Kit's Range Diary

[kiloindiatango]

Confession: I have been lurking here for years. YEARS. Like, since 2005. Finally, I made an account, but I was still never brave enough to post or comment. It's like walking into a party where everybody knows everybody but you and the person who invited you didn't show, and there you are, wandering around nursing your Shirley Temple and trying to fit in. Scary! So bear with me. My first post will be a big one. I've read the forum rules but I'm still a little scared I might accidentally break one. If I do, let me know and I'll fix it. But it's time to start introducing myself so I can have a good time at this party! I'm just so excited about the road I'm on that I want to be able to share it going forward, so I have to roll back a bit to get this range diary on track and up to date.

I first started shooting USPSA in the fall of 2004. I was at the range with my husband shooting AR-15s at the gongs for fun (and making dishwashing wagers) when this random guy walked over and started talking to us about USPSA. He was practicing in the next bay and invited me over to try it out. That was November 7, 2004, the day I met Scott Giesick, a Master class shooter who is now half of the training team at Practical Shooting Instruction in Montana. I remember practicing and learning the basics with Scott, then going to the new competitor clinic the next spring and shooting matches (badly) all year long. It wasn't until 2006 that I finally joined USPSA and got classified (D, in Production). I even went to Area 1 that summer and placed second in my class and division. And then... I got snapped up and shipped off to the law enforcement academy. Three months at the academy followed by 16 weeks in field training followed by five months as a probationary officer followed by rotating swing shifts.... and no more USPSA for me! (I know, excuses, excuses!)

Fast forward a few years, and now I'm a detective on a permanent day shift schedule - and a firearms instructor with my department. I re-connected with Scott last year when I took one of his competition handgun classes to try to pick up some training techniques I could pass on to our officers. At that time PSI didn't have a web presence, so I offered to set up a web site for them in exchange for some one-on-one training. I was tired of being a D-class shooter. I wanted to get better and I was willing to put in the work to make it happen.

Scott told me to order up a copy of Mike Seeklander's book, Your Competition Handgun Training Program. I read it cover to cover in one day and was immediately hooked on the idea of a systematic approach to training.

You see, I'm a numbers geek. I spent three years as an analyst doing nothing but spreadsheets and reports for a Fortune 500 company in the Washington DC area. I LOVE playing with data, seeking out inefficiencies in processes, noting what works to improve whatever metric I'm examining. It's the same reason Crossfit appealed to me so immediately when I first stumbled into it in 2007 - my WODs and PRs are all in an app on my iPhone, sorted by date, so I can see how my deadlift is coming along. LOVE IT. And now here was a way to start doing the same kind of metrics tracking with my shooting. If you can track it: you can improve it.

Scott and I sat down together in early December 2011 and made out a training plan. We knew our Area 1 championship would be really early this year - April 25th-29th, so we backed up from there and realized if we started on 12/13/11 and followed Seeklander's program exactly, we would end the complete training rotation one week before Area 1. Perfect timing!

So that's what we've been doing. Since December 13, 2011, we have met at the range three days a week for shooting practice. Once or twice a week, Nate Martin (the other half of PSI) joins us and we all take turns running drills. I've been really lucky to have two Master class guys critiquing everything I do. I have corrected SO MANY THINGS about my shooting. Now, I'm not rich, so I'm on a pretty strict ammo budget. I get 225 rounds per practice session, which is 675 rounds a week, or 2,700 rounds for the four weeks of Phase 1. In Phase 1, I recorded shooting 1,631 rounds on drills (we trimmed the number of reps in the program to fit my ammo budget). The rest went to warmups, correcting miscellaneous shooting technique issues, and other drills outside the program.

Here's what I noticed about Seeklander's program. I started out as a shooter who always wondered HOW ON EARTH people called shots... because I just shot as fast as I thought I could hit the targets and prayed for alphas. I thought I was focusing on my front sights (and I probably even was for the first shots) but after that? Well, you can imagine how well that worked out for me.

Within weeks I went from not being able to call my shots at all... to calling my shots.... to calling and making up my deltas/misses (yes, this took another week), to now having to train myself out of making up charlies because it's usually not worth the time-to-accuracy tradeoff. Amazing.

