Supranatural Posted February 22, 2015 Share Posted February 22, 2015 3 part question both involving slide lock release. Part 1: I am doing a lot of dry fire practice between range sessions. A lot of stuff goes like this: Draw and shoot 6 times, reload, acquire target and shoot 6 times again. Does anyone make it a habit to have the slide locked back and practice the slide lock release as part of some of their dry fire practice? Part 2: How do most of you release your slide? Do you use your weak hand or your trigger hand (thumb)? Does anyone rack the slide at all (I am guessing not as that seems to take too much time). Part 3: In actual competition does anyone not fire the entire magazine (i.e., say in USPSA production class you use up 9 rounds out of 10, drop the magazine and load a new one, thus avoiding the slide lock back on an empty magazine) or does everyone use up all their ammo before doing a speed reload? One of the reasons I ask is that I've read that I should use the support hand thumb to release the slide, however due to an old skiing injury to that thumb it is sometimes painful to use it in that manner so a slide lock release with my support hand thumb is a 50/50 proposition depending on the day (some days it hurts some days it's fine) so if I train to use the support hand thumb I will have to change it up in the event of a day when I am experiencing pain in that thumb. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bkreutz Posted February 22, 2015 Share Posted February 22, 2015 Shooting USPSA you want to plan your reloads to drop the mag before going to slide lock. IDPA pretty much forces you to shoot to slide lock. (procedural for dropping a mag with rounds in it, of course you could "reload with retention", but that's even slower than shooting to slide lock). Another reason I don't shoot IDPA anymore. I've gotten used to my 28 round mags. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted February 22, 2015 Share Posted February 22, 2015 If you're going to be shooting USPSA forget about practicing a slide lock reload. if you need to preform a slide lock reload during a stage something has gone wrong ... i have no clue about IDPA since i don't shoot it ... i'm assuming you shoot Production where you need to worry about relaods during a stage ... i always plan a stage so that i never take more than 8 shoots before reloading. if you do that you should rarely, if ever get to slide lock unless you come up against an irish plate rack or a 25 yd texas star and end up dumping a bunch of mags at it ... planning to take 9 or particularily 10 shots before reloading is setting yourself up for disaster as one miss or make up shot and you're in slide lock hell .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rowdyb Posted February 22, 2015 Share Posted February 22, 2015 (edited) 1. i do not make it a habit but i do include it. it is something i have a lot of data for so i can use it as a metric. only if i plan on shooting a lot of idpa now do i really focus on it. once learned and conducted the same way every time, it doesn't need much practice once you've mastered it. but you have to get there. 2. my strong hand thumb depresses the slide stop lever and also activates the mag release. even with a 1911 i find this the fastest way, despite the tradition of doing otherwise. racking the slide is only practice for empty gun/empty chamber starts. or of course as part of malfucntion clearing. but not part of a planned reload. 3. in idpa i shoot to slide lock almost all the time. in 90% of the stages you encounter it will be faster. in uspsa i plan to always do a reload with the slide forward. only in the VERY RARE instance where in production that i start with 10 in the gun instead of 11 and the first group of targets i shoot equals 10 shots do i plan to go to slide lock. normally to me, slide lock in uspsa means i made a mistake. Edited February 22, 2015 by rowdyb Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crazygiant Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 If you have yourself a M&P, all you have to do is insert the mag with a little umph and the slide will "auto release". No fumbling with gross vs fine motor skills! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mlmiller1 Posted February 24, 2015 Share Posted February 24, 2015 My comp guns--glocks-- all release when inserting a mag. In several years of competition they have never failed to do this so I rely on that. I do however practice thumb release occasionally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supranatural Posted March 12, 2015 Author Share Posted March 12, 2015 (edited) If you have yourself a M&P, all you have to do is insert the mag with a little umph and the slide will "auto release". No fumbling with gross vs fine motor skills! I finally got out to the range after a long winter (my range also has a 24/7 indoor range but I dislike shooting there, I like outdoor shooting a lot more) and found out to my pleasant surprise that my new CZ Shadow Custom also releases the slide when I insert the mag with a bit of oomph (yes I know, how could I wait so long to try out a new pistol - trust me, it was killing me to only dry-fire with it...but I hate freezing temps and refuse to freeze my butt off while shooting). Funny thing is that it won't do it with a snap cap - anyone know why that is? So my question has morphed into - since my pistol does close the slide on it's own when a mag is inserted, doesn't it generally make more sense to just shoot to slide lock before a reload except possibly where I might have part of a stage that requires 