Johnsons1480's USPSA Range Diary

[johnsons1480]

I've been debating with myself on whether to start this range diary. I have finally decided to because I have no one locally to hold me accountable. I also like the idea of crowd sourcing to select appropriate drills. I feel like I could easily fall into selecting the drills that I want to practice instead of what needs to be practiced.

This is my inaugural post. I've currently got approximately 2,000 Bayou 135 gr bullets loaded up and ready to go. I've got another 8-900 left to load before I order my next case. I finally have a membership to a range where I can practice correctly for USPSA My goals for 2015 are:

• Shoot 10,000 rounds in 2015
• Shoot 200 rounds in one live fire practice session per week
• Dry fire 5 days per week for 15 minutes
• Shoot one club match per month
• Shoot one local major match (Oilfield Classic or Space City Challenge)
• Make B class by the end of 2015

A little bit about me. I shot my first 3 gun match in November of 2012. I got bit by the competitive bug at that point, but due to work, health, getting married, and many other things coming up, I've shot sporadically at best for the past two years. I decided about a year ago to focus solely on pistol. I want to get really good at shooting, and felt like I would never master 3 guns unless I started with mastering one and moved on from there. I recently got my D class card, and am sitting at 35.51%. I shot a match last weekend and if classifier calc is to be trusted, I shot about a 45% on 13-01 Disaster Factor. I have had about 3 live fire practice sessions since joining the range, and I can tell just that little bit of practice helped. I shot a Glock 17 then 34 for the first two years. I liked them fine, but I was never excited about them. I recently picked up a stock manual safety CZ 75 SP-01 and did Professor Atlas' trigger job. This gun has me excited about practicing and dry firing. It gives me confidence I never had with my Glocks.

Enough rambling. I will be updating this at least weekly. I'll be asking for training advice, posting videos, posting match scores, etc. Hope you all can help me along with this journey!

[johnsons1480]

Dry Fire

I dry fired for 15 minutes on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week. Since I am just starting out with the new gun, I'm working on some of the fundamentals. I'm changing from a Glock 34 to a CZ 75 SP-01. Changing grip angle and the weight of the new gun had me not drawing to where I was looking when I started out on Monday. So, I decided this week I would focus solely on the draw.

I broke my dry fire into three sections of 5 minutes each using the micro drills Ben suggested in his updated dry fire book, Dry-Fire Training - For the Practical Pistol Shooter.

• I did 5 minutes of hands relaxed at sides to full firing grip with strong hand, and weak hand in position to receive the gun with a .4 second par time
• 5 minutes of strong hand on gun with full firing grip, weak hand in position to receive gun. Draw to target and get sight picture with .5 second par time
• 5 minutes of hands relaxed at sides, draw to target and get sight picture. .7 second par time

I don't think I'm quite hitting the par times, but I am definitely drawing to where I'm looking better. I also shaved off about .2 from my 7 yard draw in comparison to my Glock.

Live Fire

I went to the range yesterday, 11/20/2014. I focused on Frank Garcia's Dot Drill. Since this is a pass fail drill, I failed all 5 times I shot it. Here is my takeaway:

• My draw is now good enough for this drill. When I attempted it a while back with my Glock, I couldn't get all 6 shots out in under 5 seconds. I have no problem doing that now. The problem is ....
• My trigger control is not there. The double action shot almost always went low, followed by 3-5 of the rest of the shots going into the circle. I have done no dry fire so far with the new gun on trigger control.
• I got all 6 in the circle maybe 3-4 times. I shot 30 circles. That's something like a 10% success rate. Not good!

Action Plan

I have two more dry fire sessions this week. I'm on call next week, so there will be no live fire session. I will do 6 dry fire sessions next week, maybe more since I have Thursday and Friday off. I'll try to make two live fire sessions the following week to make up for it. I will look through Ben's book for some dry fire drills on trigger control at speed. I know they're in there, but I don't have it in front of me. That's my dry fire focus for the time being. I plan to continue to work on draw, but for right now I will work on it within other drills.

I think I want to keep working on dots in live fire until I can nail it. I think if I get my trigger pull down, especially the transition from DA to SA, I can at minimum get my pass percentage higher.

