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Camo Cowboy's performance analysis journal


Glock26Toter

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I did a bit of dry fire practice today on drawing. What got me thinking was this video of Ron Avery. The last time Ron and I talked, I was interested in taking a class from him. I'm still going to do that, I just haven't set aside the $$ yet. Anyways, he mentioned a bit of the type of thing he was talking about in this vid. This felt like a, "if Ron had time to talk for a while longer that day" kind of thing while I watched.

So, it got me thinking and I decided to record my draw for slow motion playback for analysis. One thing that changed my game was a class from Paul Clark Jr maybe a year or so ago... maybe longer. He changed my draw completely from a "normal" draw, to a scoop draw. While the high-level look and description of a scoop draw seems to make people think it's different than a standard "over the top" draw. I've come to realize it's not really that different. I really feel comfortable with my draw these days and don't feel it's an area holding me back. Of course I'm not so naive as to believe that I couldn't use help, so if someone gives me advice I'm going to try it. Hence, todays analysis.

First, take a look at Ron Avery's video and think about what he's saying about gravity, arm movement and your natural pointing movements and how that relates to the draw.

Now, take a look at my video and run it at .5 or .25 speed. First; The overall arm movement and direction of travel for the hands and firearm is "I think" exactly what Ron is talking about.

In true Lanny form, I'm looking at the positive. I'm looking for things I've worked on a lot such as no head movement. I used to move my head dramatically to the right to favor my left (stong) eye. Now I more naturally put the gun into my light of sight. My hands, I don't think are making any extra movements and my grip builds in that natural "hand clap" area while the gun continues to move up and out and into my aiming position without moving around or changing direction.

Taking a look at the "scoop" portion of the draw. There's actually nothing spectacularly different about it, I'm still placing my hand on the grip and obtaining a full grip prior to raising the gun out of the holster. The only difference is I'm not making an extra down motion. I'm simply trusting myself, that if I grab the gun while my hand is moving up I can do that easily. Watch it very slowly, like at .25 and you'll see that it's very natural and smooth.

Another thing that I think is a strong point to my draw is the surrender draw. I practice this almost everytime I practice and when I put my gun on in the safety area I draw about 6-8 times WITHOUT breaking a shot, and then 5 or 6 times from surrender without breaking a shot. I don't remember where I heard about this little warm up, but I picked it up somewhere and like it. So, onto the surrender draw. Watch the vid and there a few things I look at with this one.

First is the fact that as soon as my hand hits the gun the differences are gone. There is no difference in my draw or the speed, or the point that my weak hand enters the grip building process. Now for the differences.

I lift my hand off the gun and maintain the hand position and especially maintain the wrist and elbow position. That's why my palm is facing away from my head. I'm simply rotating the elbow back down the exact spot I was in before raising it. Watch my elbow in relation to the doorframe and picture on the wall as I go up, and back down during this time. It relates back to what Ron Avery was saying in his video about running the draw backwards and everything remaining the same with respect to to wrist.

This makes me think that my surrender technique is actually an advantage over many shooters as I see them take longer to do this draw than their hands relaxed draw. I think my difference in speed for these two draws is negligible.

Now, having gone over this, I want to make the point that I'm NOT a GM yet and don't think I'm analyzing this to show others how to do it. I'm analyzing this because that's what we do for constant improvement and wanted to see if I could pick something up from that Ron Avery video. If someone else can pick something up from this comparison or do one of their own like this and improve something for themselves than that would be GREAT.

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I went to a match last night at Centennial Gun Club. The stage were plenty challenging and I actually got on a squad with a lot of experienced shooters so it was more like a normal match.
I felt pretty good shooting and despite not being able to move as fast as usual due to slippery floor I mostly got my dot set the the correct intensity and shot to my usual ability.

The first stage wasn't so good as I plugged TWO no-shoot hits on this really skinny shot. I was the first to shoot it and most people took headshots on it after me and I should have optimized that section better and seen the obvious super-high risk and avoided it like everyone else. However, I got "lucky" and the 20 penalty points did NOT get recorded. HAHA! I hate it when that happens as I can't enjoy my score because my competitors were cheated and that feels crappy.
However, in this case I was 46 points ahead of 2nd place so it would not have changed things.

The next stage was an unloaded table start stage. There was a shooting box/barricade in front of the table and a lot of time could be saved by loading while moving forward. But in order to get one target a severe lean was needed. I practiced and found that leaning back and making sure to keep the opposite toe touching the ground would result in a C/D zone hit while maintaining a stable platform. I worked pretty well as I shot the stage for 2nd overall and posted the fastest time on the stage. I'm happy with that one and would do it the same way again. I watched the less experienced shooters do all kinds of crazy dances and jumping tricks to try to get that one knocked out and thought about my recent 4 Cores of physical shooting I've been making notes about... "stable platform" is one of them and while this element can look pretty unstable to some, I can see what a truely unstable platform can do to an otherwise perfectly good run.

