Glock26Toter

I shot what I had for many years. That meant production with a Glock 26 (subcompact 9mm that I still carry today) and an "upgrade" to a total POS off-brand 1911 45ACP and used it in L-10 because I already had a few 10 round mags for it. I always encourage people to shoot what they have, or whatever they want. No real reason to ague that one division is better than the next. Now... OPEN on the other hand. Well, that's just COOL. I look soooo cool with my Ferrari. hahaha! Seriously though. I just like all the gadgets.

I went on a short vacation down to the Fort Myers Florida area this weekend. My wife and I met some friends who just moved down there and had a relaxing time with them. I took my buddy to a local match just North of Fort Myers at the Hansen Range with the Fort Myers Practical Shooting Association. I ran into a couple of people that I shot Nationals with so it was a nice surprise for all of us. They put on a heck of tough match down there with some 25-35 yard partial shots and a couple of swingers that were only visible through a window as wide as the swinger. With all classic targets and those tough shots I racked up 14 deltas and a couple of mikes. In the end, so did the top competitors that showed up that day and I wound up winning the match. While shooting I concentrated on my goals of aggressive transitions and calling shots. While 14 deltas was quite a bummer, the good news is that in most cases I was successful at getting good hits on some far targets plus kept a pretty consistent game going for all 5 stages. There were a few moments of point shooting on wide open and then transitioning to a far mini popper where I was able to vary the shooting engagement appropriately. This has been a weak spot for a long time. Overall, I felt like I made progress and that felt good. Areas for improvement.. more consistency is needed. I still managed to get hung up on a couple of steel targets and knew darn well I had a some deltas and mikes. However, I called them and just moved on. Obviously contradictory to my goal set. Goals: CALL THE SHOT, and be done. Drive yourself away and into the next transition. Be confident on the aggressive transitions.

It was good time blasting this weekend with two matches. One at Aurora Gun Club on Saturday and another at Centennial Gun Club on Sunday night. I had worked a pretty hard schedule during the week and almost skipped Saturday's match to relax. Only to realize that to truly relax I needed to be shooting! The match went well and I shot a clean match. Something I haven't done in a long time. I feel like I shot consistently, and didn't take any extra precautions in order to accomplish it. There was one stage with a ton of head shots and no-shoots that I probably could have pushed harder on but that stage put me in survival mode. I was very deliberate to call my shots and really watch the transitioning to ensure I didn't pick up any penalties. I still wound up with a very respectable time and it was certainly the right choice for that engagement given my current ability. Had some top Open GM's been in attendance I would probably not have won the stage, but certainly wouldn't have lost the match based on that performance. The match had me very pumped and feeling good at the end of the day and I had a great time. Areas of improvement were certainly still easy to find in their usual places. The classifier for instance was one that I know I'm capable of picking up a good score. But I just didn't focus enough and shot waaaaaay too many charlies to be proud of. I also had another stage where I posted a time quite a bit quicker than anyone else, but this was the result of not waiting for a good sight picture and picked up a 2 (or 3... can't remember) deltas. Proof, once again that the balance between speed and accuracy is very easy to upset. But again, I just had a good time and prefer to leave the match on the positive note that I made progress on my goals. Then it was the indoor match at Centennial. It was certainly crowded and the usual "80% rule" was in affect. I had a good time trying to help some new shooters and while I was unable to pull off another clean match I managed to get some video to really look carefully for goal improvements. Reviewing the 2 stages I can immediately see some pretty sloppy footwork coming off the blue barrel. This leads to an unstable platform while shooting on the move. On top of that I called a mike, but had already moved on. Upon going back for the makeup I went back to the wrong target so the makeup shot was simply wasted time. Also, I clearly don't get deep enough into the port on the right. This lead to my transitions, although aggressive being new positions instead. On the 2nd stage I can see that I've made some improvements in my transitions. I like the way I aggressively push into the next array at each opportunity. I also was very stable during all my shooting on the move. This was rewarded with high shot quality (no deltas) and I wound up with a 13.78 HF on that stage. A good time for sure! I'm looking forward to shooting next weekend in some decent weather. (hopefully!) I'll be traveling to Fort Myers FL for a weekend getaway and shooting a local match at the FMPSA club down there. Goals: Call the shot and be done. Drive yourself away and into the next transition. Be confident on the aggressive transitions.

