Doing My Best... Dreams of GM

[LexTalionis]

Hey Everyone,

My name is Mark. I'm 27 years old and am pretty new to shooting. Don't get me wrong, I've always loved guns. I've been CC'ing for 3 years now and have taken a couple basic pistol courses at our local firearms academy. But when it comes to competition, I've got about 5 months of experience. I just figured, if I'm going to carry a pistol all the time, I had better know how to use it! My first trip to a shooting match was back in June of this year, and it was a blast! I shot terribly of course, but I had a lot of fun and met some great guys. Basically, I was hooked. Since then I've been a regular lurker here gleaning wisdom from all you experienced shooters and learning a ton! I plan to make this a regular diary / blog of my shooting in part to get to know all of you and in part to keep myself accountable to practice (and let you guys chime in on what I'm doing wrong Anyway, here's some quick info to let you know where I'm coming from:

My Setup:

• Springfield XD9 4" - Not the most ideal pistol, I know, but it's what I had when I started. Scott Springer's shop just happens to be 10 minutes from my house (!), so a couple months in I had him trick my gun out to get it ready for Production. It's got a competition trigger, Dawson adjustable sights with a target rear and fiber front, grip stippling, and extended mag release.
• Bladetech DOH holster - Just got this and love it!

My Ammo:

125gr cast lead

1.100" OAL

4.5gr WSF

I wanted do everything I could to be involved in this sport (and also save money). So I bought a Lee 1000 press to load my 9mm. It's taken me months to learn how to reload well, but I've finally got a load that works well and works consistently. This makes for about 130 PF in my gun once you consider that my bullets are really closer to 128 grains. Yes, I'm casting my own bullets. There are some experienced casters in my area who have really helped me get started without making too many mistakes. If it matters to any of you, I'm using a Lee 6-drop RN mold with normal lube groove, and I tumble lube my bullets with a mix of Alox and Johnson's Paste Wax. So far, this has been the only round I've found that doesn't lead my barrel like crazy. It shoots nicely and has good accuracy. Also, since it only costs me 5-6 cents total per round, I can afford to shoot it!

My Range:

COSSA practical shooting range in Bend, Oregon. I understand they hosted the USPSA nationals back in '02 and '03. I wasn't around here then, but I still hear tales of local guys getting to hang out with Rob Leatham and others. Right now the range is run by a couple of solid A-level shooters who are great mentors and friends to me. I shoot steel matches and IPSC with them 2-4 times a month depending on the season. No M's or GM's show up regularly, but I have run across a few at special events. We have more steel matches than IPSC, so most of my experience comes on a steel plates or poppers. Honestly, I'm not very comfortable on paper targets right now and know I need to practice on them a lot more. Next year I hope to make a few trips to the Portland area (2-3 hours) since there are a lot more active clubs out there.

My Journey So Far:

1. During my first month, I shot pretty badly. I was consistently at the bottom of the pack under all the C shooters, but I was shooting safely and was learning a lot. I shot an IDPA classifier my first month and barely made ESP Marksman with a time of 170.19. I started dry firing to Steve Anderson's book several times a week. I'd like to do more, but my work & school schedule are sometimes prohibitive. During my practices, I focused on finding a good movement and repeating it over and over to burn in the muscle memory. I also was trying to learn how to "see" things. I admit, I didn't really know what the term meant, but I was definitely looking for something to see
   
2. The second month, I improved a bunch. I started to edge out some of the C shooters at our club and was posting respectable scores with good accuracy. A high point was during my first IPSC field course ever. I shot carefully and got all A's. It was probably the first time I felt like I was really in control of my pistol and knew that I was getting good hits. I shot my 2nd IDPA classifier (even though I'd never shot an IDPA match) and made sharpshooter with a time of 116.25!! Talk about improvement.
   
3. In my third and fourth months, things got a little crazy. Thinking I was fine at hitting stuff, I really pushed the clock in my dry firing trying to get my draws, turns, and El Prez's faster. I think it all showed in my match results as I was shooting much faster, but my accuracy tanked! I was beating the C shooters consistently but was still a good bit behind the top A level guys. I shot my 3rd and last IDPA classifier and did terribly! I had a total of 38 points down for the whole course (ouch!). However, my shooting speed had increased dramatically. Even with all my misses, my total time was 107.80 and was good enough to squeak me into Expert. Woah!
   
