Help with my reload? (With video)

[RePete]

Watching the reload vid that alecmc posted, the reload itself is done at chest height, whereas Jerry's reloads are done at buckle height.

 

My reload have always been done at buckle height.  Now I'm no longer shooting a 625, but a 686 and speedloaders.  Once I can get to the range, I should try the chest high reload.

[Makicjf]

17 minutes ago, RePete said:

Watching the reload vid that alecmc posted, the reload itself is done at chest height, whereas Jerry's reloads are done at buckle height.

 

My reload have always been done at buckle height.  Now I'm no longer shooting a 625, but a 686 and speedloaders.  Once I can get to the range, I should try the chest high reload.

I saw the same thing.  

I've begun trying to modify my own reload to mimic the MWP chest high reload.

Here's what I've divined:

After last shot open cylinder release, rotate muzzle slightly upwards and break backwards at the hip.

As ejecting pull gun straight in . I I've found when my elbow is at 90 degrees i'm bent forwardd. The body movement does 90% of the Revo re-orienting.

The strong hand drops as soon as the cylinder latch is pushed, grabs the new moon and meets the waiting downward facing cylinder in the traditional semi auto work space. Insert, close , regrip and push out.

This seems to create far less distance for the gun to travel and rotate, a physical index of my left arm against my side which is always the same, and increases the speed of the next shot by starting from high ready, as opposed to essentially nearly the pre rotate out position from the holster.

Truly genius!

Seeing it is one thing, executing it and retraining reloads to minimize gun movement are another.

Also, if this is consistently orchestrated, doing  a "one step" reload then moving hard might become faster than reloading as you move.

one could focus on reload, then hard movement.

this would allow better consistent positioning coming into positions hard, gun up sooner, and more true paths into and out of positions.

I'm going to try and emmulate this, for certain.

Jason

[MWP]

Movement with a reload is tricky. A lot of planning goes into my reloads during a stage. Sometimes it’s better to load then move, load on the move, or move then load. 
 

One main difference I see between my load and Jerry’s is that he used his thumb, by rotating the gun far enough to get his fingers in the frame, whilst I use my index finger on the ejector rod. While I don’t believe one is faster than the other ejecting, I believe the time it takes to get middle and ring finger back out of the frame and rotate the gun back to center is slower. Also, with this method, the gun spends more time rolled and your strong hand has to rotate “under” the grip to grab it again. The slowmo video very clearly shows this. 

[pskys2]

On 4/23/2020 at 7:27 PM, MWP said:

Do everything faster. Light the gun on fire if you have to. That’s the only way to get faster at anything in this game.
 

Smoothness is not important in going fast. That doesn’t mean you throw consistency out the door- but smoothness has no place in this game.  

Watching your reloads seems to me to reinforce my original statement.  Though BLAZING FAST your motions are smooth with no jerkiness or hesitations.  

I would also hazard that you have an innate hand/eye coordination above us average types.

When I spoke of smooth I use the term to describe the lack of uncoordinated, jerky or wasteful motions.  Especially when training newer competitors if they start thinking of speed over proper technique they may have a fast run, but the majority of their runs will likely be plagued with missed drops, partially ejected moon clips or fumbles.

Once they have the technique of handling the gun they can start pushing the envelope.  Hesitation and jerky movements are death to speed.

 

P.S. I listened to your Podcast with the Hit Factor (I think) and was glad to hear you defend the Revolver Division.  I'd hazard if they dropped the mag limit in Production to 7, so us Revolvers would not be at a disadvantage, I'd play there.  But I can only imagine the outrage that would produce!  It would be EPIC!

 

[Makicjf]

1 hour ago, MWP said:

Movement with a reload is tricky. A lot of planning goes into my reloads during a stage. Sometimes it’s better to load then move, load on the move, or move then load. 
 

One main difference I see between my load and Jerry’s is that he used his thumb, by rotating the gun far enough to get his fingers in the frame, whilst I use my index finger on the ejector rod. While I don’t believe one is faster than the other ejecting, I believe the time it takes to get middle and ring finger back out of the frame and rotate the gun back to center is slower. Also, with this method, the gun spends more time rolled and your strong hand has to rotate “under” the grip to grab it again. The slowmo video very clearly shows this. 

