From humble beginnings - Learning this "action pistol" thing

[jmtyndall]

Hey all, figured I'd try out one of these range diaries to keep track of analyze my progress in the sport.

 

A little background, I've been a gun owner for 10 years, I worked for some time as a range officer at a local range, and eventually got a job in a gun store while going to college. Around that time I became interested in getting a concealed carry license and since I wanted to take it seriously, started looking into training courses. I took a handful of courses and while at the range one day saw a flyer for the local IDPA match. I ended up shooting 1 match there and was hooked, but circumstances in life brought me to the SF Bay area and it became impossible to shoot. Other hobbies occupied my time but nothing caught me like shooting had. Fast forward 4 years and fortune has it that I got relocated to the Seattle area for work. During the move I rediscovered all my shooting stuff and reignited my interest. After some research, I found a local range that hosts several types of action pistol games. I went out to the static pistol range once to knock the rust off and penciled the first match into my calendar.

 

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[jmtyndall]

This match is an IDPA match, as the local USPSA club seems to have an off-season until March. I want to try both games eventually and see which I end up liking more. I have a feeling I will prefer USPSA, but I want to give both a fair shot without judging a sport by the cover(garment).

 

Alright, two weeks before the first match of the year and I've decided to give this a go. I realize there's been rules revisions since I last shot. I also accept that I'm going to be SLOW, but I need to set a goal.

 

THIS WEEK'S GOAL: (1) Don't DQ, (2) Don't get dead last.

 

So I setup a short dry-fire program with some simple goals in mind. Day 1 was following RO commands, then other days I did drawing from a holster, static reloads, moving reloads, moving while keeping the gun pointed a safe direction and shooting around barricades.

 

01/19/19 - Match Day

 

Stage 1 - First stage of the day didn't go too bad. Slow, yes but nothing too unexpected here. Had a little hiccup with drawing from a seated position, I'll have to work that into practice. Ended up shooting 8/22 in SSP for this stage with only 1 point down.

 

Stage 2 - This stage was a bit rough. Start position was weak hand only, 2 shots WHO to targets at 5 yards, transition to strong hand 3 head shots on targets at 10 yards, then 4 rounds each freestyle on targets at 15 yards. The weak hand only portion was slow and deliberate, got my hits. Strong hand only I rushed a bit, ended up with 2 mikes here. Then tried to make up time on the freestyle portion and dropped a couple points. 15 points down. 8/22 in SSP for this stage too.

 

Stage 3 - Now is a good time to mention the rain. It wasnt rainy match day, but the night before was. So we had mud and puddles galore. Stage 3 was SLIMY and not knowing any better I'd worn my finest 3-year old tennis shoes with no tread left. That said it was finally a fun stage with some strategy and running. Start pushing open a door then move either left or right to engage targets through ports, then move back across the other way and engage targets through ports there too. Started strong, push the door, engage 2 targets, two steps to my right, engage targets, two more steps and engage the last target. Fired 1 makeup shot here to get my slide-lock reload while on the move back to the left. That all went fine, but when I ran to the final position I slipped a bit in the mud. Luckily good habits took over, finger came out of the trigger and I pushed the gun straight out down range and caught my balance before I went down. Engaged the last target and had a good laugh at myself. 9/22 SSP with 7 points down on this one.

 

Stage 4 - Lots of leaning here. Overall I think my stage strategy was good but I hesitated a bit with where to engage 2 of the targets which slowed me down. 11/22 SSP, 3 points down.

 

Stage 5 - more headshots, more running uprange. Stage went smooth, I was slow and deliberate on my moving upstage so I didn't break the 180. 8/22, 4 points down.

 

Stage 6 - threw a mike here on a headshot at about 15 yards. Otherwise it went decently. 13/22, 8 points down.

 

Stage 7 - Last stage. The rain started, and I was the first shooter. AND it was all strong hand only. That said, I shot pretty well, picked my shooting positions and timed my reload so I was in the move. 7/22, 2 points down.

 

Overall 25/62 shooters, 40 points down, 0 procedurals, 0 non-treats.