I was able to shoot a local match, and get some practice in this past weekend. For January in Colorado we've been incredibly lucky and this weekend, while not exactly warm was good enough to get out and do some blasting. Saturday I spent the day at Ben Lomond gun club shooting a local match. My shooting contained more mistakes than normal and I was pretty disappointed with my score. The first stage I let myself get lazy and not think about whether to reload or not. Upon running the stage I ran out of rounds on the last peice of steel and took a mike. Later, I kept looking at a no-shoot partial target and although it was at a risky position I decided to shoot at the alpha zone instead of higher up for two C's or even a head shot. I paid the price and although I made the shot up, I wound up with a no-shoot. I did this again on another stage and that one ended up being left as a mike,no-shoot. With one more mike thrown on the classifier the total damage was 3 mikes and 2 no-shoots. OUCH! I'm not sure if shooting with some freinds visiting from out of the country caused me to get lazy or if I was just being stupid. Either way, not taking the match seriously enough led to a performance that I'm hoping not to repeat. What went well? I did have some success at what I feel are some good transitions and some pretty decent times that kept up decently with the two GM's taking 1st and 2nd. So despite some serious mistakes overall I feel like I made some progress on my goals. The following day I was invited to practice at that same club and decided, "to hell with any responsibilities" and went for it. HAHA! We setup one of the stages from the previous day's match that had led to some discussion and shot that all day. The stage, naturally didn't end up getting setup exactly the same but I feel it was better because it allowed us to shoot it in a bunch of different configurations. While the best plan for that particular stage was discussed I tried not to worry about it and just pretend it could only be shot in the 2-3 ways I chose. I was more worried about trying to improve my accuracy(calling the shot and being done) and especially my aggressiveness with transitions. I feel like I made some progress (although not much in the accuracy department) and a lengthy discussion between myself and Cha-Lee led to my learning something about the stage plan in the end. Unfortunately I executed his point pretty poorly and wound up hurting my foot. I could barely walk on it afterwards and felt like a dork when everyone was like "let us young guys pickup the stage and you just rest your dumb ass in the car." I still helped clean up and after some IB, Cold pack, and a night's rest the foot was fine. I'm feeling myself getting lazy with shooting, analysis, and motivation. I'm trying not to let that happen and making myself continue journaling is really helping that. I get all "screw that" for a few days, but after I do it, I'm like "when's the next match?!" Goals: Call the shot and be done. Drive yourself away and into the next transition. Adding in, Be confident on the aggressive transitions! (I almost always fire 3 shots at big, aggressive 180 transitions and this usually leads to 3 good hits.)

It's not just foot position. Be sure to look for other visual anchors and get a feel for the whole view. This is dependent on the particular position and engagement to be had of course. Think of it more like, a work flow rather than a spot you need to hit with a particular body part. Looking at the foot position, you'll reach a point where you are pretty close to that spot and don't need to continue to look there as you approach. Just as normal walking, if you look at curb you are approaching do you continue to look at the curb as your see your foot land on it? No. Likely you gauge the distance and then you look up at the door you will enter after stepping up on the curb. By the time you step up, you are now looking at the door knob. You don't look directly at the doorknob, but start to look past the door as you open it... and so on. So, look at a position as a work flow and when you are done making sure you will hit your spot then move onto the visual anchor of the edge of a wall... or if you can see through it, now you look at the target. You ease into the position and start mounting your gun into position. Now you are looking through your sights at the target as you see it come around the edge of the wall... and so on. Again, this is dependent on many factors. However, in the absence of absolute anchors like a fault line, or barrel, I've often stood in a position and looked around at walls, the berm, and just the general surroundings. This way I know when an entire view is coming into "focus" to tell me I'm arriving. This blends the particular foot arrangement into the flow and I start the engagement more simultaneously.

