[Fail to Fire during stage]

I don't want to sound like an ass, but you should focus on fixing your equipment so it does not malfunction... this is a much better investment of time and energy than optimizing your malfunction drills IMHO. The problem described could be ammo related (dud primers, raised primers, inproperly sized rounds) or gun related (weak recoil or striker spring, dirty striker channel, chipped striker tip). Make sure you 100% inspect your ammo for high primers and run every round through an ammo gage before you consider it "match ready".

Oh, and "tap-rack-bang" FTW .

I totally agree on this. And also be extra cautious when doing the "tap-rack-bang" if it's a squib load your M&P will become a paper weight on your desk.

[Drawing on the move]

Get the gun out of the holster!

If you can choose which foot to move first, I prefer to move my weakhand foot so that I do not cause my strong side to move as much when I go for the draw. In reality the gun should be out almost as fast as you can get your body moving.

+1 on this! well, at least for me. Tried taking off with left foot while right hand is going for the pistol on one of the stage and right foot on another stage. From the video I was a lot faster getting to the shooting port with the left foot first.

Or you can try to experiment which will work for you

[Front sight lifts, then what?]

I guess I really have to concentrate in seeing the front sights lift and open my eyes

Chie,

I'm afraid you'll be straining your eyes without even noticing you're shooting if you concentrate on seeing the front sight lift.

The more you concentrate on trying to see something, the more you'll probably see something else or nothing at all.

You don't need to concentrate, meaning narrowing down your vision to an almost tunnel-like one, excluding anything else from your perception, just to be able to see what you want to see. This is detrimental.

What you need to do is to open up your vision, pretending you're not the guy who's actually firing the gun, but just a spectator that wants to see the whole show.

Start shooting rounds downrange, without a target to aim on. Just firing rounds into the backstop, one round per second or slower.

You would want to be a spectator of your own shooting, you're not concentrating on anything.

Somebody is pressing the trigger, and you just happen to notice what goes on.

Don't even try to be consciously pressing the trigger, let it go by itself.

When doing this, without putting ANY expectation on the shot that you're breaking, you will eventually be able to see the front sight lifting, the slide cycling, the brass being ejected, dirt dusting up where the round impacted the backstop, the front sight landing back into the notch, etc.

The trick is that you shall not force yourself to see anything, you just have to relax and watch what goes on.

Yes. +10.

be

Thanks for all your great advice fellas,

I would have never thought of approaching my problem that way. Will follow your advice and try it this week and let you know what I'll come up with.

Btw, do any of you use an sti recoil master to soften the recoil on your gun? I am using an armscor short dust cone type bull barrel and an eb 2 pc guide rod.

Would greatly appreciate any inputs.

TIA,

Chie

[Front sight lifts, then what?]

The gun makes a big difference in how much of the front sight you see too. We downplay equipment, indian and not the arrow, etc, but some guns are drastically easier to track the front sight than others. With some guns I see the lift, lose the sight, and then see it dropping into the notch. With others I see the sight lift and rise, pick up speed going up, decelerate, stop at the peak, start back down, increase in speed and then glide to a stop exactly where it lifted from. The guns I can see all that detail with seem slow, but I can't even approach outrunning the front sight and neither can anyone else I know.

Point? I am not sure, but I wouldn't worry about how much of the track you can see if you can see the lift and at least enough of the front sight returning to get a good prep going before it lands. The more of it you can see the easier the gun is to shoot for me. I am REALLY into the quality of the front sight track and enhancing the quality of the front sight track. Splits, transitions, and accuracy all improve bigtime when I have a gun with a very high quality front sight track.

True that! I tried a friends STI in limited sweet cycling action, no snag, and really smooth and flat shooting I guess because of the long dust and bull barrel that gives a heavier front weight.

[Front sight lifts, then what?]

Luca & Flexmoney,

Thanks for the tips. Will ask for a bud's assistance to see if I'm blinking or not.

Chie

Hey Luca & Flexmoney,

After more than 2 months of being unsure . I finally found out that I am not blinking

I guess I really have to concentrate in seeing the front sights lift and open my eyes

[Revelation time!]

Chie,

Perhaps you are using a concious effort to control what should be an unconcious activity and that is causing the problem. Try relaxing more and allow the technique you have ingrained into you subconcious mind to start executing.

I offer this after talking with nunerous GMs about their shooting. Invariable it comes down to letting the what they have programed into their subconcious mind to take over. See Mike Seeklander's new website for some additional info.

Regards

Thanks pjb45,

I will try your advice.

Yeah, I think that's the problem. But I am really problematic with the solution .

When I watch the top dawgs perform I am just so amazed how they shoot so relaxed.

I think that I can control my anxiety on practice runs. But come game day, I think I will have a problem controlling my anxiety. Anyone knows the remedy to this ailment

Cheers

[Revelation time!]

I finally went to the range yesterday evening. I had taken the grip tape off my Glock a couple of nights before.

During dryfire, everything seemed fine.

We started out with a stage with 10-12y targets. Things started out well. It was cold on the range. No sweaty hands and I could hold on to the Glock well enough to get good hits.

Then came the second stage. 4 targets at 25yds. First run and I could paste 4 hits instead of 8. Every target had a nice center hit and a miss. On the second run, I paid more attention to the sights and saw what happened. The gun would recoil up and because I tried to keep it down by putting pressure on the left side panel of the gun with my weak hand I somehow managed to pull the gun to the left as it was coming down. It was not a trigger issue, I could see the gun go up and come down to the left even before I started putting pressure on the trigger.

