-JCN-

A buddy asked me if I could help with this: So we are going to try this tomorrow: Vampliers…

I’m tired of cleaning Alien pistons. I have a big ultrasound cleaner but… it’s big. I ordered a cheapo small unit today and will experiment with doing the pistons in simple green. I have done heavily carboned MPX pistons in CLR and it works great but I’m a little nervous to damage the coating on the piston that I think is TiN. It would probably be fine, but I’m going to try milder things first.

V’s last run on the same classifier. Even with a stumble on entry, 79%. Hits were good. Again for the people reading, her goal wasn’t to make a classification… it was to improve in a balanced way that would hold up to a variety of objective grading criteria. My goal as a coach is to make sure she didn’t ingrain a fundamental flaw that would limit her progress down the road. So I make sure her technique is good (or at least as good as I can coach at my level) and it’s up to her to develop the refinement and work at it to improve. This is from October 2023 shortly after we started training together. She had already self taught and dry fired basic fundamentals up to around a C class level. This is after 6 months of continued dry and live fire with some coaching. The things she has to work on to be an A class on demand are just extensions of the fundamentals we’ve laid. More precision in index and transitions (with less delay), better (and nuanced) recoil control. Basically improving the kinesthetic and proprioceptive accuracy so less vision required because less wobble and variability. But those things take time to refine. In discussion with V, she was a good friend and was concerned that I was kneecapping my own plans and goals in order to help hers. I assured her that helping her is getting me to a place that I had always wanted to get to, but lacked motivation and focus. Bundling our goals together is helping me stay on track in a way that I couldn’t / wouldn’t do on my own. It’s a very symbiotic relationship. Her time course and pace of improvement is similar to what you’ll find in some of the journals here. It’s not unheard of for someone to initial classify as B and then make A in 6 months after that and M 6-12 months after that. I like to think that I’m saving her some of the frustration and missteps that I personally went through in trying to figure out what’s what. I also like to think that her risk of burn out is way less doing it this way. We are really celebrating the process and the classification is just the spot check test of the ability. It’s really, really enjoyable. .

Good range session today. I had to work part day so we just did a morning session. Set up three classifiers and ran them a few times. I was mainly mid-high M runs with occasional GM if my index and trigger presses were aligned. If I biffed an element badly, then a high-A run crept in. I’m happy that I think I can say I’m an M class shooter. Sure, we’ll see what it turns out to be at a real match but it’s supportive. As for V, her comfortable runs are B+ level. Good runs were low A. Biffed runs were still B. So for her, I put her at a B+ skill level. Again, we will see how real life performance with nerves comes into play but that’s my best estimation of her skill set. Comparing us back to back it’s also easy to see what she needs help in and it charts the next phases of her training. We were able to work some footwork and execution things that helped her consistency and flow. It also speaks to the utility of a coach to have skills (or to have had skills) above the student. If you’re C class instructing a D class shooter… it’s hard for them to get past C class especially if some of your technique or assumptions are actually barriers to them improving. Same thing for B class. A lot of people plateau there (“terminal B”) because they have some fundamentally flawed assumptions that prevent them from breaking through. When they teach others, that flaw propagates and limits everyone involved. Sometimes ego also creeps in for the B class coach who doesn’t want to admit they don’t know what they don’t know, especially in front of their student(s). And they all suffer for it. Instead of training for a particular classification for V, we are training fundamentals at a high level. Index, recoil management, reloads, transition precision. Now we are to the point where she can digest footwork on top of that. She’s putting down high B classifiers after 6 months of work and I expect her to be putting down mid A scores by the end of the season. We aren’t pushing for her (or I) to get a classification we can’t support on course. That’s not our style. We don’t want to be the person who people say “he/she’s not really an XX class shooter.” We all have different definitions and goals. When I was just trying to make classifications, I would play that game… Hundo or bust to make GM. Threw out any run that wasn’t smoking fast. And was extremely inconsistent shooting faster than I could do reproducibly. But this phase in my life, I love the sport and the people in the sport. So I want to be more consistent and shoot classifiers at match speed rather than hero speed. I’m still toying around with some ideas, but I’m thinking of keeping a running 8 stage average and try to keep it above 85% with NO drops. I feel like for what I’m trying to define my skill set as, that is more representative of what I’m trying to do and adds the reproducibility element that I’m really looking for.

