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Camo Cowboy's performance analysis journal


Glock26Toter

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The accuracy different could be related to trigger pull differences in the two guns potentially. If you were in tune with it, you'd see it when calling your shots but if your going for pure accuracy you may be turning that skill off to some degree. If nothing else you should definitely confirm the triggers are as close as possible to matching if you want to switch between guns without issue.

Just an idea, could be a bunch of other things as well

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There was only 1 match this weekend at Aurora Gun Club. I should have practiced, and had a great opportunity to do so. But alas, had to pass it up to perform some life stuff. Damn life getting in the way of shooting!

So Sunday was the match and I think maybe I was still thinking about the day before and the wrap up still needing to be done. I didn't take any vids because I just wasn't feeling it. This slight drop in my motivation showed in my performance and I was unable to really hook up on any stage I shot.

My best performance came in the form of the second half of a long 32 rounder with a zig-zag wall setup. A fun stage to be sure, but out of the gate I had trigger freeze on the first 3 ... you read correctly... THREE targets. It was brutal watching as I took upwards of 1 second splits before getting the hell out of that position and moving into the remainder of the course. What was the upside? Well, after that there was a weird 100 degree hallway turn where I engaged 2 targets while backing up slightly and nailed 4 alphas on them while on the move. After that the wrap up was 2 paper, 2 steel. These were setup times two in symmetrical engagements that you had to shoot on either side of a barricade. (so, 2paper/2steel, times two) Anyways, the first one went great and the second was a sight for sore eyes as I powered through the engagement with what felt like .15 splits and .15 transitions for the entire thing. I don't think it was quite that quick, but it wasn't far off. A true moment of traction for me that felt good.

Sadly, that was the only moment that I really felt like I nailed the entire match. Even with that, a recovery from such a severe bout of trigger freeze was not possible.

Well, although I wasn't happy with my performance it wasn't a total disaster and I still had a good time and kept my spirits up.

The good news?

I shot the Hulk all day and it ran flawlessly. I had run off to an empty berm before the match started and sighted it in. With a single adjustment I was able to put 3 shots inside a single paster at 15 yards. At 25 I was slightly larger than that and high-right (maybe 1.5"-2" at 25 yards. Close enough for no bench and a match to shoot within minutes.

While I think the dot seemed dimmer, it's track was noticeably more consistent than the black gun.

Both guns are out this week as the Hulk still needs paint and now the black gun is getting it's Cheely comp removed for an RHF unit.

More technical time next week will tell me a lot more. Plus, it's pretty obvious that I need to perform some serious accuracy training. I'm going to hit some dot torture and similar accuracy shooting over the next several training sessions. I'm hoping that will help to better understand my dot tracking and cement in the accuracy that will take "delta" out of my daily vocabulary.

p.s. Thanks BB!

Edited by Glock26Toter
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I picked up my black gun from Rick today and headed over to AGC for some technical work.

I'm shocked and amazed at the difference installing that RHF 3 chamber comp made. It's an entirely new gun and is equal to the Hulk from what I can tell.

With 4 sight adjustments I was able to make groups that matched the Hulk. Attached is my last run to check everything. The 7,10, and 15 yards are freehand. The 25 was on a rest.

After the sight in, I ran the Dot Torture drill. I did pretty good with only a couple of rounds just outside the dots. I did it at 7 yards, two times. Next week's training will definitely include more dot drills. I like where that was going.

With respect to the technical stuff... the dot track of the gun was consistent and exactly straight up and down, just like the green gun.

I'm super excited that the comp was the ticket.

I would have run some more drills but there was a looming rain cloud that scared me off. I'll be glad to get some real match time on that black gun this weekend and see if I feel like I shoot as good as I do with the Hulk.

The next question is whether to start screwing with the mounts to see if the rear mount can bring the dot into a tighter track. I'm pretty sure I'll just leave everything as-is until after Nationals. At which time, I'm more likely to get Delta points installed. Any money spent on further tuning C-More's can be spent on Delta point hardware instead!

