Adventures of a complete beginner in USPSA

[crg]

I'm back, and only a little bit worse for wear. Early last week I had final exams, then my family came to visit so unfortunately I've been away from training for a week but I do have some good news. While I was gone some new Lok grips came in for the Shadow 2, as well as a holster to use temporarily until the GX one comes in.

 

 

The grips are "tall on top" palm swell bogies and they feel excellent. I swapped the holster onto my belt and did my dryfire today with the CZ. It will take some getting used to the weight as it's over 11oz heavier than my pre-Legion X5 but overall the gun feels very comfortable. The new grips leave a good amount of real estate to get my weak hand on and provide a ton of grip. One big plus of the CZ is I can hit the magazine release without adjusting my strong hand grip. I couldn't do this with my X5 which led me to a lot of experimenting but I never found a method I was really satisfied with. Getting the magazine into the gun, however, is obviously a bit harder since it doesn't have a mag well, which leads to my next point..

 

I've been doing some thinking about what division I'd like to eventually end up in. I'm not at a point where it matters at all, but I think I should at least get an idea of where I'd like to end up since to some extent it impacts how/what I train, i.e. training with da/sa vs using the manual safety, with or without a mag well, etc. Carry optics is the most popular division at the matches I've been to by far, and seems to tick the most boxes in terms of budget and how I want to shoot so that's where I'm leaning. For that reason I think it'll be good to train without the mag well, starting with the hammer down, etc.

 

One more piece of good news: I'm going to have quite a bit more income this summer than I expected since I lucked into a part time consulting job. I'm thinking the first paycheck will go to a dovetail mount and an SRO. I was debating selling the X5 to fund it but now I'll probably hang on to it as a backup just in case something happens to the CZ or I decide to send it to get milled later. We're not hurting for money by any means but I feel guilty spending too much at once on stuff my wife has no interest in. Happy wife happy life or something. 

 

Anyway, my next match is Sunday so I have a few more days to train with the CZ before jumping in the deep end.

 

On 4/30/2022 at 4:38 PM, Johnny_Chimpo said:

 

A one or two day pistol fundamentals class would speed your learning curve quite a bit.

 

I've heard really good things about this guy from people I trust: https://www.achillesheeltactical.com/product-page/baseline-pistol.

 

He has a baseline pistol class next Friday in NE Ohio.  Short notice but figured I'd point it out.

 

I absolutely agree. Unfortunately I couldn't make it to that one but I will definitely be on the lookout for one soon.

 

 

[Johnny_Chimpo]

10 hours ago, crg said:

I'm back, and only a little bit worse for wear. Early last week I had final exams, then my family came to visit so unfortunately I've been away from training for a week but I do have some good news. While I was gone some new Lok grips came in for the Shadow 2, as well as a holster to use temporarily until the GX one comes in.

 

 

The grips are "tall on top" palm swell bogies and they feel excellent. I swapped the holster onto my belt and did my dryfire today with the CZ. It will take some getting used to the weight as it's over 11oz heavier than my pre-Legion X5 but overall the gun feels very comfortable. The new grips leave a good amount of real estate to get my weak hand on and provide a ton of grip. One big plus of the CZ is I can hit the magazine release without adjusting my strong hand grip. I couldn't do this with my X5 which led me to a lot of experimenting but I never found a method I was really satisfied with. Getting the magazine into the gun, however, is obviously a bit harder since it doesn't have a mag well, which leads to my next point..

 

I've been doing some thinking about what division I'd like to eventually end up in. I'm not at a point where it matters at all, but I think I should at least get an idea of where I'd like to end up since to some extent it impacts how/what I train, i.e. training with da/sa vs using the manual safety, with or without a mag well, etc. Carry optics is the most popular division at the matches I've been to by far, and seems to tick the most boxes in terms of budget and how I want to shoot so that's where I'm leaning. For that reason I think it'll be good to train without the mag well, starting with the hammer down, etc.

 

One more piece of good news: I'm going to have quite a bit more income this summer than I expected since I lucked into a part time consulting job. I'm thinking the first paycheck will go to a dovetail mount and an SRO. I was debating selling the X5 to fund it but now I'll probably hang on to it as a backup just in case something happens to the CZ or I decide to send it to get milled later. We're not hurting for money by any means but I feel guilty spending too much at once on stuff my wife has no interest in. Happy wife happy life or something. 

 

Anyway, my next match is Sunday so I have a few more days to train with the CZ before jumping in the deep end.

 

 

I absolutely agree. Unfortunately I couldn't make it to that one but I will definitely be on the lookout for one soon.

