From humble beginnings - Learning this "action pistol" thing

[jmtyndall]

35 minutes ago, bimmer1980 said:

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.

 

Thanks. I have been trying to move at the beginning of the beep, but I guess I have not been very successful at that. Also I've been using a phone app as a shot timer. I did some testing last night and it won't pick up any time quicker than 0.55 seconds which I'm assuming to be the length of the start beep. I think it's time to bite the bullet and spend my birthday money on a Pocket Pro timer, I just might be working harder than this phone app is capable of supporting. 

 

I'll try isolating those parts of the skill as you mention to see if I can find any low hanging fruit.

[bimmer1980]

57 minutes ago, jmtyndall said:

 

Thanks. I have been trying to move at the beginning of the beep, but I guess I have not been very successful at that. Also I've been using a phone app as a shot timer. I did some testing last night and it won't pick up any time quicker than 0.55 seconds which I'm assuming to be the length of the start beep. I think it's time to bite the bullet and spend my birthday money on a Pocket Pro timer, I just might be working harder than this phone app is capable of supporting. 

 

I'll try isolating those parts of the skill as you mention to see if I can find any low hanging fruit.

I use a phone app too, called "IPSC Shot Timer". Dont think its the most accurate, but it will record even dryfire, or the mag been slammed in etc. It also wont pick up anything quicker than 0,57 or so.

You can put the paar time to 0,6 or you just record your mag when it´s getting slammed in. Do that without a mag in the gun, or it will record the falling mag too. 

[jmtyndall]

 

51 minutes ago, bimmer1980 said:

I use a phone app too, called "IPSC Shot Timer". Dont think its the most accurate, but it will record even dryfire, or the mag been slammed in etc. It also wont pick up anything quicker than 0,57 or so.

You can put the paar time to 0,6 or you just record your mag when it´s getting slammed in. Do that without a mag in the gun, or it will record the falling mag too. 

 

That's the same timer I've been using. I'll try it without the mag in the gun and see what I get. I definitely see several time entries when I do a reload. I wonder if the falling mag is giving me my 1.2s entry. 

 

I'll also mess around with par times again. I found it hard to keep myself honest with the start of the ending beep instead of allowing myself until the end of the end beep.

[bimmer1980]

2 minutes ago, jmtyndall said:

 

 

That's the same timer I've been using. I'll try it without the mag in the gun and see what I get. I definitely see several time entries when I do a reload. I wonder if the falling mag is giving me my 1.2s entry. 

 

I'll also mess around with par times again. I found it hard to keep myself honest with the start of the ending beep instead of allowing myself until the end of the end beep.

Yes, same problem here with the par-beep

 

When you are fast enough, the mags that are falling to the ground and/or tumbling around will give you wrong times.

[jmtyndall]

I adjusted the sensitivity on the app to eliminate the dropped mags registering. I discovered....I'm just slow. I live in a world of 1.2s reloads lol. I spent half an hour on reloads yesterday and managed to get a handful down in the 1.1s range and two in 0.9x second range.

 

Did another half-hour session later yesterday evening focusing on draws, grip and trigger pull. Draws went fine, no major progress but seeing some improvement and more importantly times which used to feel "out-of-control" fast are now starting to feel normal. I worked a bit on dry fire group shooting and trigger pulls and had a minor breakthrough on weak-hand only shooting. I noticed I was very focused on trying to pull the trigger straight and smooth and I was neglecting the rest of my hand. Namely grip strength. When shooting freestyle I grip the gun hard and it helps keep everything stable. Decided to focus on choking the ever-loving crap out of the gun when shooting weak-handed only. The harder I gripped, the more stable the sights were as I pulled the trigger. I'm going to play with this some more but it seems to be reinforcing the need to grip the gun HARD. Today my hands are tired and sore, so I'll do what my body wants (and not what my brain wants) and take the day off.

 

PS, I hope my desire to dryfire stays this high for a long time. I'm already seeing progress in my shooting and I'm excited to see where a couple years of consistent practice might land me. Sure, I won't be a badass like Ben Stoeger and classify as a GM right off the bat, but it seems possible to get there eventually.

 

Edit: Just found out a range nearby is running an all-classifier match this Sunday. Debating if I want to rush through getting classified, or just let it happen organically. We'll see how I feel at the end of this week.

Edited February 28, 2019 by jmtyndall

[jmtyndall]

I decided it was in fact a good idea to shoot the all-classifier match this weekend. I've been practicing mostly reloads and draws and I'm seeing progress. I've noticed a flinch in a few of my match videos, and my splits aren't very fast in Bill Drills because I have practiced "pin and reset" for so long. Part of trigger control at speed is going to be both pulling and releasing the trigger quickly without disturbing the sights. Also going to be spending more time on weak-hand only. 

 

Classifier Match summary:

 

CM 99-07 Both Sides Now #1

4/7 Production; 24/50 Overall

This was the first stage of the day and I shot really good points here, but I was pretty slow. I was the second slowest of all production shooters, while the points saved me. Reviewing the video my shooting pace on the second and third string seem better than the first string, but the draw to first shot was hovering around 2 seconds. Lots to work on with leans and general shooting speed/confidence. Low hanging fruit.

HF: 3.6427 / 50.89%

 

CM 18-08 The Condor

3/7 Production; 17/50 Overall

Easily my best stage of the day. Turn and draw speed to the first shot was about 1.6s, not speedy at all but it was okay. I did better than a lot of shooters here, and mostly because I wasn't afraid to move fast between the shooting positions. My first reload wasn’t too bad and I started moving before finishing it. The second reload I was being very careful not to get sucked into the 180 trap reloading while moving backwards. The result is I stood still and did a reload before I started moving. Also the video shows me I’m doing some weird…tactical flip with the gun when I’m ejecting the magazine, no need for the extraneous movement so I can work on training that out. Even still I managed a B-class percentage here.

HF: 3.6772 / 68.52%

 

CM 18-03 We Play Games

5/7 Production; 23/50 Overall

Another couple of 1.5-1.6 second draws. I’m much faster than this in practice, and I can see in the video that I’m moving my hands quickly, and getting the gun up on target, then I spend half a second seeing the sights and firing the shot. I think a lot of this is a confidence issue like I said before. In dry fire I’m getting a draw, sight picture and trigger pull in ~1.1 seconds. However I haven’t found a place where I can live fire out of a holster, and I don’t have a real shot timer. There’s a disconnect in my head where I don’t trust the sight picture I’m getting and then spend time refining and pulling the trigger in live fire, which I’m not doing dry. Bobbled the first reload here and it cost me a little bit of time, and then training kicked in and I went to get my weak-hand back on the gun even though it was a strong hand only string. By my estimates these two things cost me 1.5 seconds.

