters in attendance, I offset a potential match win with several Misses and a couple of Deltas. Two stages I did really well on and won them both... including the classifier. It's a 13 series and is not in classifiercalc yet, but I'm hoping my 11.1111 will be in master class. Another colosal mis-step was a stage with some partially covered mini-poppers that were far away. I think I shot 10 times at one of them. Correcting, then overcorrecting the other way. yeesh, what a mess. When I got home later that night I found that my scope mount was loose, but I really don't think that was the issue since it didn't seem to affect me on any other stages... "or did it, Mr. Delta-Mike?" says my subconcious. I honestly feel I just fell into that "sticky steel" situation where you tense up and mash the trigger harder each time trying to make up time. Oh well, other than the few mistakes there were some things that went well. The main lesson is that gun maintenance needs to be thorough. I normally check all screws and obviously didn't in recent cleanings. Sunday's match was at Weld County. That one, I can't say the same about the weather. It was cold and windy to start only to become a wet snow by the end of the match. It was still a great time as I really felt good about my shooting for most of the time. Once again, I was on par with the top shooters for time, but too many deltas and mikes led to a missed oportunity for the match win. I MUST call every shot and can't affort to forget that for even an instant. At the speeds I'm moving it's a sure Delta-Mike every time I do that. Unacceptable! On the first stage of the day (youtube link) I can plainly see where I set myself up for this "too fast to call the shots" scenario. I shoot the first two targets on the right, and then head for the space between the barrels. In the vid you can barely see a 3-target array with a zebra in the center. I engage that array waaaaaay too soon where clearly, I had rehearsed just running there. This leads to shooting well before I stabilize my platform (by at least 4 steps) and I missed twice on that array. I should have looked pased the gun (NOT through the sight) and hauled ass to the position. The rest of the stage was quite the boss run leading to the fastest time, but also the top spot for penalty points earned. Next was a major movement stage and I went POV on this vid. (youtube link) Normally something I don't see a lot of value in, but I do like something in this vid that's worth reviewing. Especially visible on the long transition from right to left at the tailgate I'm seeing my head turn and the gun immediately driving along with it and staying high in my vision. This is very cool for me, and anyone else trying to improve transitions as you can see exactly what "driving the gun" looks like. You can't watch the world over/through the sight, but rather the gun has to be driven from your vision and that's... I think, a textbook example. No "dismounting" or auxilliary actions. It's jut look-point, look-point. Also, that steel goes down like a dream! The rest of the match had nothing spectacular, except a couple more examples of the importance of "call every shot" where I racked up another Delta or two. This clearly points out my main goal and I really feel like once I kick this delta habit I'll start to ease my way into GM territory. hehehe! Goals: 1. Call every shot. No, seriously... EVERY SHOT. 2. Why should I stop? Well... when looking for the answer to #2... see #1! 3. Dry fire. 2 DF's and 1 Live this week! CRC 2nd OA, 2nd Open 14-Feb-15 WCFW 2nd OA, 1st Open 15-Feb-15

More dry fire tonight. Yay for making my goal this week. I just worked on draw and reloads. Broke out the Gopro to make sure I haven't picked up any bad habits or changed anything with the new pouch. I was happy with what I saw. I compared my draw with a post I did a while back and although it looked the same, with Par time set at .7 I was able to make it. Last time 1.0 was my best comfortable time. The snag out of the holster is really subconscious now and I'm able to grab the gun in the "scoop" fashion without any hesitation. That's where I've picked up the extra speed for sure. I'm moving slightly more at an angle instead of straight up now... that's the difference. Reloads are still just smooth as silk since the new pouch. Not one botched reload whether I put a 140 or big stick in the pouch. This will make my confidence of loading into a big stick skyrocket in the next match. I've always avoided it since it was a weakness in DF. With par time set to .9 I was unable drop the hammer on an acceptable sight picture. I didn't adjust the par time at all, but pretty sure 1.1 seconds is the time to beat. I'm not sure the actual reload time is worth hammering on but flawless reloads, no matter what the time, is for sure something important to us all.

I received my new mag pouch today. That DAA Racemaster is quite the work of art. I'm glad I sprung for the aluminum version. When fitting it, I found that I had to play with the angle a bit to really get it comfortable and the plastic versions don't have the ball joint to allow quite that amount of movement. Also, that aluminum is some bad-ass looking machinery. I dry practiced for about 15-20 minutes with it just doing different reload drills. The darn thing is as smooth as silk when pulling the mag free and my reloads feel like they are just as easy as picking up the remote from the coffee table. There's not draaaaaag, or stickiness as it comes free of the pouch like that magnet. I thought I liked that magnetic one, but now that my arm is moving really fast for that "snatching action" of the mag I can see how this will bring nothing but consistency to the reload. I could easily swap big sticks for 140's and there was no difference in reload speed and not even one reload was jacked. With that magnetic one if I swapped mag sizes around sometimes I would mess up. Especially when putting a big stick in there for the first time in several runs. It was just too much muscle (tension!) required for that unit. I'm excited to try it out in a match! The only downside is the fact that my 3 additional CR Speed pouches will need to be replaced with DAA Racemasters now. Guess I'll go give blood downtown. :-(

I have two things to say. First, did you use Magtech primers? Those are the only primers I've ever had dead ones with. I think they were shorter or something and required a primer depth adjustment? I don't really know. I went back to Winchester and never had another issue. I've also used CCI's without issue. But make sure your primer depth is bottoming out the primers. A good way to check is set the round on a flat surface like glass, or a good laminate type table top. If any wiggle, your primers are too high. Secondly, some advice my gunsmith gave me. Don't put grip tape on for a few months. Get used to the gun and grip before adding the tape. I liked that route. It was a welcomed change after I was using the stock grip for a while. Also, don't skimp on it. Have someone sand the grip down and put the tape on. This way the grip stays the same size. I did it myself without sanding at first and then my gunsmith replaced it for me later and did it the correct way. WOW, what a difference it made. I also had him do it for me because if he sanded too much and screwed the grip up... it was on HIM to replace it. Have fun!