I'm not sure why you are weary of COC... but I'll tell you how I trained to greatly improve my grip. I used to use cheap-o's and balls and stuff. I did it for years with no progress. But once I did two things my grip improved a lot within about a year. (also, while still fragile this has been my recovery from shooter's elbow) 1. For every set of COC grippers I did 2 sets of flex bands. This makes sure you don't train one side of the muscle. (causing tennis/shooters elbow when you overdo it) 2. Buy a COC that can't do 10 times. Don't get one you can't do once either. For me, the 120lb. A guess to start with. I could do the 120 lb one about 4-5 times. I started doing these on my way to and from work and would do 2 sets of bands (started blue... then red), and 1 set of grip for each trip. Then I would do 4 sets and 2 sets. Soon, I could squeeze the 120 lb COC 10 times without too much issue. Then I purchased the 145 lb and I can now do that one 10 times. I also have the red and green bands together for the flex. Not sure if I'll bother to go higher, but my grip is nice and strong and my elbows do pretty good unless I do something stupid to injure them. All this helps to be able to squeeze very firmly and keep the trigger finger isolated. If recoil control means, say 80 lbs and it's 100% of your grip strength then you don't have much choice but to incorporate all your fingers. If that same 80 lbs is like 60% of your grip strength it's way easier not to use all your fingers. i.e., not include the trigger finger.

I can't post sales pitch here, but if you search for "rack buddy dry fire training aid" on YouTube you may find some dude in a cowboy hat that offers what you need.

Sounds like you may be putting an upward wrist force on the weak hand. It should be downward. Move the weak hand thumb slightly forward so it makes the wrist push down. That will prevent the trigger finder interference. Also, keep working on that trigger finger isolation. It's more important than you might think. If your thumb moves you are likely milking the cow and not just moving your trigger finger back. This couples your grip and your shooting. Those need to be separated. Strength training with COC grippers will help that.

I made it to Aurora Gun Club for a local match on Sunday this past weekend. The weather cooperated nicely and I wound up not even wearing a coat most of the day. I shot a pretty solid match and only had 2 deltas. I seemed to have a pretty successful time at calling my shots and moving quickly. I can't say that I made any real improvement on my specific goals of transitioning, but I didn't lose any ground and was definitely aggressive. I only lost my consistency on one stage for a single array. Unfortunately it was a very far array (about 30 yards I think) and it led to 2... yes TWO mikes on that stage. The problem on my "problem" stage was that it was a very aggressive one-step transition into an array that you could see for quite a distance before running to a final position. The anticipation of the final run, coupled with the aggressive step proved too much motivation for my feet. I wound up shooting 3, 30 yard targets on the move and paid the price in shot quality. So bottom line is, I shot a pretty decent match but still need significant work on my goal set. Goals: Call the shot and be done. Drive yourself away and into the next transition.