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The two "primary" matches were cancelled this weekend so it was off to the Ben Lomond Gun Club with Cha-Lee and bunch of other friends for a Saturday practice session.  We setup a very challenging stage and shot it a bunch of times.  It was a pretty relaxing day and one run in particular was memorable.  I had just blown through the stage and not shot all that well although I felt like I moved very fast.  I'm concentrating on better accuracy and NO DELTAS for my goal set, so I reminded myself that I might not have a blistering speed, but better get my hits.  The next run I had a distinct feeling of "wait for it" as I went through the stage and just made sure to call each shot and wait for that sight picture to appear on every engagement before moving on.  At the end I had way better hits and my time was 2 seconds FASTER!  HAHA!  

I've missed the last few of these practice sessions as most "non-match" days wind up being misc project days.  However, I was able to shoot and still have enough time to get my initial dimension cuts on 27' of poplar moulding for a new frame run!  So a good day overall. 

Sunday I went up to Boulder Rifle Club.  The weather was nice and warm, but not blistering hot.  The stages were very technical and had some overly difficult engagements.  Here's a vid of 2 of my runs.  The first one had a plate rack and a Texas star.  A deadly combination to be sure.  I visualized those arrays over and over again and just thought "you need to shoot like you shoot on these"... "don't overthink them."  As you can see in the video, I cleaned the plate rack with zero screwing around.  On the star, although I let a shot break a tad early, it was followed that up with some very carefully called shots.  This led to at least the same amount of screwing around, if not less.  It sure felt good to nail a stage after that freak-show of a classifier that preceded it.  I don't even want to talk about the unraveling and embarrassment I displayed.  A true novice moment for me.    And seriously.  If you weren't lucky enough to have seen it first hand, you'll just have to use your imagination.  I'm done with that.

The second stage on the video has a no-shoot / mike on that crazy triple-swinger that can't see. However, I do like the movement and feel that was the most optimized stage plan and stand behind it.  The transition from 3 open targets on the right into the swinger was particularly efficient as was the rest of the stage.  For not such a good run, I felt that stage was not lost through movement. 

So, I'm very happy with the black gun's performance and feel it's a perfect backup to the Hulk now.  I had some moments during the match that I feel were GM moments, but the one that I fell apart on handed 92 points to the competition on a silver platter.  This underscores the consistency goal on my list as stages like that shouldn't happen these days.  

 

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I took off a bit early from work today to practice at Aurora Gun Club.  No window in my office, so by the time I hit the door I realized it was just starting to rain.  Bummer.  I decided to head to Centennial Gun Club and just shoot indoors.  The bummer again, was that a big client called and wanted a conference call in 1 hour.  I just couldn't win.  

I decided to go ahead and shoot for 45 minutes and see if I could get a couple of dot torture drills in.  While I accomplished my goal I was rushed and unable to relax enough to really work on anything.  A bit of a drag, but at least I got a couple of drills in and found that I still need a LOT of work on one handed shooting.  

I started reading Ben Stoeger's book.  It's a good read so far.  While reading it, and thinking about where I need help I've come up with a couple of new goals to work on.

Goals:

Consistent and firm grip.  (I've been working on "firm" but it lacks both consistent pressure and position.)

Continue to nail down accuracy. ("only the dot" type of thing... just put better in that it's really a higher level of accuracy AND shot calling I need)

Learn your target focus types.   (This is "inconsistency" I've referred to.  I need to understand what each type of target focus looks like to be able to employ them on the fly for each target.)  More drills that vary my target focus.

Sharpen up that one handed shooting.

 

 

 

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It was a full weekend of shooting two matches.  Both at Ben Lomond and Weld County.  

I'm in a situation now where I think I'm being way too hard on myself for the mistakes I'm making and it affects my psyche, causing further errors.  This is creating a cycle of undue pressure and then the errors seem worse than they are.  Then I make more.  It's got to stop.   

I'm doing fine, and need to get back to concentrating on the positive and just reviewing my performance.  In this tone, I'm only going to look at the stages that went well this weekend.  I complained that I "only shot 1 stage clean" on Saturday.  In fact, I shot 2 stages clean.  Of those stages I only dropped 7 points on one, and 6 points on the other.  The times were not even close to shabby either.  Those runs were fun, and was able to execute them exactly as planned.  They also both contained a total of 11 steel targets which I knocked down with 12 rounds.    See...positive.

