There and Back Again: A Shooters Tale by BostonBullit

[Steve_P]

You should come up to sig on saturday. I'm going up with Scott B, and I know Dave S and Matt L are going to be there too.

That will keep your fathers day free.

[BostonBullit]

I thought about that, unfortunately it's my daughters last day of soccer so I'll be doing that in the morning.

you guys get a pass this time, I'm sorry but you'll just have to compete amongst yourselves --> <---

[Dan Sierpina]

Pete,

I found when I was shooting my M&P I had to increase the grip pressure with my left hand, accuracy improved. I also pressed the trigger close to the first joint, rather than the tip or the pad of the finger.

When I was actively shooting bullseye, I used the same finger location on my Pardini. A similar long travel trigger. It helped my timed and rapid scores.

[BostonBullit]

Pete,

I found when I was shooting my M&P I had to increase the grip pressure with my left hand, accuracy improved. I also pressed the trigger close to the first joint, rather than the tip or the pad of the finger.

When I was actively shooting bullseye, I used the same finger location on my Pardini. A similar long travel trigger. It helped my timed and rapid scores.

Interesting, I'll give that a try with the laser gun this evening. I briefly experimented with actively pushing the gun right with my support hand thumb, kind of like an imaginary *thumb rest [generic]*, but that seemed like the wrong thing to be doing. thanks Dan!

[Dan Sierpina]

No, don't push with your support hand. Just increase some of the grip, let it be neutral. If you push, you'll be high right.

[BostonBullit]

No, don't push with your support hand. Just increase some of the grip, let it be neutral. If you push, you'll be high right.

I might take high right just to get away from low left! actually I got rid of the low part, I'm just hitting left these days.

got stuck at the press, just getting to dry fire practice now. short session just to play with the support hand grip strength and that's it. I won't push with the left...I promise

[BostonBullit]

Today's Manville, RI match went well overall. I again fell short of both of my goals of 90% points and zero penalties but I didn't completely cluster eff any stages either. The Manville match can give you a false sense of yourself because they aren't allowed to shoot into the side berms which makes all of the stages very flat. They are also usually fairly close range as well so my recent accuracy issues may be masked a little.

The main order of the day was concentrating on support hand grip strength and I did that fairly well. I need to keep working on that until its a subconscious thing and not something I have to focus on just before the buzzer. my one penalty of the day was on the classifier (Fluffy's Revenge 1) which I felt really good while shooting. wasn't rushing or pushing, just putting the sights where they should be and pressing that trigger. My second shot split the perf and I got the NS and the hit but not the Mike. that 1/4" dropped me from around a 58% to a 40%. interesting that at 4.31sec it was the fastest Production time by around 3/4 of a second; but like I said it didn't feel fast which is what I'm after....

and I DID remember to hand my phone off before each stage this time...

Started on Stage 1. Had 1 makeup on the steel activator but two alpha on the bonus target. missed my planned reload and went to slide lock, need to stop the mental errors like that

Stage 2, I was supposed to exit the box after the first array and take the next array on the move but for some reason I started sprinting out of the box. caught myself and got the plan back on track. the last star I shot at in a match I think I put 20rounds at it before clearing it so I was very pleased with only two pickups this time. this run was good enough for a stage win in the small field of Production shooters, so I can scratch that one off the bucket list.

Stage 3, Fluffy's Revenge 1. As I said, didn't feel hurried or anything, just felt like I was having fun shooting at a good cadence. too damn bad about that friggin NS . my reaction when I see the no-shoot is not fit for young ears

Stage 4, nothing fancy here just a plain ol speed shoot with mandatory reload. of course I botched the reload but at least I didn't let it screw me up.

Back at it tomorrow night with some dry fire fun....but for now I'm going to eat this delicious pepperoni and jalapeno pizza and watch a movie

[BostonBullit]

Sat 6/22 was my clubs monthly match, which presents a bit of an issue for me personally because I have to devote time to the match operations before my own preparation. That said I did some dry firing leading up to it focusing on good support hand grip strength and some reload practice, and spent most of my live fire time on simple accuracy work shooting at 3" dots from 30'.

