MTN

What are twitch muscles? My wife and I do have a membership to the local Y and I've thought about doing some spinning classes and body sculpt type classes. I've heard great things about crossfit but another $100+/month isn't in the budget at the moment. Again, I appreciate all the advice you've given! I don't think you should spend a single penny on exercise equipment or gym memberships right now. Your 90% solution requires only that you do more and eat less. Simple regimens of bodyweight exercise (pullups, push ups, sprints, jumps, situps, running, biking etc...) done with consistency coupled with a reasonable amount of food every day will prepare your body for more advanced forms of training. It takes the average person only two or three training sessions to learn how to do these simple movements, and they can build an entire short range program around 5-7 exercises. This is manageable from a mental and physical standpoint. Think of this as firing into a berm to git rid of a flinch reflex. As a former crossfit subscriber I can tell you that this is not a good place for you to start. You need to focus correctly executing your movements and graduate intensity as your ability to execute improves. You might notice that this is similar to what the expert shooters on this page are telling new guys like me to do. Thats because this is how humans learn and develop new skills. The worst thing you can do is take an out of shape body and learn half ass (excuse the language) movements against a clock. This is like telling a new shooter to bring his shot timer and shoot difficult stages before he knows how to correct malfunctions in his gun. He will get better at working around his weaknesses, then plateu, and development will come to a screeching halt. Remember, you are in this for the long haul and you are trying to stay on the on-ramp of fitness. I know I am probably going to start a crossfit sucks v crossfit is awesome debate here, that is not my intention. Anyhoo, I don't ever mind my opinion being critiqued so fire away.

Thanks for the tips. I am going to get some pics and video shooting some of these drills this afternoon. I should have done that long ago. I was just reading the Burketts timing drill, which I think might help provide a solution to this. I will say that the Berreta M9 does not fit my hand well at all. I have worked around that guns design for 8 years now, and at some point I guess I have to accept that shooting a pistol that doesn't fit your hand well will always produce less than ideal results. Excuses aside, I am sure there are a couple of dozen things I can do to make this situation better, without convincing the DOD to let me use my own pistol at work. thanks again guys

Left handed shooter. beavertail in line with the radius of shooting arm when arm is by my side. middle, ring, and pinky finger are comfortably wrapped around pistol grip, but not tightly enough to cause tension in trigger finger. Weak hand palm makes contact with strong hand palm at meaty portion of the strong hand. Both thumbs are pointed foward with the strong hand thumb resting on top of the weak hand thumb. weak hand wrist is nearly completely locked foward. Once this is achieved, I create the feeling of "pressing" my hands together at the palms without squeezing my fingers on the gun. My grip is probably 70/30 to 60/40 in favor of the weak hand. My stance is an iscosceles. Right foot heel about the balls of left foot, feet just outside of shoulder width. Shoulders square to the target or shooting area. slight bend in the knees, leaning foward slightly at the waist. There are probably a hundred details im leaving out here, but this generally describes my stance and grip. Thanks for the tip on Burkett's timing drills. "i would ask the question: is your sight travelling too far? or is it returning too slow? both the same end outcome; waiting too long on the sights. but with different causes" I know I probably worded this incorrectly earlier, but I feel like the sites are returning too slowly. The sights feel under control during the recoil phase, they just move back into place more slowly than I would like. Thanks for the help guys.

Perhaps I am being too passive with my control of the gun. Do you have and drills or cues that you have used to correct this deficiency?

While it certainly isn't common with routine mainenance, I have seen two instances of this happening in the last 3 years. Both resulted in the split lips of the shooters involved. Almost everyone laughed, then took their gun apart and checked it out. The next day I was shooting at a civilian range with one of the guys who got stitched up over his gun malfunction. We were laughing about how silly the whole situation was when a yahoo we had never met comes up and proceedes to tell us that the specific cicumstance we were describing was a myth and that in x amount of years around that pistol he had never seen such a malfunction. My friend gladly told him he wished he would have gotten the first hand experience of that himself. Oh well I guess we had just seen this guys unicorn hahaha. Locking blocks and trigger springs are fairly common problems in M92s that have 10,000 rounds fired through them without replacement parts. I recently had my small arms guys fix both of these on my service pistol. Other than that it shoots better than I do. Bottom line is: If you want to shoot the gun to pieces, then you have to replace to parts.