On Sunday I went up Weld County.  Just as before, I had some rough ones, but two stages came out on top as finely executed and will go a long way to save my attitude.  One of them was the example of getting into my psyche and I shot it crazy conservative and was not happy with the run.  Thanks to a target taping mishap, I was awarded a re-shoot.  I took the liberty of giving my psyche a reboot as well.  I was the last shooter so I had to make it snappy.  By the time I loaded my mags again I was not worried about trashing the re-shoot.  I just cleared my head and actually said to myself "don't to anything differently" just before the buzzer went off.  To me "don't do anything differently" means you just have to run the stage with the same plan, and the same level of stress.  Don't "try" to do it better.  The hope is, that you'll do it the same, but without the mistake(s).  (not like you planned on them the first time so why would you "try" to do it without them?)  So anyways, I wound up with a great time, and a great run.  As it turned out, it was the "the same run" but without the mistakes. 

Also, tonight I just finished a dry fire session. I've been missing reloads lately and have determined that my #1 mag pouch is just not in the right spot.  I moved it last Thursday and even though I was worried about not having enough dry fire time on it I didn't mess up a single reload this weekend.  (hey... another positive!)  

Anyways, tonight was the same way.  I dry fired for about 30 minutes with a variety of angles and movement.  I didn't mess any of them up that I can recall.  This new angle on the #1 mag pouch is just perfect for where I am now.  It's not like a huge move. Just re-angled it a few degrees and moved it back slightly.  

Oh, and I also got The Hulk back!  I'll take it out Wednesday after work and make sure it's ready to rumble for the Utah State Match coming up.  

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Why all of the negativity avoidance? You can't fix what you don't face or own up to. Embrace your failures!!! Use your failures to drive your training program instead of letting it beat you down.

Learning how to deal with failure during a match is just as important as all of your other skills. Get to work on that weakness so you can make it your strength.

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You are correct, you have to own up to weaknesses and commit to train hard and fix them.  

However, there's a different between negativity and identifying areas for improvement.   I've still got my list I'm working on and still have my goals for practice.  Just don't see the need to ONLY review them and not celebrate a few things that I did well.  Since I've been feeling particularly beat up the last few matches I wanted to let the goal list sit for a bit and allow my fun meter to swing back into the positive zone. 

 

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I was not able to shoot a match this weekend as I was in a CRO Class given by Kevin Imel.  It was a great class and I'm glad that people like Kevin are willing to put in the time to help us all out like that.  Just as I say with the RO class: Given the opportunity to take one, always say YES.

We setup 3 stages as part of the class and then went ahead and shot them like a mini match.  I was able to verify the Hulk's sight in that I had done earlier in the week.  It also seemed to be running tip top. I think I'm good to go if I want to use it as my primary for the Utah state match next week. 

I'll try to get one more session in this week to ensure that BOTH guns are sighted in exactly.  This will ensure I can decide which gun will be the primary for the match without worrying.  I'm still not quite convinced the Hulk is ready rumble as the primary.  I would prefer more than 100 rounds with ANY new component before it get's the "primary" sign off.   2 more runs that that darn Dot Torture drill would do it.  Not to mention,  I really feel that the drill is helping with my definition of what an acceptable sight picture is.  

Anyways, hopefully I'll get that chance.  Between work and the weather I'm not so sure.   

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I knocked off a tad early from work yesterday and headed to AGC for some technical work.

I found that both guns were almost exactly the same.  On at 7 through 15 yards and about 1" right/1" high at 25 yards.  Some slight adjustment on both and they are dead zero windage and 1" high at 25 yards.  The funny part is, it took an almost in perceivable adjustment on one, while the other took about 1/4 turn to get the same results.  

The other thing I noticed was that while both had batteries that were in the "good" voltage range the Hulk has a noticeably dimmer dot.  I mean, like a LOT dimmer.  I recall replacing one of the dots a while back, but I'm almost certain it was not with a brand new dot.  I think, to get the Hulk to be bright enough I'll need  a brand new module.  Once again the back up is not quite a back up.   At least I can shoot the darn thing effectively if I need to.  This is just another reminder that it's a constant battle to keep both guns running and in perfect shape.  It's all part of the fun!

So anyways. After I was sure they were both on, I ran Ron Avery's nickel drill.  I had never done that one before.  I did it at 7 yards and missed the nickle by no more than 1" but missed it about 5 times out of 25.  Not bad.  I actually found that drill easier with the dim dotted green gun.  The black gun's dot was a bit too bright to really see the nickles behind it and allowed for more mistakes.  I only had enough ammo to try once with each gun.  Next time I'll turn the dot down a tad. 