I got this message from V today. That’s really what I’ve come to love about the sport. I like the self improvement, but the camaraderie and community are what keep me engaged. Working with V is all of that, but on steroids. It’s similar to the joy and satisfaction I get working with and spending time with my daughter.

I have those tendencies too, it was much worse for me when I was younger and had more to prove. My wife and I have this saying: “Don’t go for the D rather than the B.” It was in regard to academics rather than hobbies but it’s the same concept. I used to put so much meaning and ego into the external grade that it was paralyzing and prohibitive. It was either A+ or F(uck) it. Over the years, I’ve gotten kinder to myself and am okay with being okay. I’d like to be “pretty good,” but I only have a certain amount of time, energy and physical endurance to spend. That’s one of the things I love about the classification system. When I started USPSA in 2019, I thought I would top off at A class so that was my long term goal. I could work towards those goals independently of who showed up at the match and I could identify inefficiencies that I could work on at home on my free time. So currently, I don’t have a goal except being more efficient and consistent. I usually spend 20 minutes a day dry firing and I enjoy it as meditation. Classification skills checking is a way for me to get objective data. If all I can maintain is a B or A level, then it is what it is and I’m okay with that. If it weren’t for V, I’d probably still be farting around with revolver. But in showing her how to get better, I am benefiting from the rehabilitation as well. My ego will just have to be okay with being whatever I am with the amount of effort and physical durability I have left.

That's great that you're still shooting at 60 and competing for the wins! I hope to still be actively competing in 10 years. That is fantastic! Regarding classifiers, it can be used as a road map for achievement and skill development. Like a self-coaching curriculum. That's what I use it for. It's a database driven system so it's overall a pretty good representation of what someone with exceptional skills would do on that particular task. This is kind of a famous US example: Jay Beal trained on his own with financial and access limitations to the shooting sports. He set off skill building trying to make Open Master from concealment. He had nobody to compare himself to, but used classifier skills as a guide. Eventually, he branched out from classifier goals in Open to competing in Carry Optics where he did extremely well in his first big national match out. It's a great story and an illustration of how learning what you don't know can help guide training. Good data is good data. I know for me, it's cut off a bunch of time in training having consistent achievement standards on novel tasks. If you're curious and have the range availability, you can test it yourself to see how it might help your training. Here's a USPSA classifier with IPSC targets, it's an easy one for you to set up and try it out: https://uspsa-docs.b-cdn.net/classifier-stages/Win Some Lose Some 22-05.pdf These are the points needed for each level of achievement for Limited Optics (let me know if you run irons or Open). Give it a try, see where you score. See if it matches what you thought your performance was! Aren’t you curious? Then run it a few more times knowing what is expected of you and see if it adds value to your training. For me, it cuts a lot of time off of training knowing what standards to train for. Like for V, we ran multiple different classifiers in practice testing different skills and her percentage was pretty consistent at 74-76% which I take to mean she's developing a broad and consistent level of fundamental skills. In real life at a match, I expect tension and tightness to cause a 5% drop in performance. But having good data really helps us train consistently. And again to be clear, we aren't chasing classifications per se... we're chasing the requisite skills at each level of performance. It's like the line out of the Ben Stoeger dry fire book that roughly says: We want to BE the classification, not just have a paper card that says it. .