The last match I shot, 11/15/2014, was the first clean match I've shot. No mikes, no shoots, or penalties. I was proud of that, but I felt like my shooting, even up close, needed to tighten up. I spit Cs on close targets that I should have gotten two As on easily. I think the dot drill will help me tighten up my shooting. After that, I believe transitions is my next big killer. I'll start working on that once I see some improvement on the dots.

[johnsons1480]

Dry Fire

On Friday and Saturday, I did the Trigger Control at Speed drill from Ben's Dry Fire book. The entire drill is done against a blank wall. This involved a 5 minute micro drill of holding the gun out, and pulling the trigger when the timer beeped. No par time for the micro drill, just reacting to the beep. This was followed by 10 minutes of draw and pull the trigger on a blank wall without disturbing the sight picture. A par time of 1.2 seconds was set. I was consistently right around the par time, but I'm concerned I was racing the beep.

Action Plan

I plan on doing 6 dry fire sessions this week, starting this afternoon. I'm going to move on to another drill with a target, and I'm going to concentrate on making sure I'm honest about my sight picture. I won't be doing any live fire this week due to my on call rotation at work. I'm going to try to do two live fire sessions next week, weather permitting.

Goals Update

I accomplished my goals for last week. 5 dry fire sessions, one 200 round live fire session. I haven't shot a match yet, so no update on the rest of the goals.

[johnsons1480]

Dry Fire

So far this week, I did one day of draw, one day of trigger control at speed, one day of transitions, and one day of reloads. That's only 4 days so far, so I will be doing transitions again tomorrow to reach my goal of 5 sessions this week.

Live Fire

I was actually able to get out to the range today, even though I'm on call. Even better, I wasn't interrupted! I fired 50 rounds over the chrono to get the correct velocity for the new Bayou 124 gr RN bullets I'm trying out. I have ~250 left to try. I may play with the OAL to see if I can get a little better accuracy, but probably not.

That left me with 180 rounds to do 5 dot drills. This drill demoralized me today. I think I'm going to leave it alone for a while and circle back to it later. I failed all 5 times try the drill. Worse than that is, I only got all 6 in one circle within the time limit. My draw is good. I'm up and on target quickly. The problem seems to come when I'm pulling the double action trigger in live fire. I haven't noticed this in dry fire. When I do decide to circle back to this drill, I'm going to spend a solid week dry firing the drill before I attempt it.

Action Plan

I'm going to do the dry fire drill in the book that works on draw, transitions, and reloads. I'll be working on that one drill all week until I live fire on Wednesday or Thursday, depending on the weather. I have a match on Saturday, also pending weather.

Goals Update

With my dry fire session tomorrow, I will have wrapped up my goals for this week. One live fire session with 180 rounds, and 5 dry fire sessions.

[johnsons1480]

Dry Fire

This week I worked on El Presidente in dry fire Monday and Tuesday with a 3.5 second par time, and Wednesday I dry fired the Blake Drill with a 1.8 second par time. I'm not reach either of those par times. I'll cover that in my action plan.

Live Fire

I got out to the range today. The weather was miserable, and I got rained out before I was ready to be done. I was able to fire 125 rounds. 84 were done on the Blake Drill, 30 on El Presidente (I'll explain). I didn't time one of my Blake Drills, and I just ripped off the last 5 rounds as fast as I could when I decided it was about to start pouring (My hunch was right, I got wet picking up brass)

The Blake Drill

Set three targets up one yard apart edge to edge, 5 feet at the shoulder. The distance is 7 yards, hands relaxed at sides. At the beep, engage the targets and attempt to make splits and transitions equal. The goal is 2 seconds. I'm aware this is ambitious for me, but the idea is to force faster transitions in practice. Transitions are a major deficiency I've identified in my match shooting. At this point, I would consider it my weakest link. Here are the results of the first 14 runs.

El Presidente (heavily modified)

A man came by and told me I couldn't have my targets set up the way I did because everything had to be on the choroplast. I said ok and moved the targets in 1 yard center to center instead of edge to edge. I shot the drill from 7 yards. Until I started typing this and googled it, I thought I had done this right and was really excited with my score haha.

The first run I turned, drew my gun, fired six shots, and stopped. I wasn't thinking it through because I had just been doing the Blake drills.

Here's the second run. I thought I had shot a GM score on the drill and was very proud. Then I realized the targets were supposed to be a yard edge to edge (not center to center), and I should have been 3 yards farther back. At any rate, here's the score and times.