As a specific example, my last El Presidente classifier was on 8/13/06 and I scored 28.248%. (Ouch.) At the end of Phase 1, when I did my Pre-Phase 2 skills test? I scored 66.717% (edging into B class!) That was on 1/18/12, barely a month after starting this program.

On 1/15/12, Scott and I travelled three hours to Spokane, WA so I could shoot a real match - there's not a lot of winter matches in Montana, as you can imagine! I won first place in Production. In a field of 6 shooters around my same skill level, but still! Despite there being a ton of no shoots, I didn't hit a single one of them - and were it not for one miss, I would've had a clean match. (I have a blog post about it that includes my stage videos, but apparently a side effect of lurking for years instead of posting is that I have to earn my link rights!)

This program works, folks. It's not easy. I spend ten hours a week at the range doing live fire, and another three to five hours a week doing dry fire. You have to be disciplined, you have to log the hours and the rounds downrange. But if you do that, I'm absolutely convinced this program will take you places your shooting has never gone before.

I'm now halfway into Phase 2, but I've attached my statistics for Phase 1:

I will say we've come a long way in properly recording stats since Phase 1. It wasn't until I put this spreadsheet together a few weeks after we finished Phase 1 that I realized we really needed to be scoring EVERY drill individually, even if it added time, because averaging five runs really wasn't telling me much if I ended up with a 60% accuracy rate but knew I had at least one 100% run. So now we score and hit factor every run. It also wasn't until I re-read the book that I realized I needed to concentrate a lot less on speeding up and a lot more on improving my accuracy, so you won't see that until I post my Phase 2 charts in a few weeks.

The purpose of this is to demonstrate how you can start off as an average D-class shooter with nothing more than basic, competent firearms handling skills, and start hammering the fundamentals and steadily improving your skills using Seeklander's program. I'm currently rated D-class in Production at 37.70%, but I fully expect to hit C class within my first few classifiers this season.

My first goal is to make B class by the end of 2012.

I know I can do it. And you get to watch. Well... assuming I don't get bounced from this party! If not, then I'll be updating this range diary regularly as I progress along the way to Area 1.

[monicataliani]

Wecome! I am so excited to see another girl shooter on here! I can't wait to see how your season goes! Good luck!

[Heckler]

Welcome. Great Post!

[kiloindiatango]

Wecome! I am so excited to see another girl shooter on here! I can't wait to see how your season goes! Good luck!

I've been following your range diary for awhile and picking up tips for myself! I felt like I owed it to other people to put my stuff here because you're right, there's not that many women in the range diary section!

[kiloindiatango]

I don't know that I'll be able to add notes after *every* practice (because for instance, today I worked 8 to 5, the went to the range until 9pm, and am now gobbling down dinner so I can be in bed by 10:30) but we'll see.

Tonight was Phase 2-A and I noticed I improved all my times across the board by about one second since last week. I also improved my accuracy, so it was a great night of practice for me!

I noted several things I need to do more work on. Firstly, I need to SNAP my head around when I am starting from a "facing uprange, wrists above shoulders" draw (I do WAS on the two-shot X-drill instead of hands relaxed at sides because I need more of that kind of practice). I was being lazy before and my head was lollygagging, which slowed me down in general on the turn and target acquisition. Secondly, I need to EXPLODE my hand to my new magazine when I'm doing a mag change - I was getting down there way too late. And lastly, on the Acceleration/Deceleration drill, there is no reason why I should be sighting in on the 5 yd open target and shooting it with a 1.30 draw when I can index that and hit it with a 1.00 draw (as I repeatedly proved in some side drills).

I've got one more practice this week and then my second match on Sunday. I think I only need one good classifier run to propel me from D class into C (I'm currently at 37%) so my fingers are crossed!

Edited February 10, 2012 by kiloindiatango

[feederic]

Incredible all the way around! I just picked up the Seeklander's program after skimming through here. Great progress and good luck I bet you'll fly through C Class in no time.

I take it you train indoors?

[kiloindiatango]

Incredible all the way around! I just picked up the Seeklander's program after skimming through here. Great progress and good luck I bet you'll fly through C Class in no time.

I take it you train indoors?

I'd better fly through C class or my husband (aka my reloader) will wonder what he's doing all this work for!