Went to the range and did some quick drills to see if my minds eye was matching up better to the reality of the gun. It was much closer this time and I was pretty happy with the timing and tuning. I’m more optimistic about the trajectory of improvement, now. I also decided to set up a couple extra full RSA with tuned springs. I have three RSA now that I can just hot swap without cleaning. I’ll try doing that every 200-300 rounds. I also got my Dawson sights for the SP01 tactical. I recommend the Wheeler laser for a quick ballpark for red dots, but it is super helpful for mocking up iron alignment too. When I had gone to the local range earlier, the RSO I had suggested it to (previously) came out gushing about how popular he was with all the range guys. They saw the light. I like helping people almost as much as learning about stuff.

To me at this stage in my life, I’m not looking to win at a recreational hobby. It’s like recreational bowling league or local golf league. I’m there to improve my skill and to support (and be supported by) my friends. I guess I’m at the point in my life that I care more about my relationships than trying to make a mark on the world with a hobby. Really the only thing I care about being the best at is being a father to my daughter. I want to be happy for my friends’ successes and not wrapped up in beating them or finishing ahead of them at a particular match. Because at the end of the day, it’s the relationships that really matter. That’s all IMO.

@Racinready300ex me too, haha. That’s why working with V has been great for economies of scale. She helps me set up and we both run the stages. I usually only pick three stand stages though, haha. Having objective benchmarks helps me get better as a self taught shooter. When I started Steel Challenge, I thought I was good… but the rimfire times were way out of reach. But knowing that X was the time to hit, it forced me to learn how to get the hits at that pace and what I could get away with for vision with a better trigger press. Without the objective grading criteria, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing.

@Racinready300ex well said. I get that some people think second place is first loser and all that. But I’ve got plenty of grey hairs and winning isn’t on my list of goals. Getting better within the limits of my aging body is. The classification system is a great resource for me to figure out what speed and accuracy I’m looking for the task at hand. Want to know how the index and recoil management stacks up? Run can you count. Index with accuracy? Eye of the tiger. Mid range bread and butter speed and accuracy? El Prez. et cetera, et cetera. Beating others isn’t my goal. Bettering myself is.

See, I think that’s a narrow definition and misses some of the beauty of the classification system. How you do at a match is how good you were on that day at the things that were tested at the match. Plus. Most of us amateurs do this in our free time and we know we suck. It’s not an all or nothing thing. I’m assuming you’re not 50 years old, right? I’m never going to be as good as someone in their athletic prime at this sport. But this lets me compare myself against myself and in a general way track my expectations of component skills that are too hard to tease out over a large match. .

@perttime also here with USPSA, large match performance also counts as a classifier so even if you never shot a classifier, you’d still get a classification by going to larger matches. So it’s not something we can really avoid here, it is what it is. Plus they have separate classifiers built into National events. If you don’t go to Nationals it’s kind of cool for small town club members to set up the stage and test their skills against the big fish too. It’s kind of like a postal match in that regard.

I wonder if that is because of culture or size / geography? I don’t know the answer to that. Any idea of how many US clubs and competitors versus European clubs and competitors? It also may be partly how USPSA requires clubs to run a certain number of classifiers per year so basically everyone is classified who has shot for a year. Also trophies and payouts here are often by class as well. I don’t know that it’d be so much of a thing here if classifications weren’t mandated by USPSA structure, but it’s part of the culture. Also with the USA covering as much territory as it does, I can be on vacation 2800 miles away from my home club, still be in the US and squad with people who roughly shoot like me by looking at their classifications…. .

How much work does it take to make B class? A class? M class? GM? And how much work does the average college athlete spend training for their sport per week? What about the average professional athlete? How many total hours have they spent to get to that level? IMO, B class performance deserves a lot of respect. It represents some real work put into the sport. It’s just that the amount of effort to get to M is an order of magnitude more, but that’s consistent with the investment required to get “good” at any other sport.

Hey Noah! Good to see you! I enjoy it for a number of reasons. It helps me organize my thoughts and plans. It helps me consolidate things I've learned. It allows quick review of progress (or stagnation). As a side benefit, it might help others to see the process and what goes into it. This journal is a little different because of V and her training. It's the first time I'm working with someone in this kind of capacity. It's also a 3rd person view of how to start at square one and get to a higher level.

