d_striker Posted September 1, 2015 Author Share Posted September 1, 2015 The video's set to private. Just changed it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted September 1, 2015 Share Posted September 1, 2015 Everything looked solid as hell, dude. At a quick glance it looks like the stages where your gun didn't eat it, you were at like 90%. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted September 1, 2015 Author Share Posted September 1, 2015 (edited) I got all of my mags tuned up with what I think is a permanent fix for the malfunction I was seeing. Part of my pre-match gear check will include inspecting the feed lips on all of my mags. Practice this week will be the following: -20 yard open targets -20 yard diagonal partial targets -Mini poppers -reloading L to R and R to L without bouncing up and down. Rather than "bouncing" down to load trailing leg to leave, get low and preload trailing leg while shooting. Leave with a lateral push rather than bounce. -Leave full speed moving forward while reloading. I'll sometimes leave slowly, get the reload done, and then move feet fast. Move feet fast as soon as possible. -Short transitions with knees. -Actively manage shot calling. Don't spectate what is going on with your sights and react moments later. You are actively controlling the process through continuous dynamic observation and instantaneous reaction. This is non-negoitable.... Edited September 1, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted September 7, 2015 Author Share Posted September 7, 2015 (edited) Fun match at Aurora today. I was pretty sloppy on using sights. Had quite a few uncalled hard cover mikes and flat out misses as well. I noticed that in my effort to get the gun up on target as soon as possible when entering a position, I often break the first shot before my upper body get's settled from my forward momentum. This often results in me having to fire 3 shots at the first target in an array. I'm not sure if I should continue to try to get the shot off as I'm coming into position or use the time it takes for my upper body to settle to get a better sight picture, and then break the shot. My grip has been steadily improving lately. You always hear the really good shooters talk about how important a good grip is. I'm starting to fully understand, firsthand, just how important this really is. I was able to employ what I've been working on in practice and dry fire. I had a good grip on the gun about 90% of the time today which is a drastic improvement. It's sort of hard to describe, but when I get a good grip, the gun feels like it's an extension of my body. An instrument that is working with me rather than something I'm trying to fight. The sight barely moves and it tracks straight up and down when I nail my grip. One of the things I'm going to really put a lot of value on, from this point forward, is getting a solid grip on every draw and after every reload. The first two pics attached below are from a stage today. The third pic is my grip from the August HPPS match. While my previous grip wasn't always this bad, I used this grip about 50% of the time. Edited September 7, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glock26Toter Posted September 7, 2015 Share Posted September 7, 2015 ONE... I noticed that in my effort to get the gun up on target as soon as possible when entering a position, I often break the first shot before my upper body get's settled from my forward momentum. This often results in me having to fire 3 shots at the first target in an array. TWO... I'm not sure if I should continue to try to get the shot off as I'm coming into position or use the time it takes for my upper body to settle to get a better sight picture, and then break the shot. Dude. You said it yourself. Stop doing One. Do Two. You need to be trying to get the shot off as soon as you enter the position... but you can't break the shot until you see what you need to see. Always be doing both. What I see you need to work on is your smoothness coming into the position and that's the key. You are not "easing into" the position. You come in OK, but just stop and do a lot of extra upper body preparation to finish moving into the position. This puts you way forward of the position. Feet were there a while ago... now the rest of your body is getting there. Watch this video of me where I come into that far left position on the back row of targets. ( I started it at .12 and is the best example at .25 speed.) My legs are just doing whatever they have to do in order to bring my upper body over, into the position smoothly. Watch my hat (you can't miss the damn thing.) and notice it doesn't move up or down from the point I'm entering to the point I'm exiting the position. I'm doing this BEFORE I can see the target and as soon as I see it, I'm ready to break the shot. No extra lunging or prep work... that's been done as I'm easing in. This includes the height of my head. Meanwhile, the grip is awesome and you did a great job at analysis of yourself. You are kicking some ass man. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted September 7, 2015 Author Share Posted September 7, 2015 Yeah, you're right. Thanks for the advice. Im going to work on smoothing out my entry and waiting for a good sight picture. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted September 9, 2015 Author Share Posted September 9, 2015 (edited) I took a class with Manny Bragg today that was really good. I went in knowing that my transitions are very slow. It's been a little frustrating for the past month as I have been actively practicing this in dry and live fire but was not seeing any large improvement. I felt the class was extremely valuable as a major focus was on transitions. Me trying to shoot aggressive splits (.15) and running in the redline all the time was actually hindering progress on faster transitions. Shooting a stage clean involved a certain amount of luck as I wasn't really calling every shot clearly. And for every stage that I burned down, I would train wreck 3-4 due to trying to run so far into the redline. Burning down a stage with no misses feels good. Manny made a good point that winning feels even better. Winning is not possible when you're throwing mikes like I have been. I've got a lot of good stuff to work on for the next couple months. Edited September 9, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted September 14, 2015 Author Share Posted September 14, 2015 (edited) I really feel wiped out after the CO State match this weekend. I was shooting the Sat/Sun format so I decided to drive up on Friday to walk stages and then stayed at the match hotel. I didn't get much sleep on Friday as I was tossing and turning all night, itching and feeling like I had bugs crawling on me. I was convinced that night that I was going to get crabs from sleeping in that bed. I ended up getting about 2 hours of borderline sleep. Next time I'll take Joey's advice and stay at a hotel near the airport. The match was pretty frustrating for me. I racked up a bunch of penalty points and misses and tanked two stages pretty bad. I was surprised to see that I even finished where I did but my finish is not even really a consolation to my feelings about my match performance. I would rather shoot a match with minimal penalties and solid execution of stage plans and finish lower in the end, than shoot a match crappy and finish Top 3. I know if I shot that performance at an Area match, I'd be WAY down in the standings. There were a few really fun stages and quite a few that weren't really my style, but it was a good match. Especially considering the fact that our State match rotates between sections and even then there isn't much time for the club to prep for it. I'm starting to find value in shooting stages that I don't find "fun" as they typically expose weaknesses in my shooting skills.....Which is why I don't find them fun. I need to shoot more targets at 15-20 yards. I can hit alphas but it takes me forever. I need to go out and see what the sights really need to look like to score A's and close C's at that distance. I also need to refine my trigger press as it's pretty sloppy. I know that the sloppy press at that distance doesn't get it done so I switch modes. The solution: develop a better trigger press that holds up regardless of distance or difficulty. Partial targets killed me with no shoot and miss penalties. I made good progress here and there regarding when I could get away with running in the redline and when I couldn't but there were still certain arrays that I was pushing too far in the redline. There were also certain arrays where I wasn't being aggressive enough and aiming way too hard. I noticed after Sat that my fiber had gotten really dull. I was debating on whether or not to change it out before the first stage on Sunday morning. I ended up not changing it as I thought that it might be too distracting. It was so dull that I was having a hard time using a sight focus and was getting sucked into using a target focus on some longer tight shots. After almost zeroing that stage, I went and changed it out and it was easier to keep my focus on the sight. Lesson learned. I had a couple of stupid stage plans. A couple were risky with round count. I think one paid off and one killed me. I was having trouble getting my new grip on quite a few stages. I really nailed my grip only on a few stages. I did notice that the new grip will prevent the slide from locking back occasionally. Dry Fire Practice: -Nailing grip at slow speed -Nailing grip at match speed -Moving eyes faster to the center of A zone on transitions (I've been doing this without a gun at work using my thumb. Continue to do it with and without gun.) -Reload hand speed. Get hand to mag and to the gun as fast and smooth as possible, then delay insertion rather than slowly grabbing from pouch and rocketing it to the gun.) -Shooting with hard leans Live Fire Practice: -Draw with solid grip and 2 shots at 5, 10, 15, 20 -Partials at 5, 10, 15 -Open targets at 10, 15, 20 -Bill Drill at 10, 15, 20, 25 -4 target array spanning 90. Validate information from class regarding splits vs transitions. -5 target array spread full 180. Fast eyes and aggressive transitions. -Shooting with hard leans Edited September 14, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted September 19, 2015 Author Share Posted September 19, 2015 (edited) I'm hitting my grip more consistently which is good. The bad news is that my slide doesn't lock back after the last round with my new grip. I ordered a thin RAMI slide stop that I hope will alleviate this issue. I also traded my SP01 slide stop to KneelingAtlas for a pre b slide stop. I think I'll throw the RAMI SS on the primary and the pre-b on the backup to see which works better. Then upgrade the other accordingly. The more I progress, the more I realize how important solid fundamentals are. The more I progress, the more I also realize how far away I am from getting to the level I'm striving for. All I can do is continue to train to the point where my grip, stance, sight picture, trigger press, etc. are all performed solidly without consciously thinking about it. As much as I wish there was a way to circumvent this process, there simply isn't. I just got 6 Mecgar mags that I'm designating as match mags only. I think these things are far superior to the stock SP01 mags. My stock SP01 mags will be practice mags. I got some Springer Precision base pads to go with the Mecgars. I used the same base pads on my XDm mags and I noticed that I had to hog out the hole on the base pad a little to get the base plate nub to fit. On these SP CZ base pads, I had to do some serious hog out work with the dremel. The nub fits solidly now and I'm pretty certain that the mags won't blow up like I've seen happen to a certain individual on multiple occasions. I also slapped on a .090" wide Dawson Precision front sight. Going from a .100" to the .090" is definitely