I'm Finally Starting To Notice "little Things..."

[cautery]

I couldn't get my chronograph to work consistently today, so my "range day" became more about practice than testing/practice. Having the extra rounds may have made the difference...

Having laid off shooting for about 4 yrs, my handgun skills (which were nver very highly developed anyway) have atrophied to near non-existence. Today, I had a true practice plan... and followed it. Here are some of the things I noticed:

1) My draw is incredibly slow! Best I could get it down to, and still get an "A" hit at 11 yards, was 1.30 seconds. Now, that's nothing to really "notice", but I started to analyze why and came up with a few things... a) Can't get a consistent grip on the pistol coming out of the holster. I finally figured out that at least PART of the problem is that my holster is setup all wrong. It was set too far back on my hip which was causing me to have to move my shoulder to get to the grip... So I moved it forward, which helped some. However, then I realized that there is simply no way for me to RELIABLY get my hand up under the "beaver tail" and thumb between the gun and the belt... The holster is set too close to the belt... Time to add some spacers... This will also help to get the pistol away from my... well... fat. (Move it away from me, until I can get rid of some of the "me" that's in the way).

Frankly, it's amazing to me, that I was doing 1.3's with the mechanics so jacked up...

2) I can't get a consistent grip with my left hand.... This I'm sure is predominantly due to the fact that the right hand isn't in the same/right place (fast enough) so that my left hand can hit the same spot every time.

3) My stance is... well inconstent... (to be kind). My feet are in pretty good shape, and naturally seem to hit the right mark, but from there up, I'm in trouble. I can't seem to consistently avoid locking my knees out, or keep my back straight, or incline forward at the hips... In all, I end up lock kneed, sway backed, and leaning back a lot of the time... Not a very stable platform... Probably push me over with a strong breeze.

However, when I DO manage to get the stance right, my times and accuracy are better, and I can "feel" the shot... smoother and a lot more relaxed.

I couldn't get my draw to first shot to get any better, so I recorded it as a benchmark and moved on to draw and fire two...

1) My first shot got slower!!! Have NO idea why... One would think that you could keep the first shot the same, but it got about .2 or slower... Ideas?

2) My splits are incredibly slow... No way I could "see" the second shot faster than about .6 or so to start... I could hammer the second shot about 75/25 2A/1A1C in about .21 (slow even for a hammer), but that isn't acceptable.... Only 2A at 100% for 11 yards... and it has to be Oh so much faster... Why so slow?

Well, I FINALLY "saw" the problem... or rather DIDN'T see it... I'm flinching!!! I've NEVER had that problem before, but apparently now I do... I don't really care why I was doing it, but by ACCIDENT, I discovered/did something that helped....

3) I've always had cross-dominance (right handed/left eye dominant). I used to be able to get by with both eyes open and just move the pistol over... Unfortunately, it appears that either my dry-fire practice trying to convert to right eye, or simply age (42) has changed things... The dominance isn't strong enough anymore... Now, I drift back and forth and can't get either eye to take charge.... So, for the last several months I've been having to resort to closing my left eye... It's worked... better, but not a solution, and after today definitely not.

One of the things that's been happening since I started closing one eye is that I can't get my eye to transition to the front blade from the target fast enough... or at all sometimes.

Just for grins, I shot a couple of strings (draw and fire 2rds x 2 targets) with both eyes open, not worrying really about shot placement... just concentrating on getting a sharp focus transition from the target to the front blade... It worked... I CAN transition to the blade faster.... BUT...

More importantly, my eyes stayed OPEN... no flinch... or at least a drastically reduced frequency... All I can surmise is that having one eye closed kindof "loaded" the blink trigger for the other eye...

For the first time since I read Brian's book, I ACTUALLY SAW the front blade come up out of the notch!!! I was psyched...

Unfortunately, I actually saw TWO front blades come up...

Then I remembered reading about the tape trick, and seeing carina with one lense of her shooting glasses taped with some sort of "frosted" tape...

I didn't have any of that, but just for grins I tried a piece of black electrical tape over the central focus area of my left lense (placed while I held a sight picture strong hand holding the pistol... I just aimed with normal grip, and then dropped my left hand without moving anything and picked up the piece of tape and placed it).

Then I reloaded and shot some 4 round strings... Well, there's so much other stuff wrong with my fundamentals, that no miracles happened, BUT...

1) My transition from target to front blade was faster and more consistent,

2) I was able to get a VERY sharp focus on the front blade, and

3) I was able to see the shot... no flinching!

Progress... after a fashion anyway.

While shooting the 4 round strings (besides seeing that my transitions are sucky slow (.63)), I realized that I was shooting 2As MUCH more consistently on the second target than the first.... AND faster.

All I can come up with is that my grip improves before I get to the second target... Maybe the holster position tuning and a lot more draw practice can improve the grip thing...

Tomorrow... reloads. I really have to get to work on those... With the grip reduction on my Glock, I can't use a mag well, so I really have to get precice with the reload mechanics...

Anyway, I apologize for the long post, but I had a productive day, and it helps me to write stuff out to internalize/analyze it.

[Flexmoney]

Nice to hear you notice that progress came with a focus on vision. That is a key discovery.

[cautery]

Flex - Yup, I realize/believe that everythin else is basically subordinate to seeing... Maybe not subordinate in the strictest sense, BUT the "seeing" will lead you in the right direction on just about everything else that you need to do "right".

Now, at 42, my vision is rapidly declining at near distances, and the eyes don't react as quickly. Some of that I can mitigate with practice and exercises, but some of it is inevitable. The key to me shooting " better than average" will be to find ways to cope with the limitations...

Same thing with the knees... I have one bad knee and one that ain't much better. Can't get new ones, so I have to do tings to cope with the ones I have... like dropping say... 60 pounds and taking a large percentage of the load off them.

Man, I love this sport...

[Flexmoney]

I really put a lot of stress on the "seeing" part of the game. I should point out that I do so becasue I think that vision gives us some of the best feedback that we can get from our shooting. While it certainly isn't always (100%) honest feedback, it is more dependable than other sensors.

We also need to just be aware of all the other stuff that is going on (muscle tension, mind tension, ect.). That is pretty important too. But, vision is the foundation, I think.

[cautery]

I really put a lot of stress on the "seeing" part of the game. I should point out that I do so becasue I think that vision gives us some of the best feedback that we can get from our shooting. While it certainly isn't always (100%) honest feedback, it is more dependable than other sensors.

We also need to just be aware of all the other stuff that is going on (muscle tension, mind tension, ect.). That is pretty important too. But, vision is the foundation, I think.

In military helicopter training, the first thing the instructor tries to do is get the student focused on using his eyes. Flying "by the seat of the pants" will get you killed. Your body will lie to you...

Your eyes don't "lie", as long as they are not impaired in some way. It's what the mind DOES with the input that distorts the reality... When I was younger, I had almost a 100% photographic memory (not so much anymore). It's cool because your eyes are almost like videocameras... You can replay what they saw with virtualy no interpretation. I would suspect that his would be similar to what you'd LIKE your eyes/brain to be like when shooting... assuming you've reduced the mechanics to a sub-conscious level.

Flight instructors refer to a limited attention span and attention overload. When your span of conscious control is full and you add an additional stimulus and/or task, something gets dropped... r overall performance of all tasks deteriorates. The "good" pilots are those who can relegate more of the "normal" tasks to the sub-conscious, freeing up "attention" to handle additional taskings... like shooting bad guys and avoiding surface to air missles.

[Brazos]

Good Post.