Started the match on the classifier, CM09-10 Life's Little Problems and had an ok run. every target went Alpha Charlie so at least I was consistent . the HF should come out at a 50% which is around my avg these days. Stage two I fumbled with a reload off the table and it took me 10 shots to clear a star through a port at 25', that could have gone better. had a reasonable run on the "steel stage", two alpha hits on a drop turn bonus target and not too many pickups on the plate racks. the longer field courses were a fun setup and these are usually where I pickup some stage points. I did just that on the first one, finishing strong taking down 4 poppers 1 for 1 at 40' from the prone position under a barricade and only 5 charlies in 34 round stage; very pleased there. the last stage however was a 38 rounder and I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. it was a situation where Production guys would have at least one standing reload and I planned to use a barney mag to give me 11 to open things up. my plan required that I use no make-ups in those 11 including the last shot which was a popper at 35' to activate a swinger. nailed all that and reloaded, took out a couple more poppers and moved on but I got myself out of sorts. got to my shooting position and engaged the targets I planned to, moved right while reloading as planned, engaged a popper as planned but then completely went past the paper next to it! 40pt swing on that one that dropped me to 12th of 26 and only 51%. . it also killed the goals of 90% points and no penalties; finished with the two milkes+FTE on that one target and 88.48% points before but 83.68% points after the penalty. given that I was doing registration and scoring device management + scoring and general match operation work I guess I'll take those results.

tonight I want to work on my arm position, specifically not locking my elbows like I tend to do....see if I can get in half hour on the SIRT working on that and still get my practice ammo loaded!

[BostonBullit]

The heat around here in NE has been....oppressive. or should I say suppressive as it's suppressed my desire to practice dry or live fire. I managed to do a little practicing with the SIRT but not as much as I should have. For live fire we setup a couple of the stages that were on the menu for our clubs special classifier match and ran those a few times each. most of my time was consumed by work or prepping for the clubs match + of course the 4th of July BBQ plans and prep!

The classifier match was run in 90+ deg heat and bright sun, I was sweating before I even got the registration table in place. I ran the scoring device for my squad but as these stages are set and required no real planning that wasn't a big deal. my performance was disappointing though as I ended up with only one of six scores above my current C rank. two were in the low/mid 50% range, the rest were all under 40. I was nailing hardcover and no-shoots all day like it was my friggin superpower. I ran the whole match again with the G22 using some major PF ammo to classify in Lim10 and it got worse, a zero, couple mid 40%, rest under 40%. by the time I shot the last stage I knew that was all garbage so I decided to just try and be hyper aware of mechanics and things like that. I found that I wasn't prepping the trigger at all and was just slapping away. after the second shot I started properly dealing with that issue and my hits tightened up. I'm going to do a bunch of work specifically on that at live fire this week and also with the SIRT.

I shot with a few really good shooters, Production Master level guys and it was amazing watching them take down Steely Speed VII; they both 100% it. Always fun shooting with people who are a lot better than I am because I can learn and pick things up....unless my nose is buried in a scoring device or other match operations issue :-/.

[BostonBullit]

Dryfire practice the other night was draw and fire two on a 1/3 scale target with a 1/3 scale no-shoot diagonally across the A zone, distance 10'. Started slow and worked on placing the two shots in what remained of the A zone and also did some work at just "upper scoring zones". didn't have that many slip onto the white until I started to push it, at which point I had to back off of the A zone a bit. Also ran reload drills for 20mins focusing on grip re-establishment, this area needs a lot of work.

last night was weekly live fire practice and it was raining pretty good. instead of heading to the indoor range we stayed under the big carport style tent out at the bays and worked on the plate racks. my focus of the session was on managing the reset and a slight change of my grip to angle my support hand down a little more locking up that wrist. when I slowed down and focused I found that I was slap firing, bouncing off the trigger like it was a rubber band. not good. Once I started paying attention to the reset the plates fell more quickly and consistently. now I just need to do that at matches.

