Cjblackmon

One thing that has really helped me get over shooting swingers was Saul Kirsch's book "Perfect Practice". It has swinger drills and gives you a good explanation on how to engage it. The exercises show you an easy way to shoot it and then progresses to shooting it from behind no shoots and through windows.

Folks, We might get wet . The weatherman changed his story. So, bring some rain gear to be on the safe side. Jack Jack, Good luck this weekend! I hope that you guys have a dry match! I'll keep a lookout for the match results next week. Chad

Sharyn, nice work with the video!

So can anyone fill me in on what Area 6 is like, competition, stages, etc.? This will be my second major match.

Maybe a Clearwater Cop wearing lipstick?

I had a blast! Being my first major match, I had no basis for comparison so I didn't think anything of the tight shots and multiple no shoots on the stages. I'm definately hooked! It was nice meeting a few people from the Forum (Jack Suber and Sharyn).

I bought my Pro-slim's back in December and the rep at Ridgeline told me that January of this year they have an upgrade package (Stonger headband and fatter ear cups) for the Pro-Slim's that give you the exact same performance as the Pro-Mags for $40 more. Quite honestly, the Pro-Slim's are great and I don't need anything more. I shoot outdoor IPSC, Single Stack and IDPA as well as shoot at the indoor range for practice with no complaints in noise. Take the Pro-Slims! I'm thinking of getting the hearing aid style hearing protection. When you go out in the Summer heat with Hat, Hearing Protection and Eye Protection, it gets pretty hot. The only problem is that cost about $800 for the analogs and I heard about $1600 for the digitals.

Two things Lanny Bassham told me about being competitive: 1. Pressure to win is good, but put the pressure on during your practice sessions, Let the Process of your practice allow you win. 2. The Threshold between Optimum Performance and "Just Having Fun" are very close. Relax and shoot, if you've been practicing, your Subconcious will do the rest, it's when we use our Concious mind to shoot, that we start thinking about everything else that doesn't matter and that distraction is what makes us tank.

So how do you feel about yourself and your capabilities now? Do you have the belief now to move you to the next level? This State Match has gotten me a little anxious. I took the liberty of ordering Lanny's Book and last Thursday I spoke with him on the phone for about a half an hour and got some great mental paradigms on shooting and how I should approach it. I had him overnight the Mental Management for Shooting Sports so I could listen to it in my car. There's a lot of knowledge poured into those CD's.

A friend of mine just emailed me this press release if anyone else is interested. Universal Shooting Academy is proud to announce that Emanuel Bragg will be the new Director of Training. Mr. Bragg is ranked one of the best shooters in the country and will bring a great deal of expertise to our training program. The 2006 class schedule will consist of 2-day weekend format taught by Emanuel Bragg . Tuition will be $395 per student. Each student will need 2000 rounds of ammunition for this course. The dates are as follows, April 1-2 May 27-28 June 24-25 July 1-2 Aug 5-6 Sept 23-24 If any of these dates will work for you, Please fill out the registration form on our web site www.universalshootingacademy.com and Mail or FAX it in with a $100 deposit. This will reserve your slot. Class slots are limited. Thanks for your interest in our program. Thanks Frank Garcia I'm going to talk to Manny at the State Match next weekend about scheduling another class.

I have had the pleasure of attending Frank's Shooting Academy last month. What I'm going to do is try to go down there at least once every other month to get a refresher course, fine tune the engine, and primarily use as coaching. Frank left for Iraq on the 15th and is going to be out for a several months. I heard that Emanuel Bragg is going to be taking over his classes in Frank's absence. Does anyone know Manny and what he's like in relation to Frank when teaching, as well as what the training schedule is going to be?

Thanks...

I think he means that the classifier doesn't fully represent match skills. At least that's how I perceive it. I shot the Classifier last weekend and made Expert (a few points shy of Master), I made Marksman in December 2005 in CDP. Since the last two weeks of December I have been shooting USPSA/IPSC, Single Stack Matches, along with IDPA, and practicing in general, I shoot about 4-5 times a week, which has really helped me become an overall better shooter. I could shoot Master if I practiced the Classifier a couple of times (literally). But the Classifier can be rehearsed and practiced over and over, and when you Classify at a higher level, the stages aren't going to the same, you're involving more moving than in the Classifier, and you're going to be shooting like a lower class shooter. To make a long story short, I feel (Just my thoughts) that the IDPA Classifier doesn't represent "Total" match skills. It can be practiced, you could make Master, and still not hang with the Masters. So I guess in general, it would be easy to cheat yourself.

Put simply...To win. It gives great advantage to the shooter so he doesn't have to practice. Kinda like a Black Belt in Tae Kwon Do putting on a Green Belt and beating the inexperienced people in a tournament.