 

 

 

 

I'll save you time and money: send that Shadow slide tomorrow to Primary Machine for a Trijicon cut and slap a 5 MOA SRO on it.  Carry Optics is here to stay and I doubt its popularity is going to simmer any time soon.  Bonus for supporting a Michigan company.

 

Also, see if you can find a local M or GM that enjoys coaching/teaching and have him help you with grip/draw/reloads/the basics.

[Reds_Dot]

Glad to hear you survived finals and you grabbed some work.

 

Sounds like you are heading a good direction. Carry Optics is THE most popular division in USPSA right now. I think for good reason too. I am gonna echo @Johnny_Chimpo and tell you to get the slide milled and I will also strongly suggest an SRO. I don't have any particular place you should go for the milling in mind though. The dovetail mount WILL BREAK. They all do. Plus that sits the optic super high on the gun. Get it milled and run that way. 100% worth it.

 

If you want to be able to swap to irons then I think CZ custom does a plate system that allows you to mount a rear iron sight. 

[crg]

I'll post a more substantial update later but first does anybody have experience drifting the rear sight in a Shadow 2? I tried putting it in a vice and using a hammer and punch but it wouldn't budge with any reasonable amount of force. I then bought a sight pushing tool (NcStar VISM) and tried that, but still couldn't get it to move at all. I tightened the tool down to the point that I'm confident something will break well before the rear sight moves. I think I'm just going to return the tool and leave this as a problem for whatever poor soul eventually mills the slide for an optic.

[ChuckS]

1 hour ago, crg said:

I'll post a more substantial update later but first does anybody have experience drifting the rear sight in a Shadow 2? I tried putting it in a vice and using a hammer and punch but it wouldn't budge with any reasonable amount of force. I then bought a sight pushing tool (NcStar VISM) and tried that, but still couldn't get it to move at all. I tightened the tool down to the point that I'm confident something will break well before the rear sight moves. I think I'm just going to return the tool and leave this as a problem for whatever poor soul eventually mills the slide for an optic.

You will probably have better luck getting an answer here: https://forums.brianenos.com/forum/200-cz/

 

[Johnny_Chimpo]

1 hour ago, crg said:

I'll post a more substantial update later but first does anybody have experience drifting the rear sight in a Shadow 2? I tried putting it in a vice and using a hammer and punch but it wouldn't budge with any reasonable amount of force. I then bought a sight pushing tool (NcStar VISM) and tried that, but still couldn't get it to move at all. I tightened the tool down to the point that I'm confident something will break well before the rear sight moves. I think I'm just going to return the tool and leave this as a problem for whatever poor soul eventually mills the slide for an optic.

 

Did you add some penetrating oil to the rear sight?

[crg]

1 hour ago, ChuckS said:

You will probably have better luck getting an answer here: https://forums.brianenos.com/forum/200-cz/

 

 

Thank you!

 

1 hour ago, Johnny_Chimpo said:

Did you add some penetrating oil to the rear sight?

 

I hit it with some PB blaster and tried again but I probably need to let it sit for a bit for it to make a difference. I might try again tomorrow but I'm not sure it's worth risking damaging the slide just to adjust the point of impact a little. I'm leaning towards just leaving it as is and letting someone else deal with it later, or dremeling it out if I need to remove it later for some reason.

[Russty]

Are you removing it in the right direction? 

[crg]

Sunday was my third match, and I'm happy to say I'm now 3 for 3 in not getting disqualified. This one was pretty different than the last two: the first was all classifiers so the stages were short and simple, and the second was big field stages. This one was the most challenging yet with several tight, complicated (for me) stages like the one in the video below. More importantly it was also the most fun. 

 

 

The bad news is I'm still really, really slow. The good news is I did do a few things right..  at least kind of. I didn't shoot any no shoots the entire match, and I correctly called a few misses and made them up. I also put a lot more effort into planning and visualizing the plan as much as possible in this match. I still can't actually execute the plan very well, but I did a better job of sticking to it and reloading as planned, engaging targets how I planned to, etc. Reloads specifically ended up being particularly important since my stock 17 round mags created a few awkward situations as you can see in the video. I didn't do them well, but I remembered to do them where I intended to so I'll chalk that up as a success! Regardless, in the interest of maybe not doing so many reloads next time I ordered some extended base pads this morning to bring my mags up to 23 rounds. I figure if I'm going to end up using them eventually it's best to start training with them as soon as possible.

