Revolver? Die on the vine?

[-JCN-]

Had such a good squad yesterday.

 

People who have been working hard in the off season and the improvement showed.

 

It was great. Everyone supported each other and had positive energy. 

 

No negativity or selfishness, everyone just cheered and celebrated people’s achievements.

 

 

 

After digesting our performances and reviewing video a few times:

 

Re V: She’s motivated and energized at seeing her progress and having the visualization of what needs to crisp up to get there.

 

Different stage plans are available at different levels of fundamental skill which is why continuing to assess and work on fundamentals is so important.

 

If you don’t have good trigger press, you can’t take things on the move.

 

If you don’t have good recoil control, you have to wait longer at each position rather than flowing through.

 

If you don’t have good reloads, you don’t have certain reloading windows available to you.

 

That’s the reason (IMO) getting to a certain level of fundamental skill is probably a good idea before trying to compete in earnest (if you have a long term competition goal).

 

Re Me: I’m seeing improvement in places I’m historically weak. Stage planning and execution. Adding complexity in entries and exits as part of the plan. Better mental preparation.

 

The results are being masked by unfamiliarity with the gun in live. My reloads and index are pretty decent with the gun from dry… but the timing and coordination of trigger to impulse is still not there. And my trigger presses aren’t that good.

 

I need more live fire with the gun.

 

Going to spend more time in Steel Challenge with the gun so I can work on my trigger presses at speed and my vision with the Holosun 8 MOA reticle.

 

Also, I still haven’t made it through a match without a malfunction yet. 
 

Had another FTRB in one of the later stages when I stopped brushing chamber. 
 

 

To be fair, I’m at 1k rounds since the last cleaning and I’m still trying to determine what my maintenance intervals are. 
 

I’m thinking I should probably swap pistons or at least check for carbon chunks every 500 rounds or so. 

[-JCN-]

ASSumptions

 

When my battery died in my 507 comp, it was a 1632. I just assumed the battery in the EPS was a 1632. It swapped in just fine and ran. 
 

So when we tried putting a 1632 into the EPS… didn’t fit well. 
 

So I pulled the battery out of the 507 comp to check it…

 

Yup. You guessed it. It was a 1620, not a 1632. 
 

They’re so similar in dimension that I didn’t notice the difference in feel when I had swapped them. 
 

Edited April 14 by -JCN-

[-JCN-]

Shot a steel challenge match today. Didn’t do my normal preparation but thought I would use it as practice for skills tune up. Mainly for vision and trigger presses. 
 

Knocked off some rust with PCC and rimfire pistol irons. It was helpful for vision. I appreciate that Steel Challenge has such objective data and ratings. 
 

Just tried for consistency and ramped up slowly. Still off last year’s pace by a fair amount but that’s to be expected. 
 

I also shot Open with the LO alien. 
 

First few stages were pretty rough. 
 

Man, my trigger presses with that gun aren’t good. 
 

By the end, was able to put down an M class stage which is pretty good for me using Open time standards. It would have been a GM Carry Optics stage so that tracks. 
 

I’m feeling good about my new spread of goals and what it’s going to take to get to them. 
 

I feel like it’s the right amount of work and effort to get there balanced with being able to get there. 
 

I was too optimistic in what I’d be able to accomplish with split focus. There are only so many hours in the day and I’m not getting any younger!

 

I have to stretch before stages, lol. 
 

BTW I did wind up cleaning the alien before the match. I think I might make it a more consistent routine to swap out pistons at 500 rounds. 

 

The dirty second-third rings are what prevent the gun from going smoothly back into battery. 

 

 

.

Edited April 14 by -JCN-

[JRS1985]

My Cleaning Intervall for my Alien is ~400 rounds…

Which means… every Lvl3 Match or every Training 

[-JCN-]

6 hours ago, JRS1985 said:

My Cleaning Intervall for my Alien is ~400 rounds…

Which means… every Lvl3 Match or every Training 

 

Yeah, I'm kind of hating the cleaning frequency... but at least it's a fairly quick clean.

 

I'm still kind of new to the platform and trying to figure out what fails with what interval, but I suspect I'm ultimately going to have to do something similar.