 

Parting thoughts and lessons learned-

Overall, I placed much better than I thought I would have or should have. I mean, I don't have any delusions that I'm naturally gifted or even remotely fast at this stuff. I was generally accurate, and IDPA rewards that more than moving quickly, so that probably accounts for my overall ranking. The targets were a little on the basic side, no movers or swingers which is probably good for me at this point. There was very little steel, mostly full size poppers at 10-15 yards. This leaves me wanting to try USPSA for that greater challenge.

 

Big lesson learned here was SHOES. I'm buying some new shoes with much more grip for dry weather. I'll also be bringing boots in the case of wet weather. I'm not keen on faceplanting in the mud while running with a gun.

 

 

Things to work on - As always, speed. But that's kind of a weak answer. So more than that I want to be more aware of what my body is doing while I'm shooting, where I'm seeing the sights, how I'm pulling the trigger, how my grip feels etc.

 

One handed shooting needs major work. Both strong hand and weak hand only. I think this is my biggest shooting related take-away from the match. Other general skills like moving, shooting on the move, reloading on the move and shooting around barricades always need work too.

 

I really need to find a local buddy who has access to the action bays so that I can do some live practice. I spoke with the match director and he wants to see 1 year of match attendance before he will train you to be an RSO, which is required to use the action bays. On one hand, I get it because you want someone to show interest, learn the rules etc before allowing them access to the action bays without supervision. On the other hand, I really don't want to spend a year wasting time at matches not-improving because I can only shoot on a static range.

 

Also, I'm going to try to get a video recording rig set up. I think video will help me identify problem areas that I don't necessarily recall after the match.

 

 

 

 

[Hi-Power Jack]

Throw in a good dry fire regimen.     

 

BTW, very good start.     

[jmtyndall]

Thanks, Jack. I currently own "Perfrct Practice" by Saul Kirsch and I'm looking at picking up one of Ben Stoeger's books, either "Practical Pistol" or "Dry Fire Reloaded". I'll probably end up with all of them at some point.

Dry fire is going to be the majority my my practice and learning because for now I don't have access to the action bays, and also because the range is 45 minutes away. With my work schedule, I'll be lucky if I can go live fire twice a month!

This may prove to be a woefully inadequate practice schedule, but I'll find out!

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[Hi-Power Jack]

I took a course with Max Michel in 2007, and he mentioned he

shoots only about 10,000 or so rounds/year but dry-fires a LOT.

 

Don't know what he's doing now.

[jmtyndall]

Saw a video last night of Max Michel doing 6 reload 6 reload 6. It was...inspiring, maybe a little disgusting, but inspiring none the less.

I've been dryfiring every day. I did not think I would see any improvement until I got to the range, but I have been seeing some. Tried some of Ben Stoeger's 15 minute dry fire techniques, but I think I need some work before I get to that level. Currently I'm spending a half hour per day in dry fire.

I found I was able to hit the "novice" level par times for the draw exercises, but when I came to reloading the gun, I was missing even the easiest of par times. I figured I'm new enough that I can spend entire practice sessions drilling one skill. Yesterday I spent the whole half hour on draws. I made some improvement, but I'm still sometimes hitting the web of my hand on the beavertail (ie, missing my grip). Work to be done there.

Tonight my goal was reloads. So many issues here, between index on the mag, alignment with the gun, re-establishing grip. It was sad. I can say after slowing it WAY down, doing the reload in parts, then reassembling and speeding up, I've seen some improvement. Alignment with the gun is greatly improved, as is my index on the mag. I'm still slow, really slow. No, slower than that even. However it's been really motivational to see some gains (even really basic ones) this early on.

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[Hi-Power Jack]

I've heard you have to repeat a process 30,000 times or so before it's part of your nature.

 

That's where dry firing really comes in handy (or spend $6,000 for ammo) ???

[yukonjon]

Keep up the good work and keep practicing. It will pay off. I think I know what club your talking about. If you have time, we shoot USPSA at Paul Bunyan Club every 2nd Sunday. Shouldn’t be too much further depending where your located. Let me know if you need more info on local clubs and matches.