Today if the weather holds I may run out one more time and run that nickel drill again with a buddy of mine.  We'll see.

 

  

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I spent all weekend out at the Utah State Championship match.  It was a fun and challenging match.  At first I underestimated it due to the lack of difficult or far shots.  Later I found out that it had plenty of challenges of it's own. 

I was quickly reminded in the first few stages that "run and gun" stages can easily get out of control.  I hosed through one in particular where I just lost my visual patience and managed to score 2 mikes and 3 deltas.  This put me in, 27th overall place for that stage.  

That one stage alone sealed my fate... but I wasn't done learning lessons, not by a long shot. 

I managed to do the same crap on several more stages, and when all was said and done I racked up 2 no shoots, 5 mikes, and 15 deltas.  Yikes! 

When I wasn't falling into my "old ways" I was certainly racking up some nice stage runs.  There were several that I was in the top 5 overall scores and one that I was 2nd on. This shows me that I'm capable of doing things right, but obviously need to work on doing it more often. 

Looking at my video's I'm seeing some "fluid" movement and not locking into a stable shooting platform to make the shots.  From my movement I can't see whether I'm shooting a 5 yard or a 20 yard target.  This, I think, shows that I'm still not employing the proper technique at the proper time.  I'm doing the entire stage in one mode and not slowing down as much as needed for each array.  i.e., super slow / stop on 20 yards and almost no slow down for 5 yards.

For now, I'm going to continue to concentrate on accuracy.  I think, by continuing to train myself to accept less sloppiness in my sight picture I'll also train myself to make my movements match the sight picture.  I'm thinking that this weekend I may do an "all head shot" match or something similar to really drive that point home.  hmmmm?

 

 

 

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Are you practicing the movement + shot difficulty scenarios that are kicking your butt? Doing stationary accuracy training is not the same as doing it moving or doing it as you are settling into a position after running.

Edited by CHA-LEE
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I went to the range this afternoon to get a bit of practice. 

Funny that Cha-Lee asked me if I was only doing static accuracy or adding movement.  After I thought about yesterday's post I decided to warm up with some static accuracy nickel drills (just ran it once with each gun) and then setup a movement accuracy drill. 

At 25 yards I setup two partial targets.  One side covered with a no shoot and about 6' away a lower covered no shoot.  I did a drill where I shot two on each and then moved to the other side of a barricade and shot two on each.  I didn't put a lot of emphasis on speed.  I did find that I could do the drill without no shoots in about 7.5 - 8 seconds with .50 - .60 splits.  If I pushed harder than that I wound up getting into delta or no shoot zone and could tell I was not breaking the shot properly. 

I REALLY wish I would have taken more ammo.  Just when I was really starting to like that drill I ran out.  I also ran into some snags as I discovered that my two malfunctions at the Utah match were a problem with the black gun.  

As it turns out the hammer is not dropping all the way sometimes along with a funny trigger lockup.  I thought the first malfunction at that match was failure to go into battery.  I'm now sure that it was in battery but the hammer was not down all the way.  The second malfunction I didn't know what had happened. (it was on the last stage of the match) Today I found that if the hammer did go down all the way it didn't strike the firing pin.  I'm sure it's something simple but I choose to let Rick get it working and move onto making Hulk my primary.  Even with a dim dot, I'll shoot it this weekend and I've got a hook up on a new 6MOA dot so by next week the Hulk will be back in action and I'm sure the black gun will be also.  

 

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I was able to shoot both matches this weekend.  The first was out at Colorado Rifle Club.  The staff did the usual awesome job at coming up with stages that were fun.  I was considering doing an "all head shot" match because my frustration of sloppy shooting was getting the best of me.  I mentioned it to Cha-Lee.  What he said about it hit home very well.  Basically it was "why would would you practice something that's not your goal?"  He followed that up with "pick a spot, and aim at it."  That's the goal.  He also had some good advice about how to motivate myself to be punished for not aiming.  I thought about this all day while shooting.  I didn't give a crap what my times were and didn't fret over stage planning either.  I put very little thought into micro-planning elements such as engagement order.  I didn't even want to hear my times.  I just aimed.  With the exception of one stage where I took the planning so lightly that I wound up brain-farting all over the place.  Although it earned me a No-Shoot during "make up mode" my score only had a single charlie to go with that no-shoot. 