I shot it a third time. It started to drizzle, and I ripped off the last 5 rounds in my magazine and packed all of my stuff. It started raining hard while I was picking up brass, so I made the right call.

Action Plan

I see from the averages that to hit my goal time on the Blake Drill, I will need to:

• Shave .24 off of my 7 yard draw
• Shave about 8/100 of a second off splits
• Shave .15 off of transitions

I think I will stick with this drill for a little while in live fire. It seems like a good fit for what I'm currently struggling with. Some things I noticed today were:

• My first shot was usually a C. I'm firing the first shot faster than I can see it. I think this can be improved with some honest dry fire with no trigger pulling. Speed up the draw motion, then work back into pulling the trigger. I will dry fire draw almost exclusively for the next few days
• I had 3 Mikes. I know this drill is designed to push you to the limit, but it's so close that it seems impossible to shoot 3 mikes. It's experience that will come, but I definitely need some work in dry fire surrounding this.
• I didn't have a single clean run. Again, balls to the wall shooting will do that I suppose. Again, dry fire.

Match this weekend, weather permitting. I really hope it doesn't get rained out. It's my only opportunity to shoot a match in December.

Feedback

I would love some feedback. Tell me what you need me to provide, and I will try to get that information. I'm documenting everything I can think of, but if there are things that would be helpful for me to get better and for you to help me get better, let me know. Thanks for reading!

Edited because the nicely formatted Excel chart didn't come out that way when I hit post.

Edited December 5, 2014 by johnsons1480

[johnsons1480]

Quick update. Decided to go to the range today to test some handloads and finish out the practice I was doing on Thursday when I got rained on. I was testing various OALs for the Bayou 124 gr RN I'm switching to. I settled on the OAL I had picked to test in the velocity testing.

On to the drill. I dry fired draw yesterday, and I saw an average of 0.02 faster draw times today. If I pull out the botched draws of 1.31 or greater, I improved by .05 seconds. I saw my splits and transition time improve. I noticed I wasn't regularly hitting a C on the draw this time around.

If I pull out the three runs from each set with Mikes, I improved as follows:

Average Total Time: 0.275 seconds faster

Average Points: 0.10 more points

Hit Factor: 0.83 better hit factor

I'm going to keep recording these things, but I think I'm over analyzing them. I'm not good enough yet to hit the goal, and that's what I should be working towards.

[johnsons1480]

Forgot to mention in my last post that the match I was planning on shooting Saturday was canceled, that's why I went to the range. I'm planning to shoot the Area 59 club match on Saturday. I will do a live fire practice Wednesday and dry fire all the other days.

[johnsons1480]

Dry fired on Monday and Tuesday. On Monday I did the draw with no trigger pull drill, and on Tuesday I dry fired the Blake Drill with a 1.8 second par time.

Live fired the Blake Drill today, I'm seeing my times shrinking. I got two sub second draws with good hits, and a hand full <1.10 second draws. Still got 2-3 misses, still haven't hit 6 alphas at speed. I intentionally slowed down today for four reps. I got 30 points on one rep, the other three points were on par with what I'm seeing going fast.

Tomorrow, I'm going to dry fire Ben's reload drill. Just that. I need to brush up on that before the match.

Frida, I'm going to dry fire a modified El Prez to get ready for the match. I'm going to draw hands relaxed at sides at simulated 10 yards, "fire" 6 shots at the three targets, reload, and fire six more shots. I feel like that will keep me up to speed with my draw, practice reloads, and keep up with transitions. Just a well rounded drill before the match. I think his El Prez with the turn and draw is 3.5 second par time. I think I'll cut that to 3.3 seconds for my modified drill.

I'll update after the match!

[johnsons1480]

I got third place in production. I was happy with how the match went overall. I made one bonehead mistake. Just didn't engage a wide open target on a mostly steel stage. Anyway, here are the results.

https://practiscore.com/results.php?uuid=0FB66684-93D4-43E6-BF5B-80374A7B3A14

ETA: No classifier at the match today. That irritated me.

Edited December 13, 2014 by johnsons1480

[johnsons1480]

I'm on call again this week, so it's very unlikely I will be able to make it out to the range. That means 6 days of dry fire. I think I'm going to up the dry fire this week to 30 minutes a day. I have barely been practicing reloads, and it shows. I'm going to hit that hard this week, and every week from there on out until I feel like I have it down.

