FTDMFR
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Posts posted by FTDMFR
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MONDAY 7/20/15
I've been having trouble relaxing and getting into match mode lately, so I'm going to try something new this week. I'm going to work on the same shot calling/match mode drill, but I'm going to add much more visualization than I normally do. Instead of just hitting the start button and shooting the dry fire array, over and over again, back to back, I'm going to visualize that it's a real stage at a real match, I'm the on deck shooter, and the shooter before me has just finished the stage and the range as been called clear. I'll visualize myself stepping into the start position, visualizing the stage a few more times as the stage is being taped and reset, starting my mental program as the SO gives the LAMR command, loading and holstering my gun, and continuing to run my mental program as the SO gives the standby command, at which point I'll hit the timer (with a 2-4 second delayed start). Then I'll run the drill.
Hopefully this more realistic visualization will 1) help me to be more consistent in how I prepare to shoot a stage, and 2) make it easier for me to get into (and stay in) match mode at the acutal match.
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AAR, IDPA MATCH, 7/18/15
Stats
- 114.24s, 36 points down
- 2nd of 46 SSP
- 3rd of 66 Overall
The good
- Raw time was fast
- Make up shots were fast, and necessary for the most part
- Transitions are looking pretty good. Definitely a lot better compared to a few months ago.
The not-so-good
- Reloads. A couple of decent reloads, but most were bobbled and cost an extra .25 - .50s. Super inconsistent right now. I need to practice reloads every day. I repeat, I need to practice reloads every day.
- Accuracy was absolutely horrible. Dropping points on a target 2-3 yards away and getting -3s on any target is totally unacceptable. Call every shot.
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Overall, I was pretty f*#king unhappy with my performance today. I lost the match due to dropping way too many points from overtrying and a lack of visual patience. I know I can get better hits without increasing my raw time by much if I just do my own thing and call my shots. I'm really struggling with this right now, and it seems like I've actually gotten worse over the last couple of months, even though I've been working on it a lot.
I've been doing Steve Anderson's match mode drill in dry fire a ton, but it's just not translating into the match environment consistently, only for one or two stages here and there (in this match, Stages 1, 3 and 4).
Anyone have any suggestions on how to be more consistent with not overtrying? This is by far my biggest hurdle right now. (What's the point of trying to shave .2s off my draw when I'm dropping 1 second on a 2 yard target?) I feel like I'm missing something here. Is it literally as easy as just deciding to call every shot? Because I feel like make that decision now, but something flips right when the buzzer goes off.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
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Yes it seems to be common wisdom that the support hand thumb should not touch the gun, though few top shooters do wrap their support hand fingers around trigger guard which seems to be more likely to disturb accuracy. Ben's book suggests most shooters should keep support thumb away, but it also says depending on the gun and hand it may not be a problem. I am trying to convince myself that with my short left hand thumb and smooth MP slide side it won't be a problem for me
I probably will retrain the grip when I switch platform. Be careful... Last weekend, I caused my M&P Pro to fail to pick up a new round by riding my thumb on the slide. It was a first for me. My support hand thumb usually never touches the slide or the frame.
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I shot an IDPA match on Saturday. I went through the match twice. The first time, I shot it in my normal match mode. The scores won't be out for a while, but it was the exact same stages as the match two weeks ago, and my first run would have gotten me high overall at that match.
One the second run, I decided to go balls out and shave down my raw time on the longer stages. I was 5 seconds faster on one stage, 3 seconds faster on another, and 2 seconds faster on a third. The other stages were stand and shoot, so no time difference there. My accuracy suffered a bit, but it was a good opportunity for me to practice moving between shooting positions as fast as possible. It really opened my eyes to how much time I could save just by moving faster. Now the trick is to keep moving as fast as possible between positions, but still call my shots.
On Sunday, I went to the range for some live fire practice. I decided to work exclusively on accuracy at speed at 15 yards, since that's where I need the most improvement right now. I worked on draws, doubles, Bill Drills, and Blake Drills.