[Lastcat]

In your area there are a few USPSA/IDPA Matches that run monthly. If you are a USPSA Member, then do a search to find all the Clubs in your area and hopefully find one to join (about 11 in your area). Paul Bunyan in Puyallup is a good Range, they put on some good Matches and really talented/friendly people there. Learn as much as possible and don't hesitate to ask those on your Squad for tips and hints. Looking forward to more from your experience here and best of luck .

[jmtyndall]

Jack; 30k draws, 30k reloads, 30k transitions, 30k splits....I have a long ways to go!

 

yukonjon and lastcat; Paul Bunyan is about 1:15-1:30 or so from where I'm at. I'm actually up in Mill Creek, so it's a bit of a drive to get down to Renton (where I shot last time). But if the matches are as good as you say, it might be worth making the drive down to check it out! I need to get to some matches and make some shooting buddies to keep me motivated. I know that I personally do better and stay more involved when I have a few buddies involved in a hobby to bounce ideas off of and talk smack to.

[Hi-Power Jack]

1 minute ago, jmtyndall said:

Jack; 30k draws, 30k reloads, 30k transitions, 30k splits....I have a long ways to go!

 

Yeah, me too.     

[jmtyndall]

Small update here. There's a drill in Ben's 15 minute dry fire routine; draw, 2 to the head, reload, 4 to the body. I was struggling pretty hard with this. Spent the last couple days on drawing from the surrender and hitting my reloads. Today I was finally able to hit the easiest par time 3.6 seconds. Not consistently, but I was hitting it. Only 29,900 reloads left to go [emoji14]

In other news I finally sold some stuff from another hobby I used to be involved in. That's freed up funds to order some better gear for USPSA. My current setup runs fine for IDPA but I'll need some more mag pouches to shoot USPSA. Ordered 3 more mags, 5 DAA Racer Pouches, Shooter's Connection Belt, and just because I can, a BOSS holtester hanger. Also made up a hat-cam mount for my go-pro. Bring on the shooting season!

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[jmtyndall]

Got all my bits and pieces in the mail today. Everything I got is super nice, I definitely see it lasting me years in the sport, so money well spent. That said I realize I have no idea how to use all this haha.

 

First question on the belt, do I run the overlap for both inner and outer belt at the front? Second, the boss hanger is freaking awesome. Well made, super solid. Way too much adjustment haha. For now I'm going to run it at the same angle (nearly straight) as my Blade Tech holster, but I'm going to drop the gun height until I dont have to roll my shoulder up in the draw stroke. I'll also probably loosen up the holster a bit to see what angle gives me a natural grip. Finally the DAA racers, quite nice mag holders. I think I need to do some sanding, the thin side plates make my mags flop around. The thick ones make the mags way too tight. Too bad there isn't a medium size.

 

And finally, I shipped off my slide to have a sight installed. Maybe a bold move considering I'm trying to shoot a match on the 10th! Hopefully I have the gun back in time to set up this rig and do a little dryfire.

 

Edit: talked to DAA about the mag fit. Looks like I'll have to sand down the side plates I have. Unfortunately...I dont have a power sander. Fortunately I have some spare time since I can't dryfire without my slide

 

 

 

 

[jmtyndall]

I'm back in business! Got my racers modified, got my sights installed. I can get this thread back to its regularly scheduled content! I missed a few days but with my first USPSA match this Sunday, I am planning on getting a lot of dryfire in.

 

Last night I worked on several things. First, indexing on the draw. I've been watching a lot of videos and notice that a lot of the big name guys will tend to holster the gun, leave their hands in place and take a breath before moving their hand to the start position. I decided to try to mimic this and definitely made some improvements with regards to consistency on my draw. Namely when drawing from hands above shoulders I tend to hit the web of my thumb right on the beavertail of my pistol instead of my hand sliding up where it needs to be. By leaving my hand on the gun, and consciously reversing the draw motion I was able to place my hand on my grip much more consistently. I think this will stick with me.

 

Draw par times I was able to hit:

Hands relaxed at sides - 1.1 seconds. I was not 100% consistent with my weak hand grip here and often times I was looking through the gun instead of focused on the front sight. I think I'll stick here at 1.1 seconds until I start hitting every draw correctly.

