Tom's road to Single Stack Champion

[waterboy]

Hey everyone,

Decided to get serious about meeting some of my goals in this sport:

Make GM in Single Stack and Production.

Make top 20 at SS Nats.

Long term - Win SS Nats.

I am a firm believer in working hard to achieve your goals, no matter how big they are. So tonight I did my first dry fire practice. 15 minutes of practicing draws and reloads with my 1911.

Draws:

Hands at sides start.

Started with a par time of 1.20

Ended with a par time of 1 second. Made every shot before the beep. About 75% had a good sight picture. Need to work on that.

Reloads:

Draw and reload from belt. Started with a par time of 3 seconds. Ended at 2.40 and can comfortably make it with good sight picture every time.

Any feedback is appreciated. Also recommendations on good dry fire and live fire books/ drills.

Thanks,

Tom

[RussellM]

Get Ben Stoegers books. Steve Andersons first dryfire book is great and he has a new book about to be released. I went from C to GM in about 17 months using this stuff along with some of Mike Seeklanders program.

[waterboy]

Will look into those. Thank you

[waterboy]

Going to be ordering Ben's dry fire and live fire books soon.

Shot a match yesterday at my local club. Everything felt really good. The dry fire practice is helping, especially on the reloads. Every reload was very smooth, a lot better than they normally are. I also improved on firing the first shot a lot faster. I felt I was pretty fast on the classifier, big barricade, but my hits could have been better. Need to work on accuracy at the faster speed. Planning on shooting some Bill Drills this week and hopefully that will help.

I feel my speed is pretty good for now, as I was keeping up with an "A" class open shooter on my squad, just need to work on accuracy.

[deerassassin22]

A good way to practice your draw for sure is in Anderson's book I believe is where I got this from.

1. I draw and shoot a steel 6 inch plate at 15 yards, if you hit it that's your draw time accurately. For example I can dry fire draw at 1.5sec when I believe the sights are good. When I use this with live fire I come in at 1.85 consistently.

[pjb45]

Reducing my draw dry fire par times was a two edged sword. I found I was training myself to accept less than perfect sight picture in order to make the faster par time. This translated into poorer quality hits on my draws in a match. I no longer use a par time. I want my draws to be as smooth and correct technically as possible. I also do not draw on an open target in my dry fire practice. All my dry fire targets have either hard cover or no shoots to better replicate match conditions.

I found that using Julie Golub and Mike Seeklander approaches seem to work better for me.

My normal draw on a 25 yard target is 1.25 while my reloads are 1.75

On a ten yard target my draws are <.95 with reloads in the 1.4 range. I now practice reloads that incorporate movement. This has added some time when compared to a standing reload but it more accurately portrays match conditions.

[waterboy]

Went out yesterday and shot the plate rack for a while. After watching Rob Leatham's video on youtube about how to use the recoil to transition to the next plate, I shot it a lot better and quicker. I wasn't able to use my timer as the batteries died while I was doing some Bill Drills before, but I know I have improved a lot.

My Bill Drills were ok. My fastest was 2.11 with a 1.09 draw, but I had 2 Cs. My best with all A hits was a 2.17 with a 1.14 draw.

I also did a couple Four Aces drills, but my static reloads were bad. I can reload a lot faster on the move then I can static.

I also ordered Ben Stoegers Dry Fire book. Hopefully that comes soon so I can start dry firing more than just my draws.

[waterboy]

Switched gears a little tonight. Decided to take my wheel gun out for some practice. I have all the gear for revo, but haven't shot it in awhile. Plus I had some old ammo I wanted to burn up. Didn't do a whole lot, mainly worked on shooting targets with no shoots around them from different distances, as well as only head shots.

Did do some draw and fire two rounds on target from 7 yards. First shot averaged right around 1.05 with an average of .20 splits.

Shot the plate rack a little too. Fastest time was a 3.75 if I remember right going 1 for 1.

[waterboy]

Finally opened the dry fire book by Ben Stoeger. Did 4 drills, Bill Drill, Reloads, El Prez, and one handed shooting.

Did not make the goal times, but got a good starting point.

Bill Drill- 2 seconds

Reloads- 7.2 seconds

El Prez- 5 seconds

One Handed

Strong Hand- 2.7 seconds

Weak Hand- 3.5 seconds

These are the par times I could consistently make. Going to keep following one of the 4 week cycles in the book and then come back and see if I can lower these times a little.

[Ben Stoeger]

Not a bad start.

[waterboy]

Thanks Ben. Awesome book by the way.

Did some more dry fire tonight from the book. Worked on slow draws with no time limits, then draws with a 1.2 second par time and made it every time. Did some other stuff out of Bens book that kinda breaks down the draw into different parts. Actually made all of the goal par times tonight so I was pretty happy about that.

[waterboy]

Just got back from the range. Finally got out and did some live fire drills. I had some new ammo to run through the chrono as well. I'm really liking these new SNS coated no lube groove bullets. Settled on a load that puts me at 171pf.

I also shot my best Bill Drill ever today. 2.14 seconds with all A's. The draw was a 1.23 so I can definitely shave off some time there with more practice. My splits were .20, .20, .18, .17, .16.

My biggest problem with the draw is getting a good sight picture quickly. Will have to work on that more during dry fire practice.

I can say I feel I have improved quite a bit since I started dry firing every night. Really looking foreword to the next match.