My biggest improvement was with with doubles. Before, I had been throwing a lot of -3s at 15 yards, averaging 3.5 PD down per run. Pretty terrible. This last session, I shaved my points down to average of .5 PD per run, while keeping my raw time about the same. Bill Drills and Blake Drills times improved by about 20%, with most of the improvement coming from better accuracy.
The takeaway is that most of my gains were from having more visual patience. I can shoot -0s at 15 yards all day in slow fire. I just need to work on maintaining visual patience when shooting at speed.
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THURSDAY 7/9/15
I didn't have a lot of time to dry fire tonight, since I had to load a ton of ammo for this weekend's two matches and practice session.
So, I just did the shot calling drill on my current dry fire array. Three target groups, one group each at 8, 10, 15, 20, and 25yds. I practiced 2B + 1H in tac sequence from close to far. I practiced this drill for about 20 minutes.
I'm really liking this drill. I think it's really fun, it's important to my game right now, and it's something I can squeeze in when I only have a few minutes, and I don't have to put my gear on.
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WEDNESDAY 7/8/15
Dry Fire
- Practiced for about 90 minutes.
- Trigger control at speed, freestyle, SHO, and WHO. Really focused on freestyle at 25 yards and SHO/WHO at 15 yards.
- Burkett reloads. Reloading with hard leans is still a little inconsistent. Will keep working at it.
- Blake Drills. Focused on 25 yards. Started at 4.5s and worked down to 2.3s. Will continue working on Blake Drills at different distances on Thursday night.
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TUESDAY 7/7/15
Dry Fire
- Worked on Bill Drills for an hour.
- Started on 25 yds then worked my way down to 8 yds. I ended up at 2.3s at 25 yds and 1.7s at 8 yds.
- Didn't have time to practice reloads. Will do this first thing at my next dry fire session.
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AAR, IDPA MATCH, 7/4/15
Stats
- Overall: 1st of 59
- SSP: 1st of 31
- Hits: 38 PD (17% of score), 3 misses, a few -3's.
Success Analysis
- Raw time was much better than at the last match. I had the fastest raw time on 5 of 8 stages. Practicing slicing the pie more aggressively seems to be helping. I'm slowly building enough confidence in my raw speed to trust that, as long as I focus on calling my shots, the speed will naturally be there. Will keep working on it.
- Accuracy at far targets was pretty good. Recent live fire practice at 20 yards really helped me with my confidence going into this match. Accuracy on 15 and 20 yard targets on Stage 5 was pretty good. Will continue to work on both speed and accuracy at 20 yards in live fire.
- SHO speed / accuracy was pretty good. I think I gained a lot of ground on Stage 1. I've now gotten to the point where SHO / WHO at 7 yards in doesn't phase me at all. Now it's time to move on to extending this range to 15 yards.
Solutions Analysis
- Accuracy still needs improvement. Averaged 4.75 PD per stage, and my goal is 3 PD per stage. Too many misses at close range targets. Too many uncalled misses. Keep working on visual patience and shooting in match mode. Keep practicing shot calling drill.
- Make up shots. Mixed success at this match. Most called shots were made up immediately, but I also called one missed headshot but did not make it up until I verified it was a miss on paper. Horrible habit. Keep working on this with shot calling drill.
- Accuracy on position entry. Had a couple of really bad shots when setting up behind cover, probably due to lack of visual patience. Work on this in live fire
- Reloads. Not bad, but I can do better. I've been slacking off practicing reloads for a couple of weeks. Make Burkett Drills part of every dry fire session.
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FRIDAY 7/3/15
Live Fire
- Went to the outdoor range for about 4 hours. Shot 400 rounds
- Today I focused mostly on accuracy at long distance (20+ yards).
- This has been a weak spot for me for a while, so I'll be focusing on it for a while. I started off with some untimed group shooting, then moved onto draws, doubles, Bill Drills, and Blake Drills at 20 yards.