Time for the third stage. 4 targets, all of which have A-zones with penalties on either side. Distances about 10-12y. It's getting old. First shot good, second shot to the left into the edge of the penalty. I'm starting to get pissed and blame the slick grip. There's just no way to hold on to this bar of soap thing.

So I put some ProGrip on my hands, but the problem stays.

I ask my shooting buddy:

"How hard do you squeeze your grip with you support hand?"

"I dunno, not very hard"

"Grab my hand and hold it like you hold your gun"

He grabs my hand and just holds it. Not harder that you would shake a person's hand.

"Holy shit, that's all?!"

"Yup"

OK, time for an experiment. Same targets, 10yds. Penalties on both sides of the A-zone. I hold the gun like I normally would and see the second shot go into the penalties (well, I see the sights return to the left).

I try to hold onto it, and the harder I try to hold on the harder the gun will go to the left and work its way out of my hands. I keep trying to control it, but it just doesn't work without the grip tape.

Then I decided to just let it go. I place the gun in my hands like a wuss and pull the trigger. The gun would move more, but somehow came back down a lot faster. It felt like I had absolutely no control of the gun. But what I saw was the opposite.

I noticed all I could do was just watch the sights and I witnessed how my body just figured out the rest. I was hardly holding the gun at all.

I could actually be comfortable, just hold the gun, instead of squeezing, gripping, or whatever other uncomfortable terms, and adjust the way the gun went up and down just by looking at it!

It was a shame I only had about 40 rounds left. I would have gladly shot 1000 more. It seriously felt like I could just flush my 10 years of previous shooting/training down the toilet.

I hope to get some range time before my snowboarding trip at the end of this week. I just had to write this down to make sure I won't forget it.

Shooting without grip tape is not better, but it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. It has shown me so much already about the flaws in my grip. I am going to figure this out and see what happens if I put the tape back on the gun after that.

Now for a question to all those shooters who have aquired a neutral grip and use no effort to hold the gun during shooting:

The only thing I couldn't solve in the 40 rounds I had left was getting the gun to stop at the right height. I would see the sight perfectly on the first shot, but when it would come straight down it stopped when the top of the slide was still very visible. The bottom of the front sight was at the position where the top should be.

Edited to add a link to Rob Leatham's Q&A which I found interesting

Damn, it feels like everything has changed. The way I tracked my sights. It was like I could put all my attention into looking at the gun.

Dude,

How many rounds do you usually pop in order to have your new revelation installed in your muscle memory?

As I am having a hard time trying to apply recently learned technic as soon as I hear the buzzer! Therefore going back to the the old style, which is crappy by the way

Before I hear the LARM and STAND BY, I tell my self that I will just relax and try to apply learned technic. But the result is always the opposite

[Left Grip Breaking Off On Recoil]

Interestingly...I'll have specific forearm muscles that will be slightly sore after a few practice's re-establishing grip technique

I have noticed the same. Especially the muscles close to my weak arm elbow will be sore.

What I like about shooting without tape and grip goo (if I will stick to it) is that I take that extra step to being independent of artificial help, meaning I can basically pick up any Glock around the world and shoot it well.

I wonder if the Big Dawgs from the Golden age (Brian, TGO etc.) used tape, or would use it now. I'd love to hear their opinion on the matter (Brian?)

My initial decision of not using anything also came from realizing that the sick runs at the steel challenge by Brian and the awesome shooting of TGO were all done without tape of grip goo.

Ouch! You make them seem that old...

Anyways, with regards to gripping the gun should I grip it as hard as I can or I should just make it a neutral grip?

I know... I know... I should what works best for me. But I will ask for everyones opinion on this one anyway. I just want to have some pointers, before I experiment...

Cheers,

Chie

[Front sight lifts, then what?]

Luca & Flexmoney,

Thanks for the tips. Will ask for a bud's assistance to see if I'm blinking or not.

Chie

[Front sight lifts, then what?]

All you have to see is the front sight lifting out of the notch a bit, and then again right as it's coming back down into the notch. There's no reason to see or try to see any more than that. Depending on the difficulty level of the shot(s) and if you're shooting a string of shots on the same target, you may see more of the front sight's travel than that. But that will just happen naturally - as long as you're not trying to see too hard or too much. And like Duane said (paraphrasing), to see that just calmly look in the area where the front sight is.

be

I hope Brian can answer this one.

Can you really visualize the front sight lift out of the notch and back down the notch? Is it like in slow motion or something different? Because when I align my sights on a target as soon as the gun goes off, I could not track the front sights lift or go back down and have to look for it again and align it on the rear sight for the 2nd shot.

I wonder what the GM's exactly see when the gun goes off? So atleast I would know what to look for

Cheers

[Left Grip Breaking Off On Recoil]

I tried FASTGRIP lotion and it works for me. But sometimes the darn gun still slips from my grip I wonder how hard should I grip my gun

[1911 built on Armscor Frame]

nice gun nemo!

in support of armscor 1911, here is my current game gun, i call it "SAMSCOR" frame is ARMSCOR, Slide is from Shooters Arms Mfg Philippines aka SAM. Duracoat was used for the paint. To date, it has seen 7,000 rounds

All ya need now is some spinner bling blings and your ready to roll!

[New Millenium Limited Gun]

Is she a 5" or 6"?

[New Millenium Limited Gun]

I just love the texture of the grip.

[My New Blaster]

Been waiting for this!

Nice Blaster!

[Ejecting Live Rounds From 1911]

Been there done that ! One thing I can advice is always guage (fit) all your ammo in your barrels chamber! So, you will not jam while practicing or during the match.