I practiced today with a couple of buddies. I'ts been a while since I practiced and I'm VERY lucky to have a friend who gained fairly rare access to an indoor range with lots of props. We setup a nice 30 round stage and shot it a bunch of times. I felt pretty good about most of the shooting but it was pointed out to me that my transitions are lacking. I need to work harder at my goal to "drive the gun away" and more than just that I need to work on my ability to call that final shot and be done with it. That goal is really about trying to instantly call that 2nd shot and commit to moving on - and into the transition. I need to setup some transition drills and really work on what I'm seeing in the sight as the final shot breaks so I can get to the "driving the gun away" part with more aggressiveness. My financial situation is not quite what it was two years ago and I put myself in a bit of a bind with a large remodel and spending lots of $$ on trips last year to major matches. This year I'm going to have to rein it in a touch and only go to matches that don't involve travel $$. I have plenty of miles to go wherever I want, but the extra costs of hotel, food, car and match fees will have to be stifled this year. I've decided that, although motivated by finances I need to get on board with this idea and make it align with my goals rather than look at it as a set back. (an attitude that has been affecting my motivation lately.) Sooo.... I'm going to take this coming year to really work on honing my skills and become a proper GM. Rather than spend money going to matches and losing to the top dogs, I'll stay around here and commit more $$ to practice and training. I also have a vacation day "surplus" at work and will commit to taking those vacation hours to spend on training. Hopefully this will lead to a better showing at next years area matches... and especially Nationals. I'll also hopefully have some decent funds in the account for the spring-bling that we all suffer when having to fork over the big bucks in Jan,Feb,Mar signing up for most of the matches we plan to attend. By then I'll have a shit-load of miles and hotel points and save even more! Goals: Call the shot and drive away. (need more video review and PRACTICE this particular skill) Drive yourself away and into the next transition. (I've realized that when it's several steps I'm good at this. But when it's one or two steps I'm not)

In my experience.... it seems like just when you get good and stocked up it's new barrel time. Or worse, yet. It just changes. It's very common for people to run 6.8 grains of whatever for a long time and then, what seems like overnight you have to go to 7.0 grains... and then 7.1 and it just creeps up over time. Every single person that I've talked to over the years that didn't make PF at a major match swears that they made major since however many years ago and nothing has changed. Well, something has... and that's the reason I don't load too many ahead. e.g., last year at Nationals. I made Major without issue all summer and shipped 800 rounds to Nats. Shortly thereafter I chrono'd those rounds at 165PF. (my experience just told me it had been a bad idea to ship those rounds without a fresh chrono.) Same everything that I had run at 170 all year. I shipped ANOTHER 800 rounds to Nats with a bump in powder and sure enough, made 170 with the new rounds.

Kenny's Brass. kennethallanmarx@yahoo.com. It's decapped, cleaned, roll sized. It's exactly like new... but cheaper.

I advise against loading too many ahead. Just when you get ahead, something can change and you wind up with a less than desirable PF. I only get about 1-2 k ahead at most. Nothing sucks worse than finding out you have an issue with several thousand rounds you can't use.

I trade between HS6 and Autocomp. Funny thing that I've found. 7.6 grains of Autocomp = 8.3 of HS6. Same volume. So when switching from one to the other I don't have to adjust my powder measure and still shoot 171PF. Also, people say I'm crazy but I can't tell the difference. (maybe at different PF, but at 171 I can't)

It's been several days of crazy work schedule in Ontario California, but now that I'm back I wanted to get an entry down for last weekend's match. It was down at Pueblo West Sportsman's club. The weather turned out pretty decent and I had a good time shooting the match. I took almost all POV videos (Link here) and have watched it several times looking for improvement in my goals. I was very happy with my shooting and although I think I see transitions that are not nearly aggressive enough, the big transitions are super aggressive and what I've been shooting for in my "Drive yourself away..." goal. The classifier reminded me that equipment maintenance is always important. I hadn't cleaned, or even touched my green gun since 2 weeks prior. Last weekend I remember thinking "green gun battery is questionable and it's still dirty.... I'll grab the black one today." Well, this week I thought the same thing about the black gun and grabbed the green one. When shooting the classifier, as I made ready I looked at the dot and was like... yeesh, that sucker is a bit dim. Well, it was too dim to see at the speeds required to do anything effectively. I managed to get through the stage but it was not pretty. The following stage (new batteries!) I just myself get distracted. The initial mistake of missing a steel and transitioning out of a port wasn't a big deal. What was a big deal was that my mind was already figuring out how to get a decent makeup shot back on it, while the rest of my body was trying to shoot 4 long shots through a 3.5" wide angled port. I wound up hitting the wood twice and sending bullets of into miketopia. Two mikes is NOT how to wrap up an otherwise sweet match, but that's exactly what happened. So lessons / goals? Careful shooting. (only a couple of deltas... I made progress here.) Drive the gun away when the final shot is called. (hmmm. I felt like I did that, but the vids paint a different picture. Keep working on this) Drive yourself away when the engagement is complete. (This I feel I made progress on. Not evident in the vids, but I'm pushing hard to get to the next target when it involves movement.) Maintenance. DO IT! (When you buy 357 batteries for $1.25 ea it sure as hell doesn't pay to conserve and screw your match)