Monday

15 minutes Trigger control at speed

15 minutes Reloads

Tuesday

15 minutes Draw

15 minutes Reloads

Wednesday

15 minutes Transitions

15 minutes Reloads

Thursday

15 minutes Draw

15 minutes Reloads

Friday

15 minutes Transitions

15 minutes Reloads

Saturday

30 minutes El Prez

Edited December 15, 2014 by johnsons1480

[johnsons1480]

Quick update on this week and next week

Update on 12/15-12/21

Monday: 15 minutes of dry fire reload practice

Tuesday-Thursday: Went to the hospital early Tuesday morning with a virus (and all of the lovely symptoms). Knocked me off of my feet for a few days.

Friday: 15 minutes of dry fire reloads, 15 minutes of dry fire El Prez

Saturday: Two 15 minute sessions of dry fire reloads

Sunday: 15 minutes of dry fire reloads

I've finally smoothed up my reloads. They may be slow right now, but they are finally consistent. Prior to now they were really fast or completely botched. I will continue to focus on them and work toward speed.

Plan for 12/22-12/28

Monday: 15 minutes of draws, 15 minutes of El Prez if time permits

Tuesday: 15 minutes of reloads, 15 minutes of El Prez if time permits

Wednesday - Sunday: Going out of town for Christmas. I'm not going to bring my gun. I'm going to enjoy the time with my wife and our families.

12/29 and beyond!

All of my goals kick off this week. I'll continue updating this once a week or more. I'm going to post a separate goals update next.

[johnsons1480]

2015 Goals Update!

I want to take the time to amend and/or restate my goals before the year starts. I will be using the SMART goals. These are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Result-Focused, and Time Bound

Goals for 2015:

• Shoot 10,000 rounds in 2015
  
  • I keep an accurate round count for several reasons. This is easily measurable for me.
    
  
  
• Shoot 43 sessions of live fire
  
  • Formerly "Shoot 200 rounds in one live fire practice session per week"
    
  • 200 rounds was an arbitrary number. After I began practicing, I realized this shouldn't be a fixed number.
    
  • Once per week is not achievable. Just off the top of my head, I'm going on a cruise mid February for a week and won't be able to live fire then.
    
  • I may also want to double up some weeks.
    
  • This is a SMART goal, the last one wasn't
    
  
  
• Dry fire 5 days per week for at least 15 minutes. Time away from home excluded.
  
  • Formerly "Dry fire 5 days per week for 15 minutes"
    
  • Added exception for when I'm not home. The goal wasn't achievable as written
    
  
  
• Shoot 8 or more club matches in 2015
  
  • Formerly "Shoot one club match per month"
    
  • I don't think I want to shoot matches in the miserable cold. That doesn't sound like fun.
    
  • This gives me a match per month from March - October, and the ability to shoot two in a month or none in a month depending on weather
    
  
  
• Shoot one local Level II match; Oilfield Classic or Space City Challenge
  
  • I may try to shoot both, but I am going to shoot at least one
    
  
  
• Shoot at an A class level on a classifier by the end of 2015
  
  • Formerly "Make B class by the end of 2015."
    
  • With my limited local match schedule, it may not be possible for me to make B class by the end of 2015. It is a time bound goal, so it needed to be changed.
    
  • It is possible with the time constraint of "the end of 2015" for me to be shooting A class scores by the end of the year.
    
  • I know I can be shooting classifiers at an A class level by the end of the year.
    
  • I only need one A class score to consider this goal complete
    
  
  

[johnsons1480]

My wife had to have emergency surgery over the Christmas holidays while we were at her parents house, so I was away from my gun for longer than anticipated. I'm happy to report that we are back home, and she is recovering very well. This hobby will always be secondary to my family, so the time off wasn't an issue. I'm just happy that work allowed me to be there with her in the hospital and through her recovery.

Now that I'm back home, I've started back at dry fire. I listened to Ben Stoeger's recent podcast where he answered all of the questions I had submitted. I'll be changing up my practice accordingly.

Dry Fire

I will be dry firing every morning for 15 minutes before work. This will be my first session of the day, and I will be practicing the fundamentals in the morning for the time being. I will do one day each of draws, reloads, and transitions. I will repeat that twice a week for 6 morning dry fire sessions of fundamentals.