Hands above shoulders - 1.3 seconds. I know this shouldn't be slower than hands at sides, but I couldn't reliably get it faster. I think this has everything to do with index and moving my arms faster during the first part of the draw, the "gross motor" portion, then slowing just a touch to ensure a proper grip.

Turn and draw (hands above shoulder) - 1.5 seconds. There were times I beat the par time by a solid .2 seconds. I found it helpful to focus on whipping my head around to the target the first moment I heard the buzzer. From there the turn comes pretty naturally and the draw just happens during the turn. This might be something to bring back to "hands above shoulders" to see if changing my concentration can get me faster.

 

Reloads are a WRECK. I'm inconsistent at so many parts. Tonight I'll be taking the timer away and working reloads more slowly to ingrain the right movements. I noticed that I miss the magwell a lot, and started observing why I think this is. Firstly, I think I bring the gun down too far. When I bring the gun down to chest height I tend to miss the magwell. When I make an effort to keep the gun at about shoulder/neck height I get a much better mag insertion. Second, I need to pay attention to the angle I rotate the gun. Sometimes I just kinda flick the grip to the left and the mag doesn't align with the grip and I miss the reload. When I focus to make sure I point the magwell at my belt the incoming mag and the gun line up MUCH better. I think I need to explore these mechanics a bit more slowly and then bring the timer back into the picture. Anyways, I was hitting around 1.7 seconds. I think a reasonable goal for this is going to be 1.0 seconds.

 

 

Edit: 1 hour of dry practice last night. Spent half of it reloading by starting very slowly. Confirming alignment. By the end I was hitting reloads at a "decent" speed with acceptable consistency. I think I'll keep doing practice like this for a while before I worry about bringing the timer back.

[jmtyndall]

Snowy weather is bad for matches, but good for dry-fire. Sunday's match was post-poned until next Saturday due to snow. I've been doing a lot of dry fire, to the point my hands are a bit sore. Probably jumping in too hard, too fast. Going to start planning a couple rest days during the week for now since I don't want to get injured.

 

Short update of the last few days. Did some live fire on Friday, I did fairly well in that I was able to fire some 7-yard bill drills and doubles drills with 90% A-zone hits. The problem? Splits were in the 0.30s for the most part. I need to learn to pull the trigger faster, and keep good form. I have added a drill to my dry fire where I stand at the ready, finger off trigger. At the buzzer, break the shot. Initial par times are 0.2 seconds, will try to work down to 0.1 though at these lengths of time the buzzer beep seems to be too long for an accurate gauge. This may have to be a dry fire drill once I get an actual shot timer (using my phone for now since I don't have access to action bays where I'd need a real timer).

 

I also noticed that I sometimes wasn't pulling the trigger hard enough. I've been dry firing without a trigger break, just using the return-spring to pull against. What have I learned? I've been lying to myself in dry fire! With only the return spring I am able to pull splits in the 0.18-0.20 range back to back without disturbing the sights. So I was able to draw and pull the trigger twice in 1.1 seconds. I've started to reset the trigger by working the slide between reps so that my first pull is realistic. Part of my brain is frustrated that I've "slowed down", part of me understands my other times were just a lie.

 

New Par times:

Hands at sides draw: 1.3 Seconds

Surrender draw: 1.5 Seconds

Turn and draw: 1.7 Seconds

Reloads: No par - Working on consistency for now

 

I ordered Ben Stoeger's Dry Fire Reloaded so that I have a set of drills and some guidance to work from, I think that a bit of structure will be good for me.

 

Oh yeah, I decided that I need a goal to work towards. Something other than generic par times on drills. I'm starting to think that if I work at it, I could get an initial classification of "C-class". I signed up for a USPSA membership so that my scores will start counting from the first match.

[jmtyndall]

Had a few snow days home from work. Lots of practice...maybe too much. My hands and forearms are telling me about it today. Par times are down ~0.2 seconds from the last post, so I have recovered fairly quickly. 