4. It is now the end of my fifth month of shooting. I am a bit wiser in my approach to things and am starting to understand what it means to "see" more. There have been occasions where I've started to see what was happening, and they felt awesome. Also, things have gotten really exciting! The events of this month are what have really sparked my desire to improve for the long term. I'll detail them in the next post.

If you've read this far, you have my deepest gratitude. I hope that in upcoming years and months, we can interact and share experiences. I want to learn as much from you guys as I possible can!

Thanks!

Mark <><

Edited October 18, 2010 by LexTalionis

[LexTalionis]

Ok, I posted about this in the Classifier section the day it happened, but I'd really like to recount it here... if only for my own benefit.

I'd been soaking in information from the better shooters at my club, learning and trying new things. I changed my draw and reloads at least three times each. My grip and trigger pull have also evolved significantly. The major resources I've encountered are Steve Anderson's dryfire book and Ron Allen's three-part shooting videos. For the first time this month, I started to be competitive with the A level guys here! I haven't won any matches or anything, but I'd take the occasional stage or shoot the fastest time on a steel string. My percentage was starting to get really close to them (like 95%). Overall I need to get a lot more consistent, but there are moments when I get lucky and outshoot them.

At our monthly IPSC match, we shot the classifier Fluffy's Revenge 2. Now, even though this was my 3rd classifier stage ever, I knew that I could do it well. See, from dryfiring I'd gotten really comfortable with my turn & draw. In fact, I'm probably more confident in it than either the hands-at-sides or surrender draws. So I figured I'd push myself to shoot faster than I normally would on this stage and see what happened. When the buzzer went off, I turned and shot all solid hits at a pace that felt good but way faster than normal.

3.66s

38pts

10.38hf

88.8% National (according to the calculator)

Holy cow! I'd never shot anything close to that before. I was expecting something in the 5 second range. Pretty much everyone there (including myself) was stunned. It was easily the best time for the stage.

Anyway, one of the club officers wanted to shoot the classifier again. We all understood we wouldn't count the scores, but it was more for practice and fun. I figured my first run was probably luck, but I could try to focus hard and do at least as well. A couple seconds before the buzzer, it occurred to me that I could do even better. So I figured why not try?

It was a really bizarre feeling. When the buzzer went off I remember going into this hazy state. I could see what I was doing, but I was sort of detached and only snapped back into myself as the last steel was falling. I honestly couldn't tell you much else. It's all kind of blurry. I have no idea how fast my splits or transitions were; I was just seeing the next target lightning quick and firing. It was very weird in a good way.

3.33s

38pts

11.41hf

97.6% National

What in the world! I didn't even have a USPSA membership, but one of the guys at the club told me to go get one and gave me $20 as a "contribution" to go towards the cost! My mind was spinning. I know for a fact that I can't shoot that way on any other given classifier or maybe even on any other day. I mean, that was a GM score! Did I just "hero" this stage and get lucky? But I did it twice so it couldn't have been all luck, right?

Anyway, I'm both scared and fired up right now. I know that that shooting was way beyond what I can normally do. I'm nowhere near that level of proficiency or experience and have experienced firsthand the danger of shooting too fast without being in control. But I do know now that I'm at least capable of shooting at GM speeds. And now, I've got this nagging thought in my head that maybe, just maybe, I can practice really hard and shoot that well all the time.

I guess only time will tell

Edited October 18, 2010 by LexTalionis

[LexTalionis]

Ya, I definitely need to slow down and practice more. I went out to live fire yesterday and ran some drills for the first time. Boy were they a shock! I did Dot Torture and Langdon's 3.5 Second Standard from pistol-training.com. And my results were quite terrible. I missed about half the shots on Dot Torture from 7 yards away (those circles are small!) and had more C's and D's than anything else on the Standard. I also know there were quite a few mikes. 3.5 seconds is WAY fast for that many shots! I was really out of my league on this drill. I have a lot of work to do.

So, lessons learned:

• Back to basics! See the shots before you break them. Screw the clock.
• I need to live fire a whole lot more. My recoil management is very poor and my followup shots pay the cost.
• SH and WH shooting is a big weakness. I made none of my WH shots in the Dot Torture
• Movement drills. These are hard for me to do in dryfire as I have limited room.