And yes, I am lucky enough to have access to an indoor range year-round. I live in Montana, so for example, it's in the low 30s and snowing today. While I'm not always a fair-weather shooter, I can whine like all get out if I have to shoot in really bad weather, so it's just better for everybody if I practice in the nice warm range. Although the noise is crazy loud even with doubling up on plugs AND earmuffs. We'll move outside as soon as we get enough warm weather and daylight to do it, but that's likely gonna be May.

[kiloindiatango]

Today was Phase 2-B live fire drills, which focus on movement. I find this is my most challenging area right now. I picked up a lot of good tips on how to improve today.... unfortunately my brain is of the type that I can only work on ONE THING at a time. Once I get that thing down, I can move on to the next, but I can't seem to correct multiple problems at once.

Specifically, on the Short Movement Into Position drill (where you start at one side of a barricade, then move to the other side, shoot, then move back, shoot, and so on) it was pointed out that I pause in position after breaking my last shot, THEN I explode into movement. So this week in dry fire I will be practicing break-move-break-move until I get that built in. I was also settling in and getting a beautiful sight picture before firing... when all I really need is to know I'm in the A/C zone. When I fixed this I gained a good two seconds and didn't drop any shots. I'm still working on prepping my trigger as I come around the side of the barricade instead of waiting until my sights are on target. And lastly, I need to try not to let my weight shift to my outside foot once I arrive in position. Oh wait, that's not the last thing - the last thing is, I need to speed up my splits. There's NO reason my splits should be 0.45 at ten yards. I think there's just so much going on so my brain steps down a few notches. I was able to get my splits up on the last three runs as well, which shaved off a lot of time with no real drop in accuracy.

On the shooting/moving multidirectional drill, I realized that after each reload I'm getting weaker on my grip, which was opening up my groups all over the place. When I remembered to GRIP HARD after each reload I did much better.

I'm trying a new thing where I compare last week to this week on drills so I can see my progress more sharply. I did notice I got significantly faster from last week to this week with no serious loss of accuracy (spreadsheet attached, ignore the typos!). I did take some video today but wont' be able to look at it for a bit. This week I'm being shipped off to a job training and will only be able to dry fire all week. But I plan to hit movement pretty hard each day.

I was planning to hit an out of town match tomorrow, but my shooting partner got sick today so I'm not sure if I want to drive three hours by myself just to shoot a match or not. Still pondering on that one.

Edited February 12, 2012 by kiloindiatango

[feederic]

I was planning to hit an out of town match tomorrow, but my shooting partner got sick today so I'm not sure if I want to drive three hours by myself just to shoot a match or not. Still pondering on that one.

I take it you didn't make it? I don't like to shoot alone at all either, but I'm forcing myself to do so since my shooting partners have dwindled.

[kiloindiatango]

I take it you didn't make it? I don't like to shoot alone at all either, but I'm forcing myself to do so since my shooting partners have dwindled.

I went! I just had to pack up and head out of town for job training as soon as I got back so this is my first chance to get back online! I'll have to work on a writeup but I'll have it up tonight.

[kiloindiatango]

Second Match of 2012 Recap

All week I'd been looking forward to my second USPSA match of the year, despite knowing it was gonna require another three-hour drive to get there. Then at practice on Saturday my shooting partner showed up sick and begged off for the trip. I was hemming and hawing over whether to go, but decided I really needed the exposure to the match environment so off I went. About an hour into the trip I was white-knuckle driving through blowing snow and thinking about how much my husband was going to enjoy spending my life insurance money... but I made it there safe and sound and right on time.

I felt like I had a great performance. It was a four-stage classifier match and I shot it clean. My shooting partner tells me that means I need to shoot faster. Hah! I managed to shanghai other shooters into helping me get video (thanks SPPL guys!) so I could do a critique. I still don't have link/embed privileges here yet so you'll have to go to my blog to see them. That's listed in my profile and is located at kitlear dot modwest dot com.

3-V CM 03-04 (5A, 1B, 2C - 34 of 40 pts, time of 8.37, hit factor of 4.0621)

I was impressed by how the Seeklander Phase 2 drills fit these classifiers so neatly. For instance, this stage used elements from both the Long Distance Challenge (open targets at 51') and the Multi-Hardcover drill (three partials of varying difficulty). Watching this video, I see I have a consistent cadence, but I think that's the way it should be - the open target looks deceptively simple but that's a long distance away! Whereas the close target only had the head available.