Maybe I remember things better than they actually were... (ex-girlfriend effect)... I spent the time after the steel match digesting the Alien and my mind wandered back to the Shadow 2. "I was so much better with that gun and I should perhaps go back to it, screw this bulls#!t...." Is what passed through my head. But was it like remembering an ex-girlfriend when starting a new relationship? Was I having selective memories of just the good times? So I went back to look at my 5 to Go (SC-101) times from last year (they're not in chronological order). They really weren't that good. This was my stage this weekend with the Alien. It was consistent and significantly faster than anything I had put down last year... I like having objective data to go back to! I think there's always that risk when comparing to others at matches (that might be improving, staying the same or aging out of competitiveness)... you never know what kind of training or match they had. Same thing with remembering historic classifications or your classification percent. I remember feeling awesome with the Shadow 2 when doing hundo runs... BUT... those runs aren't hundos by today's standards. People have gotten better and an M or GM today is a much higher level of shooting than it was 3, 5, 10 years ago. It's like the 4 minute running mile and overall times and speed (from Wikipedia). I like to try and contextualize myself by current standards and that means improving objectively. Sure, at some point I'm going to age out and be the legacy guy with a classification I can't back up. At that point, I hope to be the guy who busts his ass volunteering at the club and smiles enjoying the young bucks/does tearing it up on course.

Yeah, I'm kind of hating the cleaning frequency... but at least it's a fairly quick clean. I'm still kind of new to the platform and trying to figure out what fails with what interval, but I suspect I'm ultimately going to have to do something similar.

Shot a steel challenge match today. Didn’t do my normal preparation but thought I would use it as practice for skills tune up. Mainly for vision and trigger presses. Knocked off some rust with PCC and rimfire pistol irons. It was helpful for vision. I appreciate that Steel Challenge has such objective data and ratings. Just tried for consistency and ramped up slowly. Still off last year’s pace by a fair amount but that’s to be expected. I also shot Open with the LO alien. First few stages were pretty rough. Man, my trigger presses with that gun aren’t good. By the end, was able to put down an M class stage which is pretty good for me using Open time standards. It would have been a GM Carry Optics stage so that tracks. I’m feeling good about my new spread of goals and what it’s going to take to get to them. I feel like it’s the right amount of work and effort to get there balanced with being able to get there. I was too optimistic in what I’d be able to accomplish with split focus. There are only so many hours in the day and I’m not getting any younger! I have to stretch before stages, lol. BTW I did wind up cleaning the alien before the match. I think I might make it a more consistent routine to swap out pistons at 500 rounds. The dirty second-third rings are what prevent the gun from going smoothly back into battery. .

ASSumptions When my battery died in my 507 comp, it was a 1632. I just assumed the battery in the EPS was a 1632. It swapped in just fine and ran. So when we tried putting a 1632 into the EPS… didn’t fit well. So I pulled the battery out of the 507 comp to check it… Yup. You guessed it. It was a 1620, not a 1632. They’re so similar in dimension that I didn’t notice the difference in feel when I had swapped them.

