Nimitz's Journey To Shooting Greatness

[BeerBaron]

sounds like you are coming along well. just posting to let you know people are reading! keep at it.

[Nimitz]

thanks for the encouragement ... hopefully some folks are getting some value out of reading my diary so that they don't make the same mistakes I did or it provides them something to think out ... as for me, I get a little better every day ...

[Nimitz]

Wed training session: Cold Bill Drill run didn't count as I had 1 C 1/2" ctr right. This was my first shot again, need to continue to work on this first DA shot ...

My 25 yd group shooting was 4 As/1 D, still left & high of center about 3". The good news is that I'm calling them as I can see the post is left of center when the shot breaks, need to work on my weak hand grip pressure & trigger squeeze. One interesting thing about the shots was that there were 2 shots within 1/2" of each other , 2" of space & then 2 shots again within 1/2" of each other plus one 'wild' shot ... 10 yd group was all within 3/4" left/right & 2 1/2" up/down. This was the same as last time ... I need to really focus on keeping the post level with the notch

7 yd El Pres was an 83.14 % run: 6.33 secs and 54 pts; 1.53 draw, .24 splits, .30 transitions & 2.09 sec reload

Next I ran 6 reps of the Enos Transition Drill - Part 1: times/# of non As were as follows: 5.16 secs/5; 5.29/5; 5.63/0; 5.78/2; 5.50/2; 5.23/2. Interestingly, as I progressed my times continued to drop and the accuracy stayed the same ... a good trend which would indicate I'm seeing faster with each rep

I finished up with some long distance plate rack drills

Looks like my biggest mechanics issues at the moment are weak hand grip & DA trigger press. Also, after 2 weeks of 4-5 days/week of dry fire I'm starting to feel smoother in my gun handling, even if I don't really see any drastic reduction in times during live fire yet ...

Edited May 16, 2014 by Nimitz

[Nimitz]

good training session yesterday ... still can't manage a clean cold Bill Drill run .... 1 C again just slightly left of the center A zone. I really need to focus on the 1st DA shot from the draw. I did 4 sets of 5 reps of the 15 yd doubles. First set was 5A/4C/1D. 2nd set was 4A/6C. 3rd set was 5A/1B/2C/1D & last set was 5A/4C/1D. All sets I was running in the 2.15 - 2.25 sec range. Many of my C hits were only 1/2" or less left center of the A zone and were the DA shots. I'm getting a more consistent weak hand grip & less trigger jerk as the shots slowly move right ....I also managed a handful of sub 2 sec runs as well. Even though my hits are only 50% of what they should be I'm not going to slow down but rather, keep forcing myself to see faster.

7yd El Pres run was 6.9 secs & 52 points (8A & 4C) for a 73% run. 1.49 sec draw/ .29 splits/.38 transitions/2.22 sec reload

I did half a dozen Blake drill reps and was consistently around the .29-.30 secs for transitions and splits. Hits were only around 50% (half As half Cs) with 2 Cs on the left target, 8 Cs on the middle target & 4 Cs on the right target. Middle target cs were left indicating I was breaking the shot early. Obviously I need to get my eyes over to the target faster

Last up was the Distance Changeup drill (6 reps). times were 4.67/4.34/4.78/4.58/4.40/4.55 secs. First 4 reps were left to right (close,far, close) & the last 2 were far, close, close. Unfortunately on the first 2 reps I missed both head shots so that's when I stepped it down a bit to ensure I was seeing the sights. the last 4 reps had all 8 good head shots.

For the time being I've decided to adopt an overall training method of working to see & move faster rather than just slow down to get good hits. My new dry fire program should help here fill this gap so I don't want to slow down. Hopefully this is a good strategy ...

I've also begun rereading Lanny Bassem's book since I've realized my mental management program has been a little lacking. First up is I'm reworking my goals a bit, not really changing them, just reworking them. I also need to better connect the mental training between live & dry fire training & matches. So what I've started doing is using my "performance statement" before every rep of dry fire & live fire training to help reinforce it. In the past I was just using it at matches. It slows down my training a bit but I think it has started to help. I've finally realized that running my mental management program every time before I pull the trigger vice just "some times" is as important as every other aspect of my drills.

the combination of refocusing on the mental size of training plus my 5 day/week dry fire program has begun to make me feel a lot better during live fire.. With all the training aspects working in concert I'm starting to see progress during each session. Slow, steady, focused training wins the day ..

[Nimitz]

didn't get to train on Monday ... boss was flying in on his F-16 so I had to be in first thing ...