Mini-Mart CM 99-21 (11A, 1C - 58 of 60 pts, time of 9.77, hit factor of 5.9365)

Once again, this stage used Seeklander elements - a table draw AND a table reload. I wish I had my times on my draw and reload and so on so I could see how closely I'm shooting relative to my practice par times. I'll have to try playing the video to my iPhone shot timer and see if it'll pick it up. Anyhow, I think my draw looks great, reload is smooth but could be faster, and I definitely need to move my hips as I acquire each target instead of just moving my upper body. That's a new concept for me and I'm still practicing it.

Payne's Pain CM 99-19 (11A, 1C - 58 of 60 pts, time of 16.76, hit factor of 3.4606)

Yes, more Seeklander elements. Off-Balance shooting AND the Multi-Port drill. I had fantastic accuracy here. I need to explode my off hand to the new mag a lot faster. And I'm left-eye dominant, so I should've been shooting the left side just as fast as the right side, if not faster. I think by the third string I was just more comfortable with it.

Pucker Factor CM 09-04 (5A, 3B, 6C - 52 of 70pts, time of 16.47, hit factor of 3.1573)

This classifier is aptly named - that's a LOT of no-shoot targets!!! I was actually disappointed when I saw the predicted classifier calculation for my hit factor on this stage (29%). I shot it as fast as I reasonably felt I could and still miss the no shoots.... and I saw several people ahead of me shoot those things, which definitely created some apprehension. Apparently I need to be a lot more accurate if I'm going to take 16 seconds on this classifier, but I was shooting to the center of my available target just like I've been taught. *shrug* I also haven't practiced much (okay, at all) with no shoots, either. I'm not going to worry about this one for now since it won't be included in my classification scores.

When averaged with my current classifier score (average 37%) these new classifiers should put me firmly into the middle of C-class at 48% if the predictor calculator is correct. Ten percent improvement in two months is nothing to sneeze at! If I can keep that up all season long (I plan to do two Seeklander cycles) and maintain that pace I'll be firmly in B class by the end of the year! Let's cross our fingers.

Oh yeah, I won Production again, but there were only two of us shooting Production. I got 164 of 230 possible points (71%) and placed 6th out of 17 total shooters with 62.34% of stage points. I was only trailing behind two B-class Open shooters, one B-class Limited shooter, one Unclassified Limited shooter, and one B-class Revolver shooter. I am pretty happy with that performance. Although I'm sure I won't be "winning" like this once I'm faced with B-class and higher production shooters, I'm still going to try my best!

Now I'm out of town at some job training so it's just dry-fire practice from now until Friday. I have a lot of things I can work on though.

[kiloindiatango]

I got shipped out of town for training for a week with no access to a range, so I've only been able to do dry fire until today. In dry fire I primarily worked on movement drills, where I would break the trigger then immediately run to the next station and break, then rinse, repeat. I also did a session adding a reload in between stations for the same movement drill.

Today I was back on my home range and did the Phase 2 Session C drills. Attached is the comparison of last time (2/4/12) I did this drill to today. I got too impatient on the long range challenge and my hits suffered, but I did consistently have great draws to the first head shot (on which I did not miss). On the multi-position drill I've gotten much more smooth and the transition from standing to kneeling and vice versa, which improved my hit factors on that one. The strong/weak hand X-drill beat me up all day long - while I'm now prepping my trigger strong/weak handed, I really needed to be more patient on my sights. On the plus side, I did not follow the gun at all all day today and that's a pretty great improvement. I also greatly improved my split times on the off balance shooting drill.

And last but not least, I shot an El Pres classifier with a solid B-class score of 67.49%!! This is just my own benchmark, but I shoot it only once, and cold, per drill day, so I treat it like a match stage.

[Chris Keen]

Keep up the good work. Only through lots of practice will you ever be great! Top shooters, Pro. Athletes, even Famous musicians still practice.

[monicataliani]

I totally get the impatient thing. Particularly when I am practicing with a timer, I get really frustrated and really have a hard time focusing on anything but time.