 

When drawing from the surrender I keep bashing the web of my thumb on the beavertail of my gun. So much so that I actually bruised my palm yesterday. I'm not sure if I need to work on really programming that index into muscle memory, or if I should explore moving my holster forward. I've been staring at the rule book and think I'm running my holster further back than I need to be, inducing unnecessary movement into my draw. Currently I place my BOSS hanger so that the front edge of the hanger is just touching the seam of my pants. Tonight I'm going to try mimicking the draw stroke without the gun to see where my hand naturally wants to fall, then see if I can move the gun there within Production limits. I'll get the holster move then do just a few draws to see if it feels any better, but I'll avoid an extended dry-fire session tonight and tomorrow. There's a match this Saturday and I need to give my body some time to recover.

 

[jmtyndall]

Shot my first match today. Start with the positives. Didn't get dead last, didnt get DQ, didnt hit any no shoots.

I'll do a small stage breakdown here, and at the end post a link to the match video.

Stage 3 - First stage of the day. Virginia count scoring. I don't know what happened here, but I know what didnt happen. I didnt see my sights for every shot. Slung lead down range and ended up throwing 3 mikes. Not happy with how I shot this, I know I can shoot better than this.

Stage 4: CM99-11 El Presidente - My first ever classifier. My draw today is much slower than it usually is in practice. I have to reconcile that. I feel like I slowed myself down, maybe to be 100% sure I was being safe. That's not the worst thing in the world. Anyways, also wasted a lot of time on the reload by reaching to rack the slide (IDPA habit). Ended up shooting in 9.8 seconds, 52 points. Hit factor 5.2738, according to the USPSA app this is a C-class score. I'm on-track

Stage 5 - This hurt...a lot. A 15ish yard plate rack absolutely made me its *****. I think I shot 30 shots on 12 pieces of steel. At first I thought I was yanking the trigger, so I slowed down. Then tried to breath...which fogged up my glasses. Then I focused so hard on my sights I couldnt see the splashes. Turns out i was shooting over the top of the plates. By the second plate rack I figured out I had to aim at the black support to hit the plates. By that point I was so out of it I just couldnt pull it together and get my hits.

Stage 6 - This stage was actually fun. There was a piece of steel that I shot from the second position (which I planned on) but when I got to the third position my brain just could not figure out why one piece of steel was already on the ground.

Stage 1 - I liked this stage because it allowed several different strategies. I'm proud of the stage plan I came up with here, though when I was engaging targets from the third position I went for my reload one target early. Other than that the stage went relatively smooth.

Stage 2 - Last stage of the day. Threw a couple mikes on the first steel array. I was able to (mostly) keep my focus and get back on track. My reload was not per plan. Intent was to shoot the steel, reload while moving to position 2 and shoot 8 shots there, turn around and hit 2 on the target behind me, then reload on the run to position 3. That...didnt quite happen. The last steel array I managed to shoot clean, fairly happy with that.

Things I want to work on:
-Lots of Charlies, Deltas, and Mikes. I get it, everyone is probably always working on this but I know I can shoot better than I did today
-Grip the gun harder. I realized that I wasnt thinking about my grip that much, and it wasnt as strong as it has been in practice. Need to fix this
-Gun shoots high. I think this is a well known thing with 147gr ammo in an M&P. I have some 125gr I'm going to switch to once I finish off these 147s. Hopefully that's enough to fix it. Otherwise...sight change
-Move faster. Watching the video I see how slow I react to the beep and draw the gun. I can go easily twice as fast. It's got to be a mental block. I'm going to look for ways to address this, but probably more time in matches will help.
-Recovering from errors. Yeah...it sucks to waste 30 seconds whiffing 20 shots over the the top of a plate rack. But those 20 shots already happened and I can't change them. I need to keep my head in the game and just fix it.
-See the sights. This was less of an issue later, but on the last stage I missed some shots on steel that should have been easy. The first stage had several misses that aren't acceptable to me. More accuracy, less accuracy by volume.

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[razorfish]

Looks like USPSA posted a video of your Stage 2 on their feed. Over a thousand views and climbing. I agree with their assessment... Nice job!


