CZ 75 custom Shadow competing advice

[1eyedfatman]

I just recieved my Shadow late last week. I hope to shoot it first time tomorrow night. still waiting on the holster. I have been using poly striker fired pistols (Glock, XDM) and that is where all my practice and training have been. This is my first steel, DA/SA, hammer/safety pistol. I have the option of running it DA/SA in USPSA Production and IDPA SSP or SA in Limited and ESP. For DA/SA, I figure I would have to practice the DA pull to get used to it for that first shot...at least 100 DA shots at the range. For SA, I figure I would have to practice holstering hammer back and safety on and then drawing with a safe place to unsafe the gun before the shot (like unsafe after the pistol is pointing down range). The SA action would have the benefit of a great triigger right from the start and that would be the same trigger weight as the follow up shots.

For you guys that have run DA/SA pistols with manual safeties in competition, do you have any advice on which way to go DA/SA Production/SSP vs SA Limited/ESP and for either technique, any advice on what you think about and train on to be safe, fast, proficient and accurate?

[Andreas]

Assuming it's in 9 mm, man up and learn the DA first shot. You can do this in dry fire—no reason to burn live ammo except for verification. It will become a natural part of your draw stroke with a few hours of practice. Spend a half hour on dry fire every night this week and you'll be surprised at how well you do on your next range trip.

[fishsticks]

I'm in the same boat, making the switch from a glock to an Accushadow for production. I was surprised how quickly I was able to work through the whole da first shot. I've been dry firing quite a bit with some live fire to reinforce it. Haven't yet used it in a match, but don't anticipate major issues.

[ChuckS]

one eyed,

read this: Fear not, the double action shot

Later,

Chuck

[1eyedfatman]

It is 9mm. On nights I don't shoot, I do 100 dry fires with a Laserlyte daily. I recon I'll put on my big boy pants and dry fire DA with the CZ. Not sure how the hammer will do on the Laserlyte.

[cnote]

Relax

[madmike283]

I think you should have no problem learning either technique. Decide which divisions you prefer, and train from there. Would you rather trick out the gun with a mag well, etc? Does your state allow high cap mags for Ltd? If so, train to disengage the safety and run it SAO. Would you prefer keeping it "stock" from CZC and stock mags? Then learn the DA first pull. You'll also need to dry fire practice manually lowering the hammer after LAMR for the DA start.

Either way, dry fire is your friend. Whichever you decide, it doesn't require a single live-fire round to get it nailed down.

The good thing about the 75, is that is very versatile and you could run it either way. The downside to running it in Ltd would be scoring minor if it's 9mm.

I just switched to an SP01 Shadow from Mink. I came from an M&P 9 Pro with magwell in ESP/Ltd. I now shoot SSP/Prod. I won't shoot Ltd Minor again. The triggers on these things are so good, the DA first pull isn't very difficult to learn.

Again, dry fire is where you need to learn all of this stuff. Sure, go shoot the thing since its your new toy, but dry fire is where you should be ingraining the technique that you choose.

[Andreas]

It is 9mm. On nights I don't shoot, I do 100 dry fires with a Laserlyte daily. I recon I'll put on my big boy pants and dry fire DA with the CZ. Not sure how the hammer will do on the Laserlyte.

Ditch the Laserlyte. On the draw, pull through for a full DA stroke, but on subsequent "shots", don't let out the trigger far enough to reset. Instead, pull against an otherwise dead trigger. Of course, you'll have a full DA stroke after reloading, moving, or transferring the pistol to your weak hand.

Call your shots in dry fire just like you'd do in live fire.

[1eyedfatman]

What do you mean by this?

"practice manually lowering the hammer after LAMR for the DA start."

Also, that brings another thought. So, your done with the stage, hammeris back, round in the magazine, round in the chamber. What would be the proper sequence to unload and clear? Striker fire I would remove the magazine, rack back the slide to remove the round, show clear, release slde, point down range, trigger then holster.

[Andreas]

What do you mean by this?

"practice manually lowering the hammer after LAMR for the DA start."

Production rules require a hammer-down start. But the hammer will be cocked after you load the pistol. You want to get real good at lowering a cocked hammer onto an empty chamber before doing it for real on onto a live round. Opinions vary on the best way to do this.