And then the classifier... d'oh! I didn't do so good on this overall, but analyzing it a bit I can see a few things to learn from it. First, I got a mike. Without that Mike, I would have scored a 77.7%. I also dot hunted at the start of my weak-hand string for what seemed like forever (resulting in the mike). It was about 1.5-2 seconds. let's shave off 1.5 seconds for an 85.45% potential. All this is not to beat myself up, but by sort of "removing the mistakes" I can plainly see that all the other shots and movement performed on that run were within the Master realm. This is positive news and I think Lanny Bassham would be proud of my exracting "how did you get all those master level hits" out of this 65% run!

Well, I think overall I had a good match and things are looking pretty good for goal progress:

1. Visual Patience. (I saw some good stuff, but clearly lost it for at least 3 shots last night.)
2. Work at better stage breakdown. (1 clear miss on this last night, but another clear win. I know I'm working on it.)
3. Start documenting my process and skillset for mental stability. (Working on it and this is helping me "ground my technique"... or maybe, giving me basis to how I shoot.)

CGC Local match. HOA 12/28/14

Edited by Glock26Toter
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  • 2 weeks later...

I just finished reading Steve Anderson's book and I really liked it. I see why Charlie recommended this and I plan on changing my goal set to match some new things I've learned and really can't wait to start running through those drills. I've recently modified my draw as I just never felt very good about a 1 second draw as a master level shooter. Using some of Steve's tips and making a couple of changes to the angle of my holster I'm easily at a .6 draw on an open target.

So the main thing I took away from this book was the reversal of the thought process from "can I keep moving?" to "why should I stop?" This along with all the other things about calling shots in match mode and keeping the gun high really boosted my desire to kick some ass.

So I've set some goals for much more practice and specific practice for each aspect I'll be analyzing from here on out.

I simultaneously started looking at my draw for the above reasons and really, the main reason I looked at it was because I had the attitude of "I like my draw, why improve it?" and since we should always be looking for improvement I wanted to analyze it for each and every movement. Now it's time to do that with every aspect of my shooting. This will get me GM one day!

(Yes, I'm not a Master yet, but this is my way of sealing it up with attitude.)

So new goals moving forward will be this:

1. Visual Patience is going to get changed to "Call every shot / Be in Match mode at matches."

2. Still work on stage breakdown, but with some of the thought process that Steve has explained. i.e., analyze each section and ask the questions "why should I stop?" and "what's the fastest way to the end?"

3. Commit to 2 dry fire sessions per week. I've put it in the AM on my schedule to try to raise the prioity. So far I've made it AND added some night time sessions.

4. I'm still writing my processes down and modifying them even more to include some of what Steve's book has in it. The more I journal, the more I see where I can analyze for improvement.

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Today I got to shoot a match down at Pueblo West Sportsman's club. it's a great range and the guys know how to run a great match. As always, the stages were fun and challenging. The day turned out to be a very nice day, easily 50 degrees and I only had to put a light jacket on a couple of times when it go cloudy for a bit. I had a great time overall and felt like I worked on my goals and didn't do anything particularly stupid.

I ran my newly finished green gun. I sighted in yesterday in 3 rounds and worked the safety so it's very hard to turn on just like the shiny one. Now both guns run great, are almost exactly the same shooting experience and I'm ready to cut loose this season.

So, I was first up on the first stage and thought hard about being in Match Mode (calling every shot) and I carefully chose my target order. It was a 28 round stage and I programmed in a reload and couldn't decide if that was the right thing or not. At the last minght I kind of decided to skip the reload. When the buzzer went off, I was moving pretty quickly and made up a couple of mikes... but I saw them and called them, so that was a score for the goal list. There were these open targets on the way down to a port with a step-pad and a lighning fast "raise-lower" disappearing target. I had carefully chosen the order on these as the best way to shoot them seemed different that I would normally do it. However, the way I did it meant that I could keep moving. The disapearing target was no problem and I finished up the stage with by far the fastest time of the day and a stage win.

The next one was another of the same type when it came to movement. This one was much more obvious to me that if you just took some steps backwards while engaging the first 4 paper and 4 steel targets that old number 5 would be fully visible. I keep my eye on the dot and performed the steps exactly as needed. It was a great Enos moment as my dot was super dim and I really had to watch (and it was very interesting) and let the rest of my movement execute in my subconcious. It worked great for another win that was 1.8 seconds faster than 2nd place.

After that areas for improvement started showing themselves much more readily. The classifier just didn't flow at all. I completely failed to watch the dot and in an effort to move fast I lost the shot calling mode and wound up with a pretty bad finish. The next stages were a bit more of the same as I had really cooled off and missed some makeup opportunities. I proved to myself that you can't lose touch of your goals for even a minute. You have to call EVERY SHOT... throughout the ENTIRE MATCH. Stay in the moment and forget about the past and have no expectations. Just shoot.