HF: 3.8877 / 52.15%

 

CM 18-05 No Need To Believe in Either Side

7/7 Production; 47/50 Overall

Holy meltdown. I went first on this stage and I wasn’t quite ready. I’ve been trying to learn to visualize though I never really “see” anything. Currently I just kind of imagine how I’m going to shoot the stage. Anyways…in my head I set a blistering GM pace on this stage. In real life…you can call me Alpha-Mike. Draw to first target wasn’t bad, but then things fell apart. Alpha/Mike on the first target, blew through the steel okay then the last target on the first array. Had a good first shot and knew right away I missed the second, couldn’t remember if I was allowed a make-up shot so I proceeded with my reload (and bobbled it in my distraction) and moved on to the second array. Head was somewhere not-in-the game here and went Alpha-Mike on the first target (not calling my shots), second target I hit Alpha first shot then pulled the second shot low, knew right away it had to be the no-shoot so I decided to send another one which I called good but in reality it landed right on the perf of the no-shoot. 2 no-shoots on one target. At this point I slowed down for the next target and called two good shots (Alpha-Alpha) and then yanked the trigger on the last target for an Alpha-Delta. 3 Mikes, 2 No-Shoots in one stage. I could make excuses all day, but this stage isn’t acceptable to me. I was way too close to zero’ing this stage and that makes me want to do better. Next time I see this classifier I’ll be telling you a different story, I’m sure of it.

HF: 0.4919 / 5.44%

 

CM 99-28 Hillbilton Drill

5/7 Production; 30/50 Overall

This was a fun stage, and I felt pretty good about it in the moment. Amazing how running 6-pieces of steel in less than 3 seconds can really skew your memory of the stage. Another 1.6+ draw where I was on target in about 1 second and spend another 0.5 refining and taking the shot. Consistency is key right? Also took a reading of my splits here, seem to be about 0.5 seconds so that should be an easy thing to fix. Oh yeah, and I had a super impressive flinch on the second target. 

HF: 5.0388 / 48.33%

 

CM 99-47 Triple Choice

3/7 Production; 20/50 Overall

I need to work on transitioning to weak-hand only. This skill slowed me down on several stages. I also need to work on weak-hand only precision. According to the scoring here I only shot one hardcover mike. Another shooter pulled me aside and told me that he thought I shot 2 additional mikes on the center "head-box only" target but the tape came off so it looked like 1 A, 2C. I tried to review the video to see the hits but the quality doesn’t allow me to zoom in enough, and the background is dark so the hits don’t show through the target. I specifically slowed down those shots to make the hits and don't remember calling bad shots. I’m really not sure how to feel about this. Anyways, it never hurts to practice these shots so I probably will.

HF: 2.1658 / 38.19%

 

Match Take-Aways:

1) Quit forgetting the hand-warmers!

2) Confidence. If I'm doing honest dryfire I don't need to spend an extra half-second confirming sight pictures on draws. I need to find a range where I can draw from a holster and a timer so that I can practice this live in a non-match environment and either confirm my dry-fire is honest or else FIX my dry fire.

3) Splits and transitions, they say these should be about the same time. Well they are, just slow ~0.5 seconds. I'm going to start working on these items in dry fire by doing trigger control at speed, and also setting up some random targets to transition between.

4) Weak hand only. Not only the transition to weak hand, but also learning to pull the trigger. About 50% of the time I can pull the trigger without disturbing the sights. The other 50% the front sight breaks left as the trigger breaks. I've tried adjusting hand position, trigger position, hand tension, focusing on my one finger etc. Can't find the "secret sauce" to fix the issue. I probably learned to pull the trigger straight with my strong hand by firing a few thousand repetitions, so I'm hoping some weak-hand only practice will build those muscles and finger coordination that's needed to do this with my weak hand too. 

 

Match Video below: 

 

[jmtyndall]

Welcome to C-class! 54.97%

 

My current classifiers are as follows:

68.52%

52.15%

50.89%

48.33%

38.19%

5.44% - Will be dropped because it's more than 5% lower than the minimum C-class score.

45.63%

 

Assuming that my next classifier comes in around my current percentage then the 5.44% and the 38.19% won't be counted and I will be around 54%. Upper C-class. I see some low-hanging fruit which hopefully I can pick up quickly and move into B class over the next few months.

 

Looking at my shooting now I see the following as keys to getting into B class: Confidence, Splits & Transitions, Execution of practice skills.

 

Confidence and execution should come with more matches and more live-fire practice in general. I need to prove in live-fire that I can accomplish what I'm doing in dry fire. Faster splits should come with confidence combined with training away my pin-and-reset habits. Transitions will be worked into my dry training, and hopefully I can improve them by working on my index and seeing the sights faster.

Edited March 6, 2019 by jmtyndall

[jmtyndall]

Woah...lots of posts in the last 24 hours. I was listening to Ben Stoeger's podcast today and they were talking about the need to go fast and "break things" in practice so you get to know what fast feels like, then fix those things and learn to see at that new speed.

I brought this to dry fire tonight and, I'll be damned, it actually worked. I started with my draw which I've been hovering around 1.1 seconds. I decided to just beat 0.9 seconds and see what it looked like. A couple tries and I hit that. Okay, beat 0.8 seconds. A couple tries and hit that. So I set a goal to beat 0.7 seconds. I was able to get a couple reps at 0.72 seconds. At this point everything was falling apart. So I started putting things back together. Hit the weak hand grip. See the sights. Align the gun. Suddenly I was hitting 0.9 second draws and seeing the sight. I'd make a mistake, adjust my grip and hit a draw that felt glacially slow, but the time would say less than 1.1 seconds. I went ahead and ran in this 0.9-1.0 second range for a while with good success.

I tried to apply this to reloads and ended up throwing a few mags across the room and missing a lot of reloads without getting any faster. I think next time I'll try doing this Burkett style

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

[jmtyndall]

Big day at the range today. Went in with the goal to learn some things about the gun and myself, as well as to push splits and focus on grip. I'd consider it a success.

 

First I started off with 15 yard group shooting (15 yards is as far as this indoor range goes). I hate indoor ranges because I can't properly focus on my front sight, but I still shot some decent groups with the goals of 1) confirming my gun is zeroed, 2) confirming whether 124 or 147gr bullets shoot better, and 3) what level of accuracy I can achieve. First two 5 round groups were 3.5" and then 2.5" respectively and they landed 4" above the point of aim and centered about 1" right of center. Then fired a 20 round group which measured just under 5" (I could feel myself losing concentration). Took a break and got out the 124gr bullets, first two 5 round groups were 2.5" and 2.25", and then a 20 round grouping came in at 3.5" including the 2 called high flyers and 1 called low-left. I don't want to throw those out because to me, my shooting is only as good and I can consistently be. I don't get to throw out charlies in a match unless I make them up! 124gr load shoots 1.5ish inches right, and 1 inch high. The Dawson website suggests that I will need a 0.190" high front sight in order to zero the pistol. I need to chrono this 124gr load, and when I do I'll confirm what I'm seeing and order that new sight. Too bad nobody offers an adjustable rear sight. I also need to move my rear-sight 0.020" to the left to center up my hits.

