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Lots of room for improvement.........


HDGoose

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Dear Range Diary..............

First a little background. I've been actively competing in USPSA since 2013. Started out in production and initial classification was C. After competing and a lot of dry fire practice I made B in November 2014 and then bumped to A in June 2015 after raising my percentage to 76% with one GM classifier (96.7% on CM 06-10). For the last 6 months or so I've been competing on Limited (currently B at 71.14%). This season I've shot a lot of local matches and both Area 1 and Area 2. I've had moments of success at local matches but have also had some very disappointing matches. My performance at both area matches was not spectacular. At Area 2 I finished down with the ladies and super seniors (49%, 96th limited), at Area 1 I was able improve some (59%, 83rd limited). The problem is that I've not yet been able to really be consistently competitive at my current classification levels.

I'm now trying to improve as much as possible in hopes of actually being competitive for the Utah state and Idaho section matches later this year. Practice consists of dry fire at least 5 days a week and either a local match or one live fire practice session each week.

I'm trying to be more organized in my practice and I hope that this range diary will help me to keep track of both what I am working on and what I need to work on. For now it'll be tough to keep it from being negative and all about what I'm doing wrong but I'm hopeful that it'll soon be more focused on my successes and what I'm doing right.

I feel like my classifier type skills (draw, reload, stand and shoot) are relatively solid, but my field coarse skills are pretty shaky. I think my opportunities for improvement are evenly spread out between accuracy and speed. I'm consistent but not particularly fast in either gun handling / shooting or foot speed. I'll spare the details from recent matches but I feel very strongly that the largest variation between my good and bad performances lately has been in accuracy and points dropped. I think that my greatest opportunity for improvement in speed will be in transitions and movement; mainly moving sooner, shooting sooner, and shooting on the move.

Tomorrow will be a live fire session focusing on group shooting for accuracy and also on some transition drills in hopes of increasing my transition speed. The main focus of the transition drills will be to shoot sooner instead of faster. In recent dry fire sessions it feels like I am really muscling the gun to the next target and then either spending way too much time waiting for the gun to settle, or even seeing the sights go way past the target and then wasting time pulling the sights back to the target before I am able to shoot. I'd like to instead come in to the target quickly but smoothly enough that I'm able to break the shot as soon as the sights arrive on target. Tomorrow I want to figure out the right way in live fire so that I can really turn it into habit in dry fire over the next week.

Updates to follow.

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Always point out positives before identifying areas for improvement. It will help you have a lot more fun.

No matter what level of shooting you are, there are ALWAYS things you've done well.

e.g., My last response to a called mike was "yeah, but did you see that plate rack go down?!" Do that. It's more fun.

I've found that the Accuracy/Speed issue is a bit of a teeter-totter. Try to make most of your goals one or the other and move back and forth to edge your way forward. It's a lot of work to try to think about careful aiming AND moving faster. You'll find there are times when you feel you're shooting OK but moving slow, or moving OK but shooting badly. Set the goals in the front of your mind and list accordingly.

Of course the goal is to do both like those fancy shmancy GM's... we'll all get there one day!

You are on the right track. Good luck.

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Always point out positives before identifying areas for improvement. It will help you have a lot more fun.

No matter what level of shooting you are, there are ALWAYS things you've done well.

e.g., My last response to a called mike was "yeah, but did you see that plate rack go down?!" Do that. It's more fun.

I've found that the Accuracy/Speed issue is a bit of a teeter-totter. Try to make most of your goals one or the other and move back and forth to edge your way forward. It's a lot of work to try to think about careful aiming AND moving faster. You'll find there are times when you feel you're shooting OK but moving slow, or moving OK but shooting badly. Set the goals in the front of your mind and list accordingly.

Of course the goal is to do both like those fancy shmancy GM's... we'll all get there one day!

You are on the right track. Good luck.

Thanks Toter! That's good advice and I'll take it.

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So, just got home from a 200 round live fire session and I feel like progress was made.