Edited October 18, 2010 by LexTalionis

[RangerTrace]

Congratulations on the classifier and keep up the good work.

[LexTalionis]

Thanks! I actually just found out that my classifier won't count. Apparently Fluffys 2 is one of the few classifiers that require Classic turtle targets instead of the US Metric ones. Since they used Metrics at my range, it invalidates the classifier I guess I'm partly disappointed and partly relieved. In the first sense, I shot friggin awesome, and that won't go on my record. On the other hand though, I don't have the internal pressure of having to live up to that again. It kind of frees me up to focus on straight improving my basic skill set.

In other news, I've dry fired every day this week. I've knocked several tenths of a second off various things. I've found that I have to push myself to a new speed, then spend a couple weeks on it to get myself stabilized there. Otherwise I start gettng sloppy losing my precision and sight picture. Right now I'm doing my draws at .85s. For me that's pushing it. But I can now fairly comfortably have a solid A shot fired in 1s, so pushing speed is paying off.

Other stuff I'm working on in dryfire:

- Brian's transition drill part 2

- WH and SH stuff

- Trying to get comfortable with movement. I really haven't done much of this at all.

I'm also trying to get involved in stage planning and setup at my club. Our USPSA stuff hasn't been too challenging compared to the courses I see online. I'd like to do more that requires movement. Also, I've never shot at a swinger or a clamshell because my club doesn't have them. So there is definitely much to learn, and I need to seek out ways in which to do that.

Edited October 21, 2010 by LexTalionis

[RangerTrace]

Try not to worry about it so much and just enjoy the sport of shooting. Read/learn all that you can. Dry fire practice, live fire practice and shoot every club match you can afford to shoot. Before you know it, things will start to happen, things will feel right and the match results and classifiers will show your progress.

Good luck on your journey to GM. :cheers:

[L-10_shooter]

Since you are in Bend I will let you know that AREA 1 will be held here in Albany next year. Do you have the time/funds to come shoot in the Willamette valley? Eugene 1st Saturday, Albany 2nd Saturday, Tri county (portland) 3rd Sunday, and Dundee (portland) 4th Saturday. Hope to see you at a match over here! Keep up the dry fire and learning more about shooting uspsa.

[LexTalionis]

I really would like to come over to the valley. It's definitely not a trip I can take all the time, 3 hours drive is a real commitment, but I plan on making the journey a few times this coming year. It must be nice to have that many matches each month

[L-10_shooter]

It is very sweet to have a match every weekend, (expensive too) I look forward to meeting you at a match. I am the set up and tear down guy at Albany and we have covers even if it rains for a match.

[LexTalionis]

Reloads!

So I've been dryfiring pretty consistently this week, steadily pushing my times lower whilst maintaining some semblance of control I feel like my motions have gotten quite a bit faster lately. I'm sure this will have negative repercussions on my accuracy, but I intend to alleviate that with some conscientious live fire practice next week. Also, once I hit a dryfire speed that's a bit "too fast" for me, I stick with it for a while to get more comfortable and let my control and vision catch up. I don't know if this is the best way to train, but it seems to be working out alright.

Anyway! I came across this topic in the Skills forum today where people are talking about doing shot-reload-shot in .7 seconds. What the heck?!? I can do a Matt Burkett style reload drill (mag just to the mouth of the well, not inserted) in .7s easily, but to incorporate everything else? Anyway, I figured I'd try it. So I grabbed my camera and went to my dryfire room. The video I'm linking here is me without any warm up, pushing my speed quite a bit. As you can see, there were quite some ugly moments. At times, I could barely get the mag in place in .7, much less fire two shots! After that, I figured I'd try several more drills to see how I was doing (pushing my speed the whole time).

Any thoughts? I'd appreciate any advice on my practice or technique you might have. Again, this series was done cold. I had a few catastrophes (bloopers) as that speed of reload is definitely pushing it for me. But, it felt good, and I hope I can get my consistency level up. I'm having real trouble getting my mag to insert every time. With my pistol, unless the mag goes in just right, it'll get hung up on something. There is very little margin for error on my gun. Do you have any exercises or solutions on how to work on this?