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[Furrly]

Lesson to take away from your first match, BTW good job for being your first match.. Always know where your ammo and pistol is hitting at various distances with any and all ammo you are shooting with on match day. 

[jmtyndall]

Looks like USPSA posted a video of your Stage 2 on their feed. Over a thousand views and climbing. I agree with their assessment... Nice job!


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Awesome to be posted alongside those big-name Florida Open shooters. Thanks for the kind words.

Lesson to take away from your first match, BTW good job for being your first match.. Always know where your ammo and pistol is hitting at various distances with any and all ammo you are shooting with on match day. 

Definitely. I think I'm going to get my 124gr load dialed in to about 135PF and see if it shoots point of aim. If it does I will start using that for matches and just use the last of this 147gr stuff in practice. Otherwise I'll shoot an email over to Dawson and find out about a taller front sight

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[jmtyndall]

Still dryfiring away. The last two days I've only done surrender draws because I'm tired of bruising my palm by coming down on top of the beavertail. Decided to slow down and figure out where I'm going wrong.

I decided to reverse the draw stroke and felt two things. First, right as the grip breaks off the gun only my hand moves up, the upper arm all stays still. Then as the arms come up, my elbows drive forward. So I did that a few times then played it all forward. Massive improvement by focusing on driving the elbows backwards. Still hit my hand a couple times though. Using this technique and focusing on moving my support hand to my chest quickly I was able to break sub 1.2 second draws from a surrender. I'm looking forward to really burning this in because I'm sick and tired of bruising my palm.

Working on slow fire weak hand only. Definitely seeing some improvement (a higher number of successful trigger presses without sight movement). Tomorrow I will go do some live fire. Planning on shooting groups with strong and weak hand, shooting bill drills while focusing on a strong grip, and checking zero with 124gr bullets to make sure I never look like an idiot at a plate rack again.

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[jmtyndall]

Live fire today. Some improvement in weak hand only shooting and shot some groups which were okay, but could definitely use some improvement. It's really hard to focus on the front sight with indoor range lighting. I'll work on that.

500 rounds was too many. My hands hurt, I had a preignition push by the end, and my grip was coming apart during bill drills. I think I need to develop a lot of hand strength before I make much progress. Splits during bill drills were quite slow.

Ended up shooting Ben Stoeger's dots at the end and trying to push speed by starting the first dot slow then speeding up each dot. At some point I'll need to get to an outdoor range and try ripping some fast splits into the berm. Lots and lots to work on

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[jmtyndall]

Took a couple days off to rest my hands. It was rough, I wanted to dryfire the whole time but in the end it was good for my body.

Came back and tried practicing reloads. Started in the 1.5 second range and managed to work down to 1.2 seconds with some consistency. Whenever I tried to force myself to go any faster I either fumbled the reload or actually went slower. Not sure where to push to make gains here, maybe I need to get a few thousand more reload reps in to build consistency.

I discovered something that seems to be the source of my problem on surrender draws. Two things really. First, I was putting my hands up then pulling my elbows in close to my body. By leaving my elbows in a more natural position my arms are more easily able to track down towards where they need to be. During last night's practice I also hit my palm against the beavertail a couple times. I recorded myself drawing and noticed that I tend to take an aggressive shooting stance while making ready. When I do that it changes the body mechanic of my hand approaching the gun. Bend the knees and lean forward at the waist...hand hits the beavertail every time. Stand more upright, hand falls exactly into place behind the beavertail every time. I'm going to work on this some more to see what I can find

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[jmtyndall]

Two updates in one day! Tonight I did about 45 minutes of dry fire. Spent the first 15 minutes on trigger pull and accuracy. Freestyle and strong hand as usual were good. Improvement has come on weak-hand only. Still seeing the sights move and struggling to nail down any one particular cause. With that said, I'm getting to the point where I get 5 or 6 good pulls for every one bad pull. I think I may need to just keep at it without wasting energy searching for a red herring.

Moved on to surrender draws. My "cold draw" was 1.3s today. Much better than my usual 1.5-1.6 cold. After just 3 attempts I was hitting 1.1sec and even had a couple successful runs around 1.0x. Focusing on keeping my core straight and shoulders relaxed has majorly helped prevent me from hitting my palm. Hopefully these bruises eventually heal.