[-JCN-]

Maybe I remember things better than they actually were... (ex-girlfriend effect)...

 

I spent the time after the steel match digesting the Alien and my mind wandered back to the Shadow 2.

 

"I was so much better with that gun and I should perhaps go back to it, screw this bulls#!t...."

 

Is what passed through my head.

 

But was it like remembering an ex-girlfriend when starting a new relationship? Was I having selective memories of just the good times?

 

So I went back to look at my 5 to Go (SC-101) times from last year (they're not in chronological order).

 

 

They really weren't that good.

 

This was my stage this weekend with the Alien.

 

 

It was consistent and significantly faster than anything I had put down last year...

 

I like having objective data to go back to!

 

I think there's always that risk when comparing to others at matches (that might be improving, staying the same or aging out of competitiveness)... you never know what kind of training or match they had.

 

Same thing with remembering historic classifications or your classification percent.

 

I remember feeling awesome with the Shadow 2 when doing hundo runs... BUT... those runs aren't hundos by today's standards.

 

People have gotten better and an M or GM today is a much higher level of shooting than it was 3, 5, 10 years ago.

 

It's like the 4 minute running mile and overall times and speed (from Wikipedia).

 

 

I like to try and contextualize myself by current standards and that means improving objectively. Sure, at some point I'm going to age out and be the legacy guy with a classification I can't back up. At that point, I hope to be the guy who busts his ass volunteering at the club and smiles enjoying the young bucks/does tearing it up on course.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[NoahBeretta]

Enjoying your journal as always. Seems like the journaling is really important to you as well, we readers are just here for the ride!

[-JCN-]

6 hours ago, NoahBeretta said:

Enjoying your journal as always. Seems like the journaling is really important to you as well, we readers are just here for the ride!

 

Hey Noah! Good to see you!

 

 

 

I enjoy it for a number of reasons. 

 

It helps me organize my thoughts and plans.

It helps me consolidate things I've learned.

It allows quick review of progress (or stagnation).

 

As a side benefit, it might help others to see the process and what goes into it.

 

This journal is a little different because of V and her training. It's the first time I'm working with someone in this kind of capacity. It's also a 3rd person view of how to start at square one and get to a higher level. 

 

 

 

[-JCN-]

How much work does it take to make B class?

 

A class?

 

M class?

 

GM?

 

And how much work does the average college athlete spend training for their sport per week?

 

What about the average professional athlete?

 

How many total hours have they spent to get to that level?

 

IMO, B class performance deserves a lot of respect. It represents some real work put into the sport. 
 

It’s just that the amount of effort to get to M is an order of magnitude more, but that’s consistent with the investment required to get “good” at any other sport. 

[perttime]

Talk about classifications is quite foreign to me.

In my corner of Europe, few IPSC shooters bother with them. My club has a Level 2 IPSC Handgun match coming up. There's about 150 competitors registered, including 40 "crew" who pay by working at the match. The list of competitors shows THREE (3) who have a classification. The rest are marked Unclassified.

[-JCN-]

29 minutes ago, perttime said:

Talk about classifications is quite foreign to me.

In my corner of Europe, few IPSC shooters bother with them. My club has a Level 2 IPSC Handgun match coming up. There's about 150 competitors registered, including 40 "crew" who pay by working at the match. The list of competitors shows THREE (3) who have a classification. The rest are marked Unclassified.

I wonder if that is because of culture or size / geography?

 

I don’t know the answer to that. 
 

Any idea of how many US clubs and competitors versus European clubs and competitors?

 

It also may be partly how USPSA requires clubs to run a certain number of classifiers per year so basically everyone is classified who has shot for a year. 
 

Also trophies and payouts here are often by class as well. 
 

I don’t know that it’d be so much of a thing here if classifications weren’t mandated by USPSA structure, but it’s part of the culture. 
 

Also with the USA covering as much territory as it does, I can be on vacation 2800 miles away from my home club, still be in the US and squad with people who roughly shoot like me by looking at their classifications…. 
 

.

Edited April 16 by -JCN-

[-JCN-]

@perttime also here with USPSA, large match performance also counts as a classifier so even if you never shot a classifier, you’d still get a classification by going to larger matches. 
 