Also, that brings another thought. So, your done with the stage, hammeris back, round in the magazine, round in the chamber. What would be the proper sequence to unload and clear? Striker fire I would remove the magazine, rack back the slide to remove the round, show clear, release slde, point down range, trigger then holster.

Same exact thing.

Edited August 12, 2014 by Andreas

[jc3257]

When you load and make ready the hammer will be cocked. There is no decocker so you have to manually lower the hammer because the hammer needs to be in the down position for the start. You hold the hammer and pull the trigger (while pointing down range of course) than gently put I the closed position. It is not hard but takes some getting used to.

If your Shadow has a decent trigger job, the DA pull is not far off a standard striker fired gun pull weight but silky smooth. It won't take you long to get used to it. I went from a Glock 17 to a SP-01 (not a Shadow) with a complete upgrade from CGW that I did myself. I don't even pay much attention to the DA anymore.

[rowdyb]

I started in esp and limited 10 with mine for 8 months. magwell and the whole thing. loved it.

Now I have switched to shooting ssp and production with it. Learning the DA pull was tons of dry fire and paying attention. Then a few range trips with the timer and target to confirm. Little video analysis to fix a few changes and now I'm pretty happy with it.

Looking back I would have preferred to learn the DA pull first and then switch after shooting prod/ssp for a while to shooting esp/l-10 later.

And has other have said, a clean and nice 6# DA pull isn't that bad.

I also read Langdon's article mentioned above and worked it out in the order he mentions. I also emailed him with a few questions and it all was helpful.

I also thought of adding a laser bullet to help confirm where that shot was going in dry fire, but never got around to buying one and don't think it was that big of loss.

[1eyedfatman]

Rowdy,

You must have developed a technique for the DA pull with all your dry fire, research and questions. Can you describe what works for you...your system?

[rowdyb]

To learn it after never having done it or the little things that helped me in the process? The latter is a much shorter post! hahaha.

-establishing a good grip, the grip i want. with both support and gun hand.

-hand strength. training it. using it in dry fire. not cheating myself.

the above two things gave me a stable platform. a platform that gave me a good base to use for my trigger pull.

-my trigger pull has no staging. it goes from nothing to all the way done in one continuous motion. i had to learn to not make it a rushed, "now!"

-attention to pulling straight back.

for the above following langdon's article advice of "working back to the holster" made a difference. the main take-aways from that article for me were 1. get over it mentally. 2. start just shooting gun alreayd mounted. shoot just DA pulls for groups. 3. shoot extenions to fire of the DA pull for groups. 4. finally now start drawing from the holster. that's what he means by working back to the holster.

the draw is not new. using my eys for a day draw doesn't change. what's changed?? the trigger length, poundage. so i really focused on how i worked the trigger.

-going slow. doing lots of reps at reeeeallly slow speed. then working up in speed and using the timer with a par time.

-working on getting the shot to break right at extension. just like you aim to do with any other gun.

how to get the timing right for this took me lots of effort. i was getting good hits but i was wasting two tenths with the gun in front of my face confirming things. the gun, my eyes, arms and trigger finger were not in synch. two big things helped me with this. they are:

-for me i learned that on the draw as soon as my hands meet, that is when i needed to start my trigger pull. that gave me the correct timing, for close or far targets. having this reference point for my mechanics and timing of my draw was a huge breakthrough.

-aim for perfect sight alignment over perfect sight picture. this is a hard concept for me to explain in words. i was looking to see the sights aligned perfectly and then that sight picture perfectly aligned on the target. once i gave that goal up and focused on having the sights perfectly aligned but accepting where they fell on the target as long it was in the A or -0, then that was good enough. Another tenth gained for me.

finally as a slow learner i kind of had to brute force it. belt on, gun in holster, target against wall in garage 7yrd away. full and 1/2 size. beep, draw, click. over and over and over again. slowly building a groove, making sure i was getting a good grip, using a good trigger pull at the right timing and seeing the sights in the way i needed.