Had such a good squad yesterday. People who have been working hard in the off season and the improvement showed. It was great. Everyone supported each other and had positive energy. No negativity or selfishness, everyone just cheered and celebrated people’s achievements. After digesting our performances and reviewing video a few times: Re V: She’s motivated and energized at seeing her progress and having the visualization of what needs to crisp up to get there. Different stage plans are available at different levels of fundamental skill which is why continuing to assess and work on fundamentals is so important. If you don’t have good trigger press, you can’t take things on the move. If you don’t have good recoil control, you have to wait longer at each position rather than flowing through. If you don’t have good reloads, you don’t have certain reloading windows available to you. That’s the reason (IMO) getting to a certain level of fundamental skill is probably a good idea before trying to compete in earnest (if you have a long term competition goal). Re Me: I’m seeing improvement in places I’m historically weak. Stage planning and execution. Adding complexity in entries and exits as part of the plan. Better mental preparation. The results are being masked by unfamiliarity with the gun in live. My reloads and index are pretty decent with the gun from dry… but the timing and coordination of trigger to impulse is still not there. And my trigger presses aren’t that good. I need more live fire with the gun. Going to spend more time in Steel Challenge with the gun so I can work on my trigger presses at speed and my vision with the Holosun 8 MOA reticle. Also, I still haven’t made it through a match without a malfunction yet. Had another FTRB in one of the later stages when I stopped brushing chamber. To be fair, I’m at 1k rounds since the last cleaning and I’m still trying to determine what my maintenance intervals are. I’m thinking I should probably swap pistons or at least check for carbon chunks every 500 rounds or so.

Shot a match with V today. Lot to unpack. We debriefed over lunch. She is enjoying the process and feeling the improvement. Repertoire continues to develop. We had a great squad today. She's still figuring out her cadences and vision requirements in different scenarios. That never really ends, it's an ongoing process. But it's getting more roughed in and the pieces are falling more into place. For me, I started off shaky and my mind's eye and reality still weren't jiving with that gun. It settled in towards the end and things went better. But it reinforced that I really need to buckle down and put a lot of runs on this platform so I can be one with it. My stage planning and footwork were better than they have been, but ironically it was my shooting that let me down (which is the opposite of what I historically had been). Sooooo. I'm motivated to quit f*#king around and concentrate on my LO USPSA. I'm going to say I'm A class level until I get more comfortable with the gun. That's what I'm going to expect of myself for the next few months, with M level performance by the Fall. I'm going to pretend that I don't have a classification for training purpose and work as if I were an A class and train to earn my theoretical M.

I teased my cat with this shirt. And she was so scared that she peed on the bed.

I'm glad I was able to get some objective data with V the other day. Without actual data, it's just feelings. It doesn't matter what I want to happen, objective skill assessment and probability assessment matter. Breaking it down further, I think Steel Challenge iron work is about all I can do this year for a side goal. I don't think I have enough time to do the extra gun manipulation and recoil control things. It makes sense to just train up the vision, trigger presses and transitions first (in SCSA). If I can't execute those to M on demand, then what business do I have of trying for USPSA GM heroing? It's just not going to happen (which is what I determined from the classifier data yesterday). But... I think working some of those skills is still probably a benefit in the background. Revolver boils down to strength and really good trigger presses for me and those are some things that can help my LO shooting as well. It's like weight lifting and resistance training. I might just use local classifiers and classifier matches to identify and work on things that need working on in my primary division. Shoot classifiers as regular stages. I don't want a classification higher than I'm able to perform at for my primary division. I'd be self conscious of "impostor syndrome." I was talking to V about it and I think for handguns in USPSA, M is the sweet spot of ability and performance without necessarily gaming classifiers. An M on demand is a pretty high level of performance and a really good goal IMO. I would be happy with just being an M and performing at an M level. IMO that definition for me has a certain consistency parameter built in. Right now, I can perform at M level. Sometimes. But with the new platform, I'm not sure if it's kinda sometimes or most times or many times. And that's something I can work on. The consistency and reproducibility of performance at that level. .

V helped me talk through my goals. It was helpful. So my assessment and thoughts. I’m still not good at irons. To add additional platform and mag / moon loading… there’s no point right now. I can peak out at 90% but that doesn’t really help me classification wise for USPSA. It makes sense for me to just work irons in Steel Challenge first and as I improve with iron vision then add the extra gun handling stuff for USPSA. But really no point to make classifiers for USPSA any type of goal this year. I’m only A class in irons for Steel Challenge. I should work at that first, I think. If local classifiers come up, I should probably put in the work on my primary platform and use it as a test rather than a classification goal.