[L-10_shooter]

Great reloads dude! Can you do them that fast in live fire at the range? I like the bloopers, been there haha Keep up the hard work. I need to dry fire more.....

[LexTalionis]

Haha thanks. I don't know how fast I can do them live fire yet, haven't gotten a chance to work them live since I started pushing my speed. In other news I'm defnlinitely going to try to make it over to Albany in the early part of next year. My club stops doing Ipsc in the winter, so it will be a free weekend. Also, I'd like to attend the RO class in february and Area 1 in June.. So I'll me in the valley a good bit. Looking forward to meeting you.

[LexTalionis]

Dry Fire has been a little less consistent this week. My next round of classes started up, so I'm squeezed for time. I'm currently working on my Masters degree full time on top of my full time job. I've still managed to do 15-30 minutes a day though and have at least maintained where I'm at.

I just started reading Enos' book. And all I can say is Wow! The first chapter read like he was inside my head. That state of awareness and complete attention to the present is something that I've experienced snippets of. I have a taste of what it feels like, and I'm going to strive to be there all the time. One especially helpful concept is to banish concentration from my mind. If I must focus on something, let it be an image of what I want to see. Not a verbal description of what to do. This is all awesome stuff that I know it's going to take a lifetime to master.

On a more physical front, the second chapter's technique emphasis was very helpful. One thing I recognized instantly and am trying to change is in my grip. I used to (up until yesterday) apply horizontal pressure on the frame of my gun with my WH thumb. It rides on the XD's takedown lever, and I had always unconsciously pressed with it thinking it was part of a firm grip. No wonder I've never really been able to track my sights consistently! I'm now reworking my grip to let the thumbs be non-factors.

I also picked up lots of tips on relaxation and the fight against tension in the fundamentals. Man there's a lot to work on!

Edited October 28, 2010 by LexTalionis

[LexTalionis]

Sigh. Whenever I come back from live fire practice I'm always a bit depressed. My performance never meets my expectations for myself. I don't have the time or money to live fire that often, so whenever I do, it's always a fairly new experience. Today, I went out and put about 250 rounds through my gun. Here's a quick breakdown of what I did and how well I did it.

I started with Matt Burkett's Timing Drill. This was kind of enlightening to me. I actually shot better at a 1-shot per second pace than I did a 1 shot per 2 second pace. Also, the slowing down of the shots and continuous focus on my front sight revealed to me that my sights track really weird! They move up and down, but their motion is more like a squiggly line than anything else. It looks like a really shallow "S" shape. I'd never noticed that before and was only turned on to it because of the slower shooting. This sensation goes away when I shoot more quickly. I'll have to play with this more to see what's going on. Overall, I did ok. It's easy to put 10 rounds in the A zone at 15 yards when you're shooting at 1s splits. Things get a bit different when the splits are .5s and .25s though.

I followed that up with some Bill Drills. Honestly, I'd never done one in my life before today. The first couple I shot as fast as I could manage and, from 7 yards, had spreads all over the A-C zone. Those times were in the 2.6s range, but my hits sucked. Once I backed things off to around 3.4s, I was able to get all A's pretty easily. I don't know how that is for time, but I'm beginning to get a feel for what kind of shot pace I'm capable of. That's a good thing because recoil control is definitely my weakest area right now. I need to shoot more.

Next I did a Dot Torture drill from 7 yards. This was my second time trying it, and I did much better. I scored 31 / 50 points. I learned that I'm more accurate on a draw->fire than I am on a string of 5 consecutive slowfire shots. Accuracy is definitely something that I need to spend a lot more time on. Right now I cannot consistently place a bullet exactly where I want it, and that bothers me.

With my last 12 rounds, I ran an El Prez from 10 yards. My time ended up being 6.2s, and it felt really sloppy. My hits were poor, I had two D's and the rest were split between A's and C's. My first and second transitions were lousy, and my reload was slow (1.6s). However! After doing it that one time, I instantly knew that, had I had more rounds with me, I could have done it much better with a few more tries. Next time, I'll focus on El Prez more and shoot for a sub-6s, all A run.

So that's that. I'm slightly down because I felt I should be able to shoot better. But I also know that improvement occurs on a curve, and I need to put my time in. Live fire still feels awkward to me (whereas dryfire is quite comfortable). But I also see improvement from last month. So I'll just keep on trucking.