 

One thing that stood out to me watching the video is my recoil control doesn't seem that bad. I bring this up because I took some slow motion video while shooting statically a few days ago, and that video indicated my recoil control is really bad. This leads me to wonder if the gun actually is recoiling much more than it looks like but it's hard to see at normal speed, or if I'm possibly gripping a lot harder under the pressure of a match than I am during a chill day at the range. I haven't been paying attention to grip strength during the actual match since I feel pretty overwhelmed as it is but I will try to in the future.

 

This match also really emphasized what my dryfire training is lacking: movement. Watching other shooters on this stage hammered home how much time I'm losing by shifting around awkwardly instead of shooting on the move, especially for close targets like these were. I also need to practice reloading on the move because.. well you can see why in the video. So far I've been doing the first level of dryfire exercises from Ben Stoeger's book which is all static drills. They've definitely helped with my fundamentals but I think it's time to work in some more practical skills as well. Maybe it's time to take a look at the next set of drills the book recommends.

 

Finally, today I got some target stands and a pile of cardboard USPSA targets in the mail. Later this week I'll be joining a new range where I can put them to good use, then the real training will begin..

 

[crg]

47 minutes ago, Russty said:

Are you removing it in the right direction? 

 

I'm just trying to drift it towards center a little. Currently the sight is visibly shifted to the right, and the POI is also shifted right as tested by shooting off a rest. I believe I'm trying to push it in the direction it was pressed in from though since the finish on the sight is completed scraped off the dovetail on the right side.

[Johnny_Chimpo]

On 5/17/2022 at 11:54 PM, crg said:

One thing that stood out to me watching the video is my recoil control doesn't seem that bad. I bring this up because I took some slow motion video while shooting statically a few days ago, and that video indicated my recoil control is really bad. This leads me to wonder if the gun actually is recoiling much more than it looks like but it's hard to see at normal speed, or if I'm possibly gripping a lot harder under the pressure of a match than I am during a chill day at the range. I haven't been paying attention to grip strength during the actual match since I feel pretty overwhelmed as it is but I will try to in the future.

 

This match also really emphasized what my dryfire training is lacking: movement. Watching other shooters on this stage hammered home how much time I'm losing by shifting around awkwardly instead of shooting on the move, especially for close targets like these were. I also need to practice reloading on the move because.. well you can see why in the video. So far I've been doing the first level of dryfire exercises from Ben Stoeger's book which is all static drills. They've definitely helped with my fundamentals but I think it's time to work in some more practical skills as well. Maybe it's time to take a look at the next set of drills the book recommends.

 

 

 

The gun is certainly not wiggling around in your hands, but muzzle flip is a bit much.  A Shadow 2 can be shot with a whole lot less muzzle flip if yours wrists are locked.  But it looks to me that your wrists are still not locked.

 

The stage in the video has a lot of movement that is over in at most 2 or 3 steps.  Even when going across, it's still not very far.  Run with both hands on the gun and the gun as close to eye level as possible for those short hops.  It's a waste of time to break your grip for a short movement when you then have to waste time and add risk by having to re-grip the pistol and bring it up to eye level.

 

If you have to run far, then yea drop your support hand and get going.

[crg]

12 hours ago, Johnny_Chimpo said:

 

The gun is certainly not wiggling around in your hands, but muzzle flip is a bit much.  A Shadow 2 can be shot with a whole lot less muzzle flip if yours wrists are locked.  But it looks to me that your wrists are still not locked.

 

I definitely still have some work to do on my grip. I think I did a bit better in the match this last weekend but I notice it takes me some time to establish a decent grip after drawing so my first few shots are really slow. You can really see the gun jumping as I engage the first two targets in this stage:

 

 

12 hours ago, Johnny_Chimpo said:

The stage in the video has a lot of movement that is over in at most 2 or 3 steps.  Even when going across, it's still not very far.  Run with both hands on the gun and the gun as close to eye level as possible for those short hops.  It's a waste of time to break your grip for a short movement when you then have to waste time and add risk by having to re-grip the pistol and bring it up to eye level.

 

If you have to run far, then yea drop your support hand and get going.

 

Someone else told me the same thing at this match. I seem to have a bad habit of lowering the gun every time I move regardless of the distance. I made an effort to be better about this on the stage above and ended up forgetting my reload (I meant to do it while moving down range to the last position), but I think I did a little better job. Fortunately I now have access to a range where I can practice movement so this is something I will be working hard on, along with a variety of other fundamentals. Now I can focus on all of these things in practice rather than overwhelming myself with things to work on during matches.