 

Next I was curious how good of a sight picture was needed for "practical accuracy" in this sport. So I tested at 3, 5, 7, 10, and 15 yards by taking my fiber to the limits of the rear sight notch left, right, high and low. I am honestly shocked how much I could get away with while still getting very good hits. Out to 10 yards, if the rear sight in anywhere in the notch, and with an acceptable trigger pull, that's an Alpha. At 15 yards, the same procedure yielded 3 charlies (left, right and low) and one borderline alpha (high). I wanted this information to prove to myself that I don't need to stare so hard at the sights, wasting time, to get good hits.

 

I moved on to shooting 3 and 5 yard bill drills, with the personal goal to break my pin-and-reset habits and mental blocks about sight picture to try and get some faster splits. The first couple of attempts I just couldn't do it, I was seeing the sights line up and breaking 2 shots with 0.4-0.5 splits. I decided to apply the lessons learned from my draw practice last night, just force your body to do it fast and watch or observe what happens. Almost like watching from the outside. By the third attempt I was ripping all 6 shots in 1.3 seconds with splits in the 0.17-0.20 range (plus a little reaction time for the buzzer), looked at the target and I was shooting all alphas, as I should be at 5 yards. I took this new confidence and started shooting doubles, just absolutely pulling the trigger as fast as I can and trying to observe the gun. Feel what it's doing in my hand, see the sights, feel my trigger finger moving, feel the hand tension and the arm tension etc. After a couple reps I realized how much I could see despite how fast I was going. I could see the sights moving, the harder I gripped (my hands hurt now) the less the sights moved, I could even call some of the shots! I moved this out to 10 yards and tried the same thing. I couldn't fully break the mental block that was slowing me down but I was shooting in the 0.20s and 0.30s with great success. Shot 5 rounds of this with 3 low-left charlies which I knew the instant I yanked the trigger that I tensed the whole hand and pulled the shot low. I'm really excited about this in particular, looking forward to working on this more and pushing to further distances while learning to keep everything under control and see what's happening.

 

Finally, I needed some reassurances about my weak-hand only shooting after the other shooter told me that I shot 2 mikes on the classifier last week. I shot 50 rounds, weak hand only at a 10 yard head box. I shot 44 alphas, 5 bravos and one mike. Feeling pretty good, but not definitive I decided to add some pressure to help simulate how I would have felt in the match. Set a 3 second timer and shot 2 shots to the lower A-zone, followed by 1 to the upper A-zone. I did this 20 times and shot 0 mikes. I now have the peace of mind that ghosts didn't fly by and rip tape off the target during that classifier. I hit my shots and he saw them wrong. 

 

I feel...inspired and ready to work. Excited for my next range session.

 

 

[jmtyndall]

Followed up with a day at the outdoor range. Got a major load worked out for my Glock, but had some chrono errors that interfered with dialing in my minor load.

Bad day of shooting groups at 25 yards. Had a couple in the 5 inch range but couldn't manage any better than that. Had a lot of issues focusing on the front sight. I'll see if I can work on maintaining that nice sharp focus before next time out

Sent from my SM-G892A using Tapatalk

[jmtyndall]

Set up for transitions last night. It takes more effort than I expect to move my eyes first before the gun, I kept finding myself tracking the sight across the room and trying to settle it on the target. I really need to work on this quite a bit.

 

Also taking a note here that I need to remember to work on trigger control and trigger control at speed! Freestyle and strong hand only I have good trigger control when moving slowly and I can pull the trigger without disturbing the sights. When moving quickly freestyle trigger control is still good (crushing with the weak hand stabilizes the gun quite a bit), but when shooting strong hand only I have a tendency to tense the whole hand when the buzzer goes off and I start pulling the trigger. I think I know how to work on that. Weak hand only is a totally different story. The sights almost ALWAYS break left as the trigger releases. I've tried sticking more finger in the trigger, less finger in the trigger, purposely pushing right with my trigger finger, removing fingers from the grip, gripping hard, gripping losely, different backstraps and I can't seem to find a consistent solution to this problem. I feel like half the time I pick up the gun I can get about 4/5 trigger pulls without moving the sight, then the next time I pick up the gun I get 0/20 without moving the sight. I've shifted my mental focus from keeping my other fingers perfectly still to concentrating on the trigger finger, to thinking about what show is going to be on TV later and I just cannot pinpoint the issue. It's getting a bit frustrating. Maybe pulling the trigger weak hand only a few thousand times will help? Or maybe it's just going to ingrain whatever the heck I'm doing to cause this. 

[bimmer1980]

17 hours ago, jmtyndall said:

Set up for transitions last night. It takes more effort than I expect to move my eyes first before the gun, I kept finding myself tracking the sight across the room and trying to settle it on the target. I really need to work on this quite a bit.

 

Also taking a note here that I need to remember to work on trigger control and trigger control at speed! Freestyle and strong hand only I have good trigger control when moving slowly and I can pull the trigger without disturbing the sights. When moving quickly freestyle trigger control is still good (crushing with the weak hand stabilizes the gun quite a bit), but when shooting strong hand only I have a tendency to tense the whole hand when the buzzer goes off and I start pulling the trigger. I think I know how to work on that. Weak hand only is a totally different story. The sights almost ALWAYS break left as the trigger releases. I've tried sticking more finger in the trigger, less finger in the trigger, purposely pushing right with my trigger finger, removing fingers from the grip, gripping hard, gripping losely, different backstraps and I can't seem to find a consistent solution to this problem. I feel like half the time I pick up the gun I can get about 4/5 trigger pulls without moving the sight, then the next time I pick up the gun I get 0/20 without moving the sight. I've shifted my mental focus from keeping my other fingers perfectly still to concentrating on the trigger finger, to thinking about what show is going to be on TV later and I just cannot pinpoint the issue. It's getting a bit frustrating. Maybe pulling the trigger weak hand only a few thousand times will help? Or maybe it's just going to ingrain whatever the heck I'm doing to cause this. 

 

Maybe try to imagine on every triggerpull that you pull the trigger right into your dominant eye. But i suck at weakhand too.  

 

I wouldn´t go for thousands of "bad" trigger pulls. Better try to do only good ones.

[jmtyndall]

Thanks for the input. I feel like if the issue is trigger finger strength or getting the brain acclimated to moving that finger on my uncoordinated hand, then pulling the trigger a bunch might help. If it's anything else, it's going to make the issue harder to solve. I'll keep experimenting with it to see if I can find any solution that works with any degree of certainty. So far I get lucky sometimes and unlucky other times.