Got out this morning to shoot but I probably should have just stayed in bed .... after setting up I realized my timer was sitting at home in my gun room which is currently fairly unorganized as I'm trying to assemble my new belt system & make a bunch of ammo for an upcoming event tomorrow and a few other excuses. So I quickly switched my training plan to drills which don't require a timer.

Decided to run a cold Bill Drill like I always do, figuring 6 As would be no issue since I didn't have a timer .... I ended up with 1 A & 5 Cs center left of the A zone ... can't remember when I shot a BD that poorly. Decided then to just shoot groups at 25 & 10 yds and then do a bunch of shot calling drill reps.

25 yd groups were ok (3"-4") but still left & high. I tried aiming slightly right to see if my sights were an issue as they were adjusted last month but that didn't result in much improvement to which I concluded it's me ...

10 yd groups were 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" but were also slightly left and high about 1 1/2"

I'm currently at a loss to understand what my problem is so any of you who are following along please chime in ....

My assumption is some combination of trigger jerk & grip?

I then moved on to the shot calling drill and had some limited success but many surprises as well. Several times I saw what I believed to be the post clearly off to the right (no light visible) when the shot broke, only to see the hits center, left. I fear I may be starting to develop a blink and therefore only seeing the sights after the shot breaks ¬ AS the shot breaks. I'll need to do some research on not blinking fairly quickly & stop this .

I finished up with a few plate rack runs just to have some fun since I was not having a good session. called it quits before I fired all the rounds I had planned ... didn't see any value in what I was doing or continuing to practice screwing up ...

In rereading Lanny's book he talks about not reinforcing mistakes you make by always talking about things you did wrong but instead, focus on what you did right. Therefore I'm not going to really try and analyze what happened today and instead just forget about it and move on.

On the plus side I have been dry firing 4-5 days/wk for 3 weeks now so I'm close to this being an engrained activity just like 3x/wk live fire. I'm also starting to see some improvement in my gun handling speed as well ...

Tomorrow we're bringing about 15 folks from my unit out to my home range and do an Intro To Practical Shooting where we will have a short 18 rd USPSA stage setup & the Roundabout SC stage. We're going to introduce everyone into the world of practical Shooting & let them run the stages for a couple of hrs ... should be fun

Edited May 21, 2014 by Nimitz

[Nimitz]

Spent the last couple of days working on setting up my new safariland competition belt and have most of it worked out. It took a little jury rigging but I managed to get just about everything working like I want. I managed to mount an ELS 34 quick disconnect fork to both my 014 race holster and holster for my Buckmark. In addition I had to do quite a bit of surgery but managed to get the holster to fit my Buckmark with an optic & thumbrest. The last thing to do is complete the mounting of an ELS 34 fork to the new Boss attachment for my Bladetech holster I got from the Ben Stoeger pro shop. Once completed I'll post some pics of that as well ... I also have all the receiver plates in place on the belt for my production mags but I may be switching to the Ghost pouches rotated 90 deg so I've been holding off on doing anything to my current CR Speed pouches ...

yesterday I had an outstanding training session ... not so much because I shot so much better than any other session but because I have solved a problem which has been plaguing me since I started shooting 2 years ago. No matter what I had tried in the past I was never able to get my splits much below .23-.25 on a consistent basis. I'd have the rare .18 or .19 but that was it and I could never figure out why. Well I finally did yesterday ...

Although I never realized it my normal trigger mechanics would be to completely remove my finger from the trigger during reset. This had 2 important effects: 1) it made my 2nd shot relatively slower since I now had to completely reacquire the trigger before I could began pulling it and 2) because I had lost contact with the trigger I would tend to introduce a small jerk as I attempted to move it at high speed since I first had to make contact with it again.

I discovered this during on of the reps shooting 15 yd doubles where I was so focused on the sights that I didn't do my 'normal' just release my finger off the trigger, but instead kept in constant contact with it ... sort of like the pre stage of trigger freeze ...

well the results were nothing short of amazing since I never left contact with the trigger I was 'instantly' ready for the next shot, having to wait on recoil. In the past while recoil was happening my finger was coming completely off the trigger & then back on again so that I wasn't really ready to pull the trigger until after recoil was done.

It was also amazing how smooth the trigger pull felt when my finger never left the trigger as compared to whern I had to 'find' the trigger after the first shot.

Having shot a Glock for 2 years, with it's long over travel & reset it's just the way I learned to work that trigger. Now, even though my CZ has approximately only 2mm reset I've been using my old technique. In addition, most of my dry fire lately has been with either no trigger pull or only one shot as I'm working on basic trigger mechanics, draws & reloads. If I had been doing more transition work I probably would have figured this out sooner since with a DA/SA gun like the CZ, in order not to have your 2nd shot be DA you only release enough pressure on the trigger to pull it again so that it doesn't completely reset to DA .... the exact same technique for ensuring I don't take my finger completely off the trigger.

needless to say, I've incorporated double trigger pulls into my dry fire to try to make this a subconscious skill as quickly as possible ...