- I was extremely happy with my slow fire accuracy at 20 yards. I shot 5 10-round strings and was down 6 for all 50 rounds, with all points down being very close -1s.
- I think a lot of my accuracy problems have been from having the wrong point of aim (too low). I worked on it in dry fire this week, and it seemed to have helped my life fire a ton.
- Bill Drills and Blake Drills at 20 yards were a lot better than I've shot in the past. No -3s, and mostly close -1s.
- I'll keep working on this in live fire. I'll also add shooting around a barricade into the mix.
- Also shot a few Bill Drills at 3, 5, 10, and 15 yards.
- I'm pretty happy with my times at 3 and 5 yards (1.89s and 2.00s average)
- At 10 and 15 yards, my accuracy tends to fall off, and I seem to be having difficulty shooting it clean.
- I'll continue to work on 10 and 15 yard Bill and Blake Drills. I think the biggest hole in my IDPA game right now is the balance between speed and accuracy at this distance.
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WEDNESDAY 7/1/15
Live Fire
- Went to the indoor range for about an hour and shot 200 rounds.
- I worked on group shooting, single shots from high compressed ready, and 10-shot strings from high compressed ready, all from 3-15 yards
- Accuracy at 15 yards was around 90% -0s. There's still room for improvement, considering I'm only shooting 0.8-1.0s splits due to the range rules, but it's still better than I've been shooting lately. It definitely felt good, especially given how bad my accuracy was at my last match. I think I'll feel a lot better going into this weekend's matches.
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TUESDAY 6/30/15
Dry Fire
- Dry fired for about an hour
- Trigger control at speed: 15-25 yd
- Draws: Benchmarked my draws at 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 yards. Times range from .7s at 5 yards to 1.4s at 25 yards. These times are for getting an acceptable sight picture, not for breaking the shot.
Other notes
- I set up a pivot chart in Excel to track my dry fire and live fire drill times against my goals. It'll be interesting to see how dry fire and live fire track with respect to each other.
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I took a few days off for a Vegas trip, but now I'm back to work:
Live Fire
- I got my live fire range kit together and went to the range I joined last week. I spent 3-4 hours there and shot about 500 rounds.
- I spent this range session just running some basic drills - Doubles, Bill Drills, Blake Drills, and Blake Drills while slicing the pie, from 5 to 25 yards. This is the first time I've really been able to run these drills in live fire, so I wanted to spend the day establishing a good baseline of my current skill level.
Observations
- For the sake of my confidence, I'm going to avoid comparing my times to Ben Steoger's suggested GM times for these drills...
- Now I'm convinced that doing nothing but dry fire for three months has killed my recoil control. I'll have to remember to grip the gun harder in dry fire, and I'll have to do some experimentation with recoil control the next time I'm at the outdoor range. Hopefully live fire 1-2X a week will cure this pretty quickly.
- I'm going to put field course skills on the back burner for now and focus on fundamentals, especially accuracy. Looking at my numbers, I think I'll get the most bang for my buck by reducing points down. Once I can get acceptable accuracy (80% -0s) within my current par times, I'll start working on reducing the times.
Priorities for this week
- Accuracy at speed, 5-15 yds
- Transition speed, 5-15 yds
- Transition speed while slicing the pie, 10-15 yds
- Accuracy at long distance, 20-25 yds
- Maintenance: reloads
Live fire schedule for this week
- Wed (indoor range): group shooting, 15 yds; trigger control drill, 3/5/10/15 yds;
- Fri (outdoor range): Bill Drills, 5-15 yds; Blake Drills, 5-15 yds; Blake Drills behind cover, 10-15 yds; Blake Drills, 20-25 yds, hits only; Calling Alphas drill, 5-7 yds, hits only.
Dry fire schedule for this week
- Tue: trigger control drill, FS, 15-25 yds; Burkett reloads; shot calling drill; shot calling drill behind cover, 8-15 yds
- Thu: trigger control drill, SHO/WHO, 8-10 yds; Burkett reloads; shot calling drill; shot calling drill behind cover, 20-25 yds
Goals for this week
- Get accuracy in live fire drills back to >80% -0s, no -3s or misses.