First 50 rounds were spent shooting slow fire groups. Best group was 10 shots in 2.5 inches at 15 yards. The more I was able to force myself to see the sights lift the better the groups were. Next time more focus on breathing and isolating my trigger finger. Short term goal is a good 2" group and then I'll push out to 20 yards. Long term goal is consistent A zone hits at 50.

Next was 150 rounds on Blake drills at 7 yards. First few runs were in the 3.5 second range with splits averaging .35 and transitions averaging .55. After a few runs the splits were down around .25 average and I was able to get my transitions to around .33-.35. Most of the transition improvement came from my shooting buddy pointing out that after the second shot on each target I was waiting for the sights to settle before moving my eyes to the next target.

Another observation from these drills was that there was virtually no time difference between dropping points with C and D hits by getting sloppy with the sights and trigger and other runs where I forced a little more visual patience and worked the trigger more carefully for solid hits. I feel like the time spent getting better hits actually forced some small measure of relaxation that then helped to make the transitions a little smoother and got the first shot on the next target off sooner.

The plan for the next week of dry fire will be draws and white wall drills to continue grip and trigger improvement and then transition drills. Transition drills need to emphasize good grip and stance, transitioning with the hips, realistic dry fire splits based on today's live fire times, and leading the transitions with my eyes (moving eyes quickly to next target as soon as sights lift).

Might shoot a local match Saturday morning. Have to keep it fun right?

Edited by HDGoose
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Might shoot a local match Saturday morning. Have to keep it fun right?

What's this "might" stuff?

"Might" has changed to "will". My priorities were a little off but I've got them straightened out now.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Progress update:

Local match last weekend went relatively well. Dry fire work on transitions seems to be paying off as evidenced by much better transitions throughout the match. Finished 2nd (80% match points) in limited, penalty free except for two mikes. Both mikes were second shots on partial targets and I'm confident were caused be the dreaded DTS (Double-Tap Syndrome) that I occasionally struggle with.

Dry fire transition work as previously described continued throughout the week and during live practice yesterday my first Blake drill (cold) was 2.52 with .22-.25 splits and transitions and only 2 points down, both from close charlies. Subsequent runs of the same drill were not as good. Either too many points dropped from trying go fast, or slower from trying to get better hits.

Two theories/observations from this:

1. Things tend to go better when I trust my training and just let myself shoot; worse when I "try".

2. Maybe live fire is not the time to improve a technique like transitions? New plan is to use live fire to diagnose problems and figure out the correct technique, use dry fire for improvement, then use live fire as a test to measure improvement.

Positive results from dry fire training and live fire testing should result in greater confidence in my abilities and less temptation to "try".

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Steve Anderson talks about what you experienced in live fire A LOT. You should check out his podcast.

Thanks tha1000, I'll do that.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

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  • 3 weeks later...

Steve Anderson talks about what you experienced in live fire A LOT. You should check out his podcast.

Not to be a jerk or anything but those podcasts are not easy to listen to. It seems like great information but I'm not sure it's worth enduring the chopped up Van Halen songs. And to use a terrible Journey song to convey a message? Brutal.

Edited by HDGoose
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Steve Anderson talks about what you experienced in live fire A LOT. You should check out his podcast.

Not to be a jerk or anything but those podcasts are not easy to listen to. It seems like great information but I'm not sure it's worth enduring the chopped up Van Halen songs. And to use a Journey song as an analogy? Brutal.

I agree, which is why I ended up buying his second book. Lots of good information in it presented in a logical fashion.

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So, latest update:

Purposeful dry fire training continues and the progress is slow but steady. Shot local matches the last two weekends. At the first match I shot two stages really well then completely imploded on the classifier with 5 make up shots on an array of 4 poppers. Struggles with steel continued on 2 of the remaining stages with too many shots on a relatively close easy plate rack and then needed 18 rounds to clean a texas star (yep - 18). In fairness to myself I should say that I may have greatly over estimated my skills on the texas star. It could be engaged either of two positions, one approximately 20 yards or the other at about half that distance but if shot closer the stage would require either a long retreat or a more roundabout stage plan. I decided to shorten movement and engage from the further position which proved a very poor decision. Of the 6 stages I had 2 really good ones, 2 average, and 2 disasters.On the positive side I was aggressive with movement and my hits on paper were as good or better than usual. Match results were 20th of 59 overall, 8th of 27 in limited at 65%.