That's one of my core elements that I've been making notes on. "shoot like you shoot" It means don't think too hard about a particular target, or stage if it's already been proven within your ability. In other words... if you already know you can easily do something, just do it and don't waste time convincing yourself you can. I think I did that bit today where I took my recently learned tidbits and tried to apply them to every stage. Even the ones that didn't need them.

So, it wasn't like a disaster, I just saw some mistakes made and lost some momentum in the later stages and don't feel that I shot to my full ability for all stages today.

At any rate, I still shot well overall and found myself in the HOA spot. I'm happy about that and once again, can't wait to do it again next weekend!

Goals moving foreward:

1. Call every shot.

2. during stage breakdown as "why should I stop?"

3. 2 Dry fire sessions this week. (drills from the book.)

PPPS Local match, 01/11/15. HOA.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, after skipping a weekend due to work I finally got to shoot two matches this weekend. The work wasn't bad as it was for my best freind and client who ownes a mansion in Pennsylvania so the accommodations are top notch! I mean, 15 toilets to choose from... who can complain?

Anyways, the first match was at Aurora Gun club and I thought the stages were challenging and despite the cold temps I had a great time. Not a clean match, but I think too many clean matches means you aren't pushing hard enough.

I forgot to charge up the old Gopro, so no vids.

The first stage was a sit - load - shoot situation and once again I proved to myself that the old "slap and rack" load is the fastest way to make my gun go boom. I beat the Panda by 4 seconds on that stage for a wide margin stage win. The shots weren't too hard, although I did pickup a NoShoot, but I had time to make it up and move on. Maybe there was some other aspect that slowed Charlie down but I prefer to think that I moved fast and loaded faster. The only area for improvement on that stage would be the rush I was in during the first port. It was a pretty destabilized position and I did not exercise enough visual patience to call every shot.

The next stage was a speed shoot that started with 2 poppers and a dash, then some paper. I wish I could have seen my draw time to that first shot as it felt really nice and I was super happy with how quick the two poppers were handled and I was on my way. I successfully called both shots, don't remember hearing the "bing" and was probably already entering the other box by the time they both had fallen. It felt really good.

The classifer we won't talk about too much. Another instance of my doing lots of things like a Master... except on 2 shots.. and that's all it takes to tank an otherwise good classifier. I'm not too worried about a bunch of things to improve in that area. Next time, more holes less mikes.

One more stage worth mentioning is one that I had designed. In retrospect, the best way to run is was so obvious that the "Option B" was a complete miss. I'm still a beginner in stage design, and clearly need to work on that. As far as running the stage, I was the fastest, but a guy that was 2 seconds slower beat me by 14 points. That's happend a few times on these "hose fest" stages with me. I think I need to remember to dial back a notch and keep in mind that you need some points to divide that time by. Maybe I just go "sort of" off the rail next time. Had I taken another second to pop a few more A's I would clearly have been in GM-Land for that one.

So, Sunday night was the indoor match at Centennial Gun Club. Another triumph for these stage designers. I heard another complaint about some of the stages being too difficult for the beginners, but I disagree. I think one good "this is how the stages really look out there" will help prevent a false sense of ability when these beginners get out there. I can't tell you how many times I see new people at other matches these days and they are at their "first outdoor" match... CGC is doing something right to bring in this number of new shooters AND still keep some of us experienced shooters showing up too.

So, Here's a vid from the first stage. I like the way that I picked the target order and stayed in a straight line accross the stage. This was definately a stage to work on the "why should I stop" thought process and I did just that. My time was great with a 14.27 and old Mr. 2nd fastest was a 16.00 flat. I watched him run it, and he just paused a tad too long at the same spots I was continuing to move. Proof to me that I've really learned some valuable lessons from Steve Anderson's book.

And then, the classifer. (09-06, Diamond Cutter) Damn it. Another perfectly good run foiled by some wiseguy putting a No-Shoot where I was aiming. After removing the penalty it would have been an 87.5%. The hit was on the perf.. whatever. Next time just like .0001% more effort into CALLING EVERY SHOT.

The last stage, I bust my ass on. Literally. Although a spectacle to watch there are some good points for review in it. The stage was going along great after the first 6 shots and then the first point... Indoor IS IN FACT not able to be run at 100%. I've always said that they just don't feel like 100% and this is a good example of my forgetting about that, giving it my all and making a mistake that one can NOT afford in our sport. The number of ways that falling with a gun in your hand can go horribly wrong are numerous. Although I'm laughing this off, it's not something that anyone wants to do even once in their shooting career. After I get up, I'm actually quite pleased with my shooting on the move. I managed to post the 2nd fastest time on that stage with a 18.77. Not too shabby for starting without a head injury but picking one up along the way. (I was fine but did have a headache.) So the second thing to note is the clear "shooting on the move" lesson here. The guy that won the stage did it positionally rather than while moving. Although he posted a great time, had I not fallen I would have beat that time significantly. I think it's another example of how important it is to stop only when you have to. The beginning of the stage was clearly a spot where standing and shooting was the only option, but after that those targets needed to be appearing at a good pace while the shooter kept low and just ran through them. I got a mike on the first target after standing up... I think I was still a bit dazed and can't remember what went on so I'm not too worried about it.

