Bunchies' Training

[Bunchies95]

The Texas Summer Shootout hosted by River City Shooters Club was this past weekend. They had 8 great stages. My shooting, not so much. I finished 7th overall in Production, but with the people shooting, I think top three was easily within reach. I just didn't show up, nothing could get rolling, and the few times I was shooting like I normally do, it wasn't even for a whole stage. I still shot 91,7% of points before penalties (2 M), but it felt choppy as hell.

https://www.practiscore.com/match-results/uuid?uuid=9D6121BD-F181-474D-B83F-81426CF326AC

Some of my issues I think stem from I used my match gun without any practice with it the week before. It is different enough from my practice gun that it almost feels like new gun. I also rolled with a blacked out front sight. Since I only had one practice session with that set-up, it just looked weird. Finally I think the open squadding messed with me a bit. I didn't get to walk the stages like I'm used to. I walked up to a stage, looked over it while taping, came up with a plan, then shot it. The visualization and run through steps were very minimally done.

Here are the videos from the match, in no particular order:

http://youtu.be/PcrM2c3ZnJo

This was my first stage of the match. Turn and draw into a low(ish) port. The 3 poppers were directly lied up and the front and back ones activated swingers. My plan was to drive them down as fast as possible. I think I was surprised when I got 4 shots on the first popper as the pace of the shooting slowed down significantly for the remaining shots. The first reload hurt. I lost ~2 seconds on that bobble.

This stage went fairly well until I got to the long range steel. I have been shooting at this distance so much recently that I didn't pay engouh attention to my front sight. I thought it was going to be a breeze. That part is painful to watch. I also wished that I would have rolled through the shooting position after the start signal. It was a tight shot, with ~25% lower A zone available, the rest NS, but it was still pretty close.

I don't want to talk about this stage. The video speaks for itself. I am glad I went with the head shots on the left hand targets though. I watched too many people dump rounds into the no-shoots, that I decided to play it safe (weird how a head shot is "safe").

This was probably my best field course of the match. It was a pure shooting challenge. The hardest part was commiting to the center section. I realized that I couldn't get my shots off at both the max trap and clam shell. It was just too dangerour. I decided to double tap the popper, then wait at the max trap to open. Drive down to the close target and finish on the head of the clam shell. Finishing on the head may not have been such a great idea, I'm just not sure. I really had to force myself to call my shots before I left. It worked out as I had A/B hits and the B just failed the overlay.

Looking back on my stage perfomances, I lost the match on the field coures. The stand and shoot type courses, I was top 3. So I can stand and deliver. Could it be a stage programming issue?

finally, I need to fix my holster for nationals. I measured the offset, and the gun is currently sitting at 2.5". I'll investigate options to reduce that by about 3/4".

Edited June 24, 2013 by Bunchies95

[Bunchies95]

Repost to get videos to play:

[Bunchies95]

Somehow my grip has changed over time. It is to the point where my thumb is resting on my slide stop and not allowing my slide to lock back. This has burned me in a couple of stages where I should have went to slide stop but wasn't counting the rounds. For the past two days, I've really been focusing on diagnosing the issue. It appears to be off the draw, I get a firm grip on the gun while trying to keep my thumb out of the way of my support hand. This naturally makes my thumb position higher. After the reload, it doesn't seem to be resting on the slide stop.

Once I figured out the root cause, I started working on fixing the issue. I'm not going to say it is 100% fixed, but it is much better. I'm trying to keep both thumbs away from the slide.

I also set up a mini field course with some weird positions and hard leans. I focused on really moving fast when I wasn't shooting. I need to work more on driving the gun to a target when I have to lean during the transition. It just seems slow when I cannot see the target I want to transition to. I have to find it first, then go to it. I want to do both at the same time.

[Bunchies95]

Part of my training plan for nationals is to try and get into better shape. I think that is going to be the hardest part of my whole training program. I didn't realize how out of shape I had gotten! Went on a 2 mile run yesterday and I could hardly make it through it. Just a couple of years ago I was running 5 miles a day no problem. Then again I did have a lot more time on my hands in Grad school.....

[Bunchies95]

My press was down for a bit so I needed to wait on parts from Dillon and had to rebuild my stock pile. I let it go down too much recently due to work and laziness. With my press down, I couldn't do too much shooting. First real practice session in a while. Went really well, especially considering how horrible my last club match was. At the last match, I was really lazy on my stage visualization and it caused me to forget to handle a prop on one stage and forget to engage a target on another. There is a combination of reasons why, but all they are is excuses, so not really important. I have a plan to deal with that in future matches, especially when I am shooting limited. Break the stage down into multiple portions and run them as an individual program within the stage. Kinda like computer programming, write a bunch of sub tasks and call on them when neede during the operation.

Now onto my practice breakdown. I shot with another local Master shooter to push myself harder. We set up some targets left over from our last club match (one open, two with hardcover on R/L side). The hardcover wasn't much in terms of coverage, just a visual distraction. Started off with the targets at 10 yards one yard apart and shot a straight six from surrender. Times were in the 3.6-3.8 second range with mostly Alphas. Then we moved up to 7 yards. I managed to drop over a half a second on the time, quite a bit from the draw. I have a hard time believing that three yards makes that much of a difference when shooting the same array. I did notice that I was looking for a much clearer sight picture at 10 yards than at 7. I'm going to play around with shooting this in reverse next time to see if I can get the 10 yard times to match the 7 yard. I can find no logical explanation why it shouldn't be the case.