I have learned that when strong hand grip is over exaggerated due to the anticipated recoil of fast shots, the trigger finger doesn't move as quickly or travel far enough between shots to reset the trigger, therefore causing trigger freeze. I've tried to take Enos' advice and shoot with a relaxed grip to eliminate the problem and so far it works.

To whom are you addressing? If it is me, I'm in Tampa, Florida.

This past weekend, Feb 24th, 25th, 26th. He's going to Iraq on the 15th of March and be back in June. I'm going to try to see him again when he get's back to do a refresher and take the advanced class. Hey congrats on last weekend! I saw your score. Those stages are nothing like our local matches. To make it even Frank made us all shoot it as a Limited 10, since another guy and myself were shooting Limited guns and the other two were shooting a Glock and a Springer XD. Baseball was fun but the NASCAR stage was a pain to figure out.

Highly recommend Garcia as well here in Florida. I just finished a 3 day class with him this weekend and it phenomenal. He practices and teaches the basics of fundamentals. To drill them in to make the movements second nature. I know it sounds boring and elementary but it's kinda like Golf, If your swing sucks you're going to ingrain those bad habits and they'll be very hard to unlearn, more importantly, if you get to a higher level (Class) you'll platau because your foundation is weak. We did two days of drills and practice and then we shot the stages from the Florida Open from the weekend before on the third day. It's neat to watch all that you practice come together. There were a few guys that couldn't hit the broad side of a barn when we started and the third day they were hittitng everything. You actually saw the difference in your shooting and ability. Frank is very down to earth and very patient, he is by far one of the greatest teachers I have ever had.

Okay what you're saying now makes sense. The only thing that bothers me is that there is a lot of griping in the sport. So many people that are whining about rules, gear, gaming, etc. and I myself took the article that way. You did state your case, and made a very, very big topic of discussion. I just saw your article as another complaint and wanted to defend IDPA and it's rules. I wish there weren't so much contraversey to the sport. It's how I first got into competitive shooting and I really love to shoot IDPA. There's just a certain few at the clubs I just want to stay away from because listening to them just drains the life out of you. It really brings down the sport and drives people away.

That kinda contradicts what you wrote when you said in your article "So, I beg of all you shooters out there. Don't reload your ammo to the floor; use full power ammo to shoot IDPA. I think we should all strive to shoot about 15,000-20,000 over the power floor". Not caring and begging don't sound like the same thing to me. As far as being flattered for the response, dude you were getting ripped one side down the other on every other post. Yes there are probably a lot of contradictions to to the rules, but that article wasn't taken by the readers as general discussion but as another gripe. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm only going by what you said in your article and your posts.

The whole point of this wasn't to start another IDPA Complaint Thread but rather just state some ideas on what they thought of the article. Are we all not under the same impression that if IDPA did raise the Power Factor that the same guys that were winning with the 165pf loads would still win with the factory loads? Yes. We all come to the same conclusion as well, if pf is at 165 and you reload, why beat yourself and your gun up shooting 195-200pf with a .45? I have a hard time believing that the IDPA Journal would publish the article knowing that it would raise so many eyebrows and complaints. I called the Journal to ask if that guy works for the Journal or is it just a random letter that got printed (I didn't know) and it's just a members stated opinion. I think like this thread, all it did was stir up a Hornet's nest. I started shooting IDPA to get into competitive shooting, I really like it. I met a few IPSC/USPSA shooters and started shooting both. In my IDPA clubs there a few guys with strong animosity towards IPSC/USPSA and it's funny, the IPSC/USPSA guys could care less and they just shoot to have fun. I have seen so much bickering and complaining in IDPA, uneven ROing (one RO calls procedural for something while another RO doesn't for the same thing, or even worse, RO calls procedural on one guy while not calling it on someones else who did the exact same thing), there's a lot of incongruency. You don't hear the complaining in IPSC that you do in IDPA. It really turns a lot of people off to the sport and people end up leaving. I know that the simple thing for me to do is to leave IDPA alltogether, but honestly, I like it. I've made a lot of new friends and I stay away from the group that always gripes and complains. A lot of people left IPSC because of the gaming factor, "it wasn't how good you were it's what you could afford to buy", people that didn't have the money to buy race guns complained it was uneven and unfair, they formed IDPA. Now that we're all shooting stock guns, guess what? It still isn't fair. Do you think it will it ever end? We need to find a way to keep IDPA fun as well as keeping everybody on the same page and congruent with the rules. Or are we in that Quandry where not everyone is going to be happy?

Damn....I thought I was the only one who does that!!!!!!

Has anyone heard word one on when they're supposed to have the downloadable software online? When I ordered my Pact IV in mid December, they said it would be out and on their website to download in January.