this whole process took me three weeks of nightly effort. i am not some super duper shooter but i try. when i first started at a 7yrd target my 1 shot draws, no concealment, were 1.45 to 1.60 for a DA draw to be in the A/-0 every time. after the three weeks of work i can do that now in 1.40 from concealment and 1.20 without and be in the A/-0 every time. rushed, that turns into 1.10 but no certainty of my hits. these are live fire times with a timer. not pretend dry fire times. they sure aren't GM times, but yeah....

i also have had pretty much everything you could possibly have had done to a 75 shadow. to have a super smooth, constant 6# DA trigger makes it a much easier prospect. And after getting that one shot draw down then i started working on making sure my reset of the trigger and follow up shots were correct for the now awesome SA trigger pulls. That was bill drills for the most part. Also doing some reps just shooting slow groups at 10 and 15 yrds from the draw.

the video analysis i mentioned helped me fix things i thought were crappy about my draw no matter what i would be drawing, glock, 1911 or CZ hammer down to start.

does any of that help? i know each person is unique so if any of it from my experience helps you i'm happy to further share.

Edited August 12, 2014 by rowdyb

[BeerBaron]

ULASC is exactly the same as with your glock.

LAMR in production will be different. you'll load a round, rack the gun, (press check if you like), now you have to lower the hammer manually. this means grabbing hammer in one hand, point down range and pull the trigger while easing the hammer forward. it's a lot easier than it sounds, but people still manage to screw it up. just practice a bit. and make sure you get the hammer all the way down, not just to half cock (you'll be DQ if you holster the pistol at half cock).

I would suggest go into production. the first DA shot is nothing to fear and can be practiced easily in dry fire at home.

think about this.

average 12 stage over 2 days match. I know USPSA is different but in IPSC typically of those 12 stages at least 3 will be unloaded or table starts (which means you rack after the beep and first shot is single action). that leaves only 9 stages where your first shot is DA. now for those 12 stages a typical round count is 260 (often more). given we know the max DA shots is going to be 9 that leaves 251 in single action. on many of those 9 shots we can draw and fire into a close, open target. so it should be fairly rare that you actually have to make a tricky shot DA.

think about it. 251 shots SA, 9 shots DA.

now tell me how important that DA shot is to overall match performance???

[1eyedfatman]

Beer, thanks for putting it in perspective. I did over 100 dry fires this evening DA. While it is smooth, compared to the weights of my XDM/PRP and Glock/Vanek triggers, its like going to a revolver. Part of my range time tonight will not only be test firing, sights and accuracy, but slowly working the new manipulations: DA, reset, decocking, mag changes, reloads, tactical reloads, etc.

Rowdy,

Nice brain dump…that's what I'm talking about. A couple things on your two base tasks which I believe along with stance, when mastered, will greatly impact whether the rest of what I do after the buzzer has a high probability of success or not.

- Grip - would like to hear more about the support hand. I'm still trying to find that perfect spot. Support hand wrist bent forward to "lock" the wrist, thumb towards target, high on gun. I'm back and forth between support hand mainly on the side or fingers/hand wrapped around the front of the grip more. I want to manage recoil better and I feel this is a key.

- Hand strength - I take it your talking about grip pressure and trying to realisticly apply the same pressure during dry fire? Which to me is significantly more pressure by the support hand with the trigger hand more relaxed to allow the trigger finger to be more relaxed. If there is significant pressure in the trigger hand, its the pressure of the grip being forced back into the trigger hand (more front and back, then side to side). But, I've heard more then one person say grip the sh*t out to it. You?

You answered one question by saying you start you trigger pull before you reached full extension and your timing of that when the hands meet is huge, very huge.

Do you have a shot timer that picks up your clicks during dry fire? I use an iPhone app…I don't believe it would.

Your working on tenths of a sec, I'm still working on secs. Very interesting views on your sights. Do you nest your sights (really let that front sight rest in the back sight notch, level them off…which on some pistols is a small rear notch and takes some time, like my XDM 5.25) or do you look over your rear sight and the slide and focus on the front sight which may cause you to aim a little low, but is faster. Had a shooter tell me once that really fast shooters don't nest, they look over the slide, focus on the front sight and know where to aim.

Your post is like a semester in school. Its the type of thing I can work up drills on and focus directly on the issue with less "searching" time. One of those to print and save. I wish I could start semester 2 & 3 and how to get down to tenths of secs, but I better run the drills on the 1st one. Much appreciated.