Midway through the next week I burned up about 250 rounds in live fire practice - mostly on steel. During this practice session I learned that my success or failure on an array of steel seems to depend on how well I shoot the first plate or popper in the array - proper sight focus and aiming at the center of the plate or popper calibration zone and things seem to go smoothly. Poor fundamentals and rushing the first plate and things don't go so well.

At the second match results were similar except that I shot steel much better. This match had 2 relatively challenging plate racks, an easy texas star, and a tough polish plate rack and combined I think I had a total of four make up shots and shot them pretty quickly. During walk through and visualization I was very deliberate about focusing on good technique for the first plate and that seemed to help a lot. I made a few mental mistakes in the last stage of the day but I'm comfortable blaming that on the fact that it was a long hot day. Finished the match 12th of 45 overall and 6th of 23 limited at 73%.

For the next few weeks I plan to continue regular dry fire mainly focusing on transitions and movement. All dry fire sessions will start with dry fire draws focusing on proper grip and then white wall drills for grip and trigger control and will end with dry fire group shooting. I also plan on some live fire time focusing on group shooting only.

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Steve Anderson talks about what you experienced in live fire A LOT. You should check out his podcast.

Not to be a jerk or anything but those podcasts are not easy to listen to. It seems like great information but I'm not sure it's worth enduring the chopped up Van Halen songs. And to use a terrible Journey song to convey a message? Brutal.

I listen to them in the car and fast forward through the songs. Better than listening to the crap on the radio and there is lot of really good information not to mention it is free. Also just got his third book, still reading it but it is really good so far.

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  • 1 month later...

And now for the long awaited update..........

The last six weeks have been so busy that I don't really know where to start. Since my last update I've shot at least 6 local matches and two majors. Here are some of the lesson's I've learned recently:

Lesson 1: If caffeine sensitive (as I am) it is a very bad idea to enjoy a Stompin' Grounds coffee stout from Uinta Brewing with friends the night before a local match. It 's a fantastic beer but one glass contains exactly enough caffeine to keep me awake a majority of the night which can make a six stage club the next morning very unpleasant. Probably the worst performance I've had at a local in at least two years. I think the real lesson here is that if I want to be competitive I need to be a lot more serious about getting my mind and body ready for the match and sleep is a big part of that. No more caving to peer pressure the night before a match!

Lesson 2: If RO'ing a major match (just ran a stage at the Utah state match) it's a good idea to have a bottle of hand sanitizer and to use it very regularly. Most shooters are grateful to those working the match and are great about giving a handshake and a thank you to the match staff after shooting each stage. This is definitely appreciated by the match staff but can cause the RO to wake up the morning after the match with the beginnings of a cold. Maybe even a really bad cold. Ask me how I know.

Lesson 3: It is very difficult to shoot a major match with a cold. It is also very annoying to know that the cold was likely caused by not having / using hand sanitizer while working another major the previous weekend (refer to lesson 2).

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But Seriously.

With exception of a few upcoming local matches my shooting season finished up last weekend. I feel good about this because between a very busy time at work and a lot of local and major matches to prepare for (reloading etc) and shoot I haven't had a lot of time to practice.

No earth shattering occurrences at the local matches except for the previously mentioned lesson about mental and physical prepration for a match needing to start the night before (or sooner).

Three weeks ago I was able to take a two day class from CHA-LEE and as a result I have a list of opportunities for improvement as long as my arm. I was going to post the entire list here but will instead put them in individual posts as I work on them. What I will do at this time is say that CHA-LEE is not only a damned good and very knowledgeable shooter - he is also a very good teacher. I'll try to do a thorough review of the class at a later time but for now I can without hesitation recommend his class to anyone. If you have any specific questions about my experience with the class please message me and I'll happily answer them.