Toward the end of the session someone showed up with a couple of his guns so another guy could check out the different sight options. He happened to have a GlockWorx Zev Standard Deluxe setup installed in his G17 and I spent a couple mins checking it out and dryfiring it. no mush, barely any take-up, crisp break (not 1911 crisp but crisp), short reset. I ordered one when I got home, I have no willpower and I hate the glock triggers

[BostonBullit]

Back from vacation, a week at the beach with the family sans firearms (except for the trip to the Kittery trading Post to look at the empty ammo shelves). I was excited to get home and install the new Zev trigger setup in my Glock, unfortunately it's nowhere to be found. MidwayUSA uses some goofy half UPS half USPS shipping setup that's a recipe for disaster and sure enough that's what I got. UPS says they gave it to the PO on 7/13 and the PO says they "received electronic shipping info" the same day but then the trail goes cold. guess I'll be calling Midway tomorrow; should have just ordered from shootersconnection like I usually do

While I was getting heat stroke on the beach the nice people at USPSA decided to push the recalc button and while I didn't bump out of C in Production I did jump 10% to a 57.44% avg. I'm starting to see my scores even out and some consistency come into the picture so that's a good thing. When I put down the Open gun and picked up the Glock at the beginning of the season I was still going all out on stages trying to burn things down like I still had a dot and comp. the result was fast stage times and a lot of mikes and no-shoots. I've spent a lot of time slowing things down and actually paying attention to what I'm doing the past couple of months and I've learned a lot about my shooting as a result.

Today I went down to the Manville local match and shot it cold, no dry fire last night because I was still dealing with unpacking vacation stuff. first couple of stages weren't so hot, a speed shoot where I opened on a small popper at 25' and needed 4 shots to down it and a mike into the hardcover after a sluggish reload. El Prez was the classifier and my reload there was horrible, completely missed the magwell. time was slow at 8.8 and the targets looked like a shotgun pattern. that'll be a 44%ish classifier .

Last two stages were longer 150pts and 120pts and I settled things down there. I was seeing the sights rise and fall and feeling the grip on the gun but the reloads killed me. when you have 4 reloads in a stage and they're running .6s+ each you aren't going home with any trophies (not that we have trophies at these things). end result was 4th out of 14 and second C in Production; 13th out of 35 overall combined.

So the focus of the weeks practice is RELOADS. need to start hitting that magwell with consistency and stop fumbling mags around like a monkey in heat

[BostonBullit]

Last nights live fire practice session was an interesting one. Our local GM setup a field course for his own practice and left it for the other club guys to use at our weekly evening practice. The stage wasn't exactly legal per USPSA rules and wasn't Production friendly as it was meant to hone specific skills of an Open GM but it required a good range of skills to complete. These included Strong hand and weak hand around a barricade at targets with hardcover on them with the weak hand being the further distance at 40' or so, some poppers, a lot of no shoots, a swinger and a drop turn bonus both activated off of the same popper and most of it shot through ports in walls. basically it was 3 shooting positions due to the ports and barricade so there wasn't a lot of movement and with a limited round count division you were looking at standing reloads.

I made 3 runs. the first I did at what would be my match speed. waaay too many hardcover hits and make-ups on poppers. The second I did slower to focus on specific things I need to work on; support hand grip strength and trigger reset control. I found that when I really focused on the trigger reset I'd double because as soon as the reset clicked i'd break another shot. it took me a bit to refine my booger hook control in this circumstance, need to watch that going forward. The third run I ignored the timer and just wanted to get out of it with zero penalties. I was doing reasonably well but failed to recognize that I needed a makeup shot on one hardcover target so there goes that.