 

The good news is overall I did a little better in this match than the last few. I placed solidly in the middle of the pack on most stages (the ones where I didn't forget about targets..), coming out on top of a lot of C shooters. I don't put much stock in match results since there's so much volatility in who shows up, how people perform on a given day, etc. but as a lowly D class it feels good not to be last. At least not on every stage. 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 24, 2022 by crg

[Johnny_Chimpo]

4 hours ago, crg said:

 

I definitely still have some work to do on my grip. I think I did a bit better in the match this last weekend but I notice it takes me some time to establish a decent grip after drawing so my first few shots are really slow. You can really see the gun jumping as I engage the first two targets in this stage:

 

 

 

Someone else told me the same thing at this match. I seem to have a bad habit of lowering the gun every time I move regardless of the distance. I made an effort to be better about this on the stage above and ended up forgetting my reload (I meant to do it while moving down range to the last position), but I think I did a little better job. Fortunately I now have access to a range where I can practice movement so this is something I will be working hard on, along with a variety of other fundamentals. Now I can focus on all of these things in practice rather than overwhelming myself with things to work on during matches.

 

The good news is overall I did a little better in this match than the last few. I placed solidly in the middle of the pack on most stages (the ones where I didn't forget about targets..), coming out on top of a lot of C shooters. I don't put much stock in match results since there's so much volatility in who shows up, how people perform on a given day, etc. but as a lowly D class it feels good not to be last. At least not on every stage. 

 

 

 

 

 

Definitely making progress.  Keep analyzing and problem solving and you'll be in A class before you know it.

 

I'm going to edit my comment about your grip after watching the video a few times.  I don't think your wrists are the issue.  I think it's the elbows.  They look to be extended to the point of being locked.  So your arms become rigid instead of flexing to dampen some of the recoil.

 

[crg]

On 5/24/2022 at 5:33 PM, Johnny_Chimpo said:

I'm going to edit my comment about your grip after watching the video a few times.  I don't think your wrists are the issue.  I think it's the elbows.  They look to be extended to the point of being locked.  So your arms become rigid instead of flexing to dampen some of the recoil.

 

 

Yes I think you're right. I've been paying more attention during dry fire recently and have noticed there's a lot of tension in my upper body. My arms, neck, and shoulders are all tense and rigid. I can even feel the tension in my face. The Ben Stoeger and Charlie Perez books both mention this needs to be avoided so I have some work to do.

 

On a positive note, I now have access to an outdoor range where I can train to my heart's content. Today was my first visit so I decided to get a live fire baseline for all the drills I've been doing in dryfire: all the level one drills from the Ben Stoeger book and a few extras to incorporate movement and moving reloads. I've been doing dryfire consistently for about two months now but haven't had any opportunity to test the skills I've been (or haven't been) developing from it in live fire outside of matches until now. First of all it felt absolutely amazing to have the freedom to do these drills with live ammunition, even basic drills like bills and blakes are a blast to shoot. Second, after doing these drills in live fire I think in some ways I am a much better shooter than I realized but in others I'm much worse than I thought. For example I've assumed my splits in pairs and bill drills would be very slow since I have no practice actually shooting them outside matches. Today I found that while I still have a long way to go I'm not nearly as slow as I expected. Here's a pair on one target drill:

 

 

I'm not going to make master any time soon but as a lowly D class I was surprised to see how close I am to the level two par times in the Ben Stoeger book. After poring over split times and the videos I took today, I noticed the places I'm losing the most time compared to the book's par times are in the draw and reloads. I was initially surprised to see my draws are so slow (about 1.5s on average) but looking at the videos made the problem clear: I spend a lot of time on the first trigger pull. Then the reason was obvious. I have basically never fired double action outside of matches until today when I started every drill as I would start a match stage; with the hammer down. Clearly this is something I need to work on so I'll add it to the rapidly growing list. 

 

I understand some people get very good solely through dryfire, but I'm ecstatic to now have a range where I can do some live fire training. I think being able to dig into my performance in each drill will greatly help in identifying where to focus training effort. I'll still be dryfiring almost every day, but now I can confirm the results in live fire and I think there's some value in that. My focus on dryfire in the immediate future will be making a conscious effort to remove tension from my upper body. I think fixing that should help several other aspects of my shooting as well.

