Josh's Training Thread

[joshdub84]

Still seeing all the areas on the forums here - I'm really liking this idea for a journal, hopefully I can use this to hold myself a bit more accountable.

 

I'm shooting Limited and currently at B class - The first chunk of my year hasn't involved a ton of dry-fire but I'm putting together a schedule as we finally get into Spring.

 

2021 Goals:

 

Limited A Class - with consistent shooting, not just lucking my way into the paper classification.

 

Stick to Practice Schedule - I'm putting together a calendar that will involve a minimum of 20 minutes of dry-fire each night during the week, one session of live-fire practice, and continuing with my efforts in the gym (starting slow but I've been getting there).

 

Participate in 5 Majors - I've already shot one level 2 for the year and I'm registered for both Area 3 and Area 4.  I plan to shoot the Missouri Fall Classic and I'm currently debating on shooting the Illinois Section match as well.

 

Complete RO Certification - there aren't many classes available in my area, I was scheduled to go to one last year and my work schedule ended up preventing that.

 

I'm also lessening the amount of club matches I'll be shooting this year, simply due to ammo/primer concerns but also to use some of that ammo towards actual practice beyond shooting a match.  Also looking forward to reading on everyone else progress - good luck to all.

[joshdub84]

Managed a small amount of live-fire on Sunday - went out with a little over 100 rounds and spent the time working on transitions.

 

Multiple runs of the bar-hop drill from PSTG (at 8 yards) and then setup some wide transitions to work through.

 

Bar-hop:  I was hitting 4.15 as a fair average for total time, my transition from 4th to 5th shot was dragging quite a bit and it fluctuated from .45 all the way up to .85.  I'm trying to be more aggressive in transitioning targets, especially at that range.

 

Wide Transition:  Gave myself a further distance to shoot from, around 15 yards from the targets and set it up as basically a 180 transition.  I was able to stay pretty consistent at .70 but I'd like to drive that down just a little bit.  The odd thing is that for some reps, the .70 felt close to the edge of control and on other reps, it felt super comfortable.  I'm pretty sure that I was tensing my shoulders far too much during many of the reps and those were the runs that felt rough.

 

I also am finding that as I transition my eyes to the next target, I'm picking a point that is center of the available space but as I move the gun my eyes tend to drift to the right side of the target.  Which then is causing me to overswing the gun and have to correct it back a bit.  I will plan to work on that in dry-fire but I'll likely need to set that up outdoors as my indoor spot has very limited space.

[joshdub84]

Shifted things around a bit and changed my schedule - I know have a bit more room to dryfire as the company I work for moved offices.  So now, waking up earlier in the morning to get to the gym and then to the office before anyone else.  I'm able to hang my dryfire targets and have a bit more space to work with.

 

Yesterday, I worked on some micro breakdowns of movement:

 

Establishing grip in holster - .4 par time, this time is probably a bit too fast for my current skill level.  I could reach the time limit but at the cost of tensing every muscle and found myself gritting my teeth.  Planning to change this to .5 or .6 for future reps.

 

From grip to presentation - .6 par time, this felt fairly comfortable.  As in most scenarios, my first few reps were not meeting the par but as I settled in, I started meeting the beep (definitely not exceeding it and definitely still close to feeling too tense but that feels right to me).

 

Bar-Hop:  I set up for dry-fire on the bar hop and upped my par time to 4.5 seconds.  Doing so allowed me to pay attention to what my feet were doing, when I pressured myself to get moving I would try to shuffle across the bar but it would end up with my feet stacked on each other for the second target group engagement.  It took some effort but I was really focusing on crossing over my steps in order to give myself a wider stance once the bar was crossed.

 

Micro-movements like that are a bit tough for me to wrap my head around so I plan to look up some drills I can begin with to work on that.  I purchased Kita Busse's movement book but have not really dug into it too much.  Sounds like a project to start working on.

[joshdub84]

I forget to actually post anything in these - dry-fire has still been going strong.  Currently working on more smaller movement aspects (while also working on aggressively attacking targets).  I continue to work through the Bar-Hop drill and I've also been doing slight variations of this where I'm cross-stepping into position during my draw.  Trying to also work on smaller position entry/exit style drills, need to find some decent examples that I can set up.

 

Shot my local match last Saturday, apparently I managed to bang my rear sight around during the weeks dryfire, I was hitting 2 to 3 inches right of point of aim.  Resulted in throwing mikes for three stages.

 

Fixed the rear sight and put in some drive time to shoot another club match on Sunday.  Ended up squadded with Jared Fox, pretty interesting watching his shooting in person and even RO'd for him on a stage.  There were a few things he mentioned that I'm really wanting to work on as well - one stage had two positions that required very heavy leans to get at some targets.  While I feel fairly comfortable shooting from a lean (I'm left-handed but either side feels fine to me) but I'm struggling with getting into those positions at the start, I lose a lot of time as I don't approach those areas with any level of confidence.  He mentioned just getting low with a wide base so I'm working on that.

 

Also, I need to start trusting my stage planning a bit more - I often come up with something that makes sense but I spend too much time trying to "perfect" it when the original plan was the best approach.

 

Once I get to about mid-May, I plan to start two dry fire sessions per day as I ramp up for Area 3 in July.  Thankful to have the office space that will give me freedom to essentially set up whatever I need.  With the range available, I'm planning to start some drills that include true distances with full-size targets.