[bayoupirate]

Hang in there and keep stiving, with a positive attitude.

[d_striker]

Nice reloads.

I'm new to USPSA as well. I've practiced reloads over the years, though. It wasn't until recently that I started practicing my reloads with dummy rounds (bullet with no powder or primer) in the magazine. I think that it definitely changes things when you have weight in the magazine.

I've also found that setting the timer to a random start delay provides better conditioning for response to the timer. It's easier to respond when you have an idea of when the timer is going to go off. Setting it to random adds an element of uncertainty which I feel is better, overall.

[LexTalionis]

Thanks for the tips, d. I already do both of those. My mags are fully weighted and my timer is on a 2-4 second delay. Since I made that video, I've changed my reload motion a bit to try for better consistency. I now pull the gun in a little closer to me and tilt it a bit more for a better view of the magwell. I'm still looking for that perfectly economical motion that yields high consistency.

[LexTalionis]

New Website

For the past few weeks I've been building a new website for my club. Well it went live about 5 minutes ago! Check out the new page at www.oregonshooting.com/cps

[HoMiE]

New Website

For the past few weeks I've been building a new website for my club. Well it went live about 5 minutes ago! Check out the new page at www.oregonshooting.com/cps

Cool website, the CPS guys are cool people. Thats where I got started in shooting.

[LexTalionis]

Cool! I'm sorry I never got to meet you when you were shooting here.

[LexTalionis]

Well, it's been a busy last couple of weeks. I spent Thanksgiving week in Indiana with my in-laws (no practice there) and have been slammed with work and school heading towards Christmas. But I've still been dryfiring pretty consistently, and there have been a few shooting developments:

Lessons Learned

1. Don't over-crimp pistol reloads. I had inadvertently set my crimp too high. While this didn't cause any major problems (kabooms and whatnot), it did cause some of the lead in my cast bullets to peel off. This led to some buildup in my barrel and some inconsistency in performance.

2. Barrel length and gun weight make a huge difference. My 4" XD performs well enough, but I've always had problems controlling it during live fire. The thing is just so darn light that it magnifies every little error I make. I'm currently borrowing a Custom Shadow, and my performance has changed drastically. Even in dryfire, things just feel better. It points better, holds on target better, and reloads easier.

3. Grease and cold weather are not compatible! In our steel match this past Saturday, I had one stage where my gun froze up almost literally. For the first three rounds, the slide would take a full half-second to return to battery! The round would go off, slide would reciprocate and then... after an eternity the slide would close. Naturally, that crushed my time for the stage.

My dryfiring has been pretty good. I'm focusing on seeing more, especially on "controlled pairs." I'm trying to build a habit into myself to see just as much, if not more, of the front sight on the second shot as on the first shot. I don't want a "double tap" to even be a possibility. So I've backed off my par times. I'm pretty much doing everything a half second slower than my top (sloppy) speeds and am feeling really good about it.

Oh, ya. I borrowed this Shadow on Friday of last week, dry fired with it a little, then promptly got my first match win on Saturday! It was a steel match. And even with the cold weather problems, I still managed to shoot better overall than our club's top guys (both A-level). I'm hoping this becomes something of a regularity

[LexTalionis]

2011 New Year's Resolution - to make Master this year.

[LexTalionis]

Well it's been a while since my last post. A lot has happened in the last month and a half, and some of it has even been good! For economy's sake, I'm going to break this update into two posts. One for January and one for February.

In January we had two mixed steel matches at our local club. These matches both consisted of 6 stages, 2 shotgun and 4 pistol. Since it gets pretty cold out here, what we can actually setup and run becomes limited, but we do the best we can. Field courses are pretty much non-existent giving way to stand-and-shoot kind of stuff. I have to say that I didn't shoot very well this month. But then again, every time I shoot, I feel that I didn't do well

The first match day (Jan 1) was a toasty 17 degrees. I did pretty well I guess, ending missing first place overall by .51 seconds. Between two FTF's in my gun and a botched speed steel stage, I deserved to not win. What I learned from that match, however, was that I really need to work on my consistency. On any multiple string stage (like speed steel), my times are all over the place. Usually the first string I'll shoot fairly conservatively trying to gauge what I'm capable of pulling off...so it goes slow. Then the next string I'll speed up a little. By the third string I'm feeling like hot stuff and go WAY too fast ending up with misses and a totally blown time. Strings four and five are usually me trying to redeem myself whilst shooting angry. Somewhere in there I can almost always pull off the fastest individual string time of anyone in our club, but my overall times suffer. Contrast that with our top shooter who hammers out 5 consecutive strings with almost identical times (80%-90% of my fastest time) and takes the whole stage.