Finally I came back to reloads. Reloads are really not coming along how I would like. I have all kinds of issues here. Average time is coming in at 1.2 seconds for a smooth reload without issues. When I get to the part of my practice where I try to push the speed envelope, I just dont get anywhere. Technique falls apart, I start missing 75% of my attempts and the ones I do make are no faster, and mostly slower than my "technically correct" speed. I'm dumbfounded. Feed lips keep hitting and getting stuck on the frame, I have to adjust and reseat. Reload times when I try to go fast are mostly in the 1.5 second range. Then I slow down to try to "build momentum" by hitting 5 correct reloads in a row. I hit them in 1.2-1.3 seconds. Speed back up and it all falls back apart.

I tried to break it down and look at where I'm slow in order to identify which part of the reload I need to focus on. Going to my trusty Dryfire Reloaded book, it says the par time for a Burkett reload is 0.6 seconds. Decided to try that a few times and couldnt get anywhere near that time. Set the timer by my mag pouches to register when my hand hit the magazine. 0.6-0.7 seconds.

I'm either not reacting to the beep fast enough or I'm not moving to the mag fast enough. I'm not sure what a realistic reaction time is but my head tells me 0.4 seconds should be plenty. And would bring me within spitting distance of a 1 second reload. Not sure where to go from here. Maybe I'll spend some time just slapping a magazine.

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[bimmer1980]

13 hours ago, jmtyndall said:

Two updates in one day! Tonight I did about 45 minutes of dry fire. Spent the first 15 minutes on trigger pull and accuracy. Freestyle and strong hand as usual were good. Improvement has come on weak-hand only. Still seeing the sights move and struggling to nail down any one particular cause. With that said, I'm getting to the point where I get 5 or 6 good pulls for every one bad pull. I think I may need to just keep at it without wasting energy searching for a red herring.

Moved on to surrender draws. My "cold draw" was 1.3s today. Much better than my usual 1.5-1.6 cold. After just 3 attempts I was hitting 1.1sec and even had a couple successful runs around 1.0x. Focusing on keeping my core straight and shoulders relaxed has majorly helped prevent me from hitting my palm. Hopefully these bruises eventually heal.

Finally I came back to reloads. Reloads are really not coming along how I would like. I have all kinds of issues here. Average time is coming in at 1.2 seconds for a smooth reload without issues. When I get to the part of my practice where I try to push the speed envelope, I just dont get anywhere. Technique falls apart, I start missing 75% of my attempts and the ones I do make are no faster, and mostly slower than my "technically correct" speed. I'm dumbfounded. Feed lips keep hitting and getting stuck on the frame, I have to adjust and reseat. Reload times when I try to go fast are mostly in the 1.5 second range. Then I slow down to try to "build momentum" by hitting 5 correct reloads in a row. I hit them in 1.2-1.3 seconds. Speed back up and it all falls back apart.

I tried to break it down and look at where I'm slow in order to identify which part of the reload I need to focus on. Going to my trusty Dryfire Reloaded book, it says the par time for a Burkett reload is 0.6 seconds. Decided to try that a few times and couldnt get anywhere near that time. Set the timer by my mag pouches to register when my hand hit the magazine. 0.6-0.7 seconds.

I'm either not reacting to the beep fast enough or I'm not moving to the mag fast enough. I'm not sure what a realistic reaction time is but my head tells me 0.4 seconds should be plenty. And would bring me within spitting distance of a 1 second reload. Not sure where to go from here. Maybe I'll spend some time just slapping a magazine.

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Start at the "B" from Beeeeeep, and move your hand almost like if you want to kill a mosquito at your hip. The hardest part is to grip the mag correctly at that speed. Its okay to throw magazines around, i think. You are just building speed. Its nice to stop the mag at the magwell. That will make u isolate the move and will make you more accurate. Oh, dont forget to push the mag release as fast.

I´m a newbie also, but thats what i do. Just trying to help. Correct me if i´m wrong.