Next we moved the targets into a 90-90-90 formation to force some wide transitions. The outside targets had harcover on the inside to force the transition into the A zone rather than paper. We put those at 8 yards. The open target was directly in front at 15 yards. The brown target with a brown backdrop in low(ish) light made that target difficult to pick up when you were transitioning to it. We shot the targets in just about every order imaginable. I caught myself over transitioning quite often. I also pulled off early on the second shot in an attempt to make it to the other target faster. But that was a much rarer occurance than the over transition. The only target I under transitioned to occasionally was the one with no hardcover. Not sure if it was just dissappearing into the berm, or I was choosing the wrong point to look at. Will pay attention to that in future dryfire. My points were pretty good and I proved that I could transition much faster than I thought. REally pushing the speed saw a .25 second improvement, even with over transitions. I got down to ~.5 seconds going from the middle target to ones on either side and ~.65 to the middle from the edges. The direction didn't seem to matter, but the distance to target sure did. I believe with the set up we had, there is the possibility for another tenth or so in speed if I can learn to float the gun into place.

Steve wanted to work on some hard leans last night as well. So we set up a barricade to shoot around, six shots from either side. I found the leans really slowed down my shooting, having to watch the sights much closer than if I was upright. Didn't really have to do much to correct the aiming point on the second shot, it just seemed slower to recover. I learned that I definately prefer a hard right lean to a hard left lean. That makes sense as I am right handed. On the really hard left lean, I couldn't find a way to shoot with both feet on the ground unless I REALLY slowed the shooting down. The thing I found that worked best was sticking my right leg straight out as far away from my center of gravity as possible. The times I tried shooting as I was falling out of position resulted in really poor hits.

To end the session, we shot a few bill drills at 40 yards. My sights were way off. I was impacting very very low. I forgot to adjust them back from the ammo I used at Double Tap to my new practice loads (147's hit higher than 125's). After the sights got adjusted, I did fairly well. ~5 seconds with mostly Alphas. We backed up to 50, just for the hell of it. By now I was getting tired and the light was getting really bad. I couldn't see the target or my sights very well. The first run of 10 shots, I had 6A 2 close C, and 2 miss, but I called the misses due to timing the shot. I figure out that on those long range shots, I need to relax my shoulder more. When I shoot fast, my shoulders are pushed forward pretty aggressively, but when I relaxed them a tad ( roll them back in their sockets) I was much more stable. Then it was up to my trigger press.

Last night and some of my dry fire sessions, I have noticed that finding my sights is really limiting my times. It is a combination of the sights are not lined up after the draw or hard transition and I am having a hrad time shifting my focus back to the sight. I've started doing some eye exercises again and will continue doing them twice a day to strengthen my eyes a bit. The alignment issue really needs to be worked out in dry fire. I think the best way to do that is to not use a timer for a while. Just focus on the mechanics of the draw, etc. Then push the speed again.

[Bunchies95]

For my live fire practice session last night, I joined a couple of club members who already had stuff set up. Didn't have much of a choice of what to shoot, but the set-up was good enough for me. One 12 yard head shot (with NS), 20 yard angled hardcover, 2 12 yard 6" paper plates, a 15 yard zebra and 25 yard mini popper.

I played around with shooting from left to right and vice versa. All the targets were pretty hard, but the head shot and plates were giving me fits. I could shoot the 15 yard zebra target at .5 splits and get the hits close enough that they both would have at least been on the head, but my hits on the head were abysmal. I wasn't seeing much of an issue with left/right alignment, so it must have been a height issue. Maybe I was shying away from the no-shoot too much? That definately was the case with the angled hardcover. I was aiming too far away from the A zone. I recognized the danger of the shot, but I was too cautious.

My issue on the plate was not pausing enough on the target. I kept trying to run right through them. I need to get the gun to stop on the plate, shoot, then move off. Not try and keep the gun moving on those. I also realized how much I still listen for the ring of steel to aid in shot calling. With paper plates, I sometimes called a good shot that ended up being a miss. Other times I called poor shots, had multiple make ups and all of them were on target. This is a major issue that I need to work on. I can tell when I make a bad shot, or when something just didn't look right, but am having difficulty calling a marginal miss (and I'm convinced most of the misses yesterday were marginal).

The 25 yard mini popper didn't concern me to much. I had my issues with it, but I could dial it back and hit it when I wanted to. Only when I was pushing. It is kinda cool to see 1.6 secon reloads from a 15 yard zebra into a 25 yard mini popper and hit it with the first shot. I also got a few 1.4-1.5 draws to the mini popper and they felt slow. When I was missing at that speed, it felt fast. I think the biggest difference between a 1.5 draw and miss and 1.5 draw and hit was the desire to see a great sight picture. It would just happen. That's something to think about in the future. Desire to see well not try to see a good sight picture.

Maybe Yoda really was on to something....

No. Try not. Do... or do not. There is no try.

[Bunchies95]

Practice last night was very similar to the one in the previous post. But it went much better.

Before I started some drills, I shot some groups from 15, 25 and 35 yards. I found that I was about 2" high at 15 yards and slightly left. I'm not sure how much the left issue was due to trigger control, but it was very consistent so I doubt much. Got the gun zeroed in at 15 yards and just experimented at the further distances to see where it would hit. For the most part, the location didn't change much, about 3" high at 35 yards.

I had a much better time calling my shots last night. Still had some issues of making up a shot that wasn't needed or not making up one that was. I found myself shooting with a rythm across 4 plates rather than sight picture. This caused a few shots to miss, which usually got made up. The hardest target was a 35 yard mini popper. I treated it like an activator for which the zebra target was the mover. I found that, at that distance, I was looking for audible confirmation of the hit unless I called a really bad shot. At that distance, there really is no room for error is sight alignment or tirgger press. It has to be perfect.

Halfway through the session I moved the zebra target in from ~20 yards to ~5. Drew to the mini popper, transition to zebra, wide transition to head. The point was to try and change gears really quickly. The first few times I couldn't change gears, having about a 0.4 split on the close target. I had to force myself to shoot faster, almost let go of the sight picture. It went much better, but the transition back to the head was still difficult. I find it easier to transition to a hard target than an easy one, unless there are multiple targets that gradually get closer. Next session will have Ben Stoeger's distance change up drill (2 open 5 yards and 1 15 yard head).