I was able to shoot a match at Aurora Gun Club this weekend. I worked in the garage all day Saturday and got my arm good and sore and was worried about it on Sunday morning when it still hurt like hell. I put the KT tape on by myself and figured out a pretty good way to do that, so next time I'll be SURE to put it on for woodworking no matter how minor the project seems when I get started! Once again, the tape did it's job and the elbow didn't hurt at all during the match. I was also responsible for the classifier/mini stage again. Once again I made a stage design mistake that resulted in a bit of discussion but I think the solution was good and nobody screwed it up that I was aware of. Basically the design of the 2nd stage had you shooting across the first one. Something that on paper looked like a non-issue. We routinely shoot stages in which you can see the other stages targets. However this one mixed the targets a little too well for some people's liking. I thought it was a non issue... I mean, just don't shoot the wrong targets right? In the end a few well placed barrels made everyone happy. Next time I'll be more careful about the mix. The match itself I was very happy with. I shot a clean match, but suffered too many deltas for my liking. On my own stage I shot 4 deltas and had a mix-up on one array that cost me several seconds. I wound up 17th place (combined) on that stage. Luckily it was only an 80 point stage, but it was a reminder that I'm not yet done learning consistency lessons. On the remaining stages there were no stage planning issues. I was confident that I had optimized the shooting as was able to keep the gun running throughout some positions that took careful execution and optimization that I felt were tip top. I posted some decent times and was able maintain a high alpha count. I think that's good progress in my goal set of shooting when I need to shoot and moving when I need to move. Improvement? Well, the usual. I made some mistakes in squeezing the trigger with little or no sight picture. In each case I was able to catch myself and re-engage so I knew I did it immediately but it cost me huge amounts of time. I also let things get too loose a few times and paid the price with a high delta count. So the goal list remains unchanged for now Careful shooting. Drive the gun away when the final shot is called. Drive yourself away when the engagement is complete.

Keeping a range diary has led to my having a lot more fun and personally feel it's had a large impact on my performance increase. Thinking about each match, and actually writing down what you did well brings the fun stuff well into the front of your mind. Then following that up with what you need to improve makes you think about that. It all comes full circle when you get to write down later that you made progress on those areas of improvement as a positive. Keep it up!