[kiloindiatango]

Keep up the good work. Only through lots of practice will you ever be great! Top shooters, Pro. Athletes, even Famous musicians still practice.

For real. I remember a GM telling me "There are no shortcuts, you just have to shoot. A LOT." I'm finding this to be true. I improve as steadily as I'm willing to put in the hours and rounds.

[Chris Keen]

Keep up the good work. Only through lots of practice will you ever be great! Top shooters, Pro. Athletes, even Famous musicians still practice.

For real. I remember a GM telling me "There are no shortcuts, you just have to shoot. A LOT." I'm finding this to be true. I improve as steadily as I'm willing to put in the hours and rounds.

That sounds like a real smart GM there. It's TRUE. There's no shortcuts .... The only way to get to Carnegie Hall? Practice !!

With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. [from "The Book of Five Rings" by Miyamoto Musashi]

"To attain the Way of strategy as a warrior you must study fully other martial arts and not deviate even a little from the Way of the warrior. With your spirit settled, accumulate practice day by day, and hour by hour. Polish the twofold spirit heart and mind, and sharpen the twofold gaze perception and sight. When your spirit is not in the least clouded, when the clouds of bewilderment clear away, there is the true void"

[kiloindiatango]

I totally get the impatient thing. Particularly when I am practicing with a timer, I get really frustrated and really have a hard time focusing on anything but time.

I practice with two Master class guys who shoot limited, which makes it even worse because they ZOOM through the strings and then I step up there and it's so tempting to go faster than I should because I just heard/saw them do it! But on the other hand it's nice to have people watching me to acclimate me to the pressure of an audience.

[monicataliani]

I totally get the impatient thing. Particularly when I am practicing with a timer, I get really frustrated and really have a hard time focusing on anything but time.

I practice with two Master class guys who shoot limited, which makes it even worse because they ZOOM through the strings and then I step up there and it's so tempting to go faster than I should because I just heard/saw them do it! But on the other hand it's nice to have people watching me to acclimate me to the pressure of an audience.

That's why during competitions I started turning off my muffs and don't watch anyone else shoot until after I shoot. I would start focusing on the time other people would get on stages and then shoot terribly!

[kiloindiatango]

I was planning to hit a match in Washington today but yesterday there was a winter weather advisory saying 100% chance of 4-6" of snow in the pass so no such luck. Instead, I used the day for another practice session. This was Phase 2 Session A. My comparison of this week to last week is attached. I'm still making incremental speed improvements overall while maintaining or improving my accuracy. On the one shot X-drill in particular I doubled my hit factors from last week. In part I did much better on both X-drills because I've learned to speed up my splits on the body shots. My partner said "think about how much information you really need to call the shots, and don't sight in any more than you *really* need to." After he said that I had some nice improvements.

I'm starting to use my legs/hips to turn my upper body when I'm transitioning between targets, which is making for much more crisp transitions and less driving past the target. On our 2 Into 3 Weak Hand Only benchmark, my partner asked me to try to prep my trigger as I was transitioning to the next target instead of once I get on the target (like I've been doing). This resulted in a wild and crazy terrible run, but it was a learning experience - I plan to hit this hard in dry fire practice this week. I also got another B-class run on my El Pres benchmark.

[Chris Keen]

That's awesome! I really like how you are keeping records., That's important.

[kiloindiatango]

It's weird how I feel like a major slacker if I take a mere three days off from shooting. I ended up working a lot of unexpected overtime this week (bad for shooting, good for ammo budget!) so today was my first day back on the range since Sunday. Additionally, neither of my shooting partners could make it today so it was just me. On the one hand, I got done in an hour and a half instead of three hours; but on the other, it felt like my shooting was really sluggish. I am so used to the pressure of having them watch and critique me that apparently I slack off when I'm alone!

My progress stayed level on Short Movement, decreased slightly (4.220 avg HF vs 4.085) on the Long Movement, but did significantly improve on the Moving and Shooting drill. I did have a few great smooth reloads in the 2.5 to 2.6 second range, and

I also had yet another B class score on my El Presidente, so that's three in a row now. I'll see one of these at a classifier in March so we'll see if I can stay consistent! Week to week numbers attached per usual OCDness.