So it’s not something we can really avoid here, it is what it is. 
 

Plus they have separate classifiers built into National events. 
 

If you don’t go to Nationals it’s kind of cool for small town club members to set up the stage and test their skills against the big fish too. 
 

It’s kind of like a postal match in that regard. 

[perttime]

1 hour ago, -JCN- said:

I wonder if that is because of culture or size / geography?

 

...

 

I think it is culture.

Like... how you do at a Match is how good you are. If you have the best score you win. If you are the best among competitors of mediocre ability, it isn't really a win. People are familiar with sport classifications by equipment or age, but few sports seem to make arbitrary classes by ability and reward the top of those classes.

 

IPSC has a list of Classifier stages, but in my area they are rarely used. It could be different in different IPSC Regions (Countries)

[-JCN-]

10 minutes ago, perttime said:

Like... how you do at a Match is how good you are. If you have the best score you win. If you are the best among competitors of mediocre ability, it isn't really a win. People are familiar with sport classifications by equipment or age, but few sports seem to make arbitrary classes by ability and reward the top of those classes.

 

IPSC has a list of Classifier stages, but in my area they are rarely used. It could be different in different IPSC Regions (Countries)

See, I think that’s a narrow definition and misses some of the beauty of the classification system. 
 

How you do at a match is how good you were on that day at the things that were tested at the match. 
 

Plus. Most of us amateurs do this in our free time and we know we suck. 
 

It’s not an all or nothing thing. 
 

I’m assuming you’re not 50 years old, right?

 

I’m never going to be as good as someone in their athletic prime at this sport. But this lets me compare myself against myself and in a general way track my expectations of component skills that are too hard to tease out over a large match. 
 

 

 

.

Edited April 16 by -JCN-

[Racinready300ex]

28 minutes ago, perttime said:

 

I think it is culture.

Like... how you do at a Match is how good you are. If you have the best score you win. If you are the best among competitors of mediocre ability, it isn't really a win. People are familiar with sport classifications by equipment or age, but few sports seem to make arbitrary classes by ability and reward the top of those classes.

 

IPSC has a list of Classifier stages, but in my area they are rarely used. It could be different in different IPSC Regions (Countries)

 

I think this is part of why classification is bigger here. The US is a really big place, we have states that are bigger then Finland. The state I live in is smaller in size but even then we have 1/2 million more people then you do. 

 

So for many of us it's not as simple as just go to a match and see how good you are. Things are so spread out here that many can go to their local match and never shoot against anyone who's M or GM let alone a national champion. How will they know how good they are? Enter classification system. It's not perfect but it's something and gives you a idea of where you're at.

 

If someone tells me their classification I have a pretty good idea of what they can do. 

[-JCN-]

@Racinready300ex well said. 
 

I get that some people think second place is first loser and all that. 
 

But I’ve got plenty of grey hairs and winning isn’t on my list of goals. 
 

Getting better within the limits of my aging body is. 
 

The classification system is a great resource for me to figure out what speed and accuracy I’m looking for the task at hand. 
 

Want to know how the index and recoil management stacks up? Run can you count. 
 

Index with accuracy? Eye of the tiger. 
 

Mid range bread and butter speed and accuracy? El Prez. 
 

et cetera, et cetera. 
 

Beating others isn’t my goal. Bettering myself is. 

[Racinready300ex]

@-JCN- yeah I agree, and I like running classifiers in practice. It gives you a benchmark. I could setup some random thing shoot it and assume my run was good or bad. But if I find a classifier that works the same skill, now I'll for sure if my performance is good or bad. 

 

Typically though I'm to lazy to build a classifier in practice lol. 

[-JCN-]

@Racinready300ex me too, haha. That’s why working with V has been great for economies of scale. 
 

She helps me set up and we both run the stages. I usually only pick three stand stages though, haha. 
 

Having objective benchmarks helps me get better as a self taught shooter. 
 

When I started Steel Challenge, I thought I was good… but the rimfire times were way out of reach. 
 

But knowing that X was the time to hit, it forced me to learn how to get the hits at that pace and what I could get away with for vision with a better trigger press. 
 