So... goals.

1. Call every shot. Doing better... keep working on that one.

2. Why should I stop. Wow, I feel good about this one. Keep doing that.

3. 2 Dry fire session this week. Yay! I did 4. This really helps.

AGC Local match, 2nd OA, 1st Open. 24-Jan-15

CGC Local match, HOA. 25-Jan-15

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John, I'm curious if you had to disengage the safety when you got up? Ie did you subconsciously put it on as you were falling? There's no right answer, just curious, the mind does some amazing things when we aren't thinking about it. Glad you're alright and good job getting the muzzle away from your body man. Falls are scary as hell!

Www.uplandsportsman.com

Introducing the Zero Interference Shotgun Sling, enjoy all day shotgun carrying comfort without a lighter gun.

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No, the safety was off. It was a strange sensation. I was stepping into my position and suddenly I was looking at the gun in my hand. I don't remember actually falling. I knew I had fallen and my mind just said, "finger's off the trigger, still pointed downrange, nobody yelled stop... GET UP AND GO!"

My safety is actually specifically tuned to be very hard to turn on. This prevents accidentally engaging it while reloading. Sometimes I have to use my left hand to engage it.

Same with my mag release. It's cut short so it doesn't quite depress 100%... maybe 90%, where about 80% is needed to drop the mag. This again, prevents accidentally dropping the mag.

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Cool, again just curious. In the video you could see your hesitation and you pausing for the STOP.....mmm... mmm... nothin..... nothin..... alright get up and go! Regardless of the safety, if you're booger hook would have been on the bang maker when you fell there would have been a hole in the wall. You can see your comfort level increase after the 4th or 5th shot (subconsciously) after the fall . There's a lot to be learned from watching this (for all of us) and it was a solid recovery and finish for you from this "failure". Nice work man

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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Maybe you should fall down more often since its such a learning experience......... :ph34r:

Just kidding. When I watch the video it looks like you stepped on the fault line pipe with your trailing foot (first step into the shooting area) as you were entering the shooting position. On those slippery floors this is creates a mega slippery situation. PVC Pipe + Smooth Concrete = Muppet's on Ice.

The lesson here should be "DON'T STEP ON THE PVC PIPES!!!!".

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Today I went to Aurora Gun Club and did my orientation to become an official member. This is a major score since it's only 20 minutes from my house. I'm going to get back on track to practice once a week and should be able to get out there every Friday morning. I'm very excited for this opportunity.

I shot El Prez a few times today and found something that's been bugging for a while. I'm getting much faster at snatching the magazine out of my mag pouch and now, the magnet is causing me major problems. It's such a drag coming off the magnets that when I'm really moving fast I can feel the magazine slip and I really don't know what angle it's going to come up at when it hits my parking spot.

This inconsistency is something that I've been accepting in dry fire since the magnets hold the mag so much stronger without ammo in it. Today I'm like "why should I continue to practice something that's different when shooting?"

Seems like a major duh! moment, so that's changing. I ordered a DAA Race Master pouch and will use that instead of the magnetic one. Hopefully that will get some consistency back into my magazine angle when I reload.

Other than that, I was able to shoot a 10 HF on El Prez pretty comfortably. That's not quite high into the Master class, but at least it's a baseline to work from.

I also tested my new Zero 115gr JHP bullets. Looks like the gunsmith was right. They are quite a bit more accurate and my last box of Montana Gold's has just been demoted to practice only rounds. The grouping was consistently about 3 inches tighter than the MG's. About a 8" group at 50+ yards for the MG's and 5" with the Zero's. When I moved up to around 20 yards I shot 3" with the Zero's.

Tomorrow it's off to Pueblo to see if these zeros can help me sneak past the Panda!

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I shot a match today at Pueblo. It was a very sunny day and even with a significant wind in the AM it was warm and the wind died down by the last 2 stages. These guys always run a good match and there were some good aiming challenges as well as a nice run-and-gun stage.

I was first on the first stage. I normally don’t mind this, but I was beating around the bush and was not loaded when they called me to shoot. I wound up bumping down one shooter, but was still rushed when coming to the line. I made sure to take a couple of breaths and blow that stuff off so that I would hopefully not bring that stress to my run. I pushed pretty hard and moved a bit too fast and got 2-3 Deltas on it. I still got a decent hit factor, but after checking the scores I definitely should have aimed more and run less.

