Reloads

[Onepocket]

Other than practice, anyone out there with sub one second reloads have any tips. I'm trying hard to get them at .90 @ 7 yards. What's your fastest? Thanks.

[magpulled]

The Burkett drill seems to help me a lot. I start off my dry fire practice doing his drill for 5-10 mins.

[Onepocket]

How do you do the drill???

[Smitty79]

Burkett reload is a dry fire where you just get the mag to the well. You don't seat it. Goal is perfect alignment with a parte about .3 sec less than your dry fire reload par time.

[Reshoot]

The Burkett drill never made sense to me. Why practice just part of the reload process? Granted, breaking down a drill into individual steps can be useful. However, in the end, one must master he entire process.

I practice reloads standing behind a card table, that has a thick piece of form on it. The magazine in the gun contains 3 rounds, magazine on the belt is full. With the timer on random delay, I draw a sight picture and do a full reload at the sound of the beep. The drill is complete when I re-establish correct sight picture and squeeze the trigger.

Being an open competitor, this drill gives me realistic weight as I never run a magazine empty. Well, not on purpose anyhow. HA!

[Smitty79]

The Burkett drill never made sense to me. Why practice just part of the reload process? Granted, breaking down a drill into individual steps can be useful. However, in the end, one must master he entire process.

I practice reloads standing behind a card table, that has a thick piece of form on it. The magazine in the gun contains 3 rounds, magazine on the belt is full. With the timer on random delay, I draw a sight picture and do a full reload at the sound of the beep. The drill is complete when I re-establish correct sight picture and squeeze the trigger.

Being an open competitor, this drill gives me realistic weight as I never run a magazine empty. Well, not on purpose anyhow. HA!

The 2 training "gurus" I read and base my training on, Ben Stoeger and Steve Anderson, both recommend doing these. The purpose is to break down a very complicated thing, shooting a stage, into a bunch of small skills that can be practiced. I'm a C shooter, training to make B, and I've seen a big improvement in my reload reliability since I added Burkett reloads to my dry fire routines.

[GunBugBit]

Steve Anderson suggested doing reload drills without a mag in the gun to drop, just hit the mag release button and load a mag from your belt. Repeat as desired. One good thing about this is that you can do more reps in a shorter time.

I practice reloads over the back of a leather chair, letting the mag drop onto the leather seat. But I still have to bend over to retrieve it. I don't mind the effort but it takes longer to get reps in.

I'm doing some of both -- dropping a real mag and a ghost mag.

When I practice reloads with a par time, I start with the gun held on target and consider myself done when the sights are back on target.

I DO see a lot of value to the Burkett reload drill. Most of the time is taken up by reaching down to the belt and raising the mag to the magwell's mouth. This drill lets you focus on that. Last night I was doing this and finding that I could later beat my full-reload-sequence par times with a little time left over, allowing for a quick pause to make sure the mag is lined up to slide right in.

My fastest is not fast. 1.2s is the par time I can usually meet but I still botch it during practice sometimes. In matches, I hardly think about the reload but they go well. A couple of guys watching me one night made comments that indicated they thought I was pretty good at the mag change, but compared to truly fast people I am not fast. I've tried going for less than 1 second but can't pull it off.

[Steve Moneypenny]

I advise breaking down every step, if you want to attach matt's name to it.. yes, ...

First get your hand moving to get the mag out of the mag pouch asap, and up to the gun. and pause. align the gun, and put it in.

i do this with no mag coming out first of all... just get the mag up and lined up. work your par time down, make your par ever so much faster so your rushing like hell beat it,... keep pushing. then i will do some loads of pause then insert. then i'll add the mag coming out to verify I'm clearing it.

I don't know where your coming from... you want .9... but are you at 1.5 now? or .94. Assuming shot to shot.

the faster you get the faster you have to get the mag out of the gun or you'll hit it on the way out of the gun with the new mag coming out.

Blazing reloads are cool.. but if you can hit a 1.25 consistently, your pretty dang good.

Best i think was .87. ran a little class a week ago, we were playing and i hit .98 a few 1.02's a couple of 1.05's then missed once and threw a mag down range (past the mag well) stepped back relaxed got my mag reloaded. then did two back to back .98's Tension is your worst enemy on this super speed stuff. ( i'm slow not fast by any means) This is with production gear btw, cr speed holders. Grand Power K100 X-Trim pistol. 7 yards. A/C zone plate

[Gooldylocks]

I do Burkett reloads, dropping a ghost mag on all the sets until I get down to pretty fast. Once I get to my fastest set I drop a mag every time just to make sure I am not getting lazy with the press. My Burkett reloads are ~.7 par time. Best live fire reload was mid 9's, I am consistently at 1.1-1.2ish. But I do all my static reload practice at 10 yards, since that is the distance most classifiers are.