In the afternoons, I'm going to start working through the rest of the book. I'm going to begin working on more complex skills outside of the stand and shoot skills. I don't have a plan yet, but will soon.

I noticed my draw didn't suffer too badly from my time away, but it feels like I totally forgot how to reload. Before I left, I was feeling pretty good about reloads. I had finally made a break through on my consistency, and speed was coming along as well. I'll have to work back into it and relearn it.

Live Fire

Taking Ben's advice, I'm going to take January off of live fire. I'm going to hit the dry fire hard this month, and wait until the weather isn't so disgusting to get back to live fire. It will also be nice to have more time at the range once I get there. December/January hours are really short, and they get longer as the year goes by. I'm going to be shooting for around 300 rounds per session, one session per week when I start back up. One month before the major matches, I'm going to shoot for two sessions per week with a round count of 300 or more per session. In the time away from live fire I will be coming up with a training schedule of drills I would like to work on. I'm going to try to have at least a month planned ahead of time at all times.

Matches

No local matches scheduled for me until either the end of February or some time in March. This is all about fun, and shooting matches in the wet and cold isn't my idea of fun. I believe I am going to sign up for both the Oilfield Classic and the Space City Challenge as my majors for the year. I thought about the Texas Open in Orange, but decided against it.

That's it for now. I'll update when I have more of a plan formed.

[johnsons1480]

I went back through Ben's dry fire manual all the way to the end. To my surprise, there are practice plans in the back of the book. I really wish I had seen those sooner! I've wasted so much time on the fundamentals drills. So on Monday, I started on the extreme plan. I came up with a spreadsheet with all of the drills and started working through them for about 10 minutes each, so 40 minutes of dry fire a day. Here's my Week 1 schedule.

I did the plan on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Thursday morning I woke up and noticed that my wrist was sprained and not feeling awesome, so I iced it a few times while I was at work. It felt pretty good when I got home, so I started with the One Handed Shooting drill. I split the drill in half, 5 minutes each. The 5 minutes of SHO drills were fine, but as soon as I switched to WHO I was in a good deal of pain. I shut it down at that point and iced it. Looks like I'll be icing it and not dry firing for the weekend.

I think the culprit is a technique issue with my WHO draw. I'm repeatedly tweaking my strong hand wrist on the transfer. I'm going to do some research into the technique of doing this so I can prevent further delays in training. I'm a little embarrassed that I hurt myself doing dry fire, but stuff happens and you just have to deal with it and keep pushing through.

[johnsons1480]

Wrist is all healed up, and I've been dry firing like a mad man lately. I've done 10 minutes per drill, and these are the drills I've done so far.

Monday: Distance Draw, Bill Drill, Shooting While Moving, Gun Pickup
Tuesday: Distance One Handed Draw, Reloads, Shooting While Moving Hard, Ammo Pickup
Wednesday: Long Distance Draw, ElPrez, Position Entry, Seated Start
Thursday: One Handed Shooting, Position Entry Hard
So far today: Plate Rack Drills

I believe on Sunday I'm going to kick off this year's shooting with a shooting test. This will be a 475 round test from distances of 3-50 yards. I'm trying to establish a baseline and determine where my weaknesses and strengths are. I will be going through Ben's Standard Excercises in the Core USPSA Skills section of the book. He presents a chart with the following drills and their associated GM times at each distance.

Doubles

Bill Drill
Blake Drill

Singles

El Presidente

Double Reload Double (Four Aces)

Strong Hand Only (SHO)

Weak Hand Only (WHO)
Bill/Reload
The Heads
Criss Cross

I want to figure out where I stand as a shooter so I can better quantify what I'm trying to achieve and where my strengths and weakness lie. I'll try to report back with the results, but it may be too much data to post.

[johnsons1480]

Felt really good at the range yesterday. All the dry fire is paying off. I'm not where I want to be, but I'm getting there. This is a marathon, not a sprint. I was a little laxe on my sight picture in the beginning, but I kind of expected that after almost 2 months off of live fire. I shot about 300 rounds.

I didn't get to do the whole test I had planned. It was a gorgeous day and the range was packed out. I was able to grab a cell and run the test for all single target drills from 3-10 yards. I then moved on to bill drills for 100 rounds or so, then four aces for the next 100 or so rounds. My draws are getting really close to the times I need. Generally under a second at 7 yards hands relaxed at sides, and around 1.1 surrender. My bill drills were hovering around 2.1-2.2 seconds. My reloads are killing me. I didn't write anything down. My best was around 1.3 when I felt like I absolutely nailed it, but most of my reloads are at or above 2 seconds. I feel like my mechanics just aren't there. Does anyone have a video that shows a step by step slow break down of how to reload? If so, post it in here.