Hardcover continues to be my bane. I'm not calling my shots well so when I have one in the black I don't usually catch it. This is leading me to spend time checking targets after I put two rounds into them which in turn screws up my transitions and times. this needs to be fixed...but how?

[bill o]

That's a lot of different skills to be working in one practice session. Try devoting an hour to one or two specific drills, refine your gunhandling in dryfire during the week, then measure your progress in live fire. If you're spending the bulk of your live fire time at these Wednesday night group practices, it will hold you back.

[BostonBullit]

My only live fire practice is the Weds night sessions. I can't rearrange life at this time to change that so instead I have been trying to change what I do in those sessions. For a few weeks I was successful at wandering over to another pit and working on my own drills before joining the rest of the crew and running through a stage for some "flow" practice. Lately I haven't been able to do that because I always seem to be needed somewhere else; either doing something for match prep or playing RO for the newer guys. It's a case of the needs of one being outweighed by the needs of many; my club needs certain things to be done to keep the sport going locally and I do my part to make sure those things happen. Eventually I'll have more time and be able to add another practice day into the schedule but in the meantime I do what I can to balance all my responsibilities. I'm ok with that (most days), I'm not going to be playing on the national stage anytime soon and as long as I'm having fun then it's all good....most days

[bill o]

In that case you might want to declare 1/2 hour of the Wednesday practice to be BostonBullit's protected selfish time to work on a specific drill, during which time ye shall not be disturbed. My bigger point is that running micro drills is a better use of limited practice time. And believe me, my practice time is as limited as it gets.

[BostonBullit]

In that case you might want to declare 1/2 hour of the Wednesday practice to be BostonBullit's protected selfish time to work on a specific drill, during which time ye shall not be disturbed. My bigger point is that running micro drills is a better use of limited practice time. And believe me, my practice time is as limited as it gets.

yea, that's the general plan.....be nice if I could actually get to the range before 6ish but such is life with a 1.5hr each way daily commute. boo hoo for me....

[partyboy424]

Email me the drill you want to do every Wednesday. I'll get there a half hour early, set it up and we can spend the first half hour just working on fundamentals. Then join the rest of the guys.

[BostonBullit]

Email me the drill you want to do every Wednesday. I'll get there a half hour early, set it up and we can spend the first half hour just working on fundamentals. Then join the rest of the guys.

Cool man, that could work....as long as there are no enticing dinner offers at local restaurants to serve as a distraction.... | |

[BostonBullit]

Spent some time doing the Burkett Reload drill last night; I like it. My baseline time wasn't screaming fast but that's why I'm working on these drills right? I started with a .8s baseline and did 10 reps each of +.2, +.1, +0, -.1, -.2. I like this drill because it elimates the re-establishing of the grip and getting back on target part of the equation. This lets me just concentrate on building the muscle memory of getting my grip on the mag just right and the magwell into just the right position for a smooth reload. Once I have this down pat I can work on the grip issue. one thing at a time instead of trying to fix everything at once.

tonight is club practice. I hope to have time to setup a basic skills drill with partyboy424 and run that for a bit before joining the rest of the gang but I also need to mock up the stage I designed for this weekends match to make sure I didn't goof anything up (again). I should have skipped the train and drove into the city so I could get to the range earlier

[Steve_P]

So how did practice go? Did you get to focus a bit on some individual drills? If so, which ones?

[BostonBullit]

So how did practice go? Did you get to focus a bit on some individual drills? If so, which ones?

Yes and no. Kevin (partyboy424) and I were planning on doing some distance drills with a par time. setup was 3 2/3 scale targets setup El Pres style at 100'. facing targets hands at sides draw, two on each, reload, two on each with a 12s par time. We put the small targets onto normal ones turned around white side out so we could see close misses. goal was to work on shooting distance and working against a par time.

first run I did in around 10.5s but only put maybe 8 of 12 on the target. second run I slowed it down and ended up going over time by around 1.5s but had all 12 on the 2/3 size target. they were all over the thing but they were there.

by that time there were a lot of other people there who wanted to give it a try and I had to go mock my match stage so I went and did that. good thing I did because it needed tweaks.