Without the objective grading criteria, I wouldn’t have known what I was missing. 

[-JCN-]

To me at this stage in my life, I’m not looking to win at a recreational hobby. 
 

It’s like recreational bowling league or local golf league. 
 

I’m there to improve my skill and to support (and be supported by) my friends. 
 

I guess I’m at the point in my life that I care more about my relationships than trying to make a mark on the world with a hobby. 
 

Really the only thing I care about being the best at is being a father to my daughter.

 

I want to be happy for my friends’ successes and not wrapped up in beating them or finishing ahead of them at a particular match. 
 

Because at the end of the day, it’s the relationships that really matter. 
 

That’s all IMO. 

[-JCN-]

Went to the range and did some quick drills to see if my minds eye was matching up better to the reality of the gun. 
 

It was much closer this time and I was pretty happy with the timing and tuning. 
 

I’m more optimistic about the trajectory of improvement, now. 
 

I also decided to set up a couple extra full RSA with tuned springs. 
 

I have three RSA now that I can just hot swap without cleaning. I’ll try doing that every 200-300 rounds. 
 

 

I also got my Dawson sights for the SP01 tactical. 
 

I recommend the Wheeler laser for a quick ballpark for red dots, but it is super helpful for mocking up iron alignment too. 
 

 

When I had gone to the local range earlier, the RSO I had suggested it to (previously) came out gushing about how popular he was with all the range guys. They saw the light.  
 

I like helping people almost as much as learning about stuff. 

[perttime]

10 hours ago, -JCN- said:

...
 

I’m assuming you’re not 50 years old, right?

 

...

 

No. 60.

 

I suppose being able to compare classifier scores within the country is a valid point.

 

During "the season", most active Finnish (or European) shooters have a Level 2 or 3 IPSC Match every weekend, within 2 or 3 hours driving. So you will go against the national top guys'n girls quite frequently. Many also cross borders and see how they do against a more international crowd. To see how you really do in a bigger picture, you have to go to a Continental Championships or World shoot, every 2 or 3 years - and that can get costly.

[-JCN-]

6 hours ago, perttime said:

I suppose being able to compare classifier scores within the country is a valid point.

 

During "the season", most active Finnish (or European) shooters have a Level 2 or 3 IPSC Match every weekend, within 2 or 3 hours driving. So you will go against the national top guys'n girls quite frequently. Many also cross borders and see how they do against a more international crowd. To see how you really do in a bigger picture, you have to go to a Continental Championships or World shoot, every 2 or 3 years - and that can get costly.

 

That's great that you're still shooting at 60 and competing for the wins! I hope to still be actively competing in 10 years. That is fantastic!

 

Regarding classifiers, it can be used as a road map for achievement and skill development.

 

Like a self-coaching curriculum. That's what I use it for.

 

It's a database driven system so it's overall a pretty good representation of what someone with exceptional skills would do on that particular task.

 

This is kind of a famous US example:

 

 

Jay Beal trained on his own with financial and access limitations to the shooting sports. He set off skill building trying to make Open Master from concealment. He had nobody to compare himself to, but used classifier skills as a guide.

 

Eventually, he branched out from classifier goals in Open to competing in Carry Optics where he did extremely well in his first big national match out.

 

It's a great story and an illustration of how learning what you don't know can help guide training.

 

Good data is good data.

 

I know for me, it's cut off a bunch of time in training having consistent achievement standards on novel tasks.

 

If you're curious and have the range availability, you can test it yourself to see how it might help your training.

 

Here's a USPSA classifier with IPSC targets, it's an easy one for you to set up and try it out:

 

https://uspsa-docs.b-cdn.net/classifier-stages/Win Some Lose Some 22-05.pdf

 

These are the points needed for each level of achievement for Limited Optics (let me know if you run irons or Open).

 

 

 

Give it a try, see where you score. See if it matches what you thought your performance was! Aren’t you curious?

 

Then run it a few more times knowing what is expected of you and see if it adds value to your training.

 

For me, it cuts a lot of time off of training knowing what standards to train for.