When I was teaching myself revolver reloads, I tried my best to mimic Jerry's method, but found all of the gun rotation required to use my thumb on the ejector rod frustrated me.  

I modified my monkey see monkey do to using my left index finger.  I found it required less fine dexterity: that is a plus for me.

Thanks for making the video and adding input!

Jason

[MWP]

1 hour ago, pskys2 said:

Watching your reloads seems to me to reinforce my original statement.  Though BLAZING FAST your motions are smooth with no jerkiness or hesitations.  

I would also hazard that you have an innate hand/eye coordination above us average types.

When I spoke of smooth I use the term to describe the lack of uncoordinated, jerky or wasteful motions.  Especially when training newer competitors if they start thinking of speed over proper technique they may have a fast run, but the majority of their runs will likely be plagued with missed drops, partially ejected moon clips or fumbles.

Once they have the technique of handling the gun they can start pushing the envelope.  Hesitation and jerky movements are death to speed.

 

P.S. I listened to your Podcast with the Hit Factor (I think) and was glad to hear you defend the Revolver Division.  I'd hazard if they dropped the mag limit in Production to 7, so us Revolvers would not be at a disadvantage, I'd play there.  But I can only imagine the outrage that would produce!  It would be EPIC!

 

I agree, proper mechanics need to come first. What I normally see in classes or matches are people with a smooth flow already, a process- and the speed just needs to be turned up. 
 

Analyzing technique, as Jason pointed out, is huge to cut the speed down as well. How much the gun moves up and down and back up again, how hard the moon is thrown vs letting the nose drop and gravity do the work- all are excellent things for a shooter to examine as they trim time off a reload. 
 

That podcast was fun. Revolver is unlike all other divisions and guns, and I really do believe they have a place in the shooting games- no matter what the popular opinion is right now. I’m somewhat old school and hate seeing the rule changes constantly, so if we could just leave the current divisions alone for a few decades I’m fine with that. That’s also what I think makes revolver unique, other than switching to 8 minor (which I think was a very wise choice) the rules in revolver don’t change much. A reload today is just as hard as it was 20 years ago. 

[MWP]

28 minutes ago, Makicjf said:

When I was teaching myself revolver reloads, I tried my best to mimic Jerry's method, but found all of the gun rotation required to use my thumb on the ejector rod frustrated me.  

I modified my monkey see monkey do to using my left index finger.  I found it required less fine dexterity: that is a plus for me.

Thanks for making the video and adding input!

Jason

I tried extremely hard to mimic Jerry’s reload and just didn’t see the efficiency in it. Had to put my own spin on the string hand load. 

[IVC]

It's about going faster, but there is a trick - it's not constant speed, it's variable speed. 

 

Look in the video how slow your hands move to your reloading point (which is also too high, but that's a matter of technique, not speed). Then look at how slow they move once you have the new clip in and into your firing position. Those are trivial movements that don't require fine motor skill, yet you're doing them as if they are going to help you somehow with consistency. They won't. It reminds me of people drawing on a hard target and for some reason deciding to move their hands slowly, as if the sight picture acquisition started while grabbing the gun. 

 

Here is a simple drill to do a few times and every time when you feel your hands are getting sluggish. Set par time to 0.8 seconds. On first beep bring the gun with both hands as fast as you can to the low ready position where you would normally reload. On the second beep punch it out into acceptable sight picture as fast as you can, should be by the time the beep ends. All you're working on here is reaction to the timer and fast hand movement. The goal is to maximize the "dead time" you have with the gun at your waist. After a few reps, you'll see that you can have quite a bit of time between the beeps and this time is available to you only because you moved your hands as fast as you could. 

 

After you figure out how to move hands fast, go back to your 3.5 seconds par, move hands as fast as you can, spend 2.5 seconds entering the moonclip in the "dead time" and you'll be at your par time. Except, it will feel that you have a massive amount of time (which you do). You should be able to shave a second from your reload relatively easily, just by understanding that the reload is "fast-medium-fast" and not constant speed "medium-medium-medium." The top guys shave off time by optimizing the reload part, but you should be able to match their hand speed outside the reload since it's just a matter of moving, not skill.