The next stage was a pretty straight forward run without anything overly difficult. I was able to calm down and didn’t score any deltas and had what felt like a great run. There was steel at the end, that was an array where it was mini-poppers to the sides and then a row of 3 poppers in front of each other. You could see partials on them so I just ran it from right to left. I went 1 for 1 on all the steel and the three in a row went down exactly as planned.

I can’t remember the stage after that, but the way I was shooting and feeling it went by without much of a problem at all. I was really having a good time.

I hit the classifier, El Presidente 99-11 and my main goal was to not think about the fact that I had practiced it yesterday when the best I could muster was an 84%. Not only that, most of the runs were a complete disaster. I can’t remember what I was thinking about when I got ready, but it was NOT yesterday. I simply walked up, did my make-ready routine and was almost daydreaming when the buzzer went off. I was rewarded with a very smooth run and a 94% on it. YES! This means that I’ll have a 96%, 90%, 94%, and a few 85%’s going into this month’s classification. I THINK I MIGHT make Master. Barring any scoring SNAFU’s like the last 3 months that is. (long story, but this should be the first month that all my master level scores will actually get counted!)

So, the last stage was a little movement stage with wide open close targets. All about movement and reloads on this one and it was a 3-shot Virginia count. I ran as fast as I could and reloaded smoothly on them and was fully in “shot-calling mode.” On the final array of 2 targets I really saw and felt what is like to shoot the fastest splits I’ve ever shot. Once, during Nationals I had a 3 shot bump-fire that almost got me DQ’d. Well, I think these shots were faster. I called the 3A’s and 1A,2C hits during the entire engagement and this was definitely a learning moment for me.

Overall a day of shooting at my best and I was rewarded with an HOA. Considering my last comment in yesterday’s post was “maybe I can sneak past the Panda" I think it was, mission accomplished.

Goals:

I felt really good about my goal work.

1. Call every shot. Well, almost, but for sure did well.

2. Why should I stop. Only one stop I can remember that could have been avoided.

3. Dry fire. Made 2 dry fire sessions this week plus Saturday's live fire.

PPPS HOA, 08-Feb-15

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I received my new mag pouch today. That DAA Racemaster is quite the work of art. I'm glad I sprung for the aluminum version. When fitting it, I found that I had to play with the angle a bit to really get it comfortable and the plastic versions don't have the ball joint to allow quite that amount of movement. Also, that aluminum is some bad-ass looking machinery.

I dry practiced for about 15-20 minutes with it just doing different reload drills.

The darn thing is as smooth as silk when pulling the mag free and my reloads feel like they are just as easy as picking up the remote from the coffee table. There's not draaaaaag, or stickiness as it comes free of the pouch like that magnet. I thought I liked that magnetic one, but now that my arm is moving really fast for that "snatching action" of the mag I can see how this will bring nothing but consistency to the reload. I could easily swap big sticks for 140's and there was no difference in reload speed and not even one reload was jacked. With that magnetic one if I swapped mag sizes around sometimes I would mess up. Especially when putting a big stick in there for the first time in several runs. It was just too much muscle (tension!) required for that unit.

I'm excited to try it out in a match!

The only downside is the fact that my 3 additional CR Speed pouches will need to be replaced with DAA Racemasters now. Guess I'll go give blood downtown. :-(

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More dry fire tonight. Yay for making my goal this week.

I just worked on draw and reloads. Broke out the Gopro to make sure I haven't picked up any bad habits or changed anything with the new pouch. I was happy with what I saw. I compared my draw with a post I did a while back and although it looked the same, with Par time set at .7 I was able to make it. Last time 1.0 was my best comfortable time. The snag out of the holster is really subconscious now and I'm able to grab the gun in the "scoop" fashion without any hesitation. That's where I've picked up the extra speed for sure. I'm moving slightly more at an angle instead of straight up now... that's the difference.

Reloads are still just smooth as silk since the new pouch. Not one botched reload whether I put a 140 or big stick in the pouch. This will make my confidence of loading into a big stick skyrocket in the next match. I've always avoided it since it was a weakness in DF. With par time set to .9 I was unable drop the hammer on an acceptable sight picture. I didn't adjust the par time at all, but pretty sure 1.1 seconds is the time to beat. I'm not sure the actual reload time is worth hammering on but flawless reloads, no matter what the time, is for sure something important to us all.

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Wow, what a week. On Friday I found out that I made my major goal of making MASTER. I'm super excited and I feel more ready than ever to take on the next goal of Grandmaster. Not sure how I'll get there, but the jouney will be a fun one for sure. I headed into another weekend of shooting on cloud 9 and although there were some mistakes made to be gone through soon enough, I really felt good about my shooting overall.

I had a great time at matches on both Saturday and Sunday.

Saturday's match was at CRC and the weather was great. Plenty of sunshine and only a bit of wind.