The main purpose of the session last night was to work with my new rig set up. I bought a ghost holster and mag pouches. I really like the holster, but still need to adjust it a bit. To get the gun within 2", I have to cant the gun inwards. I prefer a more straight up and down gun. The mag pouches are going to take some getting used to. They are deeper than the CR Speeds, and therefore put the mag lower in relation to my belt. I found myself grabbing the tops of the mags rather than the whole mag. I may experiment with some spacers on the bottoom to lift the mags up. I am also thinking of running bullets facing out. I can see the advantages at certain pouch locations, but am not sure if it is worth the amount of time needed to get used to it.

[Bunchies95]

Ran Stoeger's Distance Change up drill (2 open at 5, head at 15). I used a no-shoot for the head shot instead of hardcover, I think that made me shy a little high. I shot it in every target engagement order I could think of. The times didn't really seem to change much, but the comfort level sure did.

I was having difficulty shooting near-far-near, in the sense that the head shots seemed harder. I would miss occasionally as I tried to rush to the next close target. Forcing myself to ensure a good called shot before the transition helped a lot, and only added ~.2 seconds to the time. I'd say near-far-near was the hardest way to shoot it.

The next hardest way for me was to draw to the headbox. The hits were noticably better, but I felt like I had to rush the head shots to make up time. It is strange that some of my better times came from shooting the head first.

The most comfortable way, for me, was to shoot both near targets and end on the head. All the pressure was gone on the head shot about having to transition to another target. I could instantly change gears and be patient with the sight picture.

Overall, I got a few runs below 3 seconds, but not with great hits (a very lucky head shot that just touched the perf and a few C's on the close stuff). The best scores were in the low to mid 3 second range with very good hits. I felt like I could do that pretty consistently. One of the cool things is I had some splits down below 0.15 seconds. I have never done that in a practice session before. A year ago, a 5 yard target would see me at .25 seconds, with difficulty. Those fast splits were uber relaxed. When I actively tried to reproduce them, trigger freeze was the result. Average splits were ~.18 seconds.

I was having difficulty getting my draw below 1 second for a while. Eventually I got my draw down to 0.9 seconds, but I was just point shooting the target, didnt see my sights at all. The new Ghost holster cants the gun in the opposite direction as my Bladetech, resulting in a bad grip from time to time. I'll work on the holster position some more and dry fire a bit. The bad grip resulted in a few C's on the close target. I could freel the gun move in my hands.

I ended the session by moving the head shot to line up directly with the sun. That was hard shooting. I could barely see the target and really had to pay attention to my sights. I'm glad I did it though. Never know when it is going to happen in a match.

With one round left, I raced Steve to a 15 yard popper from hands relaxed. I lost by a split second. The timer recorded one shot at 1.17 seconds, but we heard two shots, almost like a gun doubling.

[Bunchies95]

I'm finally starting to get some solid match performances again. For a while there I seemed to be making stupid rookie mistakes.

Let's start with a review of the River City match. This was a 5 stage club match that I decided to shoot Limited Minor. The first stage was the classifier (not on video) "Lightening and Thunder". It is a fixed time course of fire. I didn't use the par time effectively on this stage, especially on the first string. I drew too fast which resulted in a mike and the poor grip cause some points down. Next string I fumbled the reload and ended up with one NPM by not getting the shot off. Final string went very well though. The points were pretty good SH.

https://www.practiscore.com/match-results/uuid?uuid=556272A0-79F2-4D2A-AF68-143ADF142012

Stage 1:

135/145 points (0D's) 21.02 seconds

This stage went pretty well. The first two targets had hardcover in the middle of the A zone running vertically. This caused me to shy away into the C zone a bit, dropping most of my points on these two targets (3C). The backing up into the low-ish port seemed kinda awkward though. There was a open target at 27 yards hidden behind a barrel. I saw more than a few members of my squad throw one into the barrel, so I decided I would be better off taking three shots at it instead of risking a mike. I think that was the right decision even though I had 3 A's on target. The only thing that pisses me off about this stage is the hiccup with the gun. Watching the video, it doesn't look like a round got chambered. I racked the slide and moved on pretty good. Just lost my momentum and almost broke the 180 going back to the target I had the malfunction on.I only lost about a second and a half from shot to shot (so maybe two full seconds on the clock), but that was the difference between 4th on the stage and winning it. I don't remember where my other 2 charlies came from, but it wasn't the swinger. I got a beautiful 2Alpha on it. I was happy.

Stage 2

129/145 points - 18.26 seconds

I told Steve Cline right before I ran this stage to watch for lightning. I just felt like I was going to burn it down. I was right, in a way. The time was 2 seconds faster than anyone else in Limited and with decent points. The stage started up with a retreating load. You could see two of the targets from the start position, but I decided it was better to be moving to the steel while loading since I had to get there anyways. The load and two steel was very smooth. The next movement portion, not so much. Had to take a few extra shots to make up D hits as my front sight was bouncing all over the place. I'm not sure that my decision on shooting the popper right before the reload was the right one. It was kinda tucked in tight, but I had to do two hard transitions to get to it. I took one step while engaging the two paper on the right. Time might have been saved by just getting into position for the popper first, then shooting the paper while leaving. Reload was good. That run on those plates was awesome! It's kinda weird how I can go one for one on all the steel on that stage, but have make up shots on paper at 5 yards. The last target had a bit of trigger freeze. I just tensed up too much trying to shoot it quick.

[Bunchies95]

Stage 3

138/160 points 21.55 seconds

Points on this were horrible for some reason. I had my only D on a field course on this stage. I planned two extra shots on this stage: one on the horizontal hard cover through the door and one on the zebra through the port. I had a lot of C's on the final array of paper just trying to blitz through that. I called my miss on that final steel and made it up very quickly. I saw that it went straight into the barrel. If the barrel wasn't there, it would have hit the mini popper. So the good news is that at times, my shot calling can be relly good. Just need it to happen all the time now. Room for improvement on this stage would be to not take so many make up shots.