[alma]

Support hand info see here, second to the last post. http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=199368#entry2219710

[1eyedfatman]

Support hand info see here, second to the last post. http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=199368#entry2219710

Whoa momma…where's that post been all my life. Breaking down the support hand grip nicely Alma. I see there is much more there I need to sponge up. I think I've come across a honey hole of info here.

[alma]

Glad you find it useful. Let me know if you have any topic requests.

[JayDee]

Like Beer Baron stated, the majority of your matches will be spent shooting your pistol in single action. Dry fire practice should approximate match conditions.

When I first got a CZ Shadow, I practiced the DA shot a lot. Too much. I practiced DA so much that I was letting the trigger reset much too far on all the subsequent SA shots, and my speed and precision got worse. Once I figured this out, it took several hours of dry fire to retrain my finger to reset only enough to make the SA trigger stroke. Since then, I have much faster splits and many fewer fliers from mashing the trigger.

[rowdyb]

LIke JayDee that was the next thing to fix, making sure that trigger pull on the draw didnt jack up the next one or two. Thus why as soon as I felt I had a good draw I went to bill drills. And in dry fire at home after the DA pull, "ghosting" the trigger pull on the other targets to approximate the SA trigger. Again, I'm a middle of the road person, but I'm trying. Real numbers again. My bill drills are right now 2.50 pretty consistently for clean ones. ( the only ones that count right?)

And the math break down was why we shoot DA/SA guns right? To have an awesome trigger more in the match than the one we don't like, the DA one on the draw.

How important is the draw? A poster above kinda discounted it, but I think of it this way. 1. It is often the very first thing you do in a stage. Doing it right or wrong effects the rest of what you do. Mentally and physically. 2. Draw times can vary widely between competitors in the middle divisions. So to me it is a "free" way to gain two tenths on someone each and every time. We all know the places to save time; shot splits, target transitions, reload planning, movement into and out of positions. This I think is another. 3. Confidence comes from mental and physical preparedness. If the draw is something you once worried about and now have done the physical prep to learn it and the mental prep to know you've got it, then your confidence overall at a match will increase.

mmm, your other questions. By grip I meant just getting a stronger grip overall. And then applying it in dry fire. Keep your dry fire honest.

Support hand others covered way better than I could.

I look through the sights. I file my rear notch to .140 and with a .100 front sight, all to help with faster sight acquisition. I'm looking through them, not over them. But at the same time, I am working on making my index soo good that where I look I'll shoot. The gun follows the eyes, right? Again, what I orignally said is hard for me to describe in words. I could do it in pictures though, hahaha.

Thinking is the enemy of perfection-Bruce Lee. You've thought this out, you got a good plan. Now it's action time. My day job is teaching people to ride motorcycles. In doing this I focus on OAR. Observe, analyze, reinforce. You've observed what your doing. You've analyzed it. Now time to reinforce changes or doing what you do right by doing it over and over.

[alma]

Someone already posted Ernest Langdon's article. Here are the videos:

Edited August 12, 2014 by alma

[alma]

[motosapiens]

Rowdy,

You must have developed a technique for the DA pull with all your dry fire, research and questions. Can you describe what works for you...your system?

I'm not rowdy, but I just squeeze the trigger quickly without moving the sights. That sounds simple, but that's really all there is to it. The white wall fundamentals described in ben stoegers dry-fire book will get you there pretty quickly.

I also occasionally do live-fire DA drills, drawing and shooting a 2" circle at 7 yards. Takes me about 2 seconds right now, but I know there is room for improvement. Improving that won't help much with most uspsa stages (there's almost always a pretty easy first shot you can take), but it will help with some steel challenge stages.

[Quack]

As others have said, dry fire in DA, that's about what it took for me to go from a 2011 to my Accu Shadow. It was about a week of dry fire to where it was no longer an issue.

If you load your own ammo and use Federal primers, get the CGW 8.5# spring. This will drop the DA down to ~4.5#

Also work on your reloads and movement. Those will more than make up the extra time you may need for the first DA shot.

Edited August 12, 2014 by Quack