I shot one match this weekend at Aurora Gun Club. I was responsible for the "short stage" and the classifier. We've had a couple of bottle necks on that stage lately with multi-string classifiers and have learned a lot about how to consider match flow when picking stages. I failed to see a stage plan for my quickie stage that to the local range "Safety RO" violated the ranges safe angle policy. It was an oversight and a lesson and once I found out about it didn't agree that we violated any safe angles. It was definitely on the edge and could have resulted in bullets impacting where they shouldn't have. However it was not going to result in bullets going over a berm, or hitting a floor so in the end, the RO and I decided it could stay. We all know a forbidden action well into a local match will usually just result in it being thrown out. I didn't want to do that. Well, after blowing all the tape off of one of the targets, I got to shoot it twice. Both runs were significantly faster than anyone could do running the "original design" way. I learned a lesson to watch for everything and once again proved that leaving stage descriptions vague can be a good way to learn a lot about stage design. So, that stage and another one that included some very close, on the move engagements reminded me of my goals. Those close targets should not result in low shot quality and it's important to stay there and AIM until the shooting is done. The aiming can be of the loosest focus we need to provide, but it still has to have a certain level of discipline and execution or you just wind up puking points allover the place. On both the stages that involved that type of engagement I only posted 1 delta and a few charlies. When coupled with the fact that I feel my movement was aggressive and as fast as I could move that's a significant step in my goals. There were a couple of stages that had some good aiming challenges as well. While I did get a mike on one of them, for the most part I feel like I was able to get a tad more aggressive on my transitions and made progress. The only time I feel like I lost it was on the missed target. I was getting VERY distracted by some bad sun glare on my glass. I was seeing it the whole time when shooting that direction but for that one target allowed myself to continue moving into the transition despite not having called the shot. Basically... I called the first hit... then miss.. then an uncalled makeup shot... and moved on. The one mike compared to some very spicy times on targets with noshoots all over them makes me feel good about the match overall and I had a good time for sure. So the goal list remains unchanged for now Careful shooting. Drive the gun away when the final shot is called. Drive yourself away when the engagement is complete.

I ran out to AGC this morning for some technical work and a bit of practice. I just switched to Precision Delta bullets and wanted to chrono/sight in with them to see what differences were had. As it turned out, the green gun was only 1" left, and the black gun was dead on. Since it's been a while since I sighted in, I'm not sure if they were off, and the PD bullets made them less off, or if they just haven't drifted much this time. At any rate, I was happy with the accuracy (.75 groups at 15 yards) and after a nudge on the old C-More they were both dead on. I didn't want to get too crazy since both guns chrono'd at 179PF with the new bullets. This is not crazy hot, but it's certainly over where I like to be so I dropped .3 out of my powder and I'll verify with the chrono tomorrow after the match. This should put me back in my sweet spot. This also means a total of .5 grains less since switching to Winchester Primers and Precision Delta bullets. If my math is correct (and it's probably not) that means I should see a savings of $1.34/1000. That's almost $20.00/year HAHAHA! So I did some work on transitioning. It was recently brought to my attention that I could be getting off the target faster and decreasing transition times. After a bit of personal reflection I believe this is a good spot to focus on improving. Not that I'm camping out the target, but in my recently increased focus on calling shots I've become aware that the second call is creating a linger. Today I concentrated on immediately moving the gun off the target before seeing the dot in the glass again and only reacquiring it on the next target. The mental note that made this a conscious thought was "jerk the gun away from the 2nd shot." That may be overstating it a bit as I'm not blindly jerking it away, but rather driving the gun AWAY from the shot that just broke. This leads, more definitively TOWARD the next target and the dot comes back into the sight ON the next target. This is easily overdone, but the thought process of putting my mind on the AWAY portion of the transition rather than the TOWARD portion seemed to help me grasp, and perform the process. I can see an improvement in the aggressiveness of the transition. I was not tracking time or accuracy and was only focused on what I saw and felt at this new level of aggression. I did see anecdotal improvement on time as my 15 yard, 5' transitions were routinely in the .21-.23 range. Something that I believe would have been in the .28-.30 range before. I'm not positive and since this is the first day practicing I'll hold off any real conclusions until I can get some more trigger time on this one. I blasted about 80 rounds in freestyle and then switched to SHO/WHO for several rounds of the same drill. I'm getting much more confident and comfortable with one handed shooting. I think making an effort to run at least 2 mags at the end of each session in SHO/WHO has helped a bunch on this. So, goals moving forward will get an edit for better transitions. Continue calling shots like you've been lately. (careful shooting. Watch the dot) decrease transition time by "driving the gun away" when the final shot is called. MOVE. (drive the gun and yourself away from the engagement when the final shot is called)