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Hello all. Long time lurker. First post. A question that I've had for a while about dry firing, specifically with semiautos. I've done dry fire slowly, cycling the slide after each trigger pull. Are you doing the same thing when you're dry firing stages?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Unless I'm specifically practicing trigger control, then I don't bother cycling the slide before every pull. You can learn and improve a lot in dry fire even without the actual trigger break.
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TUESDAY 6/23/15
Dry Fire
- Trigger control at speed (10 mins): Freestyle, while leaning around cover.
- Shot calling drill (30 mins): I set up a new target array, again with a mixture of tac sequence, tac priority, mozambiques, etc. Started at 10s, worked up to 24s. Also practiced visualization and running my mental program before each rep.
- Transitions while slicing the pie (60 mins): I set up an array so I can practice transitioning between targets. The array is symmetric so I can practice using both sides of cover. 2 rounds each, while slicing the pie, using a metronome. This is a huge weakness for me right now, so I'm going to focus on it for the next couple of weeks.
I started off at 75bpm / .75s splits, worked up to 240bpm / .25 splits. I seem to be timing the movement of my upper body with the transitions a lot better, at least in dry fire. I'll need to see if this shows up in live fire as well.
Observations
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Transitions while slicing the pie: From doing a little dry fire practice, as well as reviewing some of my first-person videos of matches, it looks like there are two main reasons that my transitions behind cover are slow:
- I'm not getting enough of the target in my field of view quickly enough. When I enter a cover position, I seem to be slowing inching out of cover just until the -0 area of the target is barely exposed. Last night, I found that, unless the target is very close, then I can actually lean out enough to see the entire target and still be behind cover. So, when I enter a cover position, I need to aggressively lean out so that the entire target is visible, so I can acquire the first target more quickly. I'll add this to my live fire practice.
- I'm not shifting my body position from target to target aggressively enough. Somewhat related to the first point above. When I have been slicing the pie, after shooting a target, I've wasted a lot of time searching for the next target over. However, If the targets are spaced closely enough together, then when I'm leaning out, I can actually see not just 100% of the target I'm shooting at, but also the edge of the next target, while still being behind cover. If I lean out enough to see the edge next target in my peripheral vision, then that will help me transition more aggressively.
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Other thoughts on cover
- When entering cover, if there's a wide target way outside the edge of the barricade, it's a lot more comfortable and faster to align my shoulders to the cover line and target, not to the barricade. This lets me shoot those wide targets while keeping my body in a much more neutral position, which will help with accuracy.
- Shooting around weak side cover is significantly harder than shooting around strong hand side cover. The angle I can sweep before having to move my feet is a lot smaller. My tendency has been to crowd cover and extend my gun beyond the barricade, but that throws my wrists out of whack and kills my accuracy. It seems to work better if I stay further back from cover and just accept that I'm going to have to move my feet more often when shooting weak side behind cover.
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Yep, visualization is the key. I try to visualize each stage at least 10 times before shooting, from my POV. I visualize my sights lifting on each target, for the correct number of hits, in the correct target order; how refined the sight picture should be depending on the target difficulty; reloading at whatever reload points I planned, including seeing the mag go into the well; prop manipulation; entering each shooting position ready to shoot; loading the gun if there's a table start; etc.
Ideally, I'll repeat the visualization over and over again until I can run through the stage in my mind faster than I can shoot it in real life. Then, when the timer goes off, I can just focus on watching the sights and calling my shots.
A good rule of thumb I heard (maybe from Steve Anderson's podcast) is that if you've done a good job rehearsing a stage, then after the match, you should be able to accurately recreate that stage from memory in great detail.
Lately I've been practicing getting into the habit of using visualization during my dry fire practice. If I'm running a drill on a semi-complex array of targets, I'll go through the visualization process several times before shooting it.