[crg]

Had another productive trip to the range today. I've spent the last week doing a lot of dryfire to work on the skills that were really lacking last time. Last time I noted that my draw is really slow so I've spent a lot of time working on that, however not necessarily just to speed it up yet. Speed is an issue, but I don't think simply speeding up is the solution; I think it's symptomatic of bigger problems in my entire draw process  Before I push for raw speed I need to be getting my support hand on the gun and clamped down quickly, prepping the trigger sooner, and getting rid of all the unneeded tension in my upper body, arms, and strong hand. The last point has been a huge focus over the last week that has made me much more conscious of unnecessary tension in my back, neck, shoulders and arms. I've also been trying to be more conscious of what's happening in my hands, as Ben Stoeger stresses a lot in his books and videos. I realized I've been unconsciously squeezing harder with my strong hand while trying to grip harder with my support hand which took a considerable toll on my trigger pull. I still have a lot of work to do but today I could consistently draw at around the same speed as before (around 1.4 to 1.5s) without stiffening my entire upper body and "turtling" down to the gun, and establishing a better grip in the process.

 

This effort paid off dramatically in my splits and transitions. Last time I was consistently splitting 0.27 to 0.30 s in bill drills. Today I was easily hitting 0.18 splits shooting at the speed my sights returned to my point of aim, and occasionally dipping down to 0.16 s. From what I've read and watched I think this is largely due to a more relaxed strong hand and less tension in my body allowing the gun to get back on target faster. My accuracy could use some work as I'm throwing a few charlies at that speed at 7 yards, but this JJ Racaza interview suggests I'm at least on the right track in trying to go fast as long as accuracy is "acceptable". My splits on the same target in blake drills were similar and transitions weren't too much slower, averaging around 0.25 s.

 

I also tried a few new drills from the Ben Stoeger book which made another deficiency in my training glaringly obvious: transitioning between targets at different distances. I set up two targets at 5 yards and a third at 15 yards with a no shoot and tried to shoot pairs on each in under 5 seconds as the book suggests. Hitting the par time was no problem, but slowing myself down enough to make accurate shots on the far target was. I find if I start by engaging a close target then when I transition to the far target I really want to keep shooting at the same pace. Obviously that's not very a good idea when engaging a target 3x further away and mostly covered in a no shoot though. I managed a few reasonable attempts by the end of the session but this is something I'm going to have to spend a lot more time on.

 

I have another week to practice before my next match, and will probably spend it mostly doing more of the same. I plan to focus on gradually increasing the speed of my draws but want to really be careful about making sure I'm still doing each step of the process correctly. I've learned the hard way that a fast draw is worthless if I'm holding the gun like a wet noodle at the end. 

[Johnny_Chimpo]

16 hours ago, crg said:

Had another productive trip to the range today. I've spent the last week doing a lot of dryfire to work on the skills that were really lacking last time. Last time I noted that my draw is really slow so I've spent a lot of time working on that, however not necessarily just to speed it up yet. Speed is an issue, but I don't think simply speeding up is the solution; I think it's symptomatic of bigger problems in my entire draw process  Before I push for raw speed I need to be getting my support hand on the gun and clamped down quickly, prepping the trigger sooner, and getting rid of all the unneeded tension in my upper body, arms, and strong hand. The last point has been a huge focus over the last week that has made me much more conscious of unnecessary tension in my back, neck, shoulders and arms. I've also been trying to be more conscious of what's happening in my hands, as Ben Stoeger stresses a lot in his books and videos. I realized I've been unconsciously squeezing harder with my strong hand while trying to grip harder with my support hand which took a considerable toll on my trigger pull. I still have a lot of work to do but today I could consistently draw at around the same speed as before (around 1.4 to 1.5s) without stiffening my entire upper body and "turtling" down to the gun, and establishing a better grip in the process.

 

This effort paid off dramatically in my splits and transitions. Last time I was consistently splitting 0.27 to 0.30 s in bill drills. Today I was easily hitting 0.18 splits shooting at the speed my sights returned to my point of aim, and occasionally dipping down to 0.16 s. From what I've read and watched I think this is largely due to a more relaxed strong hand and less tension in my body allowing the gun to get back on target faster. My accuracy could use some work as I'm throwing a few charlies at that speed at 7 yards, but this JJ Racaza interview suggests I'm at least on the right track in trying to go fast as long as accuracy is "acceptable". My splits on the same target in blake drills were similar and transitions weren't too much slower, averaging around 0.25 s.

 

I also tried a few new drills from the Ben Stoeger book which made another deficiency in my training glaringly obvious: transitioning between targets at different distances. I set up two targets at 5 yards and a third at 15 yards with a no shoot and tried to shoot pairs on each in under 5 seconds as the book suggests. Hitting the par time was no problem, but slowing myself down enough to make accurate shots on the far target was. I find if I start by engaging a close target then when I transition to the far target I really want to keep shooting at the same pace. Obviously that's not very a good idea when engaging a target 3x further away and mostly covered in a no shoot though. I managed a few reasonable attempts by the end of the session but this is something I'm going to have to spend a lot more time on.

