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Glock A Roo

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Looks for Range

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  1. Quote: from Steve Anderson on 4:03 pm on Jan. 1, 2003 ...I stopped and realized I was hunched over the gun... I stood up straight, relaxed and the groups improved... Now in dry fire, I'm standing much straighter and much more relaxed. Live fire still has some lean, but not as much. Still experimenting... SA I too get much better results, even under match stress, by standing pretty much upright. I am baffled though when I see the top shooters like Barnhart and Avery leaning heavily into the stance. Avery less so than Barnhart (who looks like the absolute antithesis of relaxation, clenched jaw and all), but Avery still hunches his shoulders and leans his head waaaaay into the gun. Every time I try that I get tensed up and heel the muzzle to the left. For some reason, keeping my head up high and bringing the gun up to my eyeline (like Burkett advises) allows me to index quicker than pushing my chin forward trying to look like Avery. But every time I flip through the pages of "Front Sight", I see the top guys leaning strongly into their stances and I figure there's something I'm missing... ? (Edited by Glock A Roo at 6:21 pm on Jan. 2, 2003)
  2. Flex, The almost-straight arm position combined with my arms' biomechanics caused me to push the muzzle to the left. So this made me work very hard at the last moment of the presentation to realign the sights. This struggle ruined relaxation and neutrality. Plus my mindset was one of forcing myself into the gun instead of flowing with it. I think... For me and my structure, I have only achieved that spring-loaded front sight action using a position that looks a lot like BE's and Burkett's. Now the sights practically align themselves with whatever target surface I square off to. I have changed my mindset as much as my mechanics. Now to harness it...
  3. Hi Brian I've been shooting matches for about 2 years, mostly IDPA with some IPSC thrown in. As I understand it, your advice is to do timing drills but not worry about the actual splits, just maintain neutrality so as to achieve good sight recovery/consistency. Keep working this without regard to actual times and just let my mind optimize things for speed as the index becomes more subconcious. Is this right?
  4. After lots of experimentation I think I've developed a neutral grip and upper body shooting platform. Now I'd like to learn how to harness it. Background: for a long time I've had the weakhand "cam technique" going but I kept my arms very close to being locked out. I was pushing hard behind the gun, driving into it like a linebacker instead of "driving" the gun like BE says. This pushed my muzzle to the left a bit and kept the front sight lift from being consistent. Muzzle flip was minimal but the lack of consistency really hurt. In 20/20 retrospect I see that I was muscling the gun and suffering the consequences. Lately I've bent my arms more, leaned & hunched less behind the gun, and presented the gun like a cup of tea on a saucer instead of punching out with it. It's almost like I'm gently raising a gift up to the eyeline between myself and the target. From watching myself in the mirror my platform now looks very much like Matt B in this picture http://www.comp-tac.com/images/matt3.jpg Now the sights pretty much align themselves between my eye and the target without much effort. The sight tracking is consistent between shots and the realignment after recoil recovery is very nice. One thing I see though is that the muzzle is flipping more and I need to exercise more visual patience before breaking the next shot. This has increased my splits from 0.15-0.20s using the old bruteforce method to more like 0.25-0.30s. It doesn't sound like much of a time difference but it feels like an eternity. I shoot an almost-stock Glock 19 by the way. So, will quicker splits come naturally as I adjust to the kinesthetics of my more neutral mechanics? Or do I need to lock/set my wrists more, like Avery talks about? It would be useful to hear some replies along the lines of "well, when I went through that stage of shooting development...". I think I've made a significant improvement but I don't know where to go from here. Thanks in advance. (Edited by Glock A Roo at 4:30 pm on Dec. 11, 2002)
  5. followup report: Note that in my post I mentioned that my weak (left) arm was just short of being locked out. More than once I have been advised by high level mod-iso shooters to bend my left arm more. But when I did, I sensed more muzzle flip so I kept it out there just short of locked. Well, I recently took an Andy Stanford class and he gave me the same advice: "bend your left arm more to get it more symmetric with the right arm". I also started picking up nicely his teaching on utilizing trigger prep and reset. I shoot Glocks so taking advantage of reset helps a lot. I noticed this: when my left arm was bent more, there was some more muzzle flip, BUT I also realized 2 very important things: 1) there was more flip, but the gun returned EXACTLY to its orginal position after the shot broke. Combined with quick trigger reset, this made the followup shot very easy to break accurately and quickly. Not nearly as much effort was required to "see what I needed to see" for the next shot. 2) the more-bent left arm shifted my natural POA so that when I squared my shoulders to the target, my sights line up DEAD-ON centered in the A zone. Woo-hoo! I can square to the target, close my eyes, present the weapon, and when I open my eyes my sights are perfectly centered on the target. This eliminates the struggle (and therefore tension, inconsistency, etc.) of fighting my own stance to get the gun centered on target. This improvement has enhanced not only my fast-mode IPSC/IDPA shooting but also makes it much easier to hit those steel targets at 50 yards. In retrospect, I see that the almost-straight left arm was good for "brute-forcing" the muzzle flip, but it caused my sights to return INCONSISTENTLY. This variable degree of sight shift forced me to do a lot more work to set up the followup shot, and invited poor trigger control in the rush to make that next shot. Funny thing is that you can (and I have) read this same info 1000 times in Brian's book, but it's hard to grasp until you experience it. Ironically, Brian's book is helping me more _after_ I improve than beforehand. It explains why the improvements help. Reading his work confirms my experience and improves my confidence since in some ways I am treading a path already worn by a master. Gotta love it.