Specific results from yesterday:

finally had a valid cold run Bill Drill even tough the time was a pathetic 3.25 secs. Interestingly, 5 of the 6 hits were in a perfect straight line vertically over 6" and the other A zone hit was left 1". According to my "Flexmoney BD cheatsheet" that is a timing issue which means at least my grip was good.

25 yd group: 2 left of center & 2 right of center, both < 1" apart + one hit LRH corner just outside the a zone

10 yd group: 1 1/2" x 1", 1 " left & 1/2" high of the bulleye

7 yd El Pres run was 72.7%; 58 pts/7.78 secs/1.72 sec draw/2.21 sec reload/.3 sec splits/.4 sec transitions

5 yd Dots: decided to drop down to only 5 shots per string; all strings shot in 5.3 secs or less ( 2 in under 5 secs), 2 of the 6 were 5/5. usually the shot I missed was either the first or last in the string

Shot 15 yd doubles; 15 reps with 7 reps at A-A and 8 reps at A-C. Times ranged from 3.03 - 2.50 secs

Finished the session running some plate racks for fun ...

Edited May 27, 2014 by Nimitz

[Nimitz]

In order to get prepped for my club's upcoming classifier match in Jul I've made a slight adjustment to my training profile. My live fire sessions will now consist of one marksmanship drill and 2 USPSA Core Skills drills from Ben's Skills & Drills book. I plan to also continue to shoot El Pres once each session as a continuing benchmark since it incorporates numerous core skills ...

Yesterday was my first session with the new drill mix. The session consisted of a cold run Bill Drill followed by a 7yd El Pres and then the Plate Rack Heads, Criss Cross & Tight Shots drills.

Bill Drill was 5A/1C. Nice circular grouping for the 5 As with the 1 C being center left - first DA shot.

El Pres run was 7.18 secs & 48 pts for a 65.1% run; draw was 1.69, reload 2.31, splits ~ .2-.3 & transitions were .3s. Just cutting 1 sec off my reload time would have pushed this to a "A" class run with no other changes ..... I've got my reloads down to a repeatable 1.7 secs in dry fire but so far that is not showing itself in live fire.

Criss Cross strings were running in the 9-10 sec range w/90% As so we'll see how this progresses over the next couple of weeks

For the Tight Shots drill I setup a zebra striped target at 18 yds, a diagonal partial at 13 yds & 9 yd head shots

Strings were 6.05 - 6.33 secs with very little variation in time regardless of the target shooting order. Had all As for the head shot, 9 As/3Cs for the diagonal & 8As & 4 shot 1" left of center into the hard cover for the zebra target. Therefore I'll just need to ratchet up the difficulty of the of the headshot as the others seem right at the appropriate level.

Had one round left in my mag so I went back to 23yds and shot 1 plate on the plate rack (1 for 1)

[Nimitz]

Good session this morning. Over accuracy for the 2 drills I did was over 90% with times at or better than in the last few weeks ...

Cold Bill Drill was kind of a disaster ... 6 shots in a nice tight 2" group but the group was located in the upper left quadrant of the target, along the C/D line .... not sure what I was up to there, maybe I just didn't realize where my index was ....?

7 yd El Pres run: 71.6%; 54 pts, 7.35 secs; draw 1.73, reload 2.3, splits & transitions in the .3s

First drill was 3yd, 5 yd & 10 yd singles to work on my transition speed:

3 yds: ave time was 1.80 with draws ranging from 1.08 - 1.22 ( 3 reps)

5 yds: time was 1.8 - 1.99; draws averaging 1.24; hits were all As left target, 2 Cs middle target & 3 Cs right target ( 6 reps)

10 yds: times were 2.34 - 2.67; draws 1.63 ave with splits mostly in the .3s; hits were again all As left, 2 Cs mid & 1 D right ( 5 reps)

Distance Change-up Drill:

times were 3.96 - 4.66 with most runs in the 4.2 sec range; had one run with all .18 splits on the close targets, all other runs splits were .26 & less. Of the 7 runs 4 were clean (6 Alphas) including the fastest run at 3.96 secs, 2 runs had 1 Mike each on the 15 yd head target & 1 run had 1 C on the left close target

Last time I ran this drill times were 4.34 - 4.78 & I had 4 Mikes on the head target out of 8 runs & 2 Ds on the close targets

Finished up with a couple of fun 10 yd plate rack runs, fastest time was 4.54 secs

18 training days remaining before our yearly classifier match ...

