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Scott's Road to USPSA Success


SCTaylor

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Back to dry during on the regular again.

.6 Burkett both phases
2.2 4-aces

Dry fire - Focusing on draw, transitions, and fast reloads.

Live fire - Focus on transitions and shooting sooner.


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Started back on the dry fire, well this morning. I’m getting up at 5am but being slothful.  A-holes on Instagram are shaming me into practice, negative motivation can also be a good thing.

 

Draws to site pictures – Simulated 7 yards - .7 seconds. Beat the buzzer more often than not, probably could get down to .6. 

Focus: Support hand moving to holster on beep and acquiring grip early in draw stroke.

 

Reloads – 1.0 seconds – First time really working the reloads with a 1911, magwell, and teeny mags.  But it was a little easier than reloading the Tanfo, go figure.  Made the time limit more times than not, need to ingrain new habit for gun/magwell position for loading.

    Focus: Gun/magwell position for loading. Acquire proper grip on magazine. Upon magazine seating, regrip gun & drive gun flat to target – don’t fish.

 

Front Sight

Simulated 7 yards & 7.5’ between targets

 

1st String – Turn, Draw, 2 shots each of 3 Targets

1.8 par time. Hit this with consistency. First few reps, points would have been crap with several mikes.  Kept the par time down and began to focus on proper sight picture and trigger control.

    Focus: Snap eyes/head to first target at turn. Snap eyes to exact 1” circle on next target.

 

2nd String – Face downrange, Draw, 2 shots each of 3 Targets

1.6 par time. Hit the par 90% of the time. When I missed the par, I also missed the draw/grip.

    Focus: Snap eyes/head to first target at turn. Snap eyes to exact 1” circle on next target. On draw, don’t push out too hard/throw gun at target. Speed it out there but decelerate near end of push-out.

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1.       Target Transitions – 7/8 Yards – (left to right) 8yd open, plate rack, 12yd open, 8yd open – 5.0

a.       Snap eyes to each target, specific spot! 

b.       Determine sight picture required for each target type and distance. This will be done via live fire.  It is possible to target focus more often that sight focus.

 

2.       4 Aces – 1.8 Goal – 2.0 Par

a.       Reload is the low hanging fruit.

b.       Focus on snapping left hand to magazine – correct grip on magazine – snap back to magwell

c.       Ensure grip is rebuilt properly after inserting magazine.

d.       Par time is important – Make 2.0 solid then work to increase speed.

 

3.       El Prez – 4.0 Goal – 3.8 Par

a.       Speed is there. Focus on doing everything correctly.

b.       Breakdown process

                                                               i.      Turn & snap eyes to target

                                                             ii.      Begin draw during turn, build grip as I finish the turn & come up to first target.

                                                           iii.      Relax shoulders – grip with hands

                                                           iv.      After called 6th shot, snap hand to new magazine & depress mag release

                                                             v.      Rebuilding grip after reload is very important.

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Triple 6 - 6.0 par time. Focused on rebuilding grip after reloads, firmed that up well. 

 

El Prez - 3.8 par time. Focused on consistent reloads and grip after load. I need to work on consistency of gun position for reload, it is varying by about 1-1.5" in space. That variance is causing issues hitting the magwell.

 

slide lock reloads - 1.2 par time. Not something I've worked on much. Focus on the same reload process until rebuildIn grip, then hit slide lock lever with support thumb. Touched 1.0 a few times but not consistently. 

Edited by SCTaylor
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  • 2 weeks later...

Dry fire has been lacking a little bit lately, however, I’ve been making it to live fire quite a bit more.  Live fire is giving me some serious increase in actual shooting skill as well as confidence.  I’ve never shot “a lot” before in my life but in the month of July shot 800+ in training and a little under 200 in a match.  To date for 2017 I’ve shot just under 5,000 rounds, by far the most ever.

 

I feel more confident in gun handling, movements into / out of position, and breaking down a stage.

 

Practice sessions in the month of July were setup with a focus on transitions and shooting sooner.

 

Blake Drills

Run at 7 yards

Average total time – 2.07

Average transitions - .27

I’ve been working more on speed so my scores kind of sucked, average 2 alpha and 4 charlie.  Later in the month, as the speed became “normal” I shot an average of 4 alpha and 2 charlie.

 

Heads

Ran at 10 yards

Average total time – 4.38

Average transitions - .71

This is hard! I missed about 20% of the time pushing speed and only had about 30% alphas at this distance.  It sure gave me some confidence to know I can quickly hit the heads, especially to know the correct point of aim for the head A zone.