[jmtyndall]

Well I went to the range today. I've been doing a lot of dry fire and focusing on grip, so my hands are smoked. I figured that was okay and I'd still have a productive live fire practice. Right after warming up I shot the doubles drill a couple times and noticed I was barely able to hang all the shots in the A/C at 7 yards. Tried to work on a few other things and was just really unsatisfied with my shooting. Gun was moving around in my hands, having to readjust grip, yanking the trigger and pulling shots low left.

Packed it in and called it a day. I was feeling pretty down but I spent some time thinking and reflecting and realized a lot of the issues stemmed from tired hands not being able to actually grip the gun. My hands were sore and tired which explains the gun shifting around, and likely explains the horrible flinch I didnt see as much last time I shot.

I didnt make progress in my shooting tonight, but I did learn a lesson. Know when to let your body rest. Dont ignore what its telling you. I turned money into noise tonight because I didnt listen. I will take a couple days off to recover, regroup and then try again next week. Hopefully with better results.

Also, need to train trigger control at speed. Cant be said enough. Slow fire, pin and reset I can pull the trigger dead straight. When I try to go fast my hand tenses and I pull the gun all over the place

[bimmer1980]

16 hours ago, jmtyndall said:

Well I went to the range today. I've been doing a lot of dry fire and focusing on grip, so my hands are smoked. I figured that was okay and I'd still have a productive live fire practice. Right after warming up I shot the doubles drill a couple times and noticed I was barely able to hang all the shots in the A/C at 7 yards. Tried to work on a few other things and was just really unsatisfied with my shooting. Gun was moving around in my hands, having to readjust grip, yanking the trigger and pulling shots low left.

Packed it in and called it a day. I was feeling pretty down but I spent some time thinking and reflecting and realized a lot of the issues stemmed from tired hands not being able to actually grip the gun. My hands were sore and tired which explains the gun shifting around, and likely explains the horrible flinch I didnt see as much last time I shot.

I didnt make progress in my shooting tonight, but I did learn a lesson. Know when to let your body rest. Dont ignore what its telling you. I turned money into noise tonight because I didnt listen. I will take a couple days off to recover, regroup and then try again next week. Hopefully with better results.

Also, need to train trigger control at speed. Cant be said enough. Slow fire, pin and reset I can pull the trigger dead straight. When I try to go fast my hand tenses and I pull the gun all over the place

 

I see a lot of myself in your experiences.   If i have that bad days, i try to warm my hands up even more, just with draws and good hard grips. After some reps, they stop hurting. If the shooting somehow stresses me (what leads me to really strange 2nd trigger pulls), i do this one drill where you fire one round and do the next pull dry, as soon as the sights are back. When i can pull the 2nd fast and straight, i shoot some live pairs, then i change back to 1 live - 1 dry again and repeat. Just load a round and put the mag back to your belt, then repeat. Maybe there is no progress on that bad day, but at least i did some good reps and didn´t engrave 100 flinches in my brain.

 

I hope u understand my old school-englisch  

[jmtyndall]

 
I see a lot of myself in your experiences. [emoji4]  If i have that bad days, i try to warm my hands up even more, just with draws and good hard grips. After some reps, they stop hurting. If the shooting somehow stresses me (what leads me to really strange 2nd trigger pulls), i do this one drill where you fire one round and do the next pull dry, as soon as the sights are back. When i can pull the 2nd fast and straight, i shoot some live pairs, then i change back to 1 live - 1 dry again and repeat. Just load a round and put the mag back to your belt, then repeat. Maybe there is no progress on that bad day, but at least i did some good reps and didn´t engrave 100 flinches in my brain.
 
I hope u understand my old school-englisch [emoji6] 

Your English is great. Thanks for the advice.

I definitely slowed down and did some slow fire group shooting and worked on breaking the habit of holding the trigger back and riding the reset. Maybe the session wasnt a total waste. But I like your idea of shooting doubles with only one round. I'll try that out.

[jmtyndall]

I was back at the range last night. Did better than last time and my grip strength has returned, though I still have a bit of pain (probably mild tendonitis) from jumping in so hard. Hands haven't been used to gripping so hard for as long as I've been doing dry fire sessions. It's been REALLY hard to take the days off to let them heal. In the mean time I am still doing some movement and airgunning around the house, as well as digesting as much content as possible. Joined Practical Shooting Training Group, started rereading the books I have and been working my way through the Practical Pistol Show podcasts.

 

Anyways, back to the range time. As limited as I am with what I can do at this range I worked on pressing out, finding the sights and breaking a shot as quickly as possible at 7 yards. As close to performing a fast draw as I can get at this range. The results weren't exactly pretty, but out of 100 rounds I shot 93 Alphas, 6 Charlies and a delta, timer data was worthless due to other shooters on the range. I'm tightening my grip and anticipating recoil as I pull the trigger which I'm really trying to work on as well, so I spent another 60 rounds practicing trigger control at speed/group shooting. Basically set a 3 inch dot out at 7 yards, get a good sight picture, then execute a quick but smooth trigger press. The final 6 shots I was able to keep all 6 at relatively quick speed. I shot my remaining 90 rounds doing doubles at 7 yards, really trying to work on seeing the sights, gripping the gun, tracking the sights etc. My last couple of runs I tried to concentrate on locking my wrists and I felt like I was better able to control recoil. I want to make that a focus next time I go out. I am amazed at the things you can learn just shooting 2 rounds at a target just 5-7 yards away.

 

I'm itching to shoot my next match, but I'm out of town for a funeral this weekend. Probably for the best though since my hands are still a bit sore. 

[jmtyndall]

I must say, after a few days without my gun in my hands they feel pretty good. I can tell that hand strength and grip endurance are going to be an important part of my training. Did a quick session of dry-fire last night. I was not happy with either the speed nor the consistency of my reloads. Just a few thousand more reps and maybe I'll get there

 

Before I left for the weekend I had ordered an Apex DCAEK kit for my M&P and it made a massive difference. It's much easier for me to pull the trigger quickly without disturbing the sights, and particularly it's much easier for me to pull the trigger weak-hand only without disturbing the sights. I'm hopeful this helps my shooting a bit. 

 

But one drunken night while out of town I did a "bad" thing. I ordered a Walther Q5 match. Now I just need to decide if I want to stick with production or shift over to carry optics. While I think about it I'll keep shooting the M&P. 

 

Tonight's dry fire will be focused on reloads.

Edited March 26, 2019 by jmtyndall

[jmtyndall]

Working down reload times is much harder than draw times. With draw time I was able to force speed then clean up what broke. With reloads any time I try to push it all falls apart. Mags fly across the room, feed lips get stuck on the side of the gun, rim of the case gets stuck on the back of the gun.