I shot a match at Weld County today. It was a cold morning, but warmed up nicely by the time we started shooting. At the suggestion of a friend I purchased some KT Tape and wore it today for my tennis elbow. It was already pain free since my acupuncture on Friday but I wanted to make certain not to strain it today. That stuff is da bomb! It stayed stuck to me all day (I shaved my arm this morning where I intended to put it) and was comfortable too. Waaaaay more comfortable than those darn arm strap things. My arm had zero strain today and I feel like I can get back on strength training next week. I'll definitely make sure to wear it when I do moulding runs in the future as well. I was happy with my shooting today. Although I still managed to post 1 mike and 3-4 deltas I felt good about most of the shooting. Nothing happened that was spectacular, but there were no moments where I felt like I fell off the wagon either. Some engagements I was really in tune, and called shots easily (yes, even the deltas) and the only time I really lost the dot was on the classifier. The sun angle was such that I really did lose the dot because it was gone. I saw the dot, but there was so much glare and/or reflections that I was unable to stay focused. I got lucky though, and just shot my way through it and still wound up with an 86.5% on it. That's an M class score, but I'll take that instead of a mike-noshoot any day. There was one engagement where I felt like I really made progress. It was a stage where I wanted to shoot a row of targets on the move, but some were low risk and some were high risk targets. I was concerned about my ability to vary the speed of engagement. When the buzzer went off I was successful at speeding up between and during the open targets, and slowed down just enough on the harder ones. I maximized my shooting on that portion and it was a "show yourself what's possible" moment that I haven't had in a while. Unfortunately, it was short lived and on the very next engagement (a plate rack) I lost any time gained. Oh well, there's always work to be done. So areas of improvement? Still lacking on stage planning. There were some plans and optimizations that were pointed out to me that I should have seen on my own. I'm frustrated every time this happens. I want to have enough time to figure things out on my own. But inevitably someone's like "what do you think about this plan?" and it's some obvious shit I should have been telling them about. This is definitely an area that I still need to improve. At any rate, it was a good match and I feel like I'm getting back into the groove with respect to analysis and self improvement. Goals: Continue calling shots like you've been lately. Work on increasing transition speed. (transition immediately after the dot lifts and don't linger on the shot) Move, MOVE. When the shooting is done, get going.

It's been a while since I've updated my journal. I'm not sure what's up with my lack of motivation lately. Since Nationals I've just been lazy. I don't think I'm having less fun, but I'm just in a mode where I feel like I need a break from thinking so hard and trying so hard. I need to get motivated again and get on with improving my game. This last match at Pueblo West Sportsman's Club didn't help matters with a fresh elbow injury. I ran a bunch of moulding on my router table during the week. Then made it worse on Saturday when I was finishing it up and making some cuts. Sometimes, when the stock is warped I just power grip it into the fence with my right hand. (instead of clamping it like a dude with tennis elbow!) At any rate, I didn't realize how bad it was until I woke up Sunday morning. I was wincing in pain moving my bag into the truck and knew I was screwed. I made it through the match but I could tell I was not gripping evenly and was stressed the entire time about making it worse. I almost quit, but like a dumbass stayed in. I have an acupuncture appointment on Thursday and it already feels much better with rest and Icy-Hot. I don't think I did the kind of damage that will last, but it's a good reminder that I need to be careful all the time. In order to get back on track, I'm finishing this entry by returning to the old formula of some good aspects, identify areas for improvement and update the goal list. So, while I was shooting fairly inconsistently on Sunday there were some positives that came from it. I was able to recognize the inconsistent grip and it's affect on the dot tracking. This made me really watch it and led to some pretty decent shooting. I shot a clean match with only about 2 - 3 deltas and nothing particularly stupid in the way of my performance. However, areas of improvement are still easy to spot. I was talking with Cha-Lee about transitions and he brought up some good points about how to improve them by abandoning the call immediately after the final shot is made. I also feel like I've been losing my aggressiveness regarding movement. Probably caused by my increased accuracy lately. Need to shift back to getting moving once I'm done shooting. Goal list: Continue calling shots like you've been lately. Work on increasing transition speed. (transition immediately after the dot lifts and don't linger on the shot) Move, MOVE. When the shooting is done, get going.