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MONDAY 6/22/15
Lately I've noticed that when slicing the pie, my transitions seem super slow, and my accuracy is not as good. I haven't had a good way to practice slicing the pie in dry fire, since there are no good corners to practice with due to the layout of my apartment. I have a nice big wall to use for dry fire, but there are no walls in front of it to use as cover. So, all my practice with slicing the pie so far has been just from shooting matches.
So today I built a couple of free standing poles that I can set up in front of my dry fire wall to simulate the edges of a barrier. Nothing fancy, just PVC pipe. pipe flanges, and wood rounds:
I can also break these down pretty quickly to take to the range.
Dry Fire
- Shot calling drill: Started at 10s, worked up to 24s. A big hurdle for me is staying focused throughout the drill and not letting my mind wander off. When I catch myself started to think about something else, repeating the matra of "call every shot, call every shot" seems to bring me back into focus.
- Slicing the pie: I set up an array and started working on pieing targets using my barricades. Nothing on the timer for now, just experimenting, seeing what distance from the barricade works best, how to better position and angle my foot with respect to the first target, how large an angle I can comfortable pie through before having to shift my feet, how that angle changes shooting from right cover vs. left cover, etc. It's been really eye opening, even after just one practice session.
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SUNDAY 6/21/15
Live Fire
- Shot about 200 rounds at the indoor square range.
- Focused mostly on trigger control and accuracy at speed. My trigger control is looking good, but my visual patience continues to need a lot of improvement. I still tend to rush the trigger, even though I can see the sights are not acceptably aligned. On the bright side, I think this is something I can continue to improve on the square range while not burning through a lot of ammo.
- Looking back at my old range journal, it looks like I haven't done a non-match live fire practice session since 3/19... Not good.
Dry Fire
- Practiced Steve Anderson's shot calling drill for about an hour. Started off at 10 seconds and worked up to 30.
- I'm really liking this drill. My main struggle with it is putting speed on the back burner and really focusing on calling my shots. (Which I guess is probably the entire point of the drill.)
- I'll continue to do this drill every dry fire session until my next match in two weeks and see if it helps my visual patience and accuracy.
Other Notes
- I finally joined a range where I can do some real live fire work (draw, move, set up my own targets, shoot more than 1 round per second, etc). I'm really interested in seeing how much this will improve my game, and what kind of gains I will see in the two months leading up to IDPA Worlds.
- My plan is to have live fire twice a week: once during the week at the square range, and once on the weekend at the outdoor range.
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AAR, IDPA MATCH, 6/20/15
Stats
- Overall: 2nd of 68
- SSP: 1st of 38
- Hits: 44 down. One M, 3 or 4 -3s.
Success Analysis
- Did really well on a SHO / WHO drill stage. Raw time was really good, shot calling was really good (for the most part).
- Shooting on the move was pretty good. I am a lot more confident with it than I was a few months ago.
Solutions Analysis
- Pieing targets was horrendously slow. I've been practicing transitions a lot, but not while slicing the pie. I need to add slicing the pie to my routine immediately.
- On one stage, I could see that my sights weren't acceptable, but I kept pulling the trigger anyways, and I dropped a TON of points, AND my time was slow. On other stages, I called some bad shots, but I didn't quite trust my called shots for some reason, and I didn't make them up. This lead to a miss and 2 or 3 -3's that I really should have made up. I need to keep working on my shot calling and visual patience. I'll probably start with the drill from Steve Anderson's podcast on 6/15/15.
Takeaways
- SHO / WHO looked good, but that's only like 10% of shots fired at any given match. I need to put SHO / WHO in maintenance mode and shift focus onto the skills more commonly used in IDPA: freestyle, shot calling during hard leans, slicing the pie quickly.
- I gave up waaaay too many points today on a couple of stages, and it cost me high overall.
- Mental game is good, when it's on. Continue to work on consistency. Also work on mental skills during live fire, not just dry fire.
- I need to join a live fire range as soon as humanly possible. Dry fire is only going to get me so far.
- Although I'm disappointed with today's performance, I'm chalking it up to an off day. Onwards and upwards.