 

Front Sight

 

Setup the classifier per the book, turned the outside targets into the shooter.

Average total time for string 1 – 2.4

Average total time for string 2 – 2.15

Average target transitions - .31

Average hit factor for string 1 – 10.08

Average hit factor for string 2 – 11.9

Total average hit factor – 11.1 which equates to 83% for Single Stack. Would be an 87% in Production…

 

I still have not hit my goal of high hit factor, running the strings in 2 seconds or under, or running clean strings. However, the improvement throughout the month went from an average HF of 9.1 to 11.1, roughly 20% improvement.

 

Overall my improvement is substantial. I’m happy with the progress but will not quit pushing. I will start dry firing on the regular again to drive life fire improvement.

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Dry fire - 8/8/17

Distance change up - 10 yard open, 15 yard plate. 2.0 par. Snap eyes hard and pay attention to trigger pull straight to rear. Work on grip at draw consistency.

Shooting while moving - 10 yard open - left and right - get low and move aggressively. Have to confirm in live fire sight picture versus hits.

Reloads - .9 par. Make sure to get proper grip on magazine. Hold magazine in hand until started to magwell, do not tea-cup into gun. When I missed, it was a- bad grip b- tea cup into magwell/gun.




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  • 2 weeks later...

I've been sucking hind teet on dryfire lately. Sucking as in sessions not going well, you might ask? No, sucking as they didn't exist.  Although I've been hitting the range for live fire practice on my regular schedule of once per week, less match weekends or vacation weekends.

 

Made it out last Friday with a focus on long range shooting. Setup 2 targets at 25 yards and spent nearly a full two hours shooting doubles and bill drills.  Short version, my trigger control is total shit. I'm nearly treating a 25 yard pull the same as a 10 yard, that is to say a pretty aggressive slap.  Learned a lot in ~200 rounds of ammo.

 

Doubles @ 25 yards

2.10-2.25 seconds consistently yielded both shots on paper. Commonly low left first shot (barely on paper or barely Charlie) and follow up Alpha or close Charlie.  Split times remained pretty stable a .40-.45 average.

 

1.75-2.05 seconds consistently yielded a Mike and a where the F' did that one go?  I've got the speed to easily make 2 seconds on a 25 yard open but not yet refining the sight picture or pulling the trigger straight back with the proper control.

 

Bill Drill @ 25 yards

4.00-4.5 seconds average for 4 runs.  Total crap show. Draw slowed from 1.4-1.5 to 1.75-1.85 (compared to Doubles) splits were all over the place. I lost confidence in the guns mechanical ability / accurate zero that I just kinda gave up.

 

After that happened, I stepped back for a deep breath. Took a deep break, told myself to quite being a puss, and do what I know how to do.  Picked up the doubles again and made some progress. 2.3-2.5 average time but started putting Alpha/Alpha or Alpha/Close Charlie up, still having an issue with pushing the bullets left.

 

Dryfire

 

Setup 1/6 scale "classic" targets to drill hard into the long(er) range shooting.

25 yards simulated

 

Draw to sight picture - 1.10 seconds.  Pretty easy to get the gun up well within time. Found that I am "throwing" the gun in the final portion of the draw, leaving the gun to bob & wobble before regaining control; serious loss of time.  I will keep the speed from beep to last 10% of the draw, but begin to decelerate for the final 10%, allowing the sights to settle.

 

Doubles - 1.4 seconds.  Same issues as noted above. Also began to notice poor trigger control, sympathetic strong hand movement, and general slop.

 

Blake Drill - 3.4 seconds. Same issues, again. Also noticed it's a bit more of a challenge to determine target or sight focus on transitions. Something I'll have to proof in life fire.

 

Several challenges came into my life recently requiring some serious self motivation, dedication, and seriously hard work so I'm working diligently on those things and including shooting as one of those items. It's that important to me and I will be a USPSA Single Stack Master in 2018, if not sooner.

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What one can do in dry fire doesn't necessarily translate over to live fire.  I've been finding that to be especially true lately.

 

On the Bill Drills:   Shoot some off the clock.  Pay attention to the sights and trigger pull and not the time.  I rarely try and race the timer when distance shooting.  If I can get good hits with my G35 (couple C's) in under 5.31 seconds I'm pleased.

 

Judging from your videos you're making faster progress than me.  Keep it up.

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@superluckycat Thanks bud.  