I forgot my Gopro so nothing to review from that perspective. I seemed to be losing a bit of visual patience and although my times were on par with the top shooters in attendance, I offset a potential match win with several Misses and a couple of Deltas. Two stages I did really well on and won them both... including the classifier. It's a 13 series and is not in classifiercalc yet, but I'm hoping my 11.1111 will be in master class. Another colosal mis-step was a stage with some partially covered mini-poppers that were far away. I think I shot 10 times at one of them. Correcting, then overcorrecting the other way. yeesh, what a mess. When I got home later that night I found that my scope mount was loose, but I really don't think that was the issue since it didn't seem to affect me on any other stages... "or did it, Mr. Delta-Mike?" says my subconcious. I honestly feel I just fell into that "sticky steel" situation where you tense up and mash the trigger harder each time trying to make up time. Oh well, other than the few mistakes there were some things that went well. The main lesson is that gun maintenance needs to be thorough. I normally check all screws and obviously didn't in recent cleanings.

Sunday's match was at Weld County. That one, I can't say the same about the weather. It was cold and windy to start only to become a wet snow by the end of the match.

It was still a great time as I really felt good about my shooting for most of the time. Once again, I was on par with the top shooters for time, but too many deltas and mikes led to a missed oportunity for the match win. I MUST call every shot and can't affort to forget that for even an instant. At the speeds I'm moving it's a sure Delta-Mike every time I do that. Unacceptable!

On the first stage of the day (youtube link) I can plainly see where I set myself up for this "too fast to call the shots" scenario. I shoot the first two targets on the right, and then head for the space between the barrels. In the vid you can barely see a 3-target array with a zebra in the center. I engage that array waaaaaay too soon where clearly, I had rehearsed just running there. This leads to shooting well before I stabilize my platform (by at least 4 steps) and I missed twice on that array. I should have looked pased the gun (NOT through the sight) and hauled ass to the position. The rest of the stage was quite the boss run leading to the fastest time, but also the top spot for penalty points earned.

Next was a major movement stage and I went POV on this vid. (youtube link) Normally something I don't see a lot of value in, but I do like something in this vid that's worth reviewing. Especially visible on the long transition from right to left at the tailgate I'm seeing my head turn and the gun immediately driving along with it and staying high in my vision. This is very cool for me, and anyone else trying to improve transitions as you can see exactly what "driving the gun" looks like. You can't watch the world over/through the sight, but rather the gun has to be driven from your vision and that's... I think, a textbook example. No "dismounting" or auxilliary actions. It's jut look-point, look-point. Also, that steel goes down like a dream!

The rest of the match had nothing spectacular, except a couple more examples of the importance of "call every shot" where I racked up another Delta or two. This clearly points out my main goal and I really feel like once I kick this delta habit I'll start to ease my way into GM territory. hehehe!

Goals:

1. Call every shot. No, seriously... EVERY SHOT.

2. Why should I stop? Well... when looking for the answer to #2... see #1!

3. Dry fire. 2 DF's and 1 Live this week!

CRC 2nd OA, 2nd Open 14-Feb-15

WCFW 2nd OA, 1st Open 15-Feb-15

Edited by Glock26Toter
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Despite a major snow storm that blanketed the Denver area I was able to shoot a match the weekend. I guess some of us are just dumb, and/or crazy enough to risk life and limb driving through blizzards and over mountains to get to a match. Then there are some that are willing to take those people along for the ride. So when Charlie called and said there was a match in Grand Junction that Bob Krogh runs and we should go, I said YES. (after all, there is really only ONE answer to "do you want to go shoot?")

It was a terrible drive in both directions, but while there the weather held out and only got a bit cold at the end of the match.

The stages were great. The club isn't that old and the designers claimed to be "inexperienced" but I saw no sign of that and had a hell of a good time shooting with some guys I've only met a handful of times, if at all.

I didn't turn the GoPro on even once. I just didn't feel like worrying about that and just had fun shooting.

The first stage of the day I was almost 2 seconds slower than both GM's and was a bit disappointed in myself for that. There was also a delta to be had wrecking any chance of competing with them on this stage. There were two places that I lost significant time. I just didn't get things going at full speed. I just left the positions in a hurry and failed to explode out of the positions. The shooting was fine, and I just didn't remember to haul ass. I did the same thing on the classifier. I was so busy trying to make it "no big deal" that I didn't shoot it as fast I could shoot.

The next stage resulted in much better movement and that's reflected in my posted time that was .16 seconds faster than Bob Krogh. Again, I had a delta and the only reason I beat Bob on the stage was because he too, had a delta. At least I was getting warmed up and movement, other than at the classifier was much faster for the remainder of the match.

The main thing that I've started doing since reaching master is REALLY looking at the GM's and trying to figure out how my performance is compared to them. I'm going to try to focus less on who I'm "beating" or whether I'm "placing well" and start really looking at how I'm shooting with points and time against the GM's. I think that this will help to focus on not only positive reinforcement, i.e., keeping an eye on who I want to be like, but it will help to point out and focus on what I can do in small actions to make it to GM.