I cant tell where I'm going wrong, I know that my grip on the mag isnt quite consistent. The gun position or movement up to the gun position is likely also not consistent. I pushed harder and harder trying to fix it and it just got worse to the point I was missing 70-80% of my attempts.

I think part of the problem is that this is a much more complicated skill than the draw. Tomorrow night I will back way off, no timer, half speed. Slower even just to work the mechanics then start working it down just one tenth at a time. Going to take me a LONG time to get to those 1.0 second reloads

 

Edit: Shoot Fast Podcast Ep. 48. "Gripping your mag consistently is as important as nailing your grip on the load." Listened to that a couple times and then went to grab my gun. The faster I go, the less consistently I grab the mag. I noticed that a lot of my missed reloads I was holding just the very end of the magazine which results in a lot more "slop" with where the bullet end of the mag is pointed, which is probably causing the top of the mag to smack into everything around the magwell instead of going into the magazine well. Slowed down to about 2.0 second loads and grabbed the mag really consistently with my finger nice and high along the front of the mag and noticed that things got a lot better. Going to work on doing that consistently as well as some Burkett loads and just working on grabbing the mag.

Edited March 29, 2019 by jmtyndall

[jmtyndall]

Went to do live fire this weekend. Still haven't gotten in contact with whoever holds approval power to allow me to use the action bays at the range I'm a member off. I get it...safety is important, but I've been getting the run around for months. Might as well not have the bays.

That said another practice session with no holster or mag pouches so I worked on 15 yard head shots strong and weak hand (classifier stuff), a bit of practical accuracy at 7 and 15 yards. Finally took the target out to 25 yards and did a bit of shooting for groups. Noticed I was struggling a bit seeing 2 rear sights and 2 targets.

Now when I first started shooting pistol I was cross dominant. I taught my brain to be right eye dominant, or at least to use my right eye for shooting. Now it's not a huge problem but since my eyes are nearly identically dominant I sometimes have a bit of issue when trying to transition quick or pick up the sights quickly. Also sometimes I get this double sight/double target and it's a bit hard to shoot. So when I got home I stuck some tape to the top half of my shooting glasses lenses. Doing a couple nights of dry fire I feel like this is going to be a big improvement. I'm picking up the sight very clearly and quickly, no ghosting, having an easier time getting a nice sharp focus on the front sight (seeing the serrations), and even seeing a more precise aim point on the target. Theres a match this weekend, I'll shoot it with the tape and see how I like it.

[jmtyndall]

Shot a match yesterday. Haven't had time to rip the video and analyze it yet but after reviewing the scores I see that my stage times are incredibly slow. Actually looking back I see that this is the case for my 2 other matches as well. Now there were a couple stages where I threw several mikes on steel which took a few seconds, but there's other stages where I just don't know where the time went. In fact a couple of them I distinctly remember a couple of shooters that pretty much walked between positions(where I made a point to run) and they have faster times than me. I have a feeling that when I watch the video back I'm going to discover that my shooting was embarrassingly slow, or I'll find a couple scoring mistakes. But most likely the first.

 

Feeling a little down about the match. Going to watch the video and then try to craft dry fire drills around whatever the worst parts of my shooting were. Lots of progress to be made.

[jmtyndall]

This one is going to be a long one. I found a few videos of others shooting the match, people I know were moving slower than me but had faster raw times. Clearly the issue is either a) the shooting, b) the stage planning, or c) the execution. I'm going to try and look at the videos from these points to determine the time lost due to each piece of the puzzle.

 

Overall Production Results, the top shooter is an A class. He shot 95% of available points, I shot 90% of available points which is the second highest. Regarding stage times first place shot in 126.21 seconds and my time was 186.02 seconds, second slowest of any Production shooter. In fact only 10 shooters shot the match slower than me, and of those shooters 7 of them were seniors or super seniors. 

 

Stage 1: 

My time: 30.13 vs. Winners time: 20.87

Right away I see that I take some time once I'm in position to acquire the first piece of steel, then 2 shots per piece of steel. Splits on the two shots are about 0.75s then 1.25s. Then I take a pretty hard lean to engage a target that is actually available from a later position in an attempt to eliminate a flat-footed reload. I spend 2.5 seconds total getting into the lean and firing the 2 shots. Then...I miss the reload while moving into position, maybe half a second down to fix the reload. The targets in this position go fine, though a bit slow for their distance. Next reload into the set of 4 targets at the back goes okay and the shots were a little slow because I had trouble seeing the targets through the smoke. Bobbled the reload going into the final position but hard to tell how much it cost me to fix. Shooting at the last position comes together pretty okay. So looking at just the stage plan and execution portion of the stage, I cost myself at least 5 seconds from what I could have done with no improvement to my shooting.

 

I believe a better stage plan would be to shoot the 2 steel and 2 paper from the first position and execute a reload while moving to the second position to take the 4 longer targets. With those shot a reload while transitioning to the targets on the right (hard cover and the two stacked targets). Then one step to the right to engage the semi hidden target on the move. Finally a reload into the last position to take the final 4 shots. I think this stage plan easily saves the ~3 seconds over the hard lean, another 2 seconds on the steel make-ups and another 2 ish from aggressive shooting on the closer targets and I would be in the 24 second range. The rest of the time must come from just generally moving faster, better shooting and indexing on transitions.

 

I'm not positive this was a legal stage, I think more than 8 shots are required from the second shooting position though the fault lines just created 1 big box. I could be wrong, and this is really just a note to myself to learn how to apply that rule to stages.

 

Stage 2: CM 99-33

My time:  7.92 vs. Winners time: 7.21

Okay, not a lot of time lost here to the winner, but definitely a lot of time given up in general considering a GM time on this stage is under 6 seconds. I have never practiced seated draws, so there is a bit of time there since I remember adjusting my grip as I was standing because where my hand landed initially was not correct. Also I had an issue after the reload where I couldn't get the sights aligned on the target. Took me a second to bring the gun down and get a proper sight picture on the body of the target. Looks like the shot-to-shot time on the reload was around 2.25 seconds and a standing reload at that distance ought to be about 1 second. In fact if my index had been better I can see that I've presented the gun back out to the target by 1.25 seconds. 

 

The nice thing about classifiers is that it's easy to see where you left time on the table. Hammer those reloads. Time with the gun in hand will improve the index.

 

Stage 3:

My time:  19.47 vs. Winners time: 14.15

Looking for 5 seconds this time instead of 10 like in stage 1. Unloaded table start so I grab a mag from pretty far back on the belt. Don't see any issue there, but right away I see a planning error. I move to the right to take a target, then turn left to engage a few targets. Then cross back to the right to get the final target in the forward position. Just an estimate that this stage plan cost me about 2.5 seconds with the long transition and retracing steps. I lose about a second when I come into the second position and look down to find the fault line and end up a little off-balance. Run back to the final position goes okay. Splits on these very close targets look pretty sporty (for me) but then...total brain-fart...I reload between targets. Now the reload didn't go horribly, in fact pretty smooth for me, but it wasn't needed! Easily 1.2 seconds lost there. I am not good (quick) at shooting in a lean and there were 2 of them on this stage which cost me. I see where I could make up at least 5.5-6 seconds on this stage.