The second match I shot (Jan 15) was terrible! I attribute my extremely poor shooting this day to a few things. First of all my Shadow was having problems. It turns out that one of the pins that secures the hammer (pardon my great lack of knowledge of all things gunsmithing) had walked itself out and was binding against the wall of the gun. So the hammer was completely locked up. Couldn't pull it back if I tried. This resulted in me using my XD for this match (which I hadn't shot in a while). The second thing that caused problems was that this was the first match I had ever seen an Open gun in action before. Sure, I'd seen them in videos, but seeing one in real life was a completely different experience. It didn't help that the guy running it was an M class shooter who was VERY fast. I started out very well winning 2 of the first 3 stages in my division (basically everyone who was not Open). But from there it all went downhill.

After my third stage the Open pistol got busted out, and I was completely mentally blown away by its speed! The guy's splits had to be in the teens consistently, and his accuracy was incredible. Besides that, the gun was LOUD! I have to say that seeing that guy in action really shook me up. I suddenly got it in me that I needed to shoot like an Open shooter (lol). Needless to say the rest of my match went to pot. Couple a bunch of misses with some pretty catastrophic gun failure, and I ended up going from first place after the third stage to fifth place by the end of the match. The gun failure ended up also being user error. I have an extended mag release and, in my zeal to shoot faster, was compromising my weak hand grip. The palm of my hand was drifting downwards over the mag release and I ended up dropping mags in the middle of recoil... three dropped mags in total. I'm sure you can imagine how terrible a magazine mysteriously dropping out of a gun in the middle of a stage is for one's stage time and one's mental condition. I didn't figure out what the cause was 'til later.

Oh well. I did end up getting some good practice in though. The one time I live-fired in January was very beneficial. It basically consisted of me running a FAST drill a bunch of times to see what I was capable of. Here's a video I made of my practice session (the best runs only of course )

Lessons learned:

• I'm terrible at follow-up shots. My splits were all in the .35s range even when going four shots to the A-zone of a target 7 yards away. The biggest limiting factor for me is my recoil control. It's horrible! It really takes me .35s to regain control of the gun to the point where I can see that my next shot would hit the A-zone. Suffice it to say, I need to work on live fire a lot more.
• Reloads! My draw times were all pretty acceptable. I was averaging 1.2s-1.35s on the draw. Being that the draw was to the upper A-zone, I feel comfortable with that time for now. My reloads, however, were pretty bad. From shot fired -> slidelock reload -> shot fired, it was taking me 1.7s-1.9s to reload the gun. Looking at the clock, that was molasses slow. I think my problem was not in the speed of the actual loading process (although that could use work of course) but in the slowness of my actually starting the reload. I need to initiate the motion as soon as the sights lift from the previous shot

Overall it was a good month. I hope to do a lot more shooting as the weather gets warmer though, but given my very busy schedule and the bitter cold, that was pretty much all I could muster.

Edited February 17, 2011 by LexTalionis

[LexTalionis]

RO Class. February started off with a bang! I spent the first weekend in Portland taking an RO class with Carl Schmidt. We spent all of Saturday pouring through the rule book, learning the ins-and-outs of that thing and how to find relevant rules for a given problem. I took the final test that night and, with all the page-flipping and deep-reading, felt like I was handling the Bible. The next day of class was spent on the range. Sunday morning we ran a simple classifier-ish stage a bunch of times as the 20+ people in the class all tried their hand at RO'ing. It was a lot of fun as Carl (who was a great guy!) had some shooters pull crazy stuff in order to give the RO's a challenge. I ended up shooting the stage twice. The first run was ok. My mag didn't drop free on the reload (misfitted base pad that I'm replacing) so that cost me. I also put a shot firmly into the hard cover section of the target. My second run, however, went great! I focused on seeing the sights and making sure that the hits were A hits. I ended up with the fastest time (non-Open shooters only) of the day and great hits; I only had one Charlie and the rest Alphas. Had it been a real match, it would have definitely been a stage win (even over the Open shooters).