I also needed to get used to the new trigger I installed Tues night. Interesting to note that after running the other stage to see how it flowed I went back and made a couple of runs at the long range stuff before tearing it down and did horribly. I had good confidence after getting them all on paper earlier in the evening and wanted to build on that but it went in the other direction pretty quickly. I'm going to work on more reload drills and might bring my gear and a little ammo with me when I go to setup the match Sat and squeeze in some very basic reloading drills.

[partyboy424]

Get there early Saturday! I'll be there most of the day with Jay practicing and then setting up. Gotta start working on Strong Hand/Weak Hand for Area 7 too.

Also, I know a lot of the greats on here seem to love this Burkett reload drill. That didn't work for me at all. Instead, I just did a little bit of work reloading with full weight dummy rounds (powderless/primerless reloads) and would draw, dryfire one shot, do a full reload and dry fire one shot. I just don't see how getting the magazine to the mouth of the magwell and then giving up can be good for muscle memory. Especially if you start adding movement, seems like it's training your body to not load the mag. Why would you slam the brakes coming up to a green light?

[BostonBullit]

Get there early Saturday! I'll be there most of the day with Jay practicing and then setting up. Gotta start working on Strong Hand/Weak Hand for Area 7 too.

Also, I know a lot of the greats on here seem to love this Burkett reload drill. That didn't work for me at all. Instead, I just did a little bit of work reloading with full weight dummy rounds (powderless/primerless reloads) and would draw, dryfire one shot, do a full reload and dry fire one shot. I just don't see how getting the magazine to the mouth of the magwell and then giving up can be good for muscle memory. Especially if you start adding movement, seems like it's training your body to not load the mag. Why would you slam the brakes coming up to a green light?

Might be able to get there a little early and do some drills but it'll be family schedule dependent. I'll know probably Friday if I can do it.

I like the Burkett drill because, as the book you gave me points out, you spend less time bending over picking mags up off the floor and more time practicing. I can see how one might become complacent and not actually get the mag seated well after doing the drill a lot and I need to watch out for that. I'm just trying to work on things a little at a time. get the grip break, mag button push, new mag grip, and motion to the well right and burned in. then I can not think about that as much and concentrate on re-establishing my grip and getting back on target....

[BostonBullit]

I didn't get any real extra live fire in before/after setup for the club match so I added some extra Burkett drills in the evenings.

The match went fairly well. The only stage I really barfed on was the first I shot, which happened to be the most complicated. I cut in line and went first so I could get it out of the way and handle scoring duties for the squad. Turns out PartyBoy424 was on the squad as well so I didn't end up having to score everyone all by myself. Stage was 37 rounds including a texas star, all classic targets, and a table start with unloaded gun and all mags on the table. took me a bit to get things onto the belt and then I opted to go right instead of left. even though it meant standing reloads I got to shoot almost everything from that one position and was better able to keep mental track of what I had shot at. there were a crap ton of penalty points assessed on this stage and a lot were failure to engage so maybe I did the right thing. I ended with two NS that I saw and made up and a mike on a 60' half target. you can't really see the stage well in the vid but it was a doosy.