 

I have another week to practice before my next match, and will probably spend it mostly doing more of the same. I plan to focus on gradually increasing the speed of my draws but want to really be careful about making sure I'm still doing each step of the process correctly. I've learned the hard way that a fast draw is worthless if I'm holding the gun like a wet noodle at the end. 

 

Very cool to hear of your progress.  Did you go to the MI section match?  It was excellent.

[crg]

9 hours ago, Johnny_Chimpo said:

 

Very cool to hear of your progress.  Did you go to the MI section match?  It was excellent.

 

Unfortunately I couldn't make it but from the videos I've seen it looked like a lot of fun. I hope to make it to some bigger matches to get the experience and meet some new people if nothing else.

 

In unrelated news, today was an interesting day in my blossoming shooting career. I've been using a shot timer app on my phone since my actual shot timer hasn't come in yet (a backordered AMG). For a while now I've just been using it to get a starting beep for drills without actually paying attention to any splits because it tends to pick up every sound in the house. That changed today when I decided I want to experience what a one second draw is supposed to feel like. I stacked stuff up so the phone would sit right next to the drawn gun and carefully calibrated the threshold to just pick up the hammer falling. Then I hit start and tried to draw and fire as fast as I'm physically capable..

 

1.5 seconds

 

I tried again, starting with my strong hand on the grip.

 

1.3 seconds

 

Wow, I am really slow. I put the gun at low ready with grip completely established and tried again.

 

~1 second

 

It was about now that I started to get suspicious. I pulled the trigger back as far as possible without breaking and hit start on the timer.

 

0.7 seconds

 

I know humans have a notoriously poor sense of the passage of time, but this did not seem right. I messed around with the app a bit until I figured out how to set a par time, set it for 1.2 seconds, and holstered the gun. Start.. beep.. draw.. click.. wait.. wait.. beep. I looked at the timer.

 

0.97 s

 

 

I have no idea what's going on with this app but I think from now on I'm just going to use the par time function, and yes I did confirm that at least the par beeps are timed correctly with a separate stopwatch. 

[Johnny_Chimpo]

21 hours ago, crg said:

 

Unfortunately I couldn't make it but from the videos I've seen it looked like a lot of fun. I hope to make it to some bigger matches to get the experience and meet some new people if nothing else.

 

In unrelated news, today was an interesting day in my blossoming shooting career. I've been using a shot timer app on my phone since my actual shot timer hasn't come in yet (a backordered AMG). For a while now I've just been using it to get a starting beep for drills without actually paying attention to any splits because it tends to pick up every sound in the house. That changed today when I decided I want to experience what a one second draw is supposed to feel like. I stacked stuff up so the phone would sit right next to the drawn gun and carefully calibrated the threshold to just pick up the hammer falling. Then I hit start and tried to draw and fire as fast as I'm physically capable..

 

1.5 seconds

 

I tried again, starting with my strong hand on the grip.

 

1.3 seconds

 

Wow, I am really slow. I put the gun at low ready with grip completely established and tried again.

 

~1 second

 

It was about now that I started to get suspicious. I pulled the trigger back as far as possible without breaking and hit start on the timer.

 

0.7 seconds

 

I know humans have a notoriously poor sense of the passage of time, but this did not seem right. I messed around with the app a bit until I figured out how to set a par time, set it for 1.2 seconds, and holstered the gun. Start.. beep.. draw.. click.. wait.. wait.. beep. I looked at the timer.

 

0.97 s

 

 

I have no idea what's going on with this app but I think from now on I'm just going to use the par time function, and yes I did confirm that at least the par beeps are timed correctly with a separate stopwatch. 

 

Those apps are notoriously inaccurate.  I think all of them.

[crg]

Yesterday I completed my 5th USPSA match and I'm glad to say I'm still at zero DQs. I took a very different approach to this match than the previous ones because there's no need for me to use matches as live fire practice anymore. Instead I was able to concentrate only on match specific stuff which I am quite poor at like stage planning and visualization. I was in a relatively small squad of about five people, most of whom were pretty new to USPSA like me. Immediately I encountered the first challenge of the match. Something I've often read about but hadn't yet seen myself: people who don't paste targets. One guy was shooting two different guns using two completely different belt setups so he would shoot each stage first, then head to the safe area to swap all his gear, then reload two sets of magazines, etc. Another was doing his best to help but he was quite elderly and there were a lot of targets to be pasted and steel to be reset in the stages. Then there was the RO who was understandably busy with timing and scoring, and one guy who really just seemed to prefer talking to pasting. The result was I was pretty much resetting stages alone for most of the match, including for the guy who shot right before me and my own targets after I shot.