 

Regarding Bill Drills.... if I can't do it at speed in practice, I sure as hell won't do it in a match.  I'm pushing really hard to get my speed up right now; learn how it feels to go that fast and then learn how to shoot Alphas & close Charlies.

 

I've gotta push past my comfort zone, make that new speed my normal speed.

 

 

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I should have explained my post better.  While I said I don't race the clock on 25 Bill Drills what I meant is time isn't the main goal.

 

I shoot the drill as fast as I can read the sights but my goal is under 5 seconds (shooting major).  

 

My times will can vary from the high 3's to low 5's depending on the day.  I don't accept mikes with distance shooting like I do with speed work.

 

If you are throwing mikes are you learning anything if you don't know where the shot went?  You already know how to shoot fast.

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It's ashame you live a couple thousand miles away from me because you would make a good training partner.  It seems like every time I discover what needs the most work in my shooting, you are working on the same thing.  Good luck

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  • 5 weeks later...

So, I haven’t been posting any of my practice schedule lately but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been hard at work.

 

Over the past several weeks my dry fire increased to approximately 5 days per week, 30 minutes per day with live fire twice a week.

 

I’m getting par times down to or very near Stoeger’s book times but my technique is crap.  The goal now that I have the basis of speed is refining everything.  Let’s use 4 aces as an example.  2.0 in dryfire is consistently achievable and 2.5 in live fire w/ mostly A’s at 7 yards is as well. Problem, I’m not getting much of a sight picture, gripping the gun properly 100% of the time, and trigger control sucks.

 

I’m working all of the static drills at the same goal par with an emphasis on doing everything perfectly correct.

 

There has been a huge jump in my classifier skill level since starting a regimented live fire routine in June. I’m routinely shooting master class scores at “match” pace, about half of my speed focused runs are Hundo’s or B class; but I’m okay with some bad shots pushing speed.

 

Live fire practice is normally setup with 1 or 2 static drills and then 1 or 2 movement/mini stage drills. Working in partials, 25 yard shots, and a 12-15 yard 7” steel plate is really helping focus on calling shots and pulling the trigger straight back.

 

Looks like I won’t shoot another classifier until 2018, so I’ll be going into the Gator Classic as a Production B. Here’s to life as that sandbagging a_-hole everyone loves to hate!

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18 hours ago, SCTaylor said:

 

 

Some video of practice from last night. Several things to address are quickly, glaringly, obvious.

The biggest thing of course is how long it took you to engage the final plate on the first attempt.

 

In every case, you get your feet into position but your weight is centered over your feet. You then you “slide” your upper body to the right in order to shift your weight over the right leg, which is the source of the pregnant pause.

 

Stop that. Get a bit lower and arrive with your shoulders centered over your legs (or weight over the outside leg if simulating a lean) and fire right away. 

 

Edited by MemphisMechanic
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Keeping good notes is become highly valuable to my training. Not all scenarios can be compared however the individual skills can be monitored and evaluated. Another key is keeping notes on when a drill when wrong; what happened and how do I fix it.

 

Don't forget in some scenarios that Hit Factor can be more indicative of the required approach than raw points.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Gator is 10 days out. I've switched over to match mode shooting, with a focus on doing everything properly, as quickly as I can.  I will not get noticeably faster before the match, I am rounding off the edges and polishing everything.  Timer has gone away from live & dry fire.

 

Main focus - gripping the gun hard as hell, pulling the trigger straight back, firing as quickly as the sights allow, and calling every shot to leave only acceptable hits.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So my last big match of the year is completed. 15th overall in production and 5th B.  It was a fun match, mostly open and fast stages. 12 pieces of steel, 2 swingers, and maybe 7 partials. There were some tricky positioning requirements though, which added an inkling of complexity.

 

I left a tremendous amount of points on the table and my competition took advantage.  Shot 64% Alphas and 82% of points. Total crap. Total. Crap.

 

Now on to the good. Overall times were in line with the Masters (average time was 207, I was 208.55). My stage plans were good, missed execution on 1 which was a disaster. Felt confident, shot on the move, shot entering & exiting, and had some really good squad mates to discuss strategy.

 

Initially I was really bummed, closed to depressed about how I finished. But in reality, I’m up 21 spots from last year’s finish, executed well, called a large majority of my shots, and generally shot consistent.

 

Here is the match video. I might do a stage breakdown later.  Comments and questions welcomed. 

Big thanks to @CrashDodson for the tips and acting as videographer. It was cool to watch him work, he’s a good shooter and only going to get better.

 

 

 

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