Stage 4

114/120 points 23.23 seconds

This stage proves once again: DO NOT CHANGEYOUR PLAN AT THE LAST MINUTE! I originaly planned to reload going across the stage, but then last minute decided that it would be better to reload moving forward which would give me the ability to haul ass across the stage. Ended up reload in both positions as the plans were equally strong. I also decided that shooting the middle two paper from the start position was the best idea so I wouldn't have to accel/dece/accel through the middle portion of the stage in order to shoot those. WAtching other people who did that, I am sure that I made the right call. Had a few too many misses on steel. It was hot, I had run a bunch of people as RO and just plain stopped watching my sights. I might have won the stage with just a bit of patience on steel. The final paper target I shot, the first shot broke while I was still transitioning to it. I was prepping the trigger and ended up over prepping it. The shot was still on papper, but I had no idea at the time. This tells me that I need to work on wide transition some more while keeping the sights aligned. Watching the video, most of the transition came from my shoulders, not my legs.

[Bunchies95]

Since I'm not feeling very productive at work today...let's get right into last weekend's Bullet Hole Match. I decided to shoot Production this time and easily won. No one that I would normally compete against showed up. So I tried to beat my shooting buddy who was shooting Limited. Were it not for a loose primer, I would have

http://www.bullethole.com/scores/bpsc/2013/aug_13.htm

Stage 1

98/120 points 20.36 seconds

A vast majority of my points dropped were on the Drop Turners. I cannot remember exactly, but I think I had 3 misses on them, with only 1 being a shot not taken. I figured if I didn't get them all in the first pass, it wasn't worth waiting till they showed up again. During the walkthrough, the second pass was not timed very well. Some of them were faster and others were slower. But watching the video, they were pretty similar. The hardest part of this stage was the start. All mags for the stage had to be on the table with an unloaded gun. I had never practiced this before. I decided to load one extra mag on my belt, just in case. The initial shooting seemed a little choppy. I think I could have been more aggressive in both the shooting and movement. The issue was that the targets would appear then quickly dissappear. By shooting faster, I could move faster. Hitting that metal pole on a shot through the port distracted me a bit, hence the look right. Wasn't expecting a steel hit on a stage with no steel.

Stage 2: Triple Choice Classifer

69/75 points 13.52 seconds

This was a solid run on the classifier. Didn't drop too many points, but the ones I did wer close to hard cover. Missed the grip on the freestyle draw trying to push the pace a bit and had to readjust, losing time. The strong/weak hand strings was just shooting for points. I figured if I pushed the pace here a miss would surely be the result. All in all, a 85% run. Some minor improvements would help a bit here (draw, sh/wh shooting)

Stage 3

174/180 points

This was a good run. I took a risk on my plan by shooting the plate rack and two more targets with one magazine. If I screwed it up, a standing reload would have been the result, but that would have happened anyways. I tried to miss that second plate twice, I think I was looking at that piece of steel instead of my sight. I'm not happy with how slowly I shot the two paper targets right after the plate rack. They were close enough and the hard cover wasn't that bad that my splits should have been half that. The right to left reload needs a bit more work. I was really focused on the 180.

Movement up the alley was decent, could be more aggressive. Need to work on aiming where the target is going to be rather than looking for the target. I'm not sure on my decision to shoot that third position like I did. My logic was I had to lean in a bit to see the hardcover, so I might as well shoot there. Then leave on the open target by the no-shoot target. This resulted in some wide transtions. It might have been better to just settle in on the no shoot and shoot right to left and not worry about the lean out on the last target. Going into the final position, I decided that the hardcover target was too dangerous to enter on, despite its close proximity. So I left that till last. Might not have been the fastest choice, but definately the most comfortable one. That third mag pouch looked hard to get to. Will have to work on that in dry fire (still trying to feel out the ghost mag pouches and their locations/angles).

[Bunchies95]

Stage 4

74/80 points 22.03 seconds

Here is where the wheels came off. I had a loose primer pocket that allowed a primer to fall out. This caused a mis-fire and a jam. The primer jammed the next round in the mag so it wouldn't chamber. After racking the slide didn't work, I just changed magazines. This laziness in inspecting brass cost me ~ 10 seconds on the stage. Ouch. The run on the steel was decent. I decided that it wasn't worth it to try and blaze all the steel to get the DT and clam shell last, so I split the arrays. However, I think I should have tried it, just to see what I was capable of. The hardcover targets behind the steel were tight! I knew the only way to do well on this stage was to get the hits. So I focused on just that. The one make-up shot i had, I just didn't like the sight picture when the shot broke. It ended up breaking the perf, but I didn't know that at the time. Just that it was a possible miss. I had 2 C hits on the clam shell . I indexed too low on it when it appeared. A/C on the DT by not aiming the second shot. I saw brown and pulled the trigger.

Stage 5

67/90 points

This was a fixed time standards. there were 6 head shots with no-shoots and hard cover. Par time was 6 seconds, one shot per target. First string was at 15 yards, seconds 9, third 3. I had one miss a vast majority of my B hits on the first string. I decided that I couldn't guarentee an A hit so I just got as many points as I could. The miss was off the draw (low left). The rest of the stage was pretty easy. I used the par time very well.

[Bunchies95]

Stage 5

149/155 points 28.77 seconds

There was really only one way to shoot this stage. Go to the star, then door then everything else. I had some trouble on the star. 8 shots for 5 plates. Granted, I'm pretty sure I hit a couple of the plates and they didn't fall, but the RO didn't see it. You can hear steel being struck, but no hits were visible on the arms, so I must have hit the plates. After the star, the door had to be manipulated. It was a hanging cloth that had to be pushed out of the way. I could have made that movement more aggressive. The reload backing up and avoiding the wall while finding a tight position was very difficult. I tried to drive the steel down at the end to get to the swingers faster, but ended up missing a couple of times, managing to hit the second one twice. Hits on the swingers were 2A and AC.

Moving Forward:

I only have 2 weeks left until the Stoeger class, so I will focus on just plain shooting ability until then. My dryfire is going to work on building a solid grip every time out of the new holster and finding my deeper mags while moving.

