Fourtrax's Range Report

[CB45]

Dryfired

Ahh! Good to hear! I need to get up to Peru and practice with you before A5.

[Chris iliff]

Dryfired

Ahh! Good to hear! I need to get up to Peru and practice with you before A5.

Yep,..........

Dry fired.

[Chris iliff]

30 min

Dry fired

Movement

Tired

[Chris iliff]

45 minutes

Dry fired

Movement

Legs pumped

I need to pull a Jake and drop a small human in weight. Geez, I'm dripping sweat like crazy.

[JakeMartens]

45 minutes

Dry fired

Movement

Legs pumped

I need to pull a Jake and drop a small human in weight. Geez, I'm dripping sweat like crazy.

Medium size person (150 pounds)

[Chris iliff]

Shot my first match of the year!!

Woke up and drove to Wildcat and set a stage with my Dad and Chad Boncquet (CB45). I would have liked to tune it a little better, but for time constraints I was proud of our stage!!

For my first match I had some of the typical first match problems. Little excited, kinda out ran the gun on a couple stages, some mental snafu's, one resulting in an FTE on a paper, that was a point sucker! Of course, this is stuff I can fix and will fix. All in all, I did do a bit better than I thought I would. Not much, but a bit.

First match I have shot using practiscore, gotta say that on the kindles it was kinda nice. Very intuitive and I could SEE the screens in the bright sun very easily. So, I am giving that method a thumbs up! Not that my opinion means much, but for all the naysayers out there..........I liked it if that matters.

Some high lights of the day........

Jonathon set a stage with 40 and 50 yard poppers. Although this was my FTE stage, I went one for one on the long steel. It was spaced far apart so each shot required a good transition. I was pleased with this shooting.

Last stage I believe was a stage win. I felt comfortable, was behind the gun, could see everything. I felt it came together here.

More DRYFIRE!!!

Edited to say: if you look up a post you'll see that Jake says he has dropped 150 lbs. I just wanted to say how awesome that accomplishment is and if you haven't seen Jake in awhile, you'll probably walk right past him. His appearance has changed by 150+ pounds!! Not awesome, SMOKING AWESOME!!!!!!!!!

Edited May 31, 2014 by Chris iliff

[Chris iliff]

Dry fired

45 min

Movement

Sweated my butt off.

[Chris iliff]

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=167762&page=15

I found this and thought, holy Snikey, I got reference this. When TGO gives advice it is noteworthy.

I must say, in the last Two years I've slowly worked myself to the same conclusions. Plus, I've watched CB45 do this and that cemented my opinion. It's what really works,

When I hear slow down and get your hits I now want to punch the person in the throat. It is the absolute worse advice to give a new or improving shooter.

[Corey]

That was a pretty good read! I had missed seeing it.

I really like it, but i think i like it more for the A/B/C shooter wanting to improve. For the brand new shooter or the low D class guy who struggles a ton, i think getting points is key. If you are missing 10+ times a match, you have to slow down. If you can stomp on the *thumb rest [generic]* and not hurt yourself with scoring its good to do but if you are already missing a ton of shots, no sense in making it worse. I could benefit from that methodology quite a bit, but a brand new shooter wouldn't get as much out of it.

When are we going to see you at a match!?!?!

[BillD]

I don't know. Chris S would go to a club match and have 16 mikes. He seemed to figure out hits at speed, mostly. Double GM after two years.

I think Chris I has the right idea about going fast. I don't believe we have to kick people in the crotch or punch them in the throat (getting a little angry here Chris ) for giving the slow down and get your hits advice.

Go fast enough and you can outrun mikes, mostly.

[CB45]

There is something a shooter must do, practice.

The speed thing is ABSOLUTELY a skill that is to be worked on in PRACTICE.

Some shooters need to work on simply shooting accurately. Most need work on shooting target arrays faster. I know several shooters who are going to shoot sloppy points regardless of shooting speed.

Match day is the worst time to practice speed. Match day is the test of how effective practice has been.

Diagnose weakness, practice weakness until it's a strength. Get better!

[Corey]

i think the going fast thing works IF you can already handle a pistol and hit a target slowly. Just stand there at 15 yards and shoot a slow fire group. If they are all in the A zone or close to, then the speed thing is beneficial. If a shooter can't even hit the target at their own pace, then going faster sure as hell wont help. Assumming the fundamentals are there, I like the concept!

Ans yes, the practice range is the place to try that, not match day

[Racer377]

I don't know about throat punching, but i am tempted to respond with a snarky comment about that mentality being why people get stuck in C/B class for years and years.

Going slow doesn't necessarily equal better hits. That advice to go slow completely misses the point. Don't go slow to get hits, learn how to pull the trigger better to get hits.

[BillD]

Ouch

[Corey]

I don't know about throat punching, but i am tempted to respond with a snarky comment about that mentality being why people get stuck in C/B class for years and years.

Going slow doesn't necessarily equal better hits. That advice to go slow completely misses the point. Don't go slow to get hits, learn how to pull the trigger better to get hits.

Thats a good one.

I've always like the "shoot fast/slow enough to get your hits. Do everything else as fast as you absolutely can. Why walk to the window when you can run. why take 3 seconds to do a reload when you can practice and do it in 1.5. anything thats not physically shooting the gun can be done faster without hurting you in anyway. Its the shooting part that SOME people do need to slow down on at some point in their shooting career. Like i said above, if you can hit a target slow, then what makes you think you can hit it faster? if you can hit it slow but not fast, find out WHY and fix that then you can hit it fast.