Edited May 30, 2014 by Nimitz

[Ben Stoeger]

Those are much better numbers then you used to be putting down.

[Nimitz]

... I get a little better every day ...

[Nimitz]

Another good session yesterday ....

Cold run Bill Drill was 4A/2C with the 2 Cs center right. Draw was 1.6 secs & splits were all under .3 secs

7yd El Pres was 75.1% run; 7.24 secs, 54 pts, 1.55 sec draw, 2.30 sec reload, splits at .28 & transitions at .31; I'm pretty much at about my max here until I can drop my reload time and my draw as well ...

today's menu was group shooting @ 25 & 10 yds; 15yd doubles & Bill Drills

as can be seen from the pic I certainly got my act together on the group shooting ... 3 6 shot groups, all As. 10 yd groups were all within 1 1/2"

For 15 yd doubles all my 2 A-A runs were in the 2.3-2.5 secs. the rest were all A-C with times 1.95 - 2.20 secs

last was Bill Drills, runs averaged 2.2 - 2.5 for all clean runs ...

[Nimitz]

Yesterday's session was Blake Drills, 2@15 and the Accelerator. Cold run Bill Drill was only 4As and 2Cs ... I need to really try to focus on this and start producing all As. For my 7yd El Pres run I completely flubbed the reload soi decided to do a rare repeat ... And I'm glad I did. Run was 7.08 secs and 56 pts for a 77% run. I did manage my first sub 2 reload in live fire (1.98 secs) as well.

Ran the Blake drill at 10 yds, runs averaged around 3.4 secs with transitions and splits in the .38 sec range.

Did nine reps of 2@15 yds. Except for the first run at 2.51 secs, all runs we're 2.17 - 2.02 secs. Hits were 10 As/7Cs/1D

Did 2 sets of the Accelerator; first 5 reps were 4.47-5.01 with the following hits: 1C on close target, 7Cs//1D on the middle target and 4Cs/3Ds on the 25 yd target.

Second set of 5 reps were: 4.76-4.89 secs with hits: clean close target, 2Cs on middle target and 4 Cs on the far target. An improvement of 26 pts out of a max of 150 pts with basically the same time. This exactly the kind of improvement I'm looking for.

For tomorrow I've decided to do a Steel Challenge session since I haven't shot any steel since our last monthly match 4 weeks ago. Also it will be my first chance to us my new Safariland open holster and belt and my new STI ... Should be fun.

[Nimitz]

Had a great Steel Challenge match on Saturday. Set a personal best time for the 6 stage match of 70.42 secs, 4.4 secs faster than my previous best time. Also managed to win 2 stages which is significant since the top shooter at our club ( a 5 div USPSA Master) & a 'well on the way to Master) A class shooter shot the match as well. They finished 1,2 at ~62 & 66 secs respectively

Couldn't get my Safariland 014 holster adjusted completely so I decided not to shoot centerfire open. Just as well since when I got to the range on Fri to train I took out my open rimfire gun and didn't have to turn on the C-more since it was already on ... oops. was unable to find a battery so I took the one off my STI ...

Monday's training was the Dot Drill, 4 Aces & SHO/WHO shooting.

Finally managed clean cold run Bill Drill at 3.01 secs. 7yd El Pres run was 74.9% (56 pts/7.28 secs). unfortunately my timer battery failed to the point that all I could get was the beep, the display was unreadable after the El Pres run.

So unfortunately I couldn't really check my times on the drills ... ran the Dots drill twice without a PAR time. First run had 3/6 clean circles & the 2nd run had 4/6 clean circles. My timer did have a PAR time of 2.5 secs set in from Sun night's dry fire so at least I could tell where I was in relation to the mid point on time. I 'm pretty sure all runs were under 6 secs but that's all the fidelity I could manage.

Ran 4 aces and all I could tell was if I was under or over 2.5 secs per rep. Did 15 reps with 58 As/2Cs

Finished up with SHO/WHO shooting ... draw & shoot 2 SHO, transfer to weak hand and shoot 2 WHO. Did the drill at 7 yds since it's been quite a while since I've done this. Did 12 reps with 43 As/4 Cs/1 D. I'll need to move back to 10 yds next time to make this drill a little more difficult.

So I've shot a 7 yd El Pres at the start of my last 7 training sessions. results have been: 83%, 73%, 72%, 65%, 71%, 75%, 77%. Time and points have been pretty consistent at ~ 7.2 secs & 56 pts. So it looks like I've basically met my initial El Pres training goal (~ 75% on demand at the start of a session) so it's time to move back to the normal 10 yds and see where I am.