I have the Area 2 match in a couple weeks and at the rate we are experiencing winter it's possible I won't get to shoot again until then. I'll need to look at Area 2 as a place to think hard about these goals and push the entire time, and call a hell of a lot of alphas.

My main thing right now is consistency and that means getting rid of the Deltas that keep showing up and working on keeping my speed up and making instant acceleration a subconscious act.

Goals for moving forward:

1. Call Every Alpha.

2. Why should I stop?

3. Haul Ass. (aka Two large)

4. Dry fire.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well, I just wrapped up Day 2 at the Area 2 match. I have not done as well as I had hoped and I'm sitting here thinking about some of the stages.

I haven't done anything particularly dumb, but haven't had but one or two stages that felt like I was running tip top either.

One was just a dumb mistake where I knocked my glasses off and they were hanging down on my face. I just didn't have the brain power to figure out that I could have stopped myself for a safety issue and squinted my way through the array trying to wait for an opportunity to fix it. It cost me big time.

The other thing I've done is allowed myself to lose visual patience and have racked up several Deltas... a lot of deltas.. and a few mikes.

At this point all I can do is focus on the positive things and try to learn something about calling every alpha.

That really sums up what's been going on. I'm very happy with my movement and even my stage plans have been pretty darn good. This match doesn't have lots of options for the stages but there are plenty of opportunities to add auxiliary movements and waste time..

My best stage so far, had several aspects to this and while entering the first port there was a chance to start shooting sooner, another one to shoot on the move, and yet another to take two mini-poppers while entering a port. If done on the move, but not so fast as to destabilize your platform all three of these opportunities added up to several seconds. I hit all of them and posted a score that was in the top half of the GM scores.

I'll wrap this entry up with that positive note, and head into tomorrows match with my goals fresh in my mind.

1. Call every alpha.

2. why should I stop?

3. Haul Ass.

4. Dry Fire.

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Area 2 has been done for a few days now, and between driving an extra day home and hitting the ground running at work this is my first chance to reflect on the match and look at my performance. It was a great match, but I got on a squad that I wasn't overly excited about. I got to shoot with a couple buddies from Colorado and all the guys were nice enough. The problem was that I was the only open shooter. I was also the only Master shooter... well, I think one other guy was a master but he was limited and since I didn't know him we didn't talk strategy or skills.

The gun ran like a champ and didn't malfulcion even once. My shooting in general was pretty good. Of note, I never missed a grip. Hit all my draws with darn near top speed. Every reload was flawless and I found my dot whenever I needed it except for twice on a single stage. I was purposely hard on myself for any deltas and by the end of day 1 had racked up 11 deltas and 3 mikes. Days 2 and 3 I did not add anymore deltas to my list, but did add another mike and 2 no-shoots on my last day.

A total of 0 gun problems, 11 deltas, 4 mikes, 2 no-shoots is not bad from a shooting perspective. The swingers were lightning fast and were responsible for 1/2 of my deltas and all but 1 of the mikes.

I feel better about this match than my "clean" Nationals last year. I was pushing hard this match and being my first major match as a Master I'm VERY happy with landing in the #8 spot of 24 Masters.

however... there were some serious mistakes in my game that I'm not very happy about.

On Day 1, there was a stage where you start with your hands interlaced behind your head. As I went for my draw a finger caught the back of my glasses and ripped them partly off of my head. It was like, full blown dumb-ass mode as I wondered when I should fix them and kept on the stage plan. I was shooting an array of several mini-poppers and halfway through had to close one eye and by the last target the glasses were so far jacked that I could no longer see enough to keep shooting. I stopped and fixed them and was off to the rest of the stage. WHY I didn't stop myself I just don't know. It was a clear safety issue, but I was waiting for the RO to freakin' babysit me I guess. He had no way of knowing how bad the situation was and would not have stopped me unless they fell completely off. the damage was done and I scored something like 44th on the stage.

The other thing I missed on a few occasions was the best stage plan. On a squad of people that mostly took the safe route and had to reload every 3 feet it was hard to see the obvious GM Moves to get me through the stages quickly. I guess I'm just not quite proficient enough to come up with my own plans yet and rely too heavily on seeing something that someone else is doing. For most of the stages I was happy with my plan but the 2 or 3 stages where I missed the best plan it was like DUH! Why didn't I see that??

So basically I've decided to pick squads with more Open shooters when given the opportunity. This will have the added benefit of meeting new people and making some freinds that I'll see while traveling. I didn't have that choice for this match, but something to think about when squadding in the future.

So moving forward I'll add another goal:

1. Call every alpha.

2. why should I stop?