more visually appealing to my eye as I was previously shooting with a good amount of light bars on each side of the XDm sight. With the narrow notch in the adjustable rear, I still don't have as much light as I did with the XDm but it's close. I also got another DAA pouch for mag #4. I've had at least 3 instances (2 of which were in major matches) where that mag inertia launched out of its pouch. I was using a Ghost pouch, in bullets out configuration, slightly angled forward. I'm going to roll with the DAA, bullets forward, for #4. Looking at the NM State match, it looks like there will be a couple stages that will force me to reload from pouch #4 so I don't want any issues with that aspect of my gear. ETA-Something I figured out in practice this week is I'm trying to speed up the wrong part of my draw. I've been trying to get my hand on my gun as fast as possible which would often lead to a marginal grip. I've found that my draw is more consistent and just as fast, if not faster, if I get my hand on my gun at a relaxed pace and then accelerate out of the holster and on target. It's going to take some time to ingrain this initial movement as I've conditioned myself to rocket my hand to the gun as soon as I hear the beep for quite some time. Edited September 19, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted September 21, 2015 Author Share Posted September 21, 2015 (edited) It was a fun weekend of shooting. Saturday was fun shooting as pretty much the entire squad was shooting Production. Curtis and I decided to do a fun little experiment/bet where he had to shoot at least 95% of the points and I would haul ass. I trashed the first stage solely because my stage plan went out the window. The next two I pretty much was just shooting at brown. It was a lot of fun but there's a lot of luck involved when shooting stages like this. Hardcover mikes still are messing with me. Sunday match at Weld was a lot of fun. The stages were all on par with stuff you would see at Level 2 and 3 matches. It's cool seeing that level of effort put into a club match. I shot really well. This was probably my best match performance I've ever had from a discipline and consistency perspective. We started on the classifier which was Short Sprint Standards. This was a really hard stage to start on but I wanted to start the match by getting all my hits. I still ended up with a miss and a NS and I took way too long shooting strong hand and weak hand but whatever. There were only 7 people in the entire match that shot this stage clean. I had 2 other misses on a stage where opening a door activated three different targets. I had a miss on a pretty fast Max Trap where I called both shots marginal and didn't go back to engage the sliver of upper A zone above a no shoot. At the distance that target was, I didn't want to pull one down into the no shoot while trying to make up a shot. I also had a miss on about a 10 yard open target that I called 2 A's on. I was really surprised to see only one hole in the target. I'm not really bummed about any of the misses in the match except for the one that I called as a hit. I shot a good match and ended up only at 83% of Jerry. I'm not really bummed about that either. He seriously crushed that match as he beat even the top Limited shooter. I had a stage that I burned down where I thought I might have gotten him but he still beat me by a little over a second. I know that I'm getting beat on transitions. All I'm going to work on this week is transitions. Mag pouch 4 tossed a mag again while getting into the last position in the video below. Luckily I didn't need that mag but I'm done with that thing. My DAA pouch should arrive today. Edited September 23, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted September 21, 2015 Share Posted September 21, 2015 Why did you create an extra shooting position after the first reload for one target on the left? You had to go all the way left anyway so why not combine all of the left targets into a single event at the end? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted September 21, 2015 Author Share Posted September 21, 2015 (edited) Why did you create an extra shooting position after the first reload for one target on the left? You had to go all the way left anyway so why not combine all of the left targets into a single event at the end? It was through a port uprange of the last two. Even if I combined it at the end, I would have had to create another shooting position to go uprange to the port. I did linger around for quite some time just to shoot that one target though, didn't I? Edited September 21, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted September 21, 2015 Share Posted September 21, 2015 Lingering and shooting slower. I wasn't there so I don't know what that portion of the stage looked like, but I wouldn't have stopped my down range haul ass opportunity after the first position when I had to go to the left anyway. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted September 21, 2015 Share Posted September 21, 2015 Did you use a stop watch to time both plans to figure out which one was in fact faster? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted September 21, 2015 Author Share Posted September 21, 2015 Did you use a stop watch to time both plans to figure out which one was in fact faster? I timed going left vs going right after the first array. I didn't even consider including the target in question at then end of the final array so I didn't time that aspect. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted September 21, 2015 Share Posted September 21, 2015 Sounds like a good thing to setup in practice to setup so you can time it and figure out the best plan of attack. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glock26Toter Posted September 23, 2015 Share Posted September 23, 2015 I shot the position on the left as a single position. If you went hard into that wall while engaging target one to gain an angle on the port you could get both left targets through the port and transition to the final target. The port basically disappeared. Live and learn. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted September 23, 2015 Author Share Posted September 23, 2015 I shot the position on the left as a single position. If you went hard into that wall while engaging target one to gain an angle on the port you could get both left targets through the port and transition to the final target. The port basically disappeared. Live and learn. You're smart. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted October 5, 2015 Author Share Posted October 5, 2015 AGC match was fun today. New grip is getting more consistent on the draw and after reloads. Still not 100% programmed in though. I've gotten sloppy lately on stage planning where I'm not counting total rounds for the stage on my initial walkthrough. I FTE'd a target that I never even saw. I almost did it at the Utah match as well. My routine for walking EVERY stage will include counting every round to make sure that I'm not missing anything. I cleaned my primary gun tonight. After putting it back together and dry firing it for a bit, the trigger return spring broke. I'm very glad that it decided to break now and not at a match. Round count on this gun is about 8k rounds with probably at least double that in dry fire pulls. I think that as part of preventative maintenance, I'm going to change out this spring every 6k rounds. Hitting the WP match tomorrow then it's off to NM for my last major of the year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted October 12, 2015 Author Share Posted October 12, 2015 (edited) I shot the High Desert Classic over the weekend which is my last major of the year. This was my first time shooting this match. I've heard from others that it was a good match and they weren't wrong. This was probably my favorite match of the year from a stage design perspective. It was a good mix of stages that tested movement and shooting. A lot of the stages had open targets which I'll never complain about. There were also a few hard cover and no shoot targets thrown in randomly but nothing excessive. One stage had a lot of hardcover targets, but other than that there just wasn't much of it. On two random hardcover targets, I threw misses into the hardcover but actually called them and made them up. This is something that has really been killing me in the past few months. I started out pretty solid on Stage 1 of the match. My focus was just to move aggressively but give my front sight absolute priority and let the shooting happen at whatever pace the front sight allowed it to happen. I felt slow but looking at times and video shows that the actual shooting wasn't slow. I was able to stay in this mode for a couple more stages and later found out that I won stages 1-3 without even really trying to force the shooting. After shooting 3 stages with pretty good hits and fairly aggressive movement, I felt like I could turn it up a notch on the shooting on stage 4. I got really impatient on the sights and my hits really suffered. I threw a Mike on a wide open target at about 10 yards and had 5 deltas on the stage. After that train wreck, I managed to get back on the sights and crank out a couple of ok stages. I started and ended Saturday's shooting with stage wins without even trying to push/force the shooting. I think there's a theme here. Results came out later that evening for the 7 stages we shot. Of course I couldn't resist peeking at them. One of the GM's that was at the match was one stage behind me so we shot most of the same stages and I found I was in the lead by about 40 points. As much as I was telling myself to not let this affect my shooting, it did. I started out shooting on Sunday very conservative. Stage 8 was a 32 round, Classic target stage. The targets were close and it should have been a fast blasting stage with constant lateral movement. The sun was low in the morning which created a lot of shadows on the targets as each array was separated with snow fenced wall that were perpendicular to the sun. I could see my front sight really well but I was looking for holes in nearly every target. I shot 32 A's on this stage but I did it really slow. Stage 9 was a port to port stage with a lot of steel. I wasn't staying on my sight and was throwing quite a few misses on steel. Not a great performance, but not horrible. Stage 10 was the last stage of my match. It was an all steel 120 point stage where you had to go port to port. I kept telling myself to stay on my front sight for every shot and I did. This was a big milestone in my shooting as I was able to tell myself to do something, visualize, and execute that task. It was probably the first time that I've ever done this for every shot of a stage. I ended up winning Stage 10. Again, I was happy that I started out good and ended strong on Sunday. All in all, I shot the match pretty solid and was able to get my first Level 2 match win which is a great way to end my major match season and keep me looking forward to next year's schedule which will be a lot bigger. Edited October 12, 2015 by d_striker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
CHA-LEE Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Congrats on the win!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
d_striker Posted October 12, 2015 Author Share Posted October 12, 2015 Congrats on the win!!! Thanks. You too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thermobollocks Posted October 12, 2015 Share Posted October 12, 2015 Nice, dude. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Richc2048 Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 Way to go dude! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DocMedic Posted October 13, 2015 Share Posted October 13, 2015 Congrats on your big win, keep it up Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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