The following weekend was the Utah state match. My performance and results were less than I had hoped for (35th of 75 Limited, 67.3%) but still an improvement over A1 and A2 earlier in the year. My stage times for this match weren't horrible and I think I was able to use many lessons learned the previous weekend to build better stage plans than I previously would have been able to. The bigger problem throughout much of the match was lack of visual patience and a result far too many penalties and too many points dropped.

The next weekend was the Idaho section match. This match was tough because I shot much of it with handicapped by a brutal head cold (see lessons 2 and 3 above). Even so I was able to come out with decent results (13th of 58 Limited, 70.9%). I had good stage plans throughout the match and was able to execute them fairly well but had a really hard time being aggressive with movement, shooting, or gun handling because of the cold. I don't dare speculate on where I'd have finished if I'd been healthy but I'm confident it would have been much better.

Edited by HDGoose
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  • 2 months later...

 Hay buddy, I happened across your range diary and seen your nice comments about my class. I am glad that you enjoyed the class and hope that it has helped in your quest to improve your performance. Improving performance is a never ending process where we can usually only work on fixing a few things at a time so don't get overwhelmed. Keep working on that list one skill at a time and you will get where you want to be. 

Its been a while since you updated this diary, how have things been going?

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I'm back after being absent far too long. I took a little break during a vacation and also trying to get caught up at work prior to and after the vacation.

I also played around a little shooting production instead of limited. I've now decided that I'm probably going to sell my production gear and focus 100% on limited.

For the last few weeks my dryfire has been mainly fundamentals and gun handling to get used to my limited gear again and that has gone well.

This week has been spent on transitions as they seem to have gotten a little choppy and I know that I donated a significant amount of time on slow transitions at my last match. Tonight while working on wide transitions I discovered a question: How wide can I transition without moving my feet - or maybe how wide should I transition without moving my feet? I think that since I'm relatively comfortable with a cone of fire (angle between feet) of roughly 90 degrees then I should be able to transition the full 90 degrees without any change in foot position as long as my stance is wide and low enough to be stable and if target difficulty will allow it. I mention target difficulty as I'm not sure I'm confident on tough shots when at the extreme edges of my cone of fire.

I plan to practice 90 degree transitions without moving my feet and also work on 90 (and 90+) degree transitions with a change in foot position as I'm sure I need to be proficient at both. I also plan to do some live fire testing to find out what target difficulty I can effectively handle when indexed at the extreme edges of my cone of fire. I think I'll find that on one or two open targets at maybe 7 yards or closer I'll be fine but at anything longer, more than two targets, steel, or partials I'll want to actually move my feet to make the targets centered in my cone of fire.

When practicing wide transitions I need to make sure I'm keeping the gun extended instead of pulling it in. When transitioning with my feet I need to make sure I'm pivoting on the ball of the inside foot and driving the transition with the toes of the outside foot.

Also in dry fire tonight it felt like I was more comfortable indexed all of the way to my left (weak) side, and less comfortable when indexed all of the way to my right. Should probably practice both until I'm comfortable at either side?

Updates to follow.....

 

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41 minutes ago, CHA-LEE said:

 Hay buddy, I happened across your range diary and seen your nice comments about my class. I am glad that you enjoyed the class and hope that it has helped in your quest to improve your performance. Improving performance is a never ending process where we can usually only work on fixing a few things at a time so don't get overwhelmed. Keep working on that list one skill at a time and you will get where you want to be. 

Its been a while since you updated this diary, how have things been going?

Hey CHA-LEE - I was actually typing an update when you when you posted your comment. Things have been going well. Life, work, and a vacation have conspired to cut into my practice and shooting time for the last few months but I think I've got my priorities straightened out now and I'm in full practice mode to work on the list and get ready for next season.

Your class has definitely helped, since then I feel like my practice (dry and live) is much more focused and productive which is resulting in quicker and better results. The list has actually made me feel less overwhelmed as now I've got priorities to work on instead of trying to work on everything at the same time.

Thanks for the encouragement!

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