 

Stage 4:

My time:  31.66 vs. Winners time: 15.44

I'm not going to lie, without watching the video I remember where most of this time is. Missed shots on steel and a pesky popper that gave half the squad fits about not falling. 2 other shooters hit it solid and then lost calibration calls so I just came back to it at the end. I think the "bones" of the stage plan is good. Start to the right with 9 shots, transition left with a reload take some shots, reload and engage the last array. 

 

So on to the actual breakdown. Missed the last popper in the first position, broke my grip and went to leave before rebuilding my grip and re-engaging which cost about 1.5 seconds. Moving to the second position for some reason I took the steel before the open paper. I should have taken the paper entering then transitioned to the steel being the harder shots. One mike on the popper cost about 0.75 seconds. Transitioned past the long array to a shorter popper array (because round count). I think if I shot this again I would go to the long target array first. Anyhow the close popper array is the one that was giving people issues. The last popper I missed the first shot then had a solid hit but didn't fall. Broke my grip to reload and noticed the popper wasn't falling so I shot it again (going to slide lock) and moved into a reload for the last array. First make up shot 0.75 seconds, second make up 1.5 seconds, bringing the gun up before noticing the gun was at slide lock 1.25 seconds. Took five shots to drop the long distance popper, accounting for about 5 seconds then about 1.3 seconds to come all the way back to that problem popper. 

 

Total execution issues here were about 12 seconds of stage time. And the RO told me that the one popper was falling after my first shot (but it was an incredibly slow popper) and my second shot knocked it back up. That's a bit frustrating, but the popper didn't exactly make or break my stage, spending 10 seconds on the long-distance array probably did break my stage.

 

Stage 5:

My time:  48.38 vs. Winners time: 35.62

My first "memory" type stage. There were several targets available from 2 different positions, and a couple target only available from one of those two. However you had to remember which targets were available from where because it was easy to re-engage or miss a target. I chose a fairly fat plan working from right to left as I believe it was less distance to run. Also there was an unstable platform at one of the positions (first or last depending on how you shot the stage). I thought it would be advantageous to hit the platform last since then I only have to enter, where using the platform first meant I had to enter and exit from it. I actually had to reshoot this stage because the plate rack kept dropping extra plates. The first time I shot 4 plates went down with 1 hit! 

 

I'm curious to see how much time I lose to execution and to see if my stage plan may have actually been better. The top CO heat in the match shot the stage right to left, same as I did.

 

Okay in the beginning, good hustle to the gun and to the position. Fairly long run but the gun is loaded and ready before I enter position. I enter this position on a weird target in the middle and then go left before working back to the right. The first time I shot this I started to the left and worked my way right. Not sure why I changed on the second run. This definitely cost time, but hard to tell how much. In the second port I forgot a mini-popper and then when I re-engaged it I threw a mike on as I went to leave position. That little mini popper cost me 3.5 seconds. I reloaded heading into the second position and meant to engage targets from left to right here. I came in and started in the middle while working left, then did an unnecessary reload (at 8 rounds) while transitioning all the way right to engage a popper only available from this position with 2 shots. Make up shot 1.25 seconds, reload and transition 2.5 seconds, engagement order...some seconds. Head to the last position (this run is where that reload was supposed to happen) into the unstable platform. Mike on the first plate, 1 second make-up. Mike on second plate, 1.25 seconds (but I did get a bonus plate here). And the crown jewel of this stage...a 3.0 seconds standing reload on the plate rack that wasn't needed!

 

Without counting any time for having a silly engagement order, execution errors cost me 12.5 seconds here. Fixing my engagement orders gets me more in line with the winner's time.

 

Stage 6:
My time:  48.46 vs. Winners time: 28.29

By far my worst stage. In fact....I was 10 seconds slower than the second slowest shooter. Shoothouse type stage and didn't have much time for trying to develop a plan, so I went into this with only one part of a stage plan which was "reload on the right." First shot I hit the popper, but I hesitated to make sure it went down then turned to engage some targets out the window to the right. I should have been taking the wide open target while moving into position, instead I waited until I was all the way up to and arms through the window. Definitely the slow way to go. Then on the final hard cover target I made up a shot after I broke my grip. Another 1.5 seconds breaking and rebuilding grip. This target was so close there was absolutely no reason for it.

 

Reload into position 3 was a bit sloppy, I overshot and had to run back a little to get in position for the long popper. 7 shots at this popper taking 8.5 seconds. Huge strategic error here not taking one or two shots and then running. This stage was right around 5 HF, so losing 15 points (-10 for a mike and the 5 points lost for not getting a hit) was only worth 3 seconds on that target. I spent 3x that and drove my hit-factor and time way down. By leaving the target I would have brought my stage HF up by 10%. 

 

At this point I have to do an unplanned reload and move into the next position. I completely space that I didn't want to go all the way into the position. Both targets were available from the entry to the position. By going all the way into the position then backing out I believe I cost at least a second. Bobble the reload into the next position and end up standing still trying to fix the reload for almost 2.0 seconds. Missed the next position too and had to back track a bit to get into it. Coming into the final position I wait a long time until I'm completely stopped before I start engaging the final 3 targets instead of beginning to engage while settling into position. Hard to tell what this cost. 

 

The execution errors I can put a time to account for 12 seconds. Missing positions probably cost an additional couple of seconds. I'm still on the order of 5-6 seconds slower than the top guy, maybe made up by shooting on the move and not going quite so deep into positions. All of these targets were on the order of 3-5 yards except the long steel so I should have been splitting way harder on them and taking more risks like shooting on the move.