[Bunchies95]

Went to a class taught by Ben Stoeger last weekend. It was hot and humid, but I still managed to learn a lot. We didn't do as much shooting as I thought we would for a two day class, but I wasn't shooting as well as I thought I could so that may be a plus. One big lesson I learned, make sure your gun is properly sighted in before you go. I was shooting low, which was originall diagnosed as a push. But after some grouping, we found out that I was hitting low. I still had developed a push on targets that I thought were hard, but not as bad as it originally was thought to be.

I'm not going to go into a whole bunch of detail about the class, but I will hit the highlights.

1. My stage breakdown is decent, however I put too much emphasis on trying to eliminate a shooting position or reduce steps. This led to some complicated plans that I didn't execute well. All options being equal, go with the easier to execute plan, even if it takes a few extra steps.
2. Pay more attention to my reloads. I tend to forcibly leave a position, then start the reload. It's better to get the reload finished before worrying about aggressive movement. This leads directly into......
3. Have the gun ready to shoot before getting into position. While not a hard and fast rule, start aiming at the target before you can shoot it. This requires any reload be done before this point.
4. For tight positions after a hard run, start slowing down sooner. This will allow me to find the position and not over run it. Keep my eyes on the foot placement point until I can be sure I will hit it.
5. Only keep your focus on one thing at a time. As soon as you finish the most pressing thing (reload, position, etc) then start aiming at the target while settling into position.
6. Practice shooting on the move more. It is just horrendous.
7. Get lower and stay low. Don't go back upright, its just wasting time.
8. Grip hard on the gun. Especially with my left hand.
9. Don't muscle the gun on transitions. It leads to overshooting the target.
10. Work with par times a little more in live fire. I found I can actually shoot faster than I think I can.

[Bunchies95]

Well apparently it has been a year and a half since I last posted here. Upon review, I had pretty much stagnated on my shooting development, even seen some major regressions at times. I started on my MBA at the beginning of last year and have been struggling to find a good work/life/school/shooting balance. My professional ambitions are very lofty (Hence the MBA) and add in the fact that my girlfriend works nights, so our time spent together is very oportunistic, there has been very little time for shooting.

I think I have the work/life/school balance working pretty well right now, so I am going to try adding in more shooting. I won't be able to practice 2-3 times a week like I used to for various reasons, but I am going to make it my goal to have at least one live fire session every week. I am also going to make it my goal to dry fire at least 4 times per week. By trying to meet these lofty goals, I am finding that scheduling is becoming extremely important. On weekends, I can't get up at 9 and start being productive at noon and can't go home and lay on the counch for an hour. I can unwind from work just as easily reloading as I can watching TV.

For at least the first major of my 2015 season, I have decided to shoot single stack. I have been getting bored with production and felt I needed a different challenge. It was slow getting everything together to properly compete, but I am finally there. I had been dry firing with my Springfield Range Officer a bit before Xmas, but more just to get a feel of the gun. I have to say....those skinny mags are a bit tricky. I'm finding that a developed pause right before insertion is crucial. I can't sling it up there like my production mags. A slight error with them might only cost me a few tenths of a second, but with SS that can easily be a full second added.

Sunday was my first match with the gun, and only got to zero the gun in the day before. I made the decision to just shoot for points this match. That lasted all of the first three stages before I decided I wanted to see what would happen if I cut it loose a bit. I'm glad that I changed strategies for one stage as I found out that I can shoot that gun just as fast as my production gun. In the heat of the moment, I didn't notice any difference in recoil (which I noticed when trying to shoot straight points). My big problem of the match came on the last stage. It had arrays that forced you to shoot eight good shots three times in a row. A single miss on steel forced a standing reload. After cutting loose on the previous stage, I had a hard time changing gears and going back to basics. I need to be able to change gears not only between stages, but between arrays or even individual targets. I will design some drills that force me to switch gears.

Single Stack is going to be a difficult challenge to master, but I think I am up for the occasion.

[wmetzler01]

Congrats on the MBA! I finished mine 3 years ago and it has easily paid for its self. I was working full time while getting my masters at Chapel Hill and it pretty much sucked up all of my time and left nothing for shooting.

After I finished my masters, I had a ton of time and started training once again.

Your plan sounds good and best luck in pursuit of your degree!

[Bunchies95]

Well I followed up a good match with probably the worst match I've had in a long time. It was a rough match as most of the targets were very challenging (20 yard swingers, 28 yard plates, partial swingers, etc). The word "mean" comes to mind. I loved every minute, even the most frustrating parts.

It's been a week since that match, but heres what went wrong:

1. Engaged safety on close target due to loose grip
2. Slide Failed to lock back on classifier
3. 3 Mikes
4. Forgot and entire array due to last minute plan change (rookie thing)

So here are my solutions and game plan

1. Get thin safety installed, maybe even single sided as it is my strong hand riding up into it. For now I will sand down the offending side as a stop gap measure
2. Found the offending mags, they did it on the safe table too. It doesn't seem like they are pushing the slide lock all the way into the slide. Still investigating, but a gunsmith gave me some advice on how to modify the slide stop by cutting a slight angle in it.
3. Cannot shoot as aggressively on partials as I can with my 9mm. I just cannot time the gun yet. I have been focusing on letting my sights settle on small targets in dry fire
4. Very confusing stage to breakdown for single stack. I saw an option that allowed my to eliminate a low port with far targets, but had me eating a standing reload. Except when I went to burn that plan in, I completely skipped an array as I had it in my mind go there after the first position, but was walking right past it in the walkthrough. NEVER EVER CHANGE THE PLAN WITH A FEW SHOOTERS BEFORE GO TIME!!!

Of everything, that last mistake pisses me off.

Now enough bashing on what went wrong, what went right?

1. Most of my stage plans were rock solid. Except for the one incident, the plans were executed flawlessly and were solid plans
2. Reloads were good, not amazing but good.
3. I HAD FUN! It was 65 degrees in south Texas and I was shooting guns, what more can you ask for?