[johnsons1480]

My range won't allow me to move target stands, so I'm going to stick to the marksmanship and core USPSA skills out of skills and drills. I've eliminated any of the drills that require anything but the standard practice setup. I've tried to combine these so I get near 300 rounds per session. I have as many as 315 rounds and as little as 210, but for the most part it looks like a good setup for me to get organized and get started. Some days have two drills, some days have three. I will be practicing the drills from every distance listed on the quick reference chart. If I can't get a bay that's 50 yards, I'll improvise.

Here's my setup for the year. This is subject to change if I figure something better out.

Session 1,Group Shooting,Doubles,El Presidente
Session 2,25 Yard Bill Drill,Bill Drills,Blake Drill
Session 3,50 Yard Bill Drill,Singles,Bill/Reload
Session 4,The Dots,Four Aces,The Heads
Session 5,Fixed Time Standards A,SHO,WHO
Session 6,Fixed Time Standards B,Criss Cross,
Session 7,Group Shooting,Plate Rack: Pick Two,Plate Rack: Straight Six
Session 8,25 Yard Bill Drill,Plate Rack: Three Load Three,
Session 9,50 Yard Bill Drill,Plate Rack: SHO,Plate Rack: WHO
Session 10,The Dots,Front Sight,
Session 11,Fixed Time Standards A,High Standards,
Session 12,Fixed Time Standards B,Doubles,El Presidente
Session 13,Group Shooting,Bill Drills,Blake Drill
Session 14,25 Yard Bill Drill,Singles,Bill/Reload
Session 15,50 Yard Bill Drill,Four Aces,The Heads
Session 16,The Dots,SHO,WHO
Session 17,Fixed Time Standards A,Criss Cross,
Session 18,Fixed Time Standards B,Plate Rack: Pick Two,Plate Rack: Straight Six
Session 19,Group Shooting,Plate Rack: Three Load Three,
Session 20,25 Yard Bill Drill,Plate Rack: SHO,Plate Rack: WHO
Session 21,50 Yard Bill Drill,Front Sight,
Session 22,The Dots,High Standards,
Session 23,Fixed Time Standards A,Doubles,El Presidente
Session 24,Fixed Time Standards B,Bill Drills,Blake Drill
Session 25,Group Shooting,Singles,Bill/Reload
Session 26,25 Yard Bill Drill,Four Aces,The Heads
Session 27,50 Yard Bill Drill,SHO,WHO
Session 28,The Dots,Criss Cross,
Session 29,Fixed Time Standards A,Plate Rack: Pick Two,Plate Rack: Straight Six
Session 30,Fixed Time Standards B,Plate Rack: Three Load Three,
Session 31,Group Shooting,Plate Rack: SHO,Plate Rack: WHO
Session 32,25 Yard Bill Drill,Front Sight,
Session 33,50 Yard Bill Drill,High Standards,
Session 34,The Dots,Doubles,El Presidente
Session 35,Fixed Time Standards A,Bill Drills,Blake Drill
Session 36,Fixed Time Standards B,Singles,Bill/Reload
Session 37,Group Shooting,Four Aces,The Heads
Session 38,25 Yard Bill Drill,SHO,WHO
Session 39,50 Yard Bill Drill,Criss Cross,
Session 40,The Dots,Plate Rack: Pick Two,Plate Rack: Straight Six
Session 41,Fixed Time Standards A,Plate Rack: Three Load Three,
Session 42,Fixed Time Standards B,Plate Rack: SHO,Plate Rack: WHO
Session 43,Group Shooting,Front Sight,

[johnsons1480]

Haven't posted in a while. I've been dry firing every day, and seeing some improvement there. I couldn't make it out to the range last week because of the weather over the weekend. I was able to make it today.

Dry Fire

I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing. Four drills a day for 5-10 minutes each is covering everything in the book in about a two week period. I'm happy with the dry fire improvement I'm seeing. I will try to concentrate harder on sight picture awareness this week.