So, while I didn't post any lightning fast times they were surprisingly good for what felt like an eternity aiming.  I was rewarded with 117 Alphas out of a match that was 134 rounds.  That's only 16 charlies and 1 delta.  (and the delta was on that crazy 25 yard, 6 second par time classifier) So 87% Alphas.  Not bad.

Today I shot the Pueblo Sportsman's Club match.  Same drill, different day.  It was all about the alphas.  Today I couldn't help myself and put a lot of effort into stage planning.  I felt like I had a good, solid plan on all of them but I was still in extreme "alpha mode" and only aimed.  Again, it seemed an eternity of aiming.  Again, I was rewarded with an 86% on alphas.  Also, just like yesterday I jacked a stage where I forgot to keep that mode alive.  This was on a SHO/WHO classifier stage.  

In the end, I still managed to lose it on a couple of stages. But for the majority my attitude of "forgetting everything" and entering a "just shoot and trust that I'll be fast enough" really paid off this weekend.  (hmmm, where have I heard that before??)  I feel like I showed myself a contrast in performance.  On one side it was making myself not care about anything and just shooting when I was shooting.  On the other side, because I spent so much time shooting, it was ASS-HAUL mode when the movement started.  

I know that this is the same shit we've been preaching.. and had preached to us... and is ultimately the goal.   But as with many things we are trying to master, we need constant reminders and this was another one for me.  

Oh, and back to the punishment thing.  Currently, I don't have any ideas.  Money isn't enough for me (long story, but I just don't think it will work) and more fitting to my attitude I would rather reward myself for doing well, such as an "all alpha" stage or "no delta" match, will get me a ... ???  In the end, I think feeling like I did after shooting this weekend is reward enough for now.  (oh man that sounds cheesy. Oh well, deal with it!)  Also, there was this texas star that I just slaughtered!  It was the fastest star I've ever taken.  It not only didn't have time to move an inch, but I heard it crying afterwards. (or somebody was.. it might have been me.)

So, now that I'm all done pumping myself up here, the times that I did fall apart need to be identified as areas for improvement.  The first one... well, that was poor stage planning and it underscores the importance of not taking that for granted.  Get your plan together! It's the only way to shoot the stage properly.  The second one revealed how bad I am at SHO/WHO shooting.  Wow, do I have a long way to go.  Also, I was very unhappy with my reload on Saturday's classifier.  

so, goals moving forward:

Practice SHO/WHO a LOT more.  Every practice. 

Get back on some serious dry fire and practice reloads.  

Continue to practice accuracy.  

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Some people need a carrot to chase after, others need a whip to make them run. Only you know what you need to provide the proper motivation/penalty to achieve what you want.

I remember reading or hearing a interview with Eric Graufel. He was struggling with misses at a young age and during practice his father helped him build the proper "Penalty" for missing by taking away a whole magazine every time he had a miss. You miss enough and eventually don't have any magazines left to practice with.

You could also use this same type of penalty with how many rounds you load in your big stick. Every time you fail at aiming properly the next stage you purposefully download your big stick by 2 rounds.

There has to be a tangible and immediate penalty for failing. If there isn't then you will blow it off and think about it later but really do nothing about it.

There is plenty of time after the match to review your overall performance and beat yourself up or pat yourself on the back. But that type of assessment is geared towards long term goals. What you are failing at now is not having an immediate penalty for not doing what you should be doing. 

I got an extra shock collar laying around, I will let you borrow it if that is the type of penalty you are looking for. Fair warning, if you scream while getting shocked it will keep on shocking :)

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Thanks for the offer Cha-lee... as tempting as the shock collar is I might just have to pass on it.  I have a feeling YOU would be yelling behind me every few seconds causing even more shocks!

I think your best point about the system is to make it immediate and not do some "carrot or no carrot" after the match.  The only issue is that I would like to think of a positive reward rather than a punishment.  I suppose it's putting too much thought into it and I'll likely do the round count subtraction.  

Meanwhile, I made it to the practice range yesterday for a bit of technical work.  I had to switch from CCI to Winchester primers last week.  I shipped all I had loaded in CCI to Nationals and didn't want to load too many Winchester loads until I chronograph-ed.  Yesterday was my opportunity (like 15 minutes while the thunderstorm was forming over the range!) and I was surprised to find that my load was 3-4 points higher PF with the new primers.  I wasn't sure if I would see a difference, but there is for sure.  I'll drop .2 to get back down to 170-171PF for this weekend's matches.  