Live Fire. The next week I got out to do some live fire practice. I had some junk ammo lying around that I needed to use up, so I went out to a local shooting area. Because of all the dry fire practice I've done, I am pretty confident in my gun handling skills (draws, sometimes reloads) and ability to move fast. However, where I lack is in live fire experience. Recoil control is a big weak point. So is trigger control and accuracy. So at this practice session I definitely had some flinch issues to work out. I find that I have a tendency to mentally disengage myself the split second before I release the shot. That sometimes results in me jerking the trigger and / or not having a good sight picture at the moment of fire. This practice session I wanted to work through that and see the sights from start to finish.

So I did a lot of group shooting at speed, trying to place the shots exactly where I wanted them. That went ok. I randomly made up drills in my mind right before I would shoot. Stuff like going from head to body to head. I finished up the day with a few El Prez runs. I found that if I focused on A-zone hits, I could pull off an El Prez fairly comfortably in the 7+ second range. If I threw caution to the wind and accepted C's (and D's gasp!), I could do it in about 5.5s-5.7s. For me, that discrepancy is too large. My accuracy shooting needs to be a lot faster.

Real USPSA Match! Finally, last weekend I shot my first big match! A friend and I went to Albany to shoot their USPSA match. There were about 80 shooters there, and it was a blast. I met a lot of really cool people and got to shoot real USPSA stages. It was all very new to me. The movement, shooting positions, and scenarios were the real deal. After getting signed up and squadded with the Production crew, I was off and running!

• The first stage was fun. It consisted of shooting through a port, moving to a Texas Star, and finishing through another port. I did pretty well on this stage. Even though I took the Star in the wrong order and got it spinning pretty quickly, I cleaned it without much of a problem. Since it was my first stage, I was very conscious about looking at my sights and only gave up a few Charlies.
• The second stage, the local Production GM challenged me to only shoot A's. It was a weird stage with a lot of ports and oddly placed stuff. The first position forced a shooter to reach through prison-like bars in order to hit a target around the corner. This was probably my best stage run of the day. Even though my time was about 2 seconds behind the GM and M who ran it, my hits were very good. I purposely chose a stage plan that would force me to make every shot count (or do a standing reload) to mentally condition myself to shoot only A's. I ended up getting 2 Charlies overall, but that was pretty good for that stage.
• From there I started to struggle. I felt that shooting only A's was too slow and decided to see what I could do to speed up. Of course that resulted in less accuracy and poor scores. The third and fifth stages were creative field courses. One required shooting on the move and the other had some kneeling. My times were pretty decent as I sped things up, but my hits were pretty bad. I gave up more C's than I should have and even a D or two.
• The fourth stage was an accuracy stage. There were some steel placed out at 30+ yards, and a lot of shooters were having trouble cleaning them up. Since I was forced into accuracy mode and I'm pretty comfortable with steel, I shot them pretty easily. The ironic thing though is that I turned from there and got poor hits on the paper ending up with a couple D's. I have to learn to not accept poor sight picture on paper targets just because the "brown area" is bigger.
• The final stage was classifier 99-61, "Sit or get off the shot." It's a seated classifier that has three strings on various hardcover targets - freestyle, SH, WH. I have to say that it was a difficult stage. I did my best to shoot at controlled speed, but I haven't done much WH or SH stuff, especially with my CZ Shadow. My times were all very quick - almost as fast as the GM. However, I pulled one miss on my SH initial shot. I haven't built up strong confidence in my double action trigger pull yet, and that showed. So my score ended up being pretty bad. It's a shame that my first classifier on record will go down in the 44% range, but the experience was definitely worth it.

All in all, I ended up doing well at the match. Of the 20+ Production shooters, I came in 4th behind a GM, M, and A. I would have beat the A shooter if I hadn't pulled a Mike on each of the last stages, but it is what it is. Amongst the overall rankings, I was 22nd out of 78 shooters. Not too bad I think. I left the place satisfied with a good shooting experience but also slightly saddened because I know I could have shot better.