Live Fire

Today wasn't awesome. I had one run on the El Prez out of 23 that got near the par time. 4.83, but with only 48 points. It was also my best hit factor of the day though. My reloads are inconsistent, and my draw needs work. The shooting part was ok. I need to get out there one more time before the match this coming Saturday. Here's my info for today. I hope it's not too small to see.

P.S. Any reload over 2.5 seconds was bobbled and then picked up off the ground. I made the mistake multiple times of not having a mag in any other pouch on my belt.

ETA: My other drill was two 10 round freehand groups at 20 yards. The first was 5.88", the second was 7.12"

Edited February 7, 2015 by johnsons1480

[Nimitz]

why set up your live fire plan a year ahead of time? i setup 1 month of drills and then reevaluate where i am then setup a training plan for the next month ...

[johnsons1480]

why set up your live fire plan a year ahead of time? i setup 1 month of drills and then reevaluate where i am then setup a training plan for the next month ...

Great question. Two things. One is, I feel like I really need to work on ALL of the fundamentals. This plan gives me a fair chance* to work on all of the basics. Two is, I like planning ahead. Absolutely nothing is set in stone though. I'll have my first match of the year this coming weekend. Hopefully I can get some video, and I'll have more info to work with after that. If you have any suggestions I'd love to hear them!

Edited February 7, 2015 by johnsons1480

[wmetzler01]

Very analytical, good use of data for setting goals and tracking progress.

Bens drills are purposely hard, so don't get discouraged if your only hitting a few of the par times.

Thanks for sharing!

[johnsons1480]

Thank you wmetzler01, I appreciate it.

Had a weird practice today. I went to the range to do 5 dills.

Doubles at 3

Singles at 3

Doubles at 5

Singles at 5

Bill Drills at 25

Doubles at 3 was no problem. I was consistently hitting the 1 second par time or under with all As with an occasional close C.

Singles at 3 was a disaster. I was consistently 0.2 seconds above the par time with awful hits.

Doubles at 5 was a repeat of doubles at 3. It went great

Singles at 5 was slightly better, but still bad. If I made sure I got all As I was way too slow. If I shot comfortably fast I wasn't hitting As. Surprisingly, when I pushed my time to at or below the par time, I did as well or slightly better than when I shot comfortably fast.

Bill drills at 25 was ok. I was right at or below the 4 second par time. I did three reps of this drill. The first on was 4-Cs, 1D, 1M. The second was 3-As and 3-Cs. The last was 1-A, 2-C, 2-D, 1-M. I need to do some long range practice.

So what did I learn today?

• I need to de-emphasize single target drills in dry fire and live fire, at least until I am working at longer distances. I don't think I will do any more single target drills until I'm up to 10 yards, maybe longer.
• My transitions and draws to targets other than directly in front of me need some work.
• I need to emphasize transitions harder in my dry fire. I need to pay special attention to my sight picture.

Time to rest up and get ready for the match in the morning. Wish me luck!

[johnsons1480]

I did ok at the match. I shot a 70% classifer, so the practice is working. That's 25% higher than my last classifier in November. The rest of the match was pretty weak. I had 6 mikes, 2 deltas, and a no shoot. This is a very challenging match with some tight shots, but that doesn't excuse the bad. I had to leave the match before I shot the last stage, so I didn't get a score for it. I was expecting 5 stages and had made plans after the match.

Really fun match, but it's clear I need to dust the cobwebs off with a few more matches. I may try to shoot one on the 28.

[johnsons1480]

Here's my plan update. I'm going to be changing up the practice sessions. No single target drills unless they are at long distances. Transitions are what I need to practice the most, followed by tight shots. I also need to back off the distance. I don't think a lack of hosing ability is my problem right now.

Live Fire

I'm going to the range Wednesday. I will be shooting 6 reps of 50 yard bill drills, 22 reps of 10 yd Blake Drills, and 22 reps of 15 yd Blake Drills. The bill drills should help some with tight shots, and the Blake drills will help with transitions.

Dry Fire

I am going to keep doing the same drills, but with a focus on visual patience. I notice myself breaking shots when the sights aren't there because I expect them to be there. I am going to burn it into my brain this week that I can't break a shot without a proper sight picture.

[johnsons1480]

I got video of two stages. I am very hesitant and rusty, as you can see.

http://vid1382.photobucket.com/albums/ah246/johnsons1480/20150214AREA59_zpsjl1gqr0v.mp4