There is certainly an improvement. Take it a step further. Also keep in mind it's really not Forward you are after, but rather Lower. It's the bent knees and hip rotation that get's what you are after and not just leaning "forward." Check out Chris Tilley... he get's low enough for stability. Keep up the good work. I'm not claiming to be an expert, but from my point of view I see you working hard and improving and like to see it.

d_striker nailed it. Do that. It will keep the stage plan in your subconscious and once you deal with the unplanned event, it's over and won't haunt you for the rest of the stage.

I shot a match today at Pueblo. It was a very sunny day and even with a significant wind in the AM it was warm and the wind died down by the last 2 stages. These guys always run a good match and there were some good aiming challenges as well as a nice run-and-gun stage. I was first on the first stage. I normally don’t mind this, but I was beating around the bush and was not loaded when they called me to shoot. I wound up bumping down one shooter, but was still rushed when coming to the line. I made sure to take a couple of breaths and blow that stuff off so that I would hopefully not bring that stress to my run. I pushed pretty hard and moved a bit too fast and got 2-3 Deltas on it. I still got a decent hit factor, but after checking the scores I definitely should have aimed more and run less. The next stage was a pretty straight forward run without anything overly difficult. I was able to calm down and didn’t score any deltas and had what felt like a great run. There was steel at the end, that was an array where it was mini-poppers to the sides and then a row of 3 poppers in front of each other. You could see partials on them so I just ran it from right to left. I went 1 for 1 on all the steel and the three in a row went down exactly as planned. I can’t remember the stage after that, but the way I was shooting and feeling it went by without much of a problem at all. I was really having a good time. I hit the classifier, El Presidente 99-11 and my main goal was to not think about the fact that I had practiced it yesterday when the best I could muster was an 84%. Not only that, most of the runs were a complete disaster. I can’t remember what I was thinking about when I got ready, but it was NOT yesterday. I simply walked up, did my make-ready routine and was almost daydreaming when the buzzer went off. I was rewarded with a very smooth run and a 94% on it. YES! This means that I’ll have a 96%, 90%, 94%, and a few 85%’s going into this month’s classification. I THINK I MIGHT make Master. Barring any scoring SNAFU’s like the last 3 months that is. (long story, but this should be the first month that all my master level scores will actually get counted!) So, the last stage was a little movement stage with wide open close targets. All about movement and reloads on this one and it was a 3-shot Virginia count. I ran as fast as I could and reloaded smoothly on them and was fully in “shot-calling mode.” On the final array of 2 targets I really saw and felt what is like to shoot the fastest splits I’ve ever shot. Once, during Nationals I had a 3 shot bump-fire that almost got me DQ’d. Well, I think these shots were faster. I called the 3A’s and 1A,2C hits during the entire engagement and this was definitely a learning moment for me. Overall a day of shooting at my best and I was rewarded with an HOA. Considering my last comment in yesterday’s post was “maybe I can sneak past the Panda" I think it was, mission accomplished. Goals: I felt really good about my goal work. 1. Call every shot. Well, almost, but for sure did well. 2. Why should I stop. Only one stop I can remember that could have been avoided. 3. Dry fire. Made 2 dry fire sessions this week plus Saturday's live fire. PPPS HOA, 08-Feb-15

Congrats on the win! 6th place is pretty darn sweet... unless there are only 6 shooters, but top B / 6thOA is something to be proud of. You look like a different dude from the first vids I saw of you with a shaky shooting platform. You are stable and hauling ass between positions. Nice work. Keep it up. We all just have a crappy match once in a while, and it's clear that you blew it off and went all in on the next match. Something that's an accomplishment all by itself. Keep up the good work.

Today I went to Aurora Gun Club and did my orientation to become an official member. This is a major score since it's only 20 minutes from my house. I'm going to get back on track to practice once a week and should be able to get out there every Friday morning. I'm very excited for this opportunity. I shot El Prez a few times today and found something that's been bugging for a while. I'm getting much faster at snatching the magazine out of my mag pouch and now, the magnet is causing me major problems. It's such a drag coming off the magnets that when I'm really moving fast I can feel the magazine slip and I really don't know what angle it's going to come up at when it hits my parking spot. This inconsistency is something that I've been accepting in dry fire since the magnets hold the mag so much stronger without ammo in it. Today I'm like "why should I continue to practice something that's different when shooting?" Seems like a major duh! moment, so that's changing. I ordered a DAA Race Master pouch and will use that instead of the magnetic one. Hopefully that will get some consistency back into my magazine angle when I reload. Other than that, I was able to shoot a 10 HF on El Prez pretty comfortably. That's not quite high into the Master class, but at least it's a baseline to work from. I also tested my new Zero 115gr JHP bullets. Looks like the gunsmith was right. They are quite a bit more accurate and my last box of Montana Gold's has just been demoted to practice only rounds. The grouping was consistently about 3 inches tighter than the MG's. About a 8" group at 50+ yards for the MG's and 5" with the Zero's. When I moved up to around 20 yards I shot 3" with the Zero's. Tomorrow it's off to Pueblo to see if these zeros can help me sneak past the Panda!

Kim, Looks like you are working hard toward your goals. Good luck. My suggestion would be to take the camera off your head and stick it on a tripod. I think you'll get a lot more value, and possibly a lot more advice watching your whole body during your shooting. This allows analysis of all aspects of your movements instead of just what we see of your arms.