6 rounds and the next one requires 10, then it might make sense to do a reload between stages rather than have to do a reload in the middle of that second 10 round section? Edited March 12, 2015 by Supranatural Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JAFO Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 It could be that it doesn't work with only a snap cap because the mag doesn't weigh the same as when it's fully loaded with ammo. If you have weighted dummy rounds, try it with those. Or the next time you go to the range, load a live mag with a snap cap on top. It will probably work then. But until you have proven to yourself that your gun will do that every time, I wouldn't expect it. How confident are you that you will be able to reload with that same "oomph" every time, even if you fumble a reload? Always try to plan your reloads to happen between positions whenever you can. Most stages lend themselves to arrays of 8 shots, but not all. Sometimes a stage will have arrays of 6 shots, at which point I will usually be dumping mags with 4 rounds left in them. Even if it works out better to take 10 shots before moving/reloading, that still leaves one in the chamber, so you're not going to slide lock (unless it was an unloaded start). As others have said, planning to go to slide lock sets you up for a flat-footed reload if you need to make up a shot, and that will cost you more time than you could save by skipping a reload between positions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Supranatural Posted March 12, 2015 Author Share Posted March 12, 2015 JAFO, I don't think it's the weight...I thought of that too when I was at the range and tried an experiment. 1 mag with just 1 live round would release the slide - and I really didn't need a lot of oomph, just my normal slide it in there did the trick. The same thing would not work with a snap cap. Did it back and forth and the live round was enough to release slide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alma Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 If you're going to be shooting USPSA forget about practicing a slide lock reload. if you need to preform a slide lock reload during a stage something has gone wrong ... i have no clue about IDPA since i don't shoot it ... .... This is awful advice. Please learn how to use your slide lock. You don't want to run dry but that doesn't mean that you don't want to be able to recover as fast as possible. There should be very little difference in time between a standard reload and a slide lock reload if you minimally competent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LuckyDucky Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 (edited) The time for a slide lock reload is the same as for a standard reload, at least if your hands are big enough to reach the slide release. So if you're shooting production, if shooting 5 targets and then reloading would be faster than 4 with a reload before moving on, then do a slide lock reload. In any event, you should be counting your rounds so you know what's coming. Edited March 12, 2015 by LuckyDucky Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gng4life Posted March 12, 2015 Share Posted March 12, 2015 I disable my slide locks...they are just holding the barrel link/barrel in place. Never have to worry about premature slide locking Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alma Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 I disable my slide locks...they are just holding the barrel link/barrel in place. Never have to worry about premature slide locking Might be possible for Open but when you shoot Production that isn't a smart thing to do. It's best to learn to use it correctly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nimitz Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 If you're going to be shooting USPSA forget about practicing a slide lock reload. if you need to preform a slide lock reload during a stage something has gone wrong ... i have no clue about IDPA since i don't shoot it ... .... This is awful advice. Please learn how to use your slide lock. You don't want to run dry but that doesn't mean that you don't want to be able to recover as fast as possible. There should be very little difference in time between a standard reload and a slide lock reload if you minimally competent. not one of the 3 top tier instructors I've trained with has ever told me I should be practicing slide lock reloads training for USPSA competitive shooting .... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alma Posted March 13, 2015 Share Posted March 13, 2015 If you're going to be shooting USPSA forget about practicing a slide lock reload. if you need to preform a slide lock reload during a stage something has gone wrong ... i have no clue about IDPA since i don't shoot it ... .... This is awful advice. Please learn how to use your slide lock. You don't want to run dry but that doesn't mean that you don't want to be able to recover as fast as possible. There should be very little difference in time between a standard reload and a slide lock reload if you minimally competent. not one of the 3 top tier instructors I've trained with has ever told me I should be practicing slide lock reloads training for USPSA competitive shooting .... Did they tell you specifically not to practice them and did they also say that they never practice them? Why would you not want that in your tool kit? It isn't like it's difficult to master. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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