3. Haul Ass.

4. Dry Fire.

5. More M/GM Open squads.

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I shot this weekend at the Colorado Rifle Club match on Saturday. Before I talk about the match I wanted to review my last entry. It was pointed out to me that I sounded like a douche with my "not crazy about my squad" comment and feel like it's worth clarifying for several reasons. First for anyone that might have read that. That comment was meant to reflect on my insecurity at stage planning and that I was thrown off by being on a squad where there were shooters that have different strategic goals. In no way did I mean to sound like I was not happy with they guys I squadded with and especially didn't mean to sound like I thought I was "above" anyone. This has happened before and I had the same feelings of insecurity and may have expressed that by saying "the only master" but what I really mean is "nobody to follow" and that's a reflection of my insecurity. By the same token I don't want to make it seem like it was that big of a deal. It's not like I'm thinking about that during the match, or not having as much fun. It's just a reflective comment about what may have prevented me from finding the best plan possible because I didn't have the potential discussions about the stage plan with a closely related shooter. I could have blown that comment off, but in the true nature of what this journal is about I think it's important to drill down to the real issue from a communication standpoint AND from a self improvement standpoint.

Now, onto the shooting. Well, the day was warm and sunny, and the stages were fun. However, at every turn I was struggling with my aiming. I was performing OK, but had to hunt for the dot a couple of times and felt like I was "not seeing the dot" almost the entire time. I got about 3 mikes and some of the farther mini-poppers just seemed to jump out of the way.

By the last stage I became aware that it wasn't me... it was my dot. It was, in fact very dim.

When all was said and done I wound up 3rd overall and was shocked at that, since it felt so clunky while shooting.

After all this "worrying" about squads and having a day where I was not in tune with my gun I'll need to work on channeling a bit of Cha-Lee's attitude and concentrate on just having fun shooting with friends.

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Squad Hater.......... :devil:

Breaking down stages to formulate a stage plan that adheres to your skill and confidence levels is a very important skill to have. The only way you are going to cultivate that is by NOT mooching stage plans off others and learning those lessons the hard way. Sure we all like to discuss different stage plans and strategies but in the end, whatever strategy you end up with should be based on what YOU are confident in executing and KNOWING why its the best plan. The training wheels have to come off at some point right?

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I shot a match today at BLGC. It was a very nice day and we had 6 stages to shoot that had a little of everything. I've been blowing off the video camera for a while, and even when I do record I haven't been doing anything with the vids. Well now I've decided that if I'm going to get to GM I better start looking at them and analyzing them properly.

The first stage (Vid) was a bit of a downer for me. I litterally could not see the dot thanks to the suns angle. When I came up on the first target it was all washed out with red and I took a long time to get the dot on target. After that, it didn't do much better and failed to find a rythm.

Next was the classifier. Just plain slow. I was too careful and wound up with a 69% on it. Not a terrible run, but I've really got to get in touch with my inner HULK to start making GM scores for classifiers. I'll get a lot of 0's along the way, but it's got to be done. Hulk shoot angry classifiers now!

Stage 3 was a great stage for me. It was a "memory" stage and I'm always confident with these stages. I found solid anchors and just executed the plan as rehearsed. I landed on my plan so quickly that I was almost excited to tell everyone about it. It was just plain simple (in my head anyways) and helped a lot to boost my confidence in stage planning. The only part that I messed up a bit on was the far right target. I didn't ease into that position very gracefully and after engaging it, I was too far over the line to just ease over and shoot the last set of targets from left to right as rehearsed. Once I corrected and realized I was not in the optimum position I just engaged the first target I could. This lead to a right to left scenario and I just went with it. Nobody was the wiser and I was rewarded with a stage win. This highlights the importance of removing the memory component from so-called memory stages and breaking them into shooting positions. I knew I was safe to shoot everything I saw from that position and I wouldnt miss anything.

In the spirit of positive reinforcement, I'll just skip to Stage 6. Here is where the dot situation has me a bit puzzled. I did great assaulting the hoser targets, and then when I hit the first array down the center I thought "you've got one target to hit the breaks and lock onto that dot." Well, I did just that. I warmed up on the first target, and then just watched the dot and broke each shot on the sight picture I knew I needed. All the way down to the last target. I'm not sure why I fired 3 into each of the close, laydown headshots, but I was pretty amped up and I think tension just took over a bit. I won the stage and am quite proud of this one. It was an excellent stage for skills building with pace, patience, and movement. I was excited to have nailed it.

As far as the dot goes... well, it sure seemed bright when I really needed it. hmmm... am I losing the dot because it's dim or is something going on with my concentration? It's my original diode and they do fade. I also didn't have this issue with the Shiny gun at Area 2... I've only noticed it when back on the Green gun last two matches. It's got new batteries so I believe it's time for some testing at the range tomorrow.

For now, I think I'm going to lay off specific goals until I see something that's not the usual list of Alpha getting, and hauling ass.

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