This past week was really busy as I had a deadline at work that I had to make, so very little dry fire for me. Today however, I made sure to take lots of breaks between homework and work to get some solid dry fire in. I swithced my mag pouches to CR Speed with the 1911 insert and noticed an immediate difference. I can get my hand on the mags without jamming my thumb into my side. Getting a better grip out of the pouch allowed my to really focus on the reload itself. Doing a draw 4 reload 4 reload 4 drill I was able to get the mag seated and start presenting before the other mag hit the ground. That's about 0.5-0.6 seconds to get the gun reloaded. I like it, I love it, I want some more of it! Still working on polishing up the presentation part but its coming along nicely. I hope to be in Master class form in a few weeks, then can start the hard push to GM.

[Bunchies95]

Congrats on the MBA! I finished mine 3 years ago and it has easily paid for its self. I was working full time while getting my masters at Chapel Hill and it pretty much sucked up all of my time and left nothing for shooting.

After I finished my masters, I had a ton of time and started training once again.

Your plan sounds good and best luck in pursuit of your degree!

Thanks! The balancing act sucks, but I think it will be worth it.

[Bunchies95]

Had a really good dry fire session last night.....well it was more like 4 sessions last night. I would read a bit, then take a break to dry fire, rinse and repeat.

Set up an array of two 2" plates, 1/3 classic target, two 2" plates and stood at 7 yards. This puts everything at a simulated 21 yards. Started with basic draw 6 reload 6 from various hand positions. On thing I noticed was that I was consistently having to raise the sights up to the target after the draw. I don't recall having to do that with the XDm so maybe it is a grip angle difference that I haven't become attuned to yet. The XDm is supposed to have the 1911 grip angle, but sure enough when I put them on top of each other and line the grip/beavertail up, the barrell is angled differently. I'll pay more attention to that in the future. I was also paying a lot of attention to making sure I saw the gun pause on th plates and had a clearly refined sight picture. I figured 21 yard 6" plates have no margin for error.

Next I worked on a box to box dril using the same array set up. Start in one box, draw to the other, shoot 6, reload to start box, shoot 6 and reload back to the other box. The main focus of this drill was to have the reload finished in the first step so I could be aiming as I was entering the next box. The movement was short enough that I didn't have to move all that explosively and could really focus on settling into position smoothly. I was surprised that I didn't have to be completely stable before breaking the shot on the first plate so I will need to confirm this in live fire to make sure I'm being honest. I also noticed I still have a habit of getting taller while getting into position. I enter in low, but as I settle the movement, I straighten my legs. I think this has to do with my comfort shooting fully erect and not liking crouching. Shooting in low positions is something I am going to have to get more comfortable with.

Next up was a square drill where I shot two plates, moved forward, moved right, back, left. I focused on keeping the gun up and aiming at the next target, not worrying about capacity. This drill wore me out more than anything as I was constantly moving and gripping the gun hard. No time to relax. Forward and right movement was easy, back and left was not. I kept wanting to break my grip moving in those directions. I'm not so worried about the backwards movement breaking my grip, but the left movement needs to be perfect. Short movements between arrays either right or left without a reload is quite common.

Finally I set up two 1/6 scale poppers at a simulated 50-60 yards distant. At this point I was just focusing on gun handling. Draw, shoot, move, reload, shoot. There was no particular order or anything like that. I just made up what I was doing as I went along. I think I only set this up to get away from studying and didn't really learn too much.

[Bunchies95]

Friday's practice session was a success on multiple levels. I invited a shooting buddy to come out to my new range. I haven't been able to practice with him since last July, so that was fun to get back into a familiar rythm. We are pretty equally skilled so we constantly push each other. I made the biggest gains in the past when I was practicing with him on a regular basis.

We set up a short stage with a single ported 8' wall: 3 targets @ 7-8 yards at varying heights and mostly open (left side), 2 stacked targets at 15 yards on the right side (one head shot and one bottom half hard cover) and a plate rack in the center at 14 yards. Nice combo of tight shots, open shots, short movements, lowish ports and steel.

We started shooting on the left side at the close targets. I can really hammer them when I want to, but I need to ensure that I have a good grip right off the draw or the points are crap. The short movement to the right side provided ample time to do a reload and not feel too rushed on the movement. Getting into position and settled in was tough. The targets required a slight lean to see properly and they were very difficult shots. It felt like I spent a lot of time trying to stabalize myself to get clean shots. Then short movement with reload into the plate rack. I re-learned the importantance of going one for one on the steel. It is better to slow down a tenth of a second per shot to ensure a hit than it is to have one or more makeups. I noticed if I picked a definitive aiming point on the steel (usually bottom third) I would do much beter.

When we started from the right side, it was very much apparent how much time getting into position for those tight shots was costing us. By starting on those targets, we were able to shave a full 2 seconds off the stage time as it enabled us to shoot the easy targets much sooner as we didn't need to be stable. I found myself finishing the array before I even really got into position. That is an awesome feeling. It was also really cool to see 1.7 second reloads with ~ 6 yards of movement as well. That really shows my reload practice paying off. I was able to shoot the close targets much more aggresively as I had a better grip on the gun after the reload. I need to focus on getting a solid grip off the draw quickly.

To end the session, we changed up the stage slightly. we pushed the close arry out to 15 yards and shot those through the port, the head shot was brought to 8 yards, and the plate rack (4 plates only though) was shot leaning around the wall. This provided an interesting planning opportunity. Do you split the second array, eat up a large transition, in order to do only 1 reload and have ammo to spare on the plate rack? Or do you run the round count right to the limit on the plate rack (not easy shots)? Or last option was to do two reloads? We tried all three. The first option proved to be the most consistent as we had the capacity to miss once or twice on the plates, but took 0.9 seconds on the wide transition. The second option proved to be the quickest by about the 0.9 seconds of the transition, but was the most inconsistent as there was no room to miss. The mental stress of having to go one for one either slowed us down on the shots too much, or we missed and ate a standing reload. The last option, while the easiest, was the slowest. Just too many reloads with no movement to make up the time.