 

I mention this not (strictly) as a complaint, but because this added some amount of extra challenge to the match for me which may have been a good thing. I was already out of breath from running around pasting the stage when I started making ready to take my own turn at shooting. I haven't really had match jitters before but I noticed my hands were shaking pretty badly this time from the physical exertion. I decided to just use whatever time I had to visualize running the stage, focus pretty much 100% on sticking to my stage plan, and let my subconscious deal with the shooting as much as possible.

 

The result was probably better than I expected. My stage plans likely weren't the best, but I stuck to them and my execution was pretty much as I visualized. My accuracy was pretty poor early on which I mostly chalk up to there being a lot of no shoots and hard cover that I didn't give the respect they deserved. Telling myself to take the time I needed on hard shots was pretty much the only adjustment I consciously made during the match and it paid off with my best stage finish yet on the last one of the day:

 

 

It doesn't mean much since there were a lot of new shooters mixed in the 16 people that showed up but sometimes you have to relish the small victories. Following my stage plans well was very encouraging for me since I've been so bad at it in the last few matches. Taking my focus off trying new things really helped there. Overall I felt pretty calm shooting. I could see the sights shaking unacceptably in the first few stages and knew where I was taking sketchy shots. I could feel where I was going too slow, clumsily shuffling around, and the million other ways I was losing time. For example one stage had a relatively long run between positions I probably could have sprinted in half the time I did, and I knew it right away. I think there's a lot of low hanging fruit for me in simply moving faster and more precisely.

 

I have about two more weeks to train then I'll be traveling for a few weeks and won't have access to my gun or anything analogous to one. Now that most of my fundamentals (i.e. draws, reloads, and basic drills like blake/bill/four aces) are on par with where they should be for level two in the training book I want to spend a little less time on those things and more time training movement-related skills. That will be the focus of the next two weeks, then I'll probably spend some of my time away doing simple agility and sprint type stuff.

 

Obligatory video below. This was one of stages I performed worst on so as always any criticism is more than welcome.

 

 

[crg]

Shot another match last Sunday. My performance was very similar to the previous week so not too much to say, but I did notice a few things. One stage was very clearly set up to be shot on the move, something I've never done in a match before. I've been practicing it a bit in training so I figured now's as good a time as any to give it a shot. Surprisingly that stage ended up being one of the best of the day for me so maybe I should have tried this sooner. That gave me some confidence to try it in a few subsequent stages including the one in the video below. For once I got a video of a stage I did decently on, though the astute observer will notice I missed a steel target and moved on after thinking I hit it in the second to last position. From my point of view it was just about in line with the first cardboard target. I probably should have taken the easier shot at it from the downrange position but it would have required going really deep to get an angle on it.

 

 

This time I was in a pretty strong squad which included a master carry optics shooter that won the match overall. This gave me the opportunity to really see up close where I'm losing time. Obviously the answer is everywhere, but there's definitely some areas I'm leaving more time on the table than others. I think the biggest one is entry/exits and movement between positions. I'm really slow to get moving from a stop, and once I start moving I'm sort of clumsily bumbling around rather than moving quickly and with purpose. The fast guys have no hesitation at all; they're already in the process of powering to the next position as their last shot is going off, and once that shot goes off they're moving as fast as they physically can. Even over very short distances like the first to second position in the stage above I estimate I'm losing half a second at the very least compared to them from the last shot of the first position to the first shot of the second position. On the uprange transition it's probably more like two seconds. There is a huge amount of room for improvement in movement for me. I don't know why I hadn't thought of this before, but next time I plan to video both myself and a much better shooter on the same stage so I can see exactly how much time I'm losing and where I'm losing it. I can then apply that knowledge to make quantitative decisions about my training.