I'm also starting to see some improvements in dry fire as well. Last night I was managing 1.4-1.5 sec reloads where previously my best was at 1.7. Also managed some .8 draws to a 10 yd target with .9 secs draws regularly accomplished. Doing the micro drills has helped considerably as I've been able to hit the goal times on the draw (.4/.5 secs) & reloads (.6 secs) without too much trouble.

Several stages will probably be setup today for Saturday's match so I'll get a look at them tomorrow. Rumor has it the Irish Plate Rack will be making its debut .... can't wait ....

[Nimitz]

Well, in spite of setting a personal best 10yd plate rack run today, it was a pretty crappy training session. Even the plate rack run had warts since I needed to take a M/U shot on plate 2. Time was 4.43 secs and since the M/U shot cost at least .43 secs I would have had my first sub 4 sec run if I could have managed to focus enough to shoot a clean run ....

Cold run Bill Drill had a decent time but with 2 center left C hits it didn't count ....

Ran my first 10 yd El Pres and although I managed another sub 2 sec reload my hits were pathetic .... so I decided to rerun it and although the hits were good the time was so slow that I only managed a 56% run

First drill was the Plate Rack Heads at 7 yds. Out of 14 runs I only had 5 clean runs with the other 9 missing one 'plate'. Misses were spread out with 4 on the left target, 3 on the center target & 2 on the right target as I was shooting L-R. Times ranged from a high of 2.88 secs to a low of 2.31 secs.

Next up was the Criss Cross drill. I did 3 runs with hit factors of 5.03-5.3. This was the first time I shot this drill so I don't have anything to compare it to yet ....

Last up was the Tight Shots drill. I moved the close target back to 11 yds & the middle target to 14 yds; the far target stood the same at 18 yds. Hits were far worse than the last time I shot this drill; 6 misses on the far target ( 4 last time), 3 misses on the mid target (none last time); 4 misses on the close target (none last time). Misses were shots into the hard cover portion of the targets (zebra, diagonal, head partials). Times averaged .3secs faster than last time. Obviously I've found the right distances to increase the level of difficulty so we'll see what happens next time.

On the bright side I've had some good success on the supply side of things ..... scored almost 3,000 rds of 22lr in the last week and 3 lbs of powder (1 pistol & 2 rifle) so I'm a little more secure ....

I'll be spending a little more time on dryfire tonight to shake off this morning's live fire session as well ....

[Nimitz]

Time to get caught up as there has been 2 training sessions & one match since my last entry ...

Last Friday's training session was not very noteworthy except that I had a 64% El Pres run, hits were 52 points but my draw and reloads are still lagging at 1.59 secs & 2.03 secs. I've decided for my remaining training sessions to pick a different classifier to shoot at the start of each session instead of just using El Pres each time. I'm also going to focus on drills that emphasize drawing, reloading & transitions as that is what makes up most classifiers.

Saturday's regular monthly USPSA match went very well as I won my class for the 2nd month in a row. More importantly, I came within 1 shot of my current #1 match goal of shooting no Mikes. For the 155 rd course of fire over 6 stages I had 4 Ds & 1 Mike. Also noteworthy is that I again took a 2nd place stage finish on what was the toughest stage of the match. The stage consisted of 15 paper targets between 20 & 25 yds. the shooting box had sets of barrels in front of it so that you could see subsets of the targets between barrels but could also see multiple targets from multiple locations. I had 24 As, 4 Cs & 2 Ds

The 2nd toughest stage was the last stage of the match for my squad and consisted of 2 sets of 2 paper targets about 15 yds away with a drop turner & opposing swingers in the middle covered with barrels on either side of the swingers. All 3 movers were activated by a stomp pad which was also the shooting area 2 yds in front of the first shooting box. You had to have both feet on the pad while engaging targets. You also had to engage at least 1 target from the rear shooting area. The stomp pad activated both swingers & the drop turner simultaneously. The bay had another small stage setup on it as well and you stayed hot & just moved from one to the other and then scored both of them at the end. I shot that stage with 11As & 3 Cs and so walking to the previous stage to score it I thought I had shot a clean match since the stage was fairly straight forward but I ended up with 1 Mike on the next to last target ... I was a little annoyed that I shot the difficult stages well only to miss an easy open target. This is also the first time I shot all movers in a match clean so that certainly was a positive thing. Overall I was very happy with my performance.

Yesterday's training session had some issues due to equipment issues. Over the weekend I got my BOSS holster attachment mod for my Safariland ELS belt sorted out as well as my Ghost mag pouch holders so I decided to use this new belt during training for the first time. Unfortunately I changed the vertical alignment of the holster Sun night after realizing that it was not as far down as it could go without checking it with a gun in the holster. While the first position I setup worked well this one did not has my thumb would hit the frame making it very difficult to draw the gun out and negating any chance of a smooth fast draw.