[Racer377]

If you can't hit it slow, you're not doing yourself any favors. Slow mikes and deltas are the worst of both worlds.

[rvb]

The problem with general advise is... it's too general.

I can think of examples of people who are always too smooth/slow but get great hits just as I can think of examples of people who are always as fast as the fastest guys but don't always connect and drop a lot of points. The latter types are the guys that when they connect, they really connect, but sprinkle in a few mikes and you have look down in the results for their names.

When folks improve their weakness and either learn to MOVE or learn to make their hits at speed, look out! It takes both in the end. DVC....

I do think that agressiveness and explosiveness are more personality driven, and are harder for folks to "learn." It seems easier for an explosive/agressive person to add trigger control and shot calling to their skill set than for a skilled trigger puller to add agressiveness/explosiveness...

As far as outrunning mikes... sometimes it's true you can outrun your competition enough to nullify a mike, but if you ballpark 2.5s per mike, just think how much your score could have improved had you connected... no one says, meh, it was just 2.5s to clear that malfunction, but we will say meh, a mike is ok cause i was pretty fast anyway? Both hurt the HF the same...

-rvb

[CB45]

See what you need to see.

Sorry Chris for loitering in your thread.

Btw, Chris S. is a group shooting beast. I dare anyone in Indiana to go heads up against him. The only person I've seen in the same ballpark is Ben S. Chris chooses to shoot fast enough to miss occasionally.

What do I know anyway? I've not been doing this long enough to know anything.

Edited June 6, 2014 by CB45

[TrukSnave]

There is something a shooter must do, practice.

The speed thing is ABSOLUTELY a skill that is to be worked on in PRACTICE.

Some shooters need to work on simply shooting accurately. Most need work on shooting target arrays faster. I know several shooters who are going to shoot sloppy points regardless of shooting speed.

Match day is the worst time to practice speed. Match day is the test of how effective practice has been.

Diagnose weakness, practice weakness until it's a strength. Get better!

thanks for calling me out…dick!

Edited June 6, 2014 by TrukSnave

[TrukSnave]

yea I agree Chris is a mad man with group shooting. His weak hand groups at 20 yards is better than most with 2 hands. He can nail 8" steel at 150 yards with his limited gun consistently. Chris likes to shoot fast…its more fun for him.

I shoot shitty points regardless of my speed. 3 weeks ago I shot everything faster than the GM's….shitty points. Last weekend I shot everything 1-3 seconds slower than the GM's with equally shitty points!

Edited June 6, 2014 by TrukSnave

[Chris iliff]

Let me clarify, they are talking about Chris Stump, lol.

I get CB45 to do my group shooting.

Man, that link to TGO sparked some good posts! That is awesome.

I still stand by my comments, maybe not a punch in the throat, but at the least a shot in the solar plexus.

I think the point I was making is......

Speed never happens by itself. It is a CHOICE that becomes automatic through repetition.

I have watched 3 shooters with less combined time than my 11 years (by quite a few years) all get to my level or above by adopting the EXACTLY what TGO is saying.

Corey is right in that I would never encourage a very new shooter with questionable skills to "go like hell". But, I will never tell that person to SLOW down. EVER. Slowing down is not the answer.

I would say......."AIM BETTER". Or, "What do you need to do to get better hits?" Gently guiding them away from ANY mental picture of Slowing down.

Anyways 2 of the 3 guys that I watched embrace these ideas and excel have posted here already. I'd count Rob, because I think he believes this too and has incorporated it in his training, but he is a meany.

CB

Truk

Stump

My hats off to ya!!!!

[Racer377]

No respect I tell ya, no respect. I'm like Rodney Dangerfield over here

[TrukSnave]

you look more like Gary Busey though

[BillD]

In his younger years. Gary didn't age well.

[Chris iliff]

Got to shoot with some excellent shooters today at ACC and for my second match of the year I can't complain. Well, I can and will, but I'll try to limit my bitchin'.

First, at this end of the spectrum I need to live fire at least once a week to get back in the groove and even hope to get better. That's not going to happen anytime soon. It's upsetting, but it is what it is.

Don't want to dwell on the negative, but I had 2 mikes on 10 - 12 yard targets right before big transitions. Seemed to be a theme that I picked up from CB45, as it happened to him a couple matches ago. It's an easy fix with some live fire.

After that, I slowed down too much and shot too conservative, didn't help that my left knee started throbbing after two stages. I have been trying to prepare for a Tough Mudder at the end of July and my training is taking a toll on my knees. I need to back off the running and start concentrating on the push ups, burpees, and planks.

Crappy grip with the weak hand after the reload on the classifier caused my hand to rub the slide, which caused a stovepipe and probably a second and a half of extra time.

Just fixing some of the rust related issues vaults me ahead a couple places. So that's good. Of course if Kurt gets some issues fixed he probably would have crushed the match. So everyone deals with something, lol.

I really miss the shooting and I guess a 4th overall (got beat by 3 open shooters, 2 A's & a GM) is not bad. Considering it is only my second match since late last year and everyone else is well into the season.

All in all I had a great day and that is the most important thing. It felt good to be with shooters and hang out.

Happy, happy, happy.

Edited to add: looking at the scores the 2 mikes cost me a second place finish. Avoiding the other rust problems, like the crappy reload grip on the classifier and shooting slow on a stage, could have easily put me in first. So, I know where to go and what to practice, just gonna have to do it dry, which sucks.

Edited June 23, 2014 by Chris iliff