The best part of the session came after we cleaned up....Jim Bodkin was in town and stopped by the range to deliver us 20k nice beautiful red coated potential A-holes......quite a workout unloading his truck but I'm set until my first major when I can get another personal delivery.

[Bunchies95]

The great Single Stack experiment was scheduled to end after Double Tap. I was not happy with the results so I have decided to extend the trial to the end of the year. I was expecting a smooth transition and have observed anything but. It has been frustrating to say the least. My match results have been pretty good (3rd Place @ Double Tap & 2nd Place @ Cowtown Classic) but I just have not felt comfortable shooting this gun yet. Still nothing feels right. I guess that is what happens when you shoot the same gun for 4 years. I have yet to be able to ride the knife's edge for an entire match. I can be aggressive or accurate. At Cowtown, I was much more accurate than the winner, but he shot the stages so much faster that he ended up winning (I thought I actually won until scoring corrected him to major). Double Tap was a big improvement, but there were instances of shooting wayyyy too aggressively and racking up bad penalties. I am still learning how to recover from bad stages. Tank a stage, and it takes me a stage or two to pull things back together, just need to forgive and forget.

Here are the things I have learned thus far:

• Shooting Major is FUN!!!
• I am not as accurate on partials/steel as I used to be. Switched to a narrow front sight last week so I can actually see some daylight between the post.
• My reloads are wicked on the move, but are being over thought while stationary
• 2 rounds may not seem like a big difference, but it is huge in stage planning. I am seeing the odd target arrays now to get better reload positions. However, with my good reloads it doesn't matter much
• Shooting SS has not forced a correction on the amount of makeup shots I take, this is a mental discipline issue that I am still working on.
• 45 brass is hard to find...everyone who shoots it usually picks it up, so no range brass.

The next matches on my schedule are Area 4 and Oilfield Classic. Thankfully I have the entire month of August off of school so I am going to try and hit the range a lot. Let's see what I can do in the next month and a half. Either way, this experiment has been frustratingly fun!

[Bunchies95]

Shot a steel and USPSA match over the past month. The steel match was horrible. I had replaced the front sight with a narrower blade, but didn't get a chance to sight it in. I think the height was different, but ever so slightly. I figured out I had to aim at the bottom of the plate in order to get decent hits. A bigger issue than that was that I couldn't actually see the blade. The fiber is now such a large proportion of the sight, that it lit up like a spotlight on me. Nobody had a marker I could use to dull it and I forgot mine....oops.

Didn't get to touch the gun between the steel match and the day before the USPSA match due to school. But after setting up the USPSA match, I had an opportunity to practice a bit. After dulling the fiber and adjusting the elevation a three clicks, things were working out better. I set up three targets, one at fifteen, steel at 30 and paper at 23 and played around with shooting them. I can hammer out the fifteen yard target and get good hits, but fell apart on the 23 yard target. I could feel the gun shift around in my left hand. This caused almost all of my second shots to be high right from the first. Need to figure that out.

The USPSA match itself went very well. I was able to put together some very good runs and one total disaster. I did have some time loss when I hesitated on a few targets. This is a stage programming issue. I attribute this to being the main RO on the squad and not having enough time to prepare as I held onto the timer until I was in the hole. The heat of the day did take a toll on me. It was 100 with very high humidity. Even though I drank plenty of water, by the last stage I was just in a fog. It showed as I had a disaster of a run. I will try some electrolyte replacement additives next match to see if that helps. I had a great run on the classifier (paper poppers). Gun came out of the holster awesome (1.25 draw) and the reload was slick. However, I went past one of the middle poppers as I was running the steel and had to go back to it. That cost me maybe half a second, but otherwise a good run. That is not a stage where you want to pause on the steel much, I just let the gun travel too fast. I'm glad that I saw it and could make it up without hesitation.

Now that I'm done with the school semester, I can make it out to the range more. I am going to try and make it out at least once during the week and another weekend day. Plus I want to attend a match a weekend until Area 4. This should help with the stage planning and execution issue.

[Bunchies95]

Well Area 4 is in the books and not the result I was expecting or even hoping for. I ended up getting DQ'ed for an accidental discharge while clearing a malfunction. I had been having trouble with the gun from the start of the second day. The malfunctions were either hammer follow or a dead trigger (not sure as I was just worried about getting the gun running again while on the clock and cycling the slide would fix both). I had another malfunction while hanging off the ropes on Stage 5. Released the rope, which forced me out of the shooting area, cycled the slide and BANG. I know my finger was off the trigger so the gun fired on its own. This DQ hurts for two reasons: 1.) It was nothing I did, gun malfunctioned in an unsafe manner and 2.) I was in the hunt for the win. I have to figure out the gun issue so I can have a lesson learned from this DQ. Since I am still new to 1911 style guns, I have no idea when springs need to be replaced or if it is a trigger geometry issue (bought the gun used with a trigger job on it already).

Other than the DQ, it was a great match. I shot pretty well for the most part, had issues on small far steel.

Stage 7: This is the stage I started on. I felt like a got off to a slow start here. The stage had to gun unloaded on the barrel and no mags on your person. The WSB wasn't specific on where the mags could be so I had them strewn across the stage where I could get to them. I had one mag on the chair that I stuffed at the buzzer, and picked another off the barrel to load with. I shot the first array decent, but not aggressive enough (especially the 15 yard partial). The challenging part of this stage was the two moving plates at the end. They were protected by static steel hardcover as well as a steel pendulum. I saw lots of people waste 5-10 seconds trying to get the plates. The question was go for the fast time and fire off two quick shots at the plate or try and get them. Being a 115 point stage, possibly giving up 30 points was quite the risk. After doing the math, the HF would improve if you knocked them down in less than 6 seconds, so well worth it.