At that point I decided to switch out some of the planned drills for the morning to try and deemphasize drawing but that didn't work very well. I shot the Dots drill and actually had my best run to date with 4/6 runs having all shots in the circle within 5 secs. I'm still doing the drill with only 5 shots vice the normal 6 7 at 5yds vice 7yds.

Next up was the Heads drill run at 10 yds. For 7 reps I was 11/14 on the right target, 12/14 with 2 Cs on the center target & 11/14 with 2 Cs on the right target. Times averaged around 3.5 secs

Last up was the distance changeup drill. For 7 reps I had all As on the left target, 1 C on the right target & 11/14 on the 15yd headshot. All times were under 5 secs

[Nimitz]

Sooner or later I'll figure out how to make a hyperlink work on my signature to link o my videos .... just not today ...

Training session from last Wed went well ... still can't shoot a first run cold Bill Drill clean to save my life ... another 5A/1C ....

Drill for the session were Singles, Criss Cross & 4 Aces. Did each drill at 7 yds & 10 yds.

7yd times for singles were: 2.22-1.95 secs with a 1st rep of 2.60 secs. Hits were 6A/7C/1D

10 yd times were: 2.26- 1.92. Hits were 3A/10C/1D

Both D hits were are the right target. Although my hits were slightly worst, my speed was basically the same which is a step in the right direction. Accuracy still needs to improve but I don't want to slow down. It was very obvious that I was moving the gun & my eyes at the same time vice getting my eyes over first & then having the gun follow. Need to make a special note to work on this in dry fire.

Criss Cross:

7yds: ave HF for 3 runs was 7.27

10 yds: ave HF for 3 runs was 5.72 (last time I ran this on 9 Jun my ave HF was 5.1

reloads were very poor in the 2.3 sec range

Last up was 4 Aces:

7yds: times were 3.88-3.48 secs. Hits were 6A/5C/1D with 3 reloads under 2 secs (finally) 1.92, 1.82, 1.75 secs

10 yds: times were 4.25-3.66 secs. Hits were 3 Cs. Also had 3 reloads under 2 secs at 1.77, 1.75, 1.72 secs

Decided to run a 10 yd plate rack and set a new personal best time of 4.28 secs. This included having to take a M/U shot after plate 6 back to plate 1 which added .51 secs to the run. Clearly I'm capable of a sub 4 sec run ... it wasn't too long ago that I had never in my life been capable of a sub 6 sec run ... clearly things are working ...

[Nimitz]

Had a great session this morning ....

I order to focus more on speed I'm going to be running my cold Bill Drill with just the goal of all hits C or better for the time being. Today's run was 2.28 secs with 3As/3Cs which is .8 secs faster than before

Next I ran 2 El Pres runs: 1st was 6.81 secs/44 pts for a 62.7% run & the 2nd was 6.08 secs/44 pts for a 70.5% run. Hits were the same on both runs: 5A/6C/1D. Reloads were still terrible at 2.46 & 2.08 secs

I then setup Pucker Factor as a substitute for the Accelerator drill. First run was 4.33 secs/30 pts for 64.7% run. I ran a total of 10 reps with 6 clean runs and 4 runs with 1 hardcover hit. Times ran from 3.39 secs - 4.51 secs. Best run a 3.96 sec/34 pts for an 80.2%. In the past I would have ran this ensuring I had 8 good hits but now I'm willing to accept a few hits into the hardcover as a push the speed and force my accuracy to catch up ...

It's clear my basic gun handling is still holding me back (draws & reloads). On the draws easily can hit sub one second times without pulling the trigger in dry fire but in live fire I'm still spending way too much time refining my sight picture. I'm going to go to 10 yd doubles to see if I can't get past this. WRT reloads not really sure what's going on. In dry fire I hit the goal times of .6 secs for the micro drills but only around 1.4 secs for a full reload. In live fire I can't seem to beat 1.75 at the moment.

Seeklander showed me a technique called super slow motion to use when you are having issues so I think I'm going to try and start over on reloads and see if I can get back on track.

Decided to do a few plate rack runs to end the session. First run was 4.10 secs, a new personal best, but even though I hit all the plates one failed to fall. Second run was 3.77 secs, again hitting all plates but 2 didn't fall. Last run was 4.00 secs with all down so this is my new current best time ...

had a couple of bullets left so I did a 7yd headshot Bill Drill: 2.45 secs, 5 shots -- 3 As/2Bs

Edited June 25, 2014 by Nimitz

[Nimitz]

This past Friday I did some things I haven't really done ...