 

Like for V, we ran multiple different classifiers in practice testing different skills and her percentage was pretty consistent at 74-76% which I take to mean she's developing a broad and consistent level of fundamental skills.

 

In real life at a match, I expect tension and tightness to cause a 5% drop in performance. But having good data really helps us train consistently. 

 

And again to be clear, we aren't chasing classifications per se... we're chasing the requisite skills at each level of performance.

 

It's like the line out of the Ben Stoeger dry fire book that roughly says: We want to BE the classification, not just have a paper card that says it.

 

 

.

Edited April 17 by -JCN-

[perttime]

"competing for the wins! "

Not really

We are different persons in many ways. I've found that if I start taking a hobby or sport seriously or even, god forbid, running stuff for others ... it becomes a chore - and there's a good chance that I'll quit. For some time at least. So, I try to remain laid back and have fun as an "also ran".

 

Back in 1996 when nobody else had a clue either, I placed 24th out of 91 at our National 3-Gun Champinships. More recently I shot an IPSC match using my 6 shot revolver. It was great fun and I was amazed that I wasn't last in Combined results. I'm thinking of doing the same thing at our upcoming local Level 2 match. And I don't expect to win anything. I've seen the WSBs, and mostly there's reasonable ways to break down the stages for a 6-shooter. Mostly....

[-JCN-]

39 minutes ago, perttime said:

We are different persons in many ways. I've found that if I start taking a hobby or sport seriously or even, god forbid, running stuff for others ... it becomes a chore - and there's a good chance that I'll quit.

I have those tendencies too, it was much worse for me when I was younger and had more to prove. 
 

My wife and I have this saying: “Don’t go for the D rather than the B.”

 

It was in regard to academics rather than hobbies but it’s the same concept. 
 

I used to put so much meaning and ego into the external grade that it was paralyzing and prohibitive. It was either A+ or F(uck) it. 
 

Over the years, I’ve gotten kinder to myself and am okay with being okay. 
 

I’d like to be “pretty good,” but I only have a certain amount of time, energy and physical endurance to spend. 
 

That’s one of the things I love about the classification system. When I started USPSA in 2019, I thought I would top off at A class so that was my long term goal. 
 

I could work towards those goals independently of who showed up at the match and I could identify inefficiencies that I could work on at home on my free time. 
 

So currently, I don’t have a goal except being more efficient and consistent. I usually spend 20 minutes a day dry firing and I enjoy it as meditation. 
 

Classification skills checking is a way for me to get objective data. If all I can maintain is a B or A level, then it is what it is and I’m okay with that. 
 

If it weren’t for V, I’d probably still be farting around with revolver. But in showing her how to get better, I am benefiting from the rehabilitation as well. 
 

My ego will just have to be okay with being whatever I am with the amount of effort and physical durability I have left. 

[Racinready300ex]

7 hours ago, perttime said:

 

No. 60.

 

I suppose being able to compare classifier scores within the country is a valid point.

 

During "the season", most active Finnish (or European) shooters have a Level 2 or 3 IPSC Match every weekend, within 2 or 3 hours driving. So you will go against the national top guys'n girls quite frequently. Many also cross borders and see how they do against a more international crowd. To see how you really do in a bigger picture, you have to go to a Continental Championships or World shoot, every 2 or 3 years - and that can get costly.

 

So here I travel about 120 miles each ways to shoot a level 1 club match where most shooters are not on my radar as competition. There are a couple of these a month, I probably shoot one a month at most. 

 

There are a couple level 2's around 200-250 miles from me. There will be no national champions at these, but you'll likely see the top guys in the region here and a few of them might make the super squad. There are maybe 3 or 4 of these a year, if I push it to 3-400 miles I get a couple more options.

 

My Area match which is the closest level 3 is just shy of 400 miles away. That's probably the only chance to shoot against national champions, and even then it depends on what division you shoot.

 

Nationals this year is about 800 miles away. 

 

And consider, I'm on the east coast which is pretty densely populated. Guys out west are probably travelling much farther than I do.  Most USPSA shooters don't travel to level 2+ matches, and classifiers give them a idea of where they are at on a national scale without needing to drive 800 miles each way to get to a national championship match.