[kiloindiatango]

This is actually an update for Saturday 2/25/12, but my internet has been spacey so I'm a bit late. My shooting partners are back and we did Phase 2 C drills. I had better trigger prep in general (I've been working on prepping as I come around barricades) and incremental gains across the board in speed and accuracy. I learned I can increase my draw time pretty nicely on off balance shooting if I work on leaning simultaneously with the draw instead of thinking about those as two different movements. I still have a lot of dry fire work to do on prepping my trigger as I'm transitioning between targets. I also still need more work on my weak hand dry fire.

On the bright side, I shot a 71% El Presidente at the start of practice!

[Ben Stoeger]

This thread is interesting. It is almost like a long term review of the Seeklander system. I am sure it will turn out pretty well.

I did notice the partial target issue come up a couple times. I think you may want to experiment a little bit with the idea of aiming for the center of the available brown on the target. I don’t think that is a terrible idea when scoring major, but in experimentation on my own I have found I get the best hit factors by aiming for a few more As.. even if I can’t shoot quite as fast.

This is a cool range diary. Keep it coming.

[kiloindiatango]

This thread is interesting. It is almost like a long term review of the Seeklander system. I am sure it will turn out pretty well.

I did notice the partial target issue come up a couple times. I think you may want to experiment a little bit with the idea of aiming for the center of the available brown on the target. I don’t think that is a terrible idea when scoring major, but in experimentation on my own I have found I get the best hit factors by aiming for a few more As.. even if I can’t shoot quite as fast.

This is a cool range diary. Keep it coming.

Thanks Ben. I have lucked out a few times and gotten double alphas on partials but you're right, I have to slow way down. We're doing the A drill tomorrow that has that course in it - I will do a couple for center and a couple slow aiming for the A carefully and see how the hit factors work out.

I do intend it to be a review of the Seeklander book. I was so impressed with the structure I committed to it from the start with the goal of completing all three phases and tracking it. We start Phase 3 next week, and will end that right before I go to Area 1.

[kiloindiatango]

About a month ago my shooting partners encouraged me to start fiddling with the stock internals on my G17. Specifically, they advised me to try a Ghost Rocket trigger kit, since it was less expensive than the drop-in models but would eliminate overtravel and make for a shorter reset. I ordered one up and it sat there collecting dust until this weekend, when I finally installed it. And by "I," I mean I swapped out some parts and pulled out the dremel and then my husband took over because he really wanted to play with the dremel. We're both Glock armorers but he's a lot better at tiny repetitive detail tasks (that's why he also does my reloading) so I was happy to go back to my knitting while he filed away on my trigger bar. I tested it with one magazine afterward and it worked, but I knew it would take some getting used to.

Fast forward to last night's practice. This is our last week of Phase 2 so it was also our last P2A drill. I knew I was in trouble on my first 2-into-3 benchmark, and it got worse when I shot a 35% El Presidente benchmark after that. My trigger pull was a sloppy mess and that trickled down into my grip and splits and everything else. I wasn't able to get consistent smooth splits until the very last drill of the day (Multi-Hardcover).

After comparing my Rocket trigger to the one in my shooting partner's gun, I do think my trigger needs a little more work. But mostly I need to shoot a thousand rounds with it to get used to the different feel.

ANYWAY, on to the review of this practice session. When you look at the attached week to week stats, I'm down nearly across the board on everything - and I'm gonna blame the trigger for all of that. However, even on my disastrous El Pres I had a sweet little 2.13 reload. And on Acceleration/Deceleration I had a 1.02 draw to the near target. We also worked out a time-saving strategy on Acceleration/Deceleration where you lean hard left (just like in the off balance drill) immediately as you draw instead of shooting the near target and THEN leaning... and then as you're swinging back right, shoot the near target while you're moving into the right lean. This creates some nice economy of movement by eliminating two shooting positions.

On Multi-Hardcover, I took Stoeger's suggestion and slowed down to aim more for the A zone rather than shooting the center of the available target area. This resulted in an average increase in my time from last week of 1.13 seconds, but an average increase in my Hit Factors of 0.446. So as long as I don't rush and screw it up this would appear to be a good idea for production.