  6. For a long time my shots averaged a little left of center (but never low) on an IPSC target. Being righthanded I figured the problem was trigger control or milking the grip. Through studious dryfire, group shooting, and analysis I eliminated these possibilities. By staying aware of what I saw during the shooting, I noticed that a lot of times my sights actually were aimed a little left of center, like between the letter "A" and the left edge of the A zone. I realized that when I square my shoulders to the target and grip the gun "naturally", the muzzle is pointed a little left. I can shift my arms to recenter the aim, but when shooting at full speed my body relaxes to its natural POA and the muzzle is once again slightly pointed left. By shifting my right foot back a bit more than usual and slightly blading my shoulders (left shoulder a bit more forward), I close my eyes, aim, and the muzzle is centered dead-on. This centering holds up during fast shooting. My grip has both thumbs off the frame but pointed at the target. The left thumb's muscle is driving into the grip panel and the left wrist is cocked at a 45 degree angle. The left arm is just a bit short of being locked out. This seems to minimize muzzle flip for me. Thus my question: is it heretical of me to violate the "stay squared to the target" element of the modern iso? Is there some benefit of staying squared that I lose with my minor Weaver-esque stance adjustment?
  7. NewGuy, I must emphatically tell you: you need personal intruction from a qualified teacher. Not someone who just shoots well, but a good shooter who is experienced in _tranferring his knowledge_ and _teaching_ it to someone who doesn't know. At the performance level you describe, you are not advanced enough to be your own coach. Techniques of good action pistol shooting are not natural. No one knows how to do this stuff innately. Some are better equipped to advance their skillset rapidly, of course, but they all must be shown at some point or another. Even the greats like Enos and Leatham were well founded in the fundamentals before they pioneered their now-famous methods for top shooting performance. Get training from a qualified teacher, and save yourself a lot of grief.
  8. Quote: from John Thompson on 2:55 pm on Dec. 4, 2001 GLOCK A ROO, That's interestng about skill level in IDPA dosen't make it safe for shooters to move because in that match I shot last week they had a target that was set on the 180 and you had to break the 180 to engage it because of hard cover! I made a stink about it and was told there is no 180 rule in IDPA. That's right John, no 180 rule in IDPA. At a match this weekend we had a stage that required going beyond the 180. The stage was designed by the same SO i mentioned above. I guess he's more worried about people engaging and moving at the same time than he is about statically breaking the 180 line.
  9. Hello fellas. I've shot both IPSC and IDPA but focus more on IDPA. I am not a supremely-skilled shooter, but I am a serious student of the combat mindset, tactics, and the dynamics of performance while under stress. IDPA is not perfect but it is a convenient forum to try stuff out. I would like to see more movement allowed in IDPA. I hate shooting boxes, though I understand the need for them. I was trained (and I practice) to move when I draw, to shoot on the move whenever possible, and to move during reloads or malfunction clearances. Space permitting, of course. Even though IDPA strives for "tactical correctness", I feel there are far too many stages where you stand exposed to multiple threats. I have gotten to the point where I move anyway and accept the penalties. This is probably a course design/philosophy issue. When I talked to an experienced, respected local SO about it he said that he agrees about the movement. But he said that the skill level of most IDPA shooters doesn't really allow high-movement shooting to be safe. He has a point. Thus my solution: I have the skills, so I excercise them in the match. When I get penalized for it, I don't care. Bottom line: if the s**t hits the fan in "Real Life", I will know how to move in the gunfight without thinking about it. That is a skill I am willing to lose IDPA points over.
  10. I have to say, I've been having a lot of trouble on this wrist-setting issue. I've got Ron's 3-tape set (which is excellent) in which he demonstrates the handshake example, where he can easily wiggle the fingers although his wrists are relatively immobile. The student he recruits for the demo can't make Ron's wrist bend, even though Ron moves his fingers effortlessly. Over the last couple of months I have reasonably integrated the essentials of the modern iso technique and seen good results. One thing I haven't been doing much is working on setting my wrists like Ron describes. Sitting here at the computer, I can "set" my wrist pretty rigidly and still easily move my fingers, which is what Ron advises. It's makes sense to me that such a "spring loaded", but not locked down, position would help bring the muzzle back quicker. It sure works for Ron. But when I try it at the range, I lose fluidity and my technique is halting and choppy. I really feel that success on this issue would make a big difference in my shooting, but I just can't seem to get a handle on it. I'm not saying you guys should be coaching me over the internet; I just wanted to add a perspective to the discussion.
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