I never understood making a distinction between "practice" and "match" ammo. I personally would never want to see different accuracy results whether I was practicing or competing. (I'm not attempting to start a discussion on that... just stating my opinion.) That said, if you stick with something like a Dillon press you can sell it for the same money you bought it for many years down the road. The only thing you did for all that time was save money on ammo. Also, you've gained the consistency of shooting the same, customized ammo all that time. Easy decision for me.

I had to skip Saturday's match, but made it to the match at Clear Creek on Sunday. The weather held out nicely and I got to shoot with Bob Krogh which is rare. He does a good job at keeping the energy up on his squad. I was fairly happy with my shooting, but was reminded at every stage that I still have a long way to go in this game. I know it never ends, but I feel like I'm in a spot right now where I make a lot of "dumb" mistakes. I'm not trying for anything in particular right now other than to refine my shooting and stop making mistakes. I plugged 2 no shoots this match. One was a close target that I took on the move and just let myself haul ass into it like it was a wide open target. I know darn well I have to slow down enough to allow proper target engagement, but just failed to do it on that target. The other one was a very poor decision to do the old "slap and rack" load on a barrel top. I have that technique well refined and I'm normally comfortable doing it without issue. However, I'll usually only do it on flat table surfaces and this was the first time (or one of very few times) that I decided to do it on a crowded barrel top. I wound up coming into my first shot with a completely screwed up grip. I mean... completely screwed up. I was in mid-fix on the grip when let the first shot fly and it plugged a no-shoot. The stage also contained a mandatory reload and the grip on the reload was almost as bad causing several misses on the steel. It was an amateur mistake and I sure felt like a bonehead for allowing it. I'm actually not very convinced my decision to do the barrel top slap and rack was the problem. Rather, it was the rushed execution on unfamiliar terrain and the half-assed fix. So, I would have done quite well against the likes of Cha-Lee and Bob Krogh if I could have just reined in the retard a tad during the match. I did, however wind up third behind them which isn't half bad... unless you count the fact that they are not shooting open. So alas I'm still but a grasshopper and will continue to train for consistency in order to one day run with the big boys. At the end of the match I decided to run an RHF gun with a Deltapoint on it. I have not actually shot one in a match so I wanted to see how it worked on a run-and-gun stage. I was very surprised to find that it was NOT an instant love affair. (good news because I'm not in a position to buy yet.) It was a plastic griped gun so the entire thing was vibrating like crazy not to mention the trigger problems I had due to the ultra long travel compared to mine. Anyways, when I was able to shoot the darn gun with splits that were on par with my usual shooting the dot seemed to "skip" and this proved to make tracking it very difficult. It was moving in a consistent, up and down motion but when it was moving super fast I barely saw it. This made kind of a skip to it because it was easy to see near the top, middle, and bottom of the track, but not so much in-between. It actually took me a while to narrow down what I had seen. After that little test I can tell that it will require some significant training and rounds down range to really get the hang of it. But the fact that the dot was so much sharper and consistent means that it's worth the effort to me.

Doing partial insertion drills will help you a bunch. Do the reload and stop short when the mag is just lined up, but not inserted in the mag well. That's it. Do that for a little while, then do it as two steps. Partial insertions... pause... complete the reload. This will create a natural, imperceptible pause during the reload that's caused by you actually looking at the insertion moment. That will really help with consistency. Even if you notice or exaggerate the pause it will be super short and create much more consistency so it will really help with fluidity and hence speed. This helps with either static loads or movement loads.

I have a saying I use. "Shoot like you shoot." My way of saying don't try too hard. Just do what you know how to do and how fast you know how to do it. All that other shit like finding your limits and going beyond them is for practice. Often, during a match RO's will hear me mutter "shoot like you shoot" to myself.