First up was the Enos Transition Drill. For part 1 of the drill I averaged right around 5.6 secs with 3-4 hits down. qwhen I switched to part 2 my times went to 6.2 but runs consistently had only 2 hits down. I didn't really get to my dry fire training beforehand so I expect my times to drop once that happens. Prior to this when I'd transition between targets in an array my eyes & gun would move at the same time causing the gun not to stop precisely on the target. Although slower at the moment, hits are much more consistent as the gun stops exactly where I'm looking every time ....

Next up I ran some 2@10yds drills to try & get out of the rut I've been in on 2@15. I did 12 reps pushing speed with 8 runs averaging 1.69 secs (2 As) & 4 runs with a 1.65 sec ave (A/C). Goal times for this distance are 1.3 secs so I'm at least in the neighborhood.

Last up was 5 reps of Tight Squeeze. Unfortunately I was unable to execute a clean run in the 6 attempts. 3 runs had 1 hit in the hard cover of the zebra target, 1 run had a N/S on the middle target and 1 run had 2 hits into hard cover on the zebra target. the classifier is Virginia count and ends up with 4 rounds in each of the 3 targets ... hits were decent (without the M) with 5 of the 6 being 10 As/1C/1M. Times ranged from 8.52 secs to 9.85 secs

For this morning's session I ran a cold El Pres, 10 Blake drills, 6 Accelerators and then just decided to fool around at the plate rack to take a break ...

El Pres was 7.55 secs & 52 pts for a 67% run

Blake drill times were: 3.21 secs ~ .3 splits/transitions (run 1)

2.95 ~ .28 splits/trans

2.82 ~ .26 splits/trans

2.67 .24/.28/.22/.29/.23

2.69 .21/.29/.18/.27/.21

2.57 .22/.25/.16/.24/.21

2.47 .22/.25/.20/.24/.20

2.76 .23/.32/.21/.29/.22

transitions were lagging behind splits by about .03 -.06 secs for most runs. Hits were right at 90% As

Next was 6 Accelerator runs where I shortened the distance to 3 yds, 10 yds & 15 yds to be more representative of classifier distances. Times were 3.81/3.91/3.62/3.75/3.73/3.51 secs

Hits were: 11A/1C 3 yd target

9 A/3 C 10 yd target

8 A/4 C 15 yd target

At the plate rack while I could not lower my current personal best time I did have a couple of runs in the 3.6 sec range but left one standing each time. Best clean run time was 4.15 secs ...

Wed I'm going to do some Steel Challenge training as I'm off that day & I have a steel match this Saturday. Might also bring out my STI if I can get my holster alignment corrected ...

Edited June 30, 2014 by Nimitz

[Nimitz]

Wed's session I decided to continue to work on transitions so first up was a cold run El Pres: 6.58 secs/46ts for a 68% run which included my current poor reload of 2.21 secs. Even just getting my reloads down to 1.5 secs would have turned that into an A class run. I obviously need to relook at my dry fire routine here since I'm consistently in the 1.4 - 1.5 secs during dry fire. For the 2 micro drills I'm right on the .6 sec goal for the 2nd half drill but I'm still struggling with the first half. This is clearly where I need to fix my technique. For some reason I'm having a lot of trouble hitting the magwell with the top of the mag consistently and when I miss it, well there's 2 sec reload ... I think I'm going to add reloads into most live fire drills as well to get more time in with real bullets flying ...

I ran El Pres a 2nd time to work on my reloads and although I only managed a 2.01 sec reload my time was 6.71 secs but hits were 58 pts. This resulted in a nice 84% run. That's pretty much as good as I can do with my current skills until I can get my reloads down & draws (draw was 1.7 secs for this run).

Next up was Enos Transitions: runs were 6.2 secs/5.96/5.76/5.38/5.4/5.21/5.13. Even as the time dropped each run pts stayed about the same: -2/-3/-3/-3/-3/-2. I was clearly seeing faster with each run which is the point of this drill.

I then switched over to Blake drills and although my overall times were a little slower than usual: 3.06 secs/3.05/3.01/3.12/3.04 my splits & transitions were consistent (the point of this drill) and lower than in the past. Hits were 3 runs with 2 Cs, 1 run with 1 C & 1 run with 3 Cs. Splits averaged in the .26 - .28 range & transitions were .29-.33.

Since I was clearly seeing faster I devoted to head over to the plate rack to finish the session to see what I could do ...

I did 4 runs with each run being a personal best and each run being faster than the one before:

3.98 secs (1.76 sec draw)

3.97 secs (1.58 sec draw + 1 M/U shot)

3.88 secs (1 M/U shot)

3.65 secs (1.55 sec draw)

I also had my open rimfire Steel Challenge gun with me as I had planned to do a Steel session as well. Decided I was about done concentrating so instead I just setup at the plate rack for a couple of runs .... good thing to since after my 5th run it started to pour ... my best run from the low ready was 1.96 secs with a .51 sec 1st shot. That pretty much represents the other end of the spectrum for me at the moment on the plate rack ....