 

TLDR and lessons learned:

• I showed up late for reasons outside of my control so I didn't get to walk stages or develop stage plans. Not having a plan, and not memorizing the plan lead to several errors including missing shooting position, forgotten targets, and unplanned reloads which cost me significant match time.
  • I will show up early and walk the stages, develop plans, run them dry and visualize them.
• I was not seeing the sights, I was not pulling the trigger well, and I was not gripping hard enough. I was relying on the feedback from steel to tell me about my shots leading to make-up shots being needed after I broke my grip and committed to moving. Coming back into position and rebuilding grip cost me time on most stages of the day. The shots in this match were not that difficult and it is unacceptable to throw multiple mikes per target.
  • I will always work on fundamentals. I will train hard gripping in practice until my forearms hurt and I will practice controlling the trigger at speed. I will practice accuracy on longer targets more often.
• Missed reloads cost me on several stages. Slow reloads and missed index cost me almost all stages
  • I will work on improving my reloads, consistency and speed. I will work on improving my index so that I don't lose the sights while transitioning or reloading.
• Entries and leans to hit targets were a particularly weak point. I was slow getting into leans and way off balance exiting them. I entered positions too deep, not aggressively and wasn't shooting while entering even on open targets.
  • I will work on entries and leans in dry fire. I will work on core strength to help stability during leaning shots.
• Aggressiveness. Iwas not aggressive in my shooting. Many targets were 5 yards and less, there was no reason I shouldn't be splitting much faster on those types of targets or shooting on the move. Overall this doesn't make up a ton of time in a stage but it adds up over 6 stages.
  • I will work on my confidence to improve this. Confidence in knowing that when I see the sights and pull the trigger, the bullet will go where I intend. Confidence to know that shooting while entering position on a close open target will not cost me points. Also confidence that no-shoots are not bullet magnets. Some caution is warranted, but don't be scared to shoot aggressively on close targets just because they have partial no-shoots.

[jmtyndall]

Finally got around to compiling the match video from last week. I'm not real good at editing so it took a while.

 

 

Other shooting diary related news, we're getting ready to move so my free time has been going towards packing and cleaning and fixing the place we're in now. When I do get free time I can't really set up the target arrays I've been using so I've been working reloads and transitioning between light switches. It works okay for now but practice is really going to slow down over the next couple weeks.

 

I shot a match yesterday, hopefully I'll be able to rip the video and put together an AAR this week. My initial feelings are pretty good. I wasn't the fastest shooter by a long shot, but I went into the day pushing speed. Points suffered a bit, but only shot 1 mike. Didn't have as many stage execution errors, but I did have a FTSA because I missed a target, which hurt my score a good bit.

[jmtyndall]

Time for another match after action report! It will probably be another 4 weeks before I get to my next match with the move and everything going on. Hopefully I can find some time to practice during all of that. Finally picked up my Q5 Match from the gun store and have enough mags for it to shoot production. If I get lucky the wife might approve funds for me to pick up a red dot and a mag extension or two so that I can try out carry optics and see if I like that any better than production. Hoping to shoot a red-dot pistol a bit before I jump in and try it though.

 

Anyways, on to the match! After last match I tried to push speed a bit here, letting points slide. I was...somewhat successful. I wasn't the slowest of the pack, but I didn't keep pace with the leaders either. A lot of reasons for that, but I don't expect to be able to match the stage winners just yet. I just want to stay in the same ballpark as them. I feel like I did that here. In the process of pushing speed, I screwed up a stage plan and forgot a target. Hefty penalty for that which cost me a couple of positions in the final standings (could have been 6th if not for that). The good news is, that should be an easy thing to fix in future matches. I mean...easier than learning to shoot I'm sure!

 

Stage 1

9/13 Production

Stage plan here I felt was pretty good, but I missed a couple of cues and that cost me some time. 1.6s on the draw to a moderate range open target, room for improvement but not that terrible. Confidence in my split times is improving. After the first reload the second array of open targets could have been taken on the move, and I should have started the reload as soon as I fired the last shot. That delayed reload caused me to stand in position for about a second before I was ready to fire on the target. Spent a little over a second on the long transition from far target to the near one right inside the port, which could easily be cut in half. I think I see the issue here is that I have to step left and in towards the port to make the shot and I don't do that very efficiently. After the second shot I go straight for my reload per plan and shoot the super-close targets while entering position. A weak point I had last match. Overall time ended up pretty middle of the road ~6 seconds slower than the stage winner. LOTS of charlies here put me pretty far down the standings.

 

Stage 2 

11/13 Production

This is where I forgot the target. If I would have put even 2 charlies on that target while I was looking at it I would have been sitting in 6th for the stage. The plan here was to come into position, take the first target then shoot the plate rack right-to-left (in 6 shots :P) before making the exit towards the next few targets. For some reason I shot the plate rack left-to-right, probably a habit from practice. That's my preferred transition direction because I've been shooting with a little tape over the left eye. Plate rack itself went okay, but at that distance there's no reason I couldn't have gone 6 for 6 on the rack. Total time 4.0 seconds, and I know plenty of good shooters could clear that in 2.0. Steel (and plate racks) are a known weak point. 

 

Okay I was down on myself about the plate rack, but I'm pretty happy with this reload here! Sure I could have got my hand of the gun a bit quicker and maybe been able to shoot the second target without a pause, but it was pretty good. I see again I'm shooting the target moving into position which I like. Transition around the barrel and have a bit of trigger freeze, so I take 3 shots before making a long leaning transition to a target on the side. Transition time around a second. Sure I'd like faster but we're making progress.

 

Into the final section I meant to take the first two targets on the move, but that position didn't go too bad. Turning to the right I had a bit of trouble finding this target through the port. The plan was to shoot this target moving into position, then the one on the left. Quick reload and take a target through the right port then left port again. That...is not what happened. First two targets fine. On the reload I moved a bit too far, back tracked to see the target I needed to shoot...then for some reason my brain thought I already shot it! Moved to the next window, shot a target I'd already engaged and finished off the stage. Knew immediately what I did wrong but decided fixing it would take too long.

 

Looking back and doing the math if I had made it to the last target and shot 2 A's I would have recovered 40 points (FTSA -10, Mike -10, Mike -10, 2 Alpha +10). My Stage HF with those hits would have been about 5.1 meaning if those make-up shots took less than 7.5 seconds I would have been points ahead. Okay, lesson learned. A missed target in the last position is probably worth making up!

 

Stage 3: CM18-06

3/13 Production

This classifier looked really intimidating, but it actually plays to my strengths. I'm a bit of a turtle and tend to shoot a lot of points. Draw to 15 yard zebra target takes about 2.0 seconds, Which I'm sure I can improve, but I'm not too upset about it either. Shot cadence picks up a bit of speed here as I get more confident with sight picture returning (one of the few stages I actually put conscious effort into gripping the gun as hard as I could). Reload transfer to strong hand goes well but the first shot strong hand-only is very delayed. I was being super careful of my trigger pulls with that no-shoot hanging out. Turns out I put one shot just kissing the perf on the no-shoot. Shame, would have been a 64.5% classifier!

 

Second string I'm not as happy with. About 1.5 seconds on the draw to an open target and the splits are a bit slower than I would have liked. Slightly bobbled the reload and transition to weak hand didn't go so great. But I'm fairly happy with the result. 56.2% classifier all said and done.