El Pres was a 52% run, not earth shattering but in line with my recent stable performance which is nice. The RO asked if I wanted a re-shoot because he didn't realize the timer was on instant but I took my score and moved on, probably would have botched it thinking about it too much if I did the re-shoot.

no video of stage 2 but it was one I designed so I had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to do. it was 5 sets of stacked barrels with two targets behind each and a trapezoid free fire zone. for just about everyone it was a two position shoot and to make life more interesting and keep the scoring arguments to a minimum PartyBoy424 took the liberty of putting no-shoots all over the barrels after I finished setup . I did ok on the stage, no penalties and 15.5sec.

the all steel stage is where I ripped it up (for me). 24 pieces of steel; two 6 plate racks, some poppers, and two falling plates all painted either red or white. at the start you lift a box to see if you need to shoot red or white first and get penalized if you hit any of the opposite color before all of the assigned color were down. it's a stage from one of the pro-ams and it was pretty fun. I had a few mental errors: took the first plate from the start position and stood there watching it fall instead of taking off. then after heading to the right side and clearing the white targets I started to reload and then decided to take out the two closest poppers first. lastly I almost ran by the single red plate on my way from right to left. I had a handful of make-ups on the stage but it's mental mistakes like these that really kill me. I ended up 4th Production on that stage at 29.5sec

Stage 5 was an Area 5 championship (?) stage that I modified a little to up the round count. start looking down an alley and move right or left at the buzzer to engage some paper. a no-shoot here, some hard cover there kept it interesting. then down the alley to engage the remaining targets including two poppers hidden behind a set of stacked barrels. at full lean there was maybe 1/3 of each showing and the barrels had no-shoots on them so I had to slow down a bit. got out of it penalty free and with a reasonable time.

I'm enjoying this new trigger setup and starting to pick up the pace on the closer targets. I again fell short of my goal of 90% available points and no penalties but the majority of the issue was that first stage so I'm not kicking myself too hard. What I'm really happy about with the match was something I've been missing; the consistency. things didn't feel rushed and the sights were rising and falling most of the time. when they weren't I recognized it and did something about it. my reloads weren't 100% clean but they were a lot better than they have been so I'm going to stick with the Burkett drill for a while.....

and to close I'll add a funny note: the family was watching a movie on the couch and since I didn't want to just disappear I decided to do my reload drill in the living room. I was off to the side and letting the mag drop onto a towel on the small couch in front of me and after maybe the 40th time I did it my 5yo daughter looks over at me and says "DAD! WHY does that thing keep falling out of your gun!??!?"

[BostonBullit]

It was pointed out to me that the video of my last match shows I have a habit of bringing the gun down more and more as I reach for mags further back on the belt. I hadn't noticed that and it shows a weakness that is probably a result of my use of that first pouch 90% of my practice reloads. I'll have to make sure to work out of every pouch during practice sessions. I also need to pickup the pace a bit during the non-shooting portion of stages; some days ya just feel old and slow though.

Last nights live fire was 100 rounds of some quick drills and a small stages with paper and steel that the group had setup before I arrived. I put a swinger in there because there's a poop-ton of them in the upcoming Area 7 Championship match (if you hadn't noticed that and are shooting in the match forget I said anything). I flowed fairly well on the steel (two 6 plate racks and an assortment of poppers) and my hits on paper were good but not great. I need to work on reloading while on the move. I find it funny that we tend to do all of this dry fire practice with reloading from a static position when in reality when we reload in a match 95% of the time it's on the move. hits on the swinger were good but it was only 20' away.

After everyone ran that stage a couple of times I said it's time for a bill drill or two so we ran that. I didn't try to burn it down and made sure I had a good grip out of the holster ending up with 5A 1C in 3.05 at 21'. the group was low but very nice except for the one flier. It's probably the best looking group I've put up on this drill and I attribute it mostly to the new trigger.

Second drill we ran was a bit of splits and reloads. three targets, a solo on the left and two stacked on top of each other right next to it at 21'. draw, two on each, reload, two on each, reload, two on each. flow was good and my reloads felt smooth but not fast. hits need to tighten up, one target looked like I was using a shotgun

going to lose some of my dry fire time to pulling the handle on the press, sucks but there are only so many hours in the day. I need to have enough 40 to get me through another few practice sessions, a couple matches, a one day Manny Bragg training class, and then the area match. hope to be able to bang out 500 or so on Sat before shooting Harvard on Sunday, that'll put me in a good place.