Conclusion. Now I'm even more determined to get better. I know that I have a lot of weaknesses and inconsistencies that I need to turn into strengths, and I can't wait to do so! My goal is to get myself in tip-top condition for Area 1 in June. I'm still shooting to make Master by the end of the year, but that falls second to just improving overall. I'd rather be a solid A-level shooter who is consistent than a B level shooter that has classified as a Master.

[LexTalionis]

Wow, this has been an eventful month! I did more shooting than any other 30 days of my life and got to spend time with some great shooters. I learned a lot about myself and definitely gained some invaluable experience.

March 5 - Mixed Steel Match

I ended up taking second place at this match behind an A-class Production shooter. However, the match was mine to lose, and I pretty much gave it away. I attribute the mess ups to a lack of visual patience and my ineptitude with WH and SH shooting. Overall, however, it was a fun time with some good friends participating.

March 12 - USPSA

I made another trip to the valley to shoot in the Albany USPSA match. Since I'm starting to make friends at the bigger clubs, I made sure I got squadded with them. Of course, that squad ended up being the "production" squad, and I got to shoot alongside a GM and M. My goal for this match was to shoot the whole thing cleanly. Over the course of the match, I got 3-4 D's, but overall held true to my goal of not getting any Mikes... until the last stage that is. I ended up pulling a Mike on a 25 yard array. My shot ate up much of the border at the edge of the target but ended up being like 1/1000th of an inch outside of touching the perf... even with an overlay. Oh well!

I finished that match 20th overall out of 67 shooters and 3rd in Production behind the GM and M. I was pleased with my progress but knew I had much more to learn. I did realize, however, that I have a huge learning gap when it comes to Swingers. On one stage in particular there were two fast moving Swingers, and I didn't know how to handle them! I ended up getting my hits, but I took forever and burned 4 rounds on each.

March 19 - Mixed Steel

This match was a real experience for me as I designed most of the stages for it. It was my first time serving as MD at my local club, and I had a blast doing so. Goofing around with Google Sketchup, I put together (what I felt was) a good variety of steel stages that tested accuracy, off-balance shooting, fundamentals, and speed. Of course, I ended up not shooting my own stages very well, only winning one of them, but I had a great time overall.

March 21 - Live fire practice

Seeing how I bombed the Swinger stage in Albany, my friend Tom and I went out to practice shooting them. We set up a swinger and a few other targets and tried different approaches at shooting them. I found that for me neither the ambush method nor the tracking method worked completely well. My most consistent hits were when I would ambush the swinger with the first shot and then track it for the second. Doing that, I felt I had much more control over my hits on a fast moving swinger.

March 26 - USPSA

I got up at the butt crack of dawn and drove 3.5 hours to the Dundee USPSA match. I again got squadded with the best shooters there which made for a great learning experience. One name in particular was Chuck Anderson who was shooting single stack that day. He was amazing to watch... when he wasn't having gun problems

At this match, I had my fair share of snafus. On one stage I dropped my magazine as I was reloading. Not knowing what to do, I bent down to pick it up instead of just reaching for the next mag. Doing so only exacerbated my time loss. On another stage I had run my stage plan pretty tight requiring me to go almost 1 for 1 on a series of steel. Of course, I totally blew the steel and ended up wrecking my stage plan. This all culminated in me having to do a standing reload for the final shot of the stage :/

All in all, however, this match was my best IPSC match ever. I shot very cleanly with one D the whole match and no Mikes! I got an 81% on the classifier and felt that I made real strides in shooting accurately at speed. I ended up finishing 2nd production at 88% of the GM. All in all, I believe the following video best describes how I did at this match:

Yes, I screwed up my reload, bumped the slidelock open, and hit a D on the shot immediately following the botched reload. But, everything else felt really good, and my hits were clean. I'm going to be practicing moving reloads like crazy, but stages like this give me hope.

Where to go from here...

It's time to get serious. I purchased and read Mike Seeklander's book, and I am hard-set on going into full training mode! I have already arranged my calendar and have been reloading like crazy because I'm going to be burning a ton of ammo! Starting next week, I will be following Mike's dryfire program 5 days a week, live firing 2 days a week, and also working on his mental, visual, and physical programs. On New Year's Day this year, I resolved myself to make Master this year. And I know that it's going to take every bit of this crazy training schedule to get me there. So off we go!