 

Stage 4

11/13 Production

Oh man I have a love-hate thing with this stage. It was a lot of fun. But I did TERRIBLE at it. 5 seconds, 12 targets, 1 shot each. Being a turtle this goes completely against my strengths and that got a bit to my head. Luckily, mikes don't hurt you on par time stages. A little over a second on the draw, could have had that shot off sooner. Why in the hell did I take my weak hand off the gun? Don't know, couldn't tell ya, doesn't make no dang sense. Blast a couple targets weak hand only, throw a quick shot on the farthest target without enough lean then run to the other side and apparently take 4 shots at the first three targets. I lucked out and didn't get an extra hit on the third target. Is missing a 3 yard target luck? Well I fired 10 shots here and only got 6 hits, and was over-time by 0.1 seconds. I want a rematch on this stage, but it definitely got the better of me.

 

Stage 5

11/13 Production

I liked this stage. There were some interesting choices to be made and I felt like I could eliminate an awkward step in the last position by taking an extra target from the middle. It seemed like a good idea...nobody else shot the stage that way. My stage time was somewhat competitive (still 4 seconds off the production winner) but I had a couple Deltas, including one of the target I took through the port.

 

What's with all the different timer noises? It was throwing me off a bit. Draw here was okay but I harp on that enough already. We get it, work on the draw/index/confidence! The rest of the stage I feel like went fairly well with regards to execution. Looking at the time it took me to make the extra shots from position 2 I am second-guessing the decision to take those targets from there. However with my reloads taking ~1.5 seconds I don't think that a flat-footed reload at the last position would have done me any favors. Overall I think I made the right planning choice, but just lost time on general efficiency of motion. This stage went pretty well considering my shooting level.

 

Stage 6

6/13 Production

So much steel. I just chrono'd my ammo and this stuff makes around 140 PF so there's no reason these steel pieces shouldn't have gone down. That threw me off a bit, and the texas star was really intimidating. Threw a fair number of mikes here on what should have been really easy shots. Also, I'm going to come right out and say I didn't have a good stage plan. I wasn't shooting with any of the experienced production guys, and a lot of the limited and open shooters were able to blow through this without being quite so punished by reloads. I tried to game out where to take targets from to make the reloads happen between positions, but wasn't having much luck without giving myself punishing leans. In the end I decided to shoot the same plan as the hi-cap guys and just live with the reloads. I'll come back to this stage some day when I'm better at planning and see what I come up with.

 

On to the actual shooting. Not sure what happened with these poppers in front of the no-shoot. They didn't want to go down, but I just watched a guy lose a calibration call on one of them so I wasn't about to leave them standing. Reload goes fine but I hesitate in position to make sure those poppers are coming down. Second position has 3 poppers in a row, one backward falling and 2 forward. I can't take anything else from here, and I can't get these from any other spot. Made the decision to drive down popper number one then try to take the mini after hitting the second one (there was a little gap). I throw a lot of missed on that little mini-popper (5 I think) which shouldn't happen. Now I'm a bit flustered and throw a bunch of extra mikes as the stage rolls on. Coming up to the star it didn't go as bad as I expected. Yeah I through a few mikes, but I think I got a free plate to fall off. Not that that's what I like but it was fun to shoot moving steel for the first time. Anyways, threw a bunch of mikes on mini-poppers all at pretty close range which cost a fair amount of time.

 

Stage 7

8/13 Production

I actually had the 4th fastest time on this stage even though I think my stage plan wasn't the greatest. 3 deltas really dragged me down a bit in the rankings though. The first two targets got to my head. They were close, and they were open. I wanted to shoot them fast. They were mini's so the simulated distance really called for a bit more care to be taken. Also, I thought "downrange" meant facing forward, turns out that I could have started facing the minis. I think I could have marginally saved some time on the draw from that. 

 

Came into the center target a bit closer than I intended and really had to slow down to not bowl it over. That made my reload come late and slowed down the next position. Here is where I think the plan could have been improved. I think I probably should have taken all 4 of these targets from one spot and then backed out of position to shoot the other side. Instead I grab the first two targets and then move a bit deeper to take the 2 targets down range. Mistake here, I wasn't shooting into the position, I took a while to get set up then get my sight picture before I started shooting. Easy lost time there. Reload around the front of the stage was a little messy and I just threw shots pretty quickly at the last 2 targets (why 3 on each? we may never know). Other than the mini targets I don't think this really went that bad. A bit of extra care on those first 2 targets could have gotten me into the 5th-6th place range.

 

Stage 8

5/13 Production

Last, but not least. Actually my first stage of the day. The plan here I think was good. Again about 5 seconds off the winner, and very middle-of-the pack. I was a bit over-careful on the 3 close targets leaving position 1. I wasn't super comfortable shooting through the narrow port between walls. I actually planned to shoot the targets in position 2 from far to near, but I got nervous about breaking the 180 on a reload while leaving that position so I opted to shoot them near to far instead. Reload doesn't go too great and I don't exactly hustle enough to the last spot.

 

I think I lost the most time here on transitions, and specifically the distance-changeup ones. The first transition from far to near takes about 1.4 seconds. On the other side the transition from near to far about 1.3 seconds. Then between the long targets I'm seeing about 0.75 seconds each.

 

 

Match Take-Aways:

1) Work the draw. Work on index. Work on confidence.

2) Transitions! They will improve as index improves, and as I get used to moving my eyes quickly. That said, I still am going to focus on dry-training transitions a LOT. One of other thing that I think will buy me some easy time is moving my eyes as soon as the shot breaks. Right now I think I'm waiting for the gun to come down before looking for the next target. I saw a couple stages in here where I did better at this than others, but stage 8 is easy to see just how long I'm spending before moving my eyes.

3) Steel and Plates. I want to be able to go 1-for-1 on these, and clean a plate rack in 3 seconds. My time between shots here was about 0.5 seconds, that should be enough time to see the next plate and get a shot off. Also, I'm going to work these dry in both directions!

4) Strong hand, weak hand. I have a feeling this will always be on the list. I don't think it's going to take a lot to see big improvements here. Just need to spend the time getting comfortable with shooting with SHO or WHO and build good trigger pulls.

5) Don't doubt myself, and don't be afraid to make-up any missed target that's available from the last position! 40 points is a lot, and at my skill level I'm shooting mostly 3-5HF on most stages. That gives me a window of 7-10 seconds where it's worth it to make up a forgotten target even if I shoot 2 charlies!

[AlphaCharis]

Hey!  A local!  I shoot at PB as well.  We may have met but I'm really bad with names and faces, especially when people are in their range gear - so if we already met... or talked at the match...  sorry - takes a few times lol  Paul Bunyan is mostly my home range (along with Jefferson) even though it's an hour 15 minutes away for me.  I shoot at Jefferson, Renton, Marysville, Custer as well for USPSA.  Only shot a few IDPA matches, though.  Nice to see you go all in and dryfiring and getting some livefire in!  We have a lot of people in our area that practice, I know you've met a bunch of them already.    You're doing very well for just starting out, welcome!

Edited April 18, 2019 by AlphaCharis