Howdy, So let me try to describe what I am experiencing for the potential teachers out there. I am primarily a carbine and rifle shooter so the concept of tracking your site and calling shots was something I feel very comfortable doing and came somewhat naturally to me when I started getting serious about pistol work about 2 years ago. After what seems to be about 1,000,000 rounds of 9mm through my pistol I feel I can do this with relative ease and can literally draw the movement of the FSP after each shot(this is something I teach my carbine students who have trouble with recoil management). This is where I am currently stuck: My front site post takes what seems like an eternity to return to my initial point of aim. I understand that this is a perception relative to the shooter and the event itself is not directly related to the actual time that elapses between shots. The carbine portion of my mind is telling my brain that I do not manage recoil efficiently and therefore have allowed my FSP to wander too far during the recoil phase of the shot string. For years I have been able to run a carbine to the speed that my trigger will allow, which is making this problem seem bigger than it probably is with my pistol shooting. So the question: is this probably a recoil management issue? or is this a combination of different weaknesses that are manifesting themselves as a relatively slow second site picture? Here is how I have been dividing my range time for the last 6 sessions. 1. SAF: NRA 25 meter bull 10M total points recorded, 10 rnds 2. Ready position: NRA 25M bull 7 meters, 2 rnds, 3 mags 3. From draw: NRA 25M bull 7 meters, 2 rnds, 3 mags 4. From draw: 3x NRA 25m bulls 10 meters, 2 rnds each, 3 mags 5. Bill Drill from ready: NRA 25M bull 7 meters, 3 mags (as fast as I can acquire the black) REPEAT drill 2,3,4 6. Rifle and shotgun transition drills 3-5 mags 7. SAF NRA 25 meter bull 15 meters total points recorded, 10 rounds What these sessions have shown me is that I can find the target quickly, but my follow up is slowed by the speed at which my gun returns to the target area. Obviously I am better during the Bill Drill as my mind allows me to fire "acceptable" hits in the black. I case your wondering this is a standard issue Beretta m92 pistol with standard mil spec ball ammunition. I don't have any competition loads or tweaks to my gun. I know, It probably isn't everyones first choice in weaponry, however it is between the Beretta, a Glock 19c, or 1911 chambered in .45 and I can never get enough ammo to justify using the .45. If this has been covered in depth somewhere else, I apologize as I could not find the thread using the search function. Any classes on that would be appreciated. I understand if your response is simply to post a link to an exhaustive thread concerning this same topic. Thanks for the help.

A lot of military shooters I know wear Mechanix brand gloves. They are cheap and preserve a lot of sensitivity. You will go through a lot of gloves and paying $50 USD for a new pair every 60-90 days during a deployment adds up. Too many "tactical" gloves are so bulky you would have to take then off to do some serious remedial action on your rifle or shotgun, and think about trying to put well fitted gloves on with sweaty hands! I don't know that you will see a lot of competitors wearing gloves. No matter how good the glove feels it will reduce your ability to make micro adjustments on your gun/shells/mags. 3 gun might see some guys using gloves eventually, as they are running long guns and shotguns that get very hot quickly. Plus, think of the sponsorship possibilities haha. Gloves make perfect sense for military and swat personnel. Guys I work with wear gloves to operate all sorts of weapon systems and there is no question they are faster without them but it is also likely they are faster with gloves on than with a gaping laceration or serious burn on the hand. The last thing I want is to burn my hand on a red hot barrel and then search an entire compound. Not to mention coming through a window into a kitchen area, or entering an explosively breached steel gate with bare hands. Cuts and burns like those pose some serious problems which are easy to imagine. I don't wear gloves when I compete with my work guns. I do train and operate with gloves on. Hope this wasn't a total waste of time to read.

Wanted to say hello. I am a military shooter who has recently developed an interest in competition shooting so I can expand my perspective. I also have an intense desire to compete in nearly every activity I participate in, so this should be a fun new hobby for me. For years I have watched videos and read articles written by target shooters and I am always amazed at the speeds at which they perform. I am hoping to find the crossover between sport and combat so I can take additional confidence and apply that to my work. Looking foward to some lively discussions!