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FRIDAY 6/19/15
Dry Fire
- Started off with some movement drills:
- I've been using a drill that Steve Anderson mentioned on his podcast, where you just move and track the sights without pulling the trigger.
- To do this drill, I set up an array of three targets, at three different scales. They're scaled so that as I transition between targets after every two steps, the simulated distance of each target is the same.
- I work this drill with a metronome to time my steps. Each rep is 6 steps forward, then 6 steps back.
- I started off at 75 bpm / .80s per step, and I ramped it all the way up to 150 bpm / .40s per step. Any faster than that and I'd have to trot instead of walk.
- I think not being able to track the sights is what's been killing my accuracy. Now, after doing this drill for a while, the sights look pretty sharp, and I can track when the sights are acceptable and when they bob and dip out of the acceptable zone, even at a brisk (to me) pace of .40s / step.
- Moving backwards is still harder for me, but there are a couple of things I've tried that seem to keep the sights more steady. First is to keep my feet parallel rather than angling them out in a vee. The second is to not even come down on my heels at all.
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Burkett reloads, with concealment, while leaning
- The trick for finding the magwell seems to be positioning the gun and mag so that my two wrists are as neutral as possible when the mag goes in. When I reload with the gun at chin level, my left wrist has to cant downwards to align the mag, and I have trouble getting the cant to be consistent. If I reload at mid- chest, then the just mag seems to find its own way into the well. The gun is a little lower than I'm used to, but not so low that I need to lower my head and look down from the targets to see the well. A quick downward glance with just my eyes still does it.
Observations / random thoughts
- I have an IDPA match tomorrow. My goals for tomorrow's match performance:
- Visualizing every aspect of every stage in excruciating detail, no matter how simple the stage
- Moving aggressively between positions or while pieing between targets
- Calling every shot
- Trusting
My mental game at the last match was pretty off, partially from SOing all day, so definitely I want to make up for it with this match.
- Started off with some movement drills:
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THURSDAY 6/18/15
Dry fire
- Transitions, 20 yrds, 2-2-2 FS. Long distance shooting has been the bane of my existence for a few months. I'm pretty accurate in slow fire, but shooting and transitioning at speed, while leaning, is a whole different thing. Started off at 60bpm / 1.0s splits, worked down to 150bpm / .40 splits.
Observations
- Hmm. I guess I should have figured out before now that you can't edit posts after 2 days. I was planning to use the first three posts in this thread as living documents. That sucks.
- I changed my holster mount from a Tek-Lock to an Adjustable Stingray. What a huge difference. Much more stable.
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TUESDAY 6/16/15
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Dry Fire
- 90 mins
- Trigger control drill: FS with hard leans. Leaning left still needs a lot of work - I tend to pull shots left. SHO and WHO are looking pretty good.
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Accuracy at long distance: Draw to 1st shot, 20yds. Straight and leaning.
- With concealment: 1.60s
- Without concealment: 1.30s
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Observations
- Tek-loks are nice and convenient for mag pouches, but not so great for holsters. There's too much wobble and it adds too much unpredictability to the draw. I need to go back to the ASR.
- Fumbled draws seem to be caused mostly by the web between my thumb and index finger crashing into the top of the beavertail. Start with hand further back to avoid having to go up and around beavertail.
- I'm getting much more confident with 20 yard targets. It seems like the more I practice, the larger the targets seem.
- I'm definitely starting to get tennis elbow in my left arm. I'm going to try doing these exercises daily for a week.
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Dry Fire
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ok lets make a distinction.
cha-lee, you describe what I would label " shot clairvoyance"
and while that may be a skill one can grow with much practice
what you describe is well beyond shot calling.
When It comes to teaching you have to start with what your students already know.
and build on that. Then ask them to do what is the next step.
People who can't call a shot will not be able to anticipate where the sights will be.
miranda
Isn't what CHA-LEE described the textbook definition of shot calling? If you know what the sight picture and sight alignment were the instant the shot broke, then you should be able to instantaneously predict where the bullet will hit the target.