Stage 8: This stage had cross activating movers where the swingers were visible from different ports. The start position forced the stage plan in terms of physical route you had to take. I opted to take on target trough a port from a distance so I could have an extra two rounds for that array. This was a decision due to lack of confidence. The swinger and one plate were at ~20 yards so I planned to throw an extra shot at the swinger and an extra for the plate just in case. Glad I made that decision because I needed the extra round on the plate.

Stage 9: This stage was pretty spread out so you needed to be quick on your feet. I opted to activate the movers from the start position as that kept me from going to slide lock in the middle of a mover array or prevented a standing reload in the last position. I did an accidental reload as my feet started reloading, but didn't waste any time with it. Just shot the next target and reloaded again as planned. I had a beautiful entry into the next position, shooting the first target 2 A while still settling into position. By now the swingers had slowed to the point that they weren't much of a challenge. The last position I came into a ittle hot. Called a high miss on my my second shot on the first target but moved onto the steel anyways. This was a delay in the brain function. I needed one extra shot on the steel and automatically made up a close delta on the next target. This left me without a round to make up the called miss. I opted to eat the mike instead of reloading for it. Would have hurt my score but saved my pride to make it up.

Stage 10: This was one of those "screw single stack" stages. The stage had two bobbers that were disappearing. You could save some time by skipping them but would lose 15% of the points. The stage plan I came up with had me reloading after the first target. This gave me a nice array of 8 by taking on target from the side of the wall instead of closer through the port. It also gave me enough rounds to attempt the first bobber instead of skipping it. I ate a mike no shoot on the partial target that I entered the position on (you had to shoot this one first if you wanted a chance at the bobber). The shot was just a half inch low and wasn't called. I timed the bobber beautifully and got it as it was coming up for a nice A/C. The second one I accidentally shot the steel first as my sights crossed it, so the timing was off and resulted in on NPM.

Stage 11: This stage I finally found a grove. I came up with a single stack unique plan and executed it as good as I could. There was a little bit of time wasted due to far and small steel. But other than that was a beautiful run. Would have been a stage win.

Stage 12: Tossed from match before I shot it

Stage 13: This was our first stage without moving targets on it. They were relatively close but had some tight shots. This stage had plenty of options on how to shoot it. I ended up with a plan that had 2 extra reloads as a matter of convenience and no matter how I looked at it, I couldn't avoid a standing reload. I don't think there was an optimal plan for single stack like there was for limited or open so I picked the one I knew I could execute well. I had a great run on this stage. One for one on steel, no make ups and little hesitation. I even hit my spot on a tightly obscured target with the gun up and shooting as soon as the target was visible. The only hiccup was in the final position, I hesitated on the entry and was slow to index on the head shot. I think I might have been better off shooting this array in the reverse order.

Stage 14: My only goal was to survive this stage as there were plenty of chances to break the 180 here. The stage started from the front and you retreated either left or right. I chose to go left, which I wasn't comfortable reloading in this direction. I had to be perfect in the first array with two USP so I could carry to the next position. Then I could reload while retreating back and to the right, which is a comfortable direction. I opted to shoot the close targets first and then the far target from this position. Since it was 3 shots per target, this had me going to slide lock. I figured this was better as the final position was a lean to the far target without a significant distance advantage. I wasn't so sure on the last shot on the far target so I had to make it up from the final position anyways. Cost me 1 second to make up a C with a miss....oops.

Stage 15: This one would have been another stage win for me. Due to the round count, I shot it slightly different than if I were shooting production. I chose to step right first to engage a hidden target as I was afraid of missing the position should I engage it later. I carried rounds to the left side and engaged the partials there. By the time I was reloaded, I could engage the close center array. I got a little hung up here and had to stutter step so I didn't step outside the shooting area. Carried two more rounds to shoot the next target, which was only available from the center. I reloaded into the left open target and started the hard transition to the final 3 targets (beautiful reload by the way). As I started to transition, I fired the second shot at the first target and called it marginal. After finishing the final three targets I swung back to the first target to re-engage and saw the delta barely there so I left it.

Stage 1: Yet another potential stage win. I didn't decide on a plan until after the walk-through. There were many plans that all had a flaw. I chose to start in the center, do a shuffle dance so I could make an 8 shot array. Then I went to the low port (deep squat for me). I ended up kneeling instead of squatting which cost me some time, though I think I was more comfortable in that position. Low ports are always challenging for me to call shots and I clipped a no shoot with a called good shot. I got the points so I was lucky. Most people engaged a plate from the port but I chose to lean around the right wall to get it. This enabled me to carry rounds for the long run from right to left and engage on target tucked behind a barrel. I took a chance at the end of the stage and didn't reload going into the final array, which gave me nine rounds with one piece of steel. Since I had it in my mind to get a good sight picture on the steel, that's how I shot the last two paper targets as well. I should have been much more aggressive on those but I still executed my plan well.

Stage 2-5: This was the next day for my squad. And also when malfunctions started happening. The malfunctions would have cost me the match on their own, but then the AD happened and I was on my way to Dairy Queen. I couldn't hang around Stage 5 but rejoined my squad on the final stage to hep reset.

Even though I didn't get to finish the match, I still had a great time and came away with some good lessons learned. I need to work on low shooting positions and some harder leans. The biggest thing is I just need to get my confidence back. This is a direct result of not practicing as much as I should. I have Oil Field Classic in two weeks, and don't have time to get out to the range much. So unless I get a gunsmith to fix my SS gun with 100% confidence, I'll either skip the match or play around in Limited with my production gun. The money is already spent, but I don't expect a good match performance from me so I plan to just have fun if I go.

[Jerome]

I noticed the DQ in the match results and was pretty shocked. Sorry to hear it. See John Harris for quick help with the 1911.

[Bunchies95]

I noticed the DQ in the match results and was pretty shocked. Sorry to hear it. See John Harris for quick help with the 1911.

Can you PM me his contact info?

Also, when am I going to see you at a match again?