I also swapped my dot from what I thought was a 4MOA to a 6MOA.  (the current dot is missing it's color designation)  I could not tell a difference between the two dots.  This sucks, because I know the green gun was quite a bit dimmer when compared to the black one.  Unfortunately for me, while I was swapping the dot out it was not only starting to rain but a thunderstorm was moving in and it got very dark.  I also don't have my black gun for comparison since it's out for repair.  I quickly sighted in and got the hell out of there.  I'll have to compare the two guns this weekend in bright sunlight so I can really tell if the known 6MOA was the fix.  

 

  

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I was able to shoot matches on both days this past weekend.  The first was out at Ben Lomond and the second at Weld County.

I took some vids of both matches, but only processed a couple of them.  Here they are.

The reason I looked at both of these was because I think they show what I've been looking for regarding goals lately.  On the first run, despite my making an error and almost forgetting a target I like the way I maintained a stable platform and kept aiming even when faced with a stage that can very easily lead you into moving too quickly with wide open targets.  I was happy with that.  Although there were other stages, one in particular that I allowed myself to rack up way too many charlies and got two mikes. 

One of the mikes was just a bad call.  I saw and called a hard cover mike and thought I made it up.  I must have done that thing where I looked directly at it while making it up.  Meaning, I aimed at and got very near the first mike with my makeup.  Both less than 1" into the hard cover.  The other side of that same stage had a barrel very close to the port and partially obscuring the target.  I heard one hit the barrel and made it up.  The makeup was a super light barrel hit.  Looking at the hit it was only a short streak directly below the first one, but obviously enough to throw the bullet off trajectory.  

While the second mike wasn't necessarily something to beat myself up over had I not allowed the large movements of the stage to dictate how I engaged the shooting I would have had more success.  I had also dropped far too many charlies on that run supporting my thought that I didn't allow myself to shoot well when required. 

The second stage in the video, I think shows some pretty decent shooting on the move.  On the second array, it was necessary to basically stop in that position to ensure at least an AC on the standing target and CC on the laydown behind that barrel.  I think it saved a lot of time over still having to lean for that stand up and then approach the barrel for 2 A's on the lay down.  The rest of the stage netted more charlies than I would have liked but for that much movement slowing down for all A's would have given up too much time.  The next fastest dude (not including PCC) took the time to run up to the laydown target and that cost him a significant time loss.  We actually wound up with the exact same hits validating my time saving plan and making the time investment I put into 2nd position well worth it.  Even though it seemed painfully long when doing it. 

So areas for improvement?  There were still plenty along the same lines as before.  

I let myself get downright stupid on the classifier on Sunday along with the stage I already explained.  Saturday there were less, but in many cases I think I took some things too slowly regarding accuracy.  I'm still looking at the same old inability to instantly change gears. 

Goals moving forward:

Practice SHO/WHO a LOT more.  Every practice.  

Get back on some serious dry fire and practice reloads.  (been hitting this 2 nights a week lately!)  

Continue to practice accuracy.  (Still on this... really seeing a difference.)

 

 

 

 

 

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I got out of work super early today and headed to the range for some practice.  After running some new rounds through the chrono I setup the same classifier that I screwed the pooch on last weekend. 

Without pressure I was able to get all the hits in under the par time and had pretty decent hits too.  The best score was 102 and the worst was 96.  There were several botched runs as well.  I found that I was missing some reloads.  I stepped closer to the target and just practiced a bunch or reloads until I worked out that I've been dropping my elbow pretty seriously during the slap-down to get the magazine.  This causes a teacup grip on the magazine and all consistency goes out the window.  I don't do it every time, but I think under the standing reload situation it's more apparent.  Once I worked that out I was happy with my reload smoothness. 

I also ran a lot of SHO/WHO drills.  I did some head shots and some alpha shooting and was pretty happy with my results. I still have a long way to go as my best head shot only routine left plenty to be desired.   

The bad news is, that at some point I injured my right elbow and some pretty sharp tennis elbow pain has reared it's ugly head again.  I'm going to go super easy on that elbow for the next 2 weeks until Nationals.  

 

 

 

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I had a good time over the weekend shooting matches at Aurora Gun Club and Clear Creek.  I tried to keep up my heavy accuracy focus and not worry so much about speed.  That's a tough nut to crack and on a couple of stages I let too much retard leak out and wound up with significantly less alphas that what I've been going for.  