Although, in a sense, I guess shot calling is a sort of clairvoyance, since in theory you can see the sights lift and process that information faster (13ms) than it takes the bullet to actually reach the target (34ms, for a bullet traveling at 880ft/s towards a 10 yard target).
Of course, being able to call shots well and and pulling the trigger when the sights are actually acceptable are two different skills. I've gotten pretty decent at the first, but I still need a lot of work on the second.
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A major missing link for most shooters if figuring out how to call their shots is knowing how displaced sights equal a particular on target hit at any given distance. If you don't understand how "aligned" or "misaligned" the sights can be in order to produce a particular hit at any given distance then you will never fully understand how to call your shots while shooting at speed.
When we are shooting and transitioning aggressively there is no time to wait for the sights to settle to a perfect alignment or on target sight picture to settle into a perfect registration. The sight alignment and on target sight picture is always moving in these aggressive shooting conditions. This means that you need to fully understand how much the sights or sight picture is displaced from "Aligned" and it still producing the desired hit.
The first step in this process is to setup 5 targets at varying distances. I like to use 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25 yard target distances. Then use the rear notch to aim at the middle of the target and manually displace the front sight to the left or right until there is no more light bar on one side. Then cleaning break a shot with the sights manually displaced at all 5 distances. Repeat this process with the front sight manually displaced Left, Right, Up, and Down. Doing this will give you the on target hit data points to know how "Aligned" do the sights have to be in order to produce an A Zone hit, or a C, or a D, or a Miss at any given distance. Since every sight configuration is different (front sight Width, Height, Light Bar size, etc) the results from this testing will vary from one gun to the next. You need to put in the range time and testing to figure out how your particular configuration responds to this testing.
From working with many students on this drill, if you have standard size competition sights, If there is ANY light bar seen to the left or right that will usually yield an A-zone hit out to 15 yards, then start creeping into the C and D zones as you get out to 20 and 25 yards. The same could be said for the fiber optic rod in the front sight. Usually, if the fiber optic rod is contained within the confines of the rear notch from an Up/Down perspective, that will also yield A-zone hits out to 15 yards and start creeping into the C/B and D zones as you move further out. The first time my students do this drill its usually a huge eye opener in how good the hits are given how much they perceive the front sight being displaced in the rear notch. This also gives them confidence in pushing their aggressive shooting boundaries to allow them to break a shot without the sights perfectly aligned.
Once you perform the above testing to figure out how much sight displacement = A,B,C,D,M hit at whatever distance, THEN you can truly start understanding and processing the sight alignment and on target sight picture data your eyes are seeing when you are shooting aggressively. Without knowing this sight displacement data you will significantly hobble your efforts in trying to learn how to call your shots.
Just an FYI, I have probably shot 10K+ in ammo over the years using this sight displacement process and then shooting drills at these varying distances to "Burn In" what I am seeing verses what the hits are data points. So there is no "Quick Fix" or "Doing it Once and be done" associated with learning these sight displacement and shot calling skills. There IS a crap ton of work that is needed to be done to hone and perfect the shot calling skills.
every class I've taken with one of the 'top tier' instructors they go over this exact process exactly becuase most people still do not understand what "proper sight alignment" means WRT Practical Shooting .... when I get asked that question my answer is always the same: "it depends" ...... on target distance, target difficulity & my current shooting abilities.
It has become very easy over time to spot someone who has not done what Cha-lee has recommended since they are basically using the same sight picture before breaking EVERY shot .....
Yeah, if you're doing this right, then your splits should get noticeably shorter as targets get closer and closer. This gets pretty apparent on IDPA "running man" type arrays.
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On Steve Anderson's latest podcast (dated 6/15/15), he describes at length a drill for shot calling. I haven't tried it yet, but it sounds really good.
I probably will retrain the grip when I switch platform. 
FTDMFR's Range Journal
in Range Diary
Posted
Thanks! I appreciate the feedback.