So my new personal best is 3.65 secs ...

[Nimitz]

Since I was off yesterday I decided to go out and get my Steel Challenge session in. At first I was going to run Speed Option which sometimes gives me trouble but then I switched to Roundabout. The best I have ever managed in competition is a 2.23 sec run (last month) with runs usually around 2.5 secs (for a 10 sec stage). I know I should be at the 2 sec mark & below here so I wanted to see if all my transition work is having any effect. Apparently it has as my first run cold out of the box was 1.99 secs. pretty cool as I've never had a sub 2 sec run ever except for 2 runs in training on Smoke & Hope ... So I proceeded to do 23 runs with 6 sub 2 secs runs including back to back 1.87 sec runs. The slowest clean run of the day was 2.14 secs. Runs that required a M/U shot were in the 2.3 sec range. Interestingly, in the past this has been my faster clean run time ...

Best first target time was .68 secs with any average right at .71 secs for the first 15 yd target. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to Saturday's match ....

Edited July 4, 2014 by Nimitz

[Nimitz]

Had another good Steel Challenge match yesterday. Finished 2nd overall, .10 secs behind the winner who was shooting a rimfire rifle optic gun. I had 3 stage wins and 4 personal best times on individual stages. I also had a new personal best overall time of 66.38 secs for the 6 stage match, a full 4 secs below the personal best I had last month. Clearly things are working as I continue to see faster..

Interestingly, I had a lot of distractions at this match as we had a ton of new shooters, including 4 teenagers & their dads which I told the MD could shoot on my squad. I therefore had to RO the entire match for every shooter on my squad plus help them all on every stage. On top of that they were all shooting single stack 45s plus 22 pistols so we were very slow. So slow that our last 2 stages were put away before we got there because someone told the MD we had already shot them. To his credit, the MD made the effort & reset the stages for us to shoot which of course meant we were down for about 1/2 hr.

None of the above was really designed to help me focus on my shooting and I left the match thinking I shot ok but not particularly great. I make it a point to never look at my scores during a match so I don't focus on results. It helps me to focus on what I should be doing, namely just my technique. I have a general sense of how I'm doing but that's it.

3 training days left until our yearly classifier match this Saturday ... can't wait ....

[Nimitz]

Well, so much for being ready for our annual classifier match this Saturday. I pulled up to the front gate of our club this morning at 7:30 only to find a bunch of cars huddled around the gate like some tailgate party. When I got to the front someone informed me the range was closed because our insurance company had canceled our liability insurance last night. At this point there has been no explanation for why but the Board is off trying to secure a new policy. Unfortunately, besides not being able to train, all matches have been canceled until further notice ...

Well, at least I'll now have another month to get ready ...

Edited July 10, 2014 by Nimitz

[Paul-the new guy]

Spent the last couple of days working on setting up my new safariland competition belt and have most of it worked out. It took a little jury rigging but I managed to get just about everything working like I want. I managed to mount an ELS 34 quick disconnect fork to both my 014 race holster and holster for my Buckmark. In addition I had to do quite a bit of surgery but managed to get the holster to fit my Buckmark with an optic & thumbrest. The last thing to do is complete the mounting of an ELS 34 fork to the new Boss attachment for my Bladetech holster I got from the Ben Stoeger pro shop. Once completed I'll post some pics of that as well ... I also have all the receiver plates in place on the belt for my production mags but I may be switching to the Ghost pouches rotated 90 deg so I've been holding off on doing anything to my current CR Speed pouches ...

Ken do you feel the ELS clip is strong enough for a holster? I have been trying to make a QLS work with my 014 and having no sucess at all.

[Nimitz]

I don't have a ton of time with it yet but it seems to work just fine. I talked with a couple of people who did this before i tried it and they all said it was working fine. My STI Steelmaster certainly isn't the heaviest open gun out there but there just doesn't seem to be a lot of pressure put on the holster durung the draw so I don't see why it won't hold up ... Now I also havn't done any running around with it since I'm only shooting open in Steel Challenge but we also don't really run with our gun in a holster anyway ...

Edited July 10, 2014 by Nimitz

[Ben Stoeger]

I ran El Pres a 2nd time to work on my reloads and although I only managed a 2.01 sec reload my time was 6.71 secs but hits were 58 pts. This resulted in a nice 84% run. That's pretty much as good as I can do with my current skills until I can get my reloads down & draws (draw was 1.7 secs for this run).

Big improvement!