I need to keep that accuracy focus up and trust that I'll be fast enough.  I've proven it many times recently and if I can keep doing it will produce some darn good scores in the future.  

I didn't take a single video as my Gopro was left on my desk and I forgot to grab it both days.  Video is providing almost zero value these days as it seems to be mostly about what I'm seeing, feeling, and thinking these days.  But the wife likes to watch them and they do provide a good anchor for performance review so I'm not giving up on them yet.

Anyways, I'll have a practice session tomorrow after work where I'll sight in the Hulk and set it aside for Nationals.  I'll practice some more one handed shooting as that seems to be the one place I consistently get my ass handed to me these days.  One more local match this weekend before I go hang with the big boys.  I'm super excited.  No expectations, just excited. 

 

 

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I went to the range today for a final practice session before Nationals.  I thought that 50 yard stuff Panda suggested seemed like as good a place as any to practice.  I setup 2 Classic targets at 50 yards and went to town.

well, not exactly.  I did take time to verify zero on both guns.  The Hulk was still dead on from 2 weeks ago YAY! and the black gun had to be adjusted slightly to get it running tip top.  Once I was happy with that it was a long haul up range to the 50 yard mark.

I hit those targets with the Hulk in a quickie stand-and-shoot drill and was pleased with a decent score.  As I recall, the best I did with 4 shots on each target was down 2 charlies.  

I quickly put that gun away as it will be my primary for Nationals.  I sure didn't want to chance screwing something up.  When I picked up the black gun I was still able to get some decent hits and ran a few different drills at that distance.  For several, I shot 2 on each, ran a few feet forward to a box.  Performing a reload on the way, and then bent down as if shooting through a port.  I was too lazy to get a real port, but did note how much more labor it was to ensure my hits when shooting bent over like that.  Very often, our port shooting is a hose-fest and it's not very common to shoot at 50 yards through a port.  I'm glad I practiced that.  I'm also glad that I did some extreme accuracy shooting with the black gun.  I was starting to think I just plain shoot better with the Hulk but couldn't put my finger on it.  After today I would say that they are as close as 2 guns can get.  I'm very happy to shoot either one now.  

At any rate, by the time I was done I had made myself feel much better about those far targets by only logging a few deltas and mikes during the session.  I certainly hope I can rein myself in for the real deal in a few days. 

Tomorrow I'll shoot a final local match where I have one stage setup with classic targets in a who/sho standards stage for some final practice.  Then it's go time. 

 

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I shot a match on Sunday at Aurora Gun Club.  We had 2 people that don't normally design stages.  Both new stage designers so it was a bit of "new blood" for the match and I thought they were fun stages.  I shot the black gun and had a few issues. 

One of them was a 3-per paper hose fest.  I found that I kept missing my trigger reset and stuttered my way through the stage.  It was a reminder that no matter how fast you work the trigger you still have to work the trigger.  I've been suspecting for a while that I want to increase my return spring tension as this fast shooting manipulation often leads to missing the reset.  I suppose that's the definition of trigger freeze but either way feel that an increase of return pressure will fix it.  

I'm not touching anything until after Nationals.

On another stage I had several malfunctions.  It didn't cycle properly and by the end of the stage I could feel the slide dragging.  After taking a brutal HF slashing I checked things out and the gun was dry as a bone.  Everything was squeaky clean without a drop of oil to be found.  ooops!  This was a reminder that you have to "work the match" and continue to check and maintain your equipment throughout.  In Saul Kirsch style I'll say "a champion doesn't let parts fall off his gun or discover it needs maintenance during a stage. He checks it and maintains it off the clock."  (that's not a quote, just something he might say after watching my shit-show on that stage.)

From a shooting perspective I was happy with what I did. I had 94 alphas, 26 charlies and 4 deltas.  It was the most alphas of the top 3 shooters. I also shot a clean match and 3 of the 4 deltas I took were on a SHO/WHO fixed time stage. So I won't beat myself up over them too badly.  I think I made a good effort toward getting all alphas as fast as I could get them and doing everything else really fast. 

I just hope I can feel half this good after this week is over in Florida. 

My goal for Nationals is not a particular placement, but rather a "as good as I can do" approach.  I just want to feel like I left it all on the range. 

 

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