 

I made another observation about shooting longer distances. This range has much larger bays than the other one I shoot at and the match stages generally take full advantage of that to work in some pretty long range shots. Steel at about 20 yards is common, and one stage had a popper that was engaged diagonally across the bay at what had to be nearly 30 yards. I typically lose a significant amount of time on these since it usually takes me several shots to hit them (you can see this in the video). While taking some of these shots I had a realization: I'm basically shooting my iron sights like a red dot. That is to say that once the fiber of my front sight is over the target I take the shot with essentially no regard for rear sight alignment. In what seemed like slow motion I saw the red fiber over the white steel but floating completely above the level of my rear sight, felt my hand squeeze the trigger, and watched the shot hit the berm well above the steel just as I knew it would. After that I made a more conscious effort to slow down and actually align the sights on longer shots, but I probably need to make that process unconscious if I'm going to keep shooting with iron sights. For better or worse I don't plan to as I actually have a 5 MOA Trijicon SRO sitting on my desk that will eventually go on the gun.. or more accurately on another gun. I'm going to buy a Shadow 2 OR as soon as I find one for a good price and use that for the time being, then probably ship the current gun to get milled as a backup.

 

Finally, later this week I'm going out state for a few weeks. I would like to bring the gun to train while I'm gone as I'll have plenty of time to, but I'm going to be driving through New York state and have read too many horror stories of people getting hassled by police there. Instead I'm planning to just bring some cones and work on various movement and entry/exit drills. Maybe if I'm lucky I can borrow one of my dad's 1911s.. 

 

[Johnny_Chimpo]

10 hours ago, crg said:

I'm going to be driving through New York state and have read too many horror stories of people getting hassled by police there.

 

Just don't drive like an idiot and you'll be fine

 

yeah, your uprange movement can be hugely improved

 

This might help

 

Edited June 29, 2022 by Johnny_Chimpo

[crg]

It's been a while so I wanted to stop by and say I'm still alive and still actively practicing and shooting, but life has been extremely busy for the last few months so I haven't had much time to post updates. In addition to typical life and grad student things we got a puppy a few months ago so this little guy has been occupying a lot of my time.

 

 

I'll post a more thorough update at some point but long story short is I shot my last match of the season last week so I'm done shooting irons for the time being and will be using the offseason to transition to shooting with a red dot in preparation for running in carry optics next year. I have an SRO and plate ready to go on an optics ready Shadow 2 as soon as it gets in, and will be making plans to send my current gun out to be milled shortly after. No video from the last match or two I shot but here's one from late August. Improvement is slow but somewhat steady.

 

 

 

[crg]

I've been waiting to post because I don't compete through the winter, but the first match of the season was yesterday so I guess it's about time for an update. For this season I'm shooting in carry optics so a few changes to the gun were in order. I'd post a picture but I'm sure we've all seen a thousand Shadow 2s with SROs. I also made a few minor adjustments to the gun: some brass grips, an extended safety, and a lighter recoil spring. I say minor but the recoil spring was actually a huge change to how the gun shoots that I wish I'd done a lot earlier. There's probably something to be said for how much my grip has improved from trying to deal with the the gun's behavior with factory springs, but the 30 second spring swap immediately cut my splits significantly (and gave me a ton more confidence) by eliminating the muzzle dip I've been fighting with. The optic is also something I wish I'd done earlier. I grew up playing shooting games so the red dot immediately felt much more familiar to me than irons.

 

I made the changes to the gun at the end of last season so I had a few months of dryfire and occasional live fire practice through the winter to get up to speed. Despite that, I completely botched the first few stages of the match yesterday by forgetting my plans the second the timer went off. About halfway through the day I remembered the importance of visualization and started to pull things back together. Unfortunately this was about the same time I started having issues with my magazines failing to drop out of the gun, costing me a bunch of time. The first few stages didn't have reloads so I unfortunately I didn't notice it earlier. I took a look at them after the match and they're pretty beat up so I'll have to do something about that before the next match. The last stage of the day thankfully didn't have a reload so I managed to pull things together enough to achieve my best stage performance to date:

 

 

With the first match of the year out of the way, it's time to set some goals for the season. Unfortunately this year is going to be extremely busy for me as I'm quickly approaching the end of my PhD so although I fully intend to give it my best effort I want to be somewhat realistic. That said, for 2023 I'm aiming to become a consistent strong B shooter. I don't know whether I'll be able to shoot enough classifiers to actually get classified in carry optics (one of the two clubs I shoot at doesn't usually do classifiers so at best I'll be shooting one a month) so I'll be happy if I can consistently place above most of the Bs in matches and all of the Cs. This might not seem very ambitious but my consistency right now is atrocious. My best classification currently is a D in limited, so although I've managed a few outlier stage performances those have very much been the exception and not the rule. If I get there sooner than I think then I'll reevalute, but for the time being I think that's a challenging but realistic goal for the season given how much time I expect to have.

 

My next match is about a month from now. In the meantime I bought some new main springs for the gun because I can't help but mess with things so testing out those and dealing with my magazine problems will keep me busy.