Jay870 Posted July 12, 2013 Author Share Posted July 12, 2013 7/12/2013 Dry Fire 60 Minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals Single Target Gun Handling Reload Challenge Close 90 Close Execution wasn't great but had good awareness and was able to diagnose and correct a lot of errors. Worked in a lot extra draws and partial draws within and between the blocks. The extra work helped. Reloads started off poor, but figured out part of it was just being lazy getting the mag out of the pouch, and that I had started "flicking" the mag out of the gun which was messing up my timing. Have a lot of work to do on the 90 degree transitions. Opening the stance and bending more at the knees helped. Turning the body during the reload is a must. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garyg19 Posted July 12, 2013 Share Posted July 12, 2013 Aha! Now I know why you kick everyone's ass at the club matchs! Good stuff Jay, I've got my own struggles with the White Wall drill. Personaly, I blame Ben Stoeger..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 12, 2013 Author Share Posted July 12, 2013 Aha! Now I know why you kick everyone's ass at the club matchs! Good stuff Jay, I've got my own struggles with the White Wall drill. Personaly, I blame Ben Stoeger..... What I need is for someone to come kick my ass for a while, maybe I would learn something. You need to get one of Matt's guns, I hear that white wall drill is a lot easier with one his triggers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 15, 2013 Author Share Posted July 15, 2013 07/14/13 Live Fire 300 rds Good practice. Trying to find my "match pace". Worked a pretty simple progression... draw 1 shot, draw 2 shots, draw 2 reload 2. Then worked into some Blake Drills, and a few runs on Accelerator. When I felt my trigger control was getting sloppy I'd break to shoot a few groups, and when I felt I was getting too tense I'd break and shoot a few bill drills. I really need to focus on my level of tension in my shoulders. My draws & reloads are both the quickest when my shoulders are entirely relaxed, but I control the gun better with some tension in my shoulders and chest. Some numbers: Seems like my draw to a sharp front-sight focus @ 7 yards is about 1.25-1.30. This is a huge improvement for me. Once I can knock another tenth off that I will feel like I am not giving up so much on the stand and shoot classifiers. Reloads are a tenth or two behind draws, again a huge improvement. On splits, to really see the front sight settling I am in the neighborhood of .25-.30, though still shooting alpha's @ 7 yards down to about .20, any quicker than that and all bets are off. Close transitions are about .05 off that pace. Had a partial bill drill run with an unremarkable draw followed by .18, .16, .14(!)... at which point my brain turned my trigger finger off. The only other time I've put a .14 on the timer was with a 9MM Shadow with a Mink trigger. My next live fire practice I want to really spend some time working the Accelerator while I am fresh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 15, 2013 Author Share Posted July 15, 2013 07/15/13 Dry Fire 75 Minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals Close Target Gun Handling (extra set of the draw drill between every other drill in this block) El Presidente Barricade Good practice. I seemed to be about .10 off my target pace on most drills but my grip was locking up well and I was seeing the sights well so I won't complain. Reloads were a little choppy at times. Draw on the El Presidente is still giving me fits. I am snapping my head around and getting on the gun quickly but I need to get my footwork sorted out. I am noticing that on the simpler drills I am regularly beating the Intermediate times, but on the more complex drills I am starting with the Beginner times and sometimes not even making those. On the more complex drills I need to begin spending some extra time visualizing each repetition of the the drill before I execute it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 16, 2013 Author Share Posted July 16, 2013 7/16/13 Dry Fire 60 Minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals Single Target Gun Handling El Presidente Close Far Close Gun handling was crisp this morning. Did some extra work on draws and reloads and chased the par somwheat to get a feel for where things start breaking down. I got the draw and footwork sorted out on the El Pres and was consistently beating the intermediate time on the turn & draw drill, but I am still just barely making the Beginner time for the complete El Pres. I need to get some video and see if I can pick out where I am slow. I think I will do this set of blocks for the remainder of the week. Hoping to get out for some live fire tonight. I have a local match coming up on Saturday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 17, 2013 Author Share Posted July 17, 2013 7/17/13 Dry Fire 60 Minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals Single Target Gun Handling El Presidente Close Far Close Mixed bag. Had good concentration to begin with and the gun handling was good. Got frustrated with El Pres again, that tensed me up and I started missing draws and reloads and I just generally screwed the pooch on that block. But, did a good job of clearing my head and settling down for Close Far Close and made some progress on that block. Didn't get out for live fire last night as I had hoped, going to try again for tonight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 18, 2013 Author Share Posted July 18, 2013 7/17/13 Live Fire 300 rds Started with chrono since I cracked a new can of Solo. 4.6gr Solo 1k, 185gr Precision moly, 1.135 COAL, Fed SPP = 171.3 PF. If I had a major coming up I would probably bump the charge by a tenth, but I don't so I'll run with this for now. Did some good work on Accelerator. My runs working far to near were better on average, but my single best run was working near to far. Working far to near, my eyes never come back to the sight from the transition to the near target... I was shooting alphas with the target focus, but want to be more consistent with picking up the front sight so I need to work on this in the future. Otherwise did a lot of experimenting with shoulder tension levels and varying degrees of extension in the elbows to see how the sights reacted. This was a combination of simple berm shooting and bill drills. I did have some observations from this, but overall I am wondering if it was the best use of my time and ammo. In the future I want to bring (and stick with) a more defined plan for my live fire sessions. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 19, 2013 Author Share Posted July 19, 2013 Took Thursday & today off from dry fire. My shoulders, elbows and wrists were all feeling a little ragged so I decided to give them a rest before tomorrows local match. Cleaned the gun & mags this morning. The barrel was the nastiest I have ever seen it. Can't wait to finish off the Precisions I've been shooting and get back to Bayou bullets. Precisions have always shot really well for me, but man do I hate scrubbing that coating out of the barrel. The mags were pretty bad as well, quite a bit of sand. I have a bunch of mag springs coming and when those arrive it will also be about time to for some new springs in the gun as well. The recoil spring has ~15K+ rounds on it, the striker & trigger springs have about 8k live fire rounds plus all the dry fire cycles. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 (edited) 7/20/13 Local Match Overall I was pleased with my performance, at least to the extent that I showed improvement over my previous match performances this season. I saw the sights well all day and my shot placement was solid. This match had quite a few partial and no-shoot covered targets and I shot with a lot of confidence, no make-up shots on partials and no no-shoots for the match. I did have one mike for the match that seemed to come out of nowhere on a wide open target at 7 yards. Still not sure what happened there but wasn't going to fight for a double I didn't call. I had one make-up shot on static steel (pulled off it too early). I had 3 or 4 extra shots on a Texas star... zipped through the first three plates, missed the fourth and then the timing was just off. I did have some gun handling issues. I struggled with the consistency of my strong hand grip on the draw all day. I flubbed the reload on the classifier, costing me at least 1-1.5 secs. Twice I failed to seat a magazine and it cost me a big chunk of time on both stages. That almost never happens to me so I'm going to inspect my gun and mags to make sure its not a hardware issue, but its probably just my mistake. ETA: Finished high overall. Shot 93.13% of the available match points... could be higher but pretty happy with that given the number of partial targets. Edited July 22, 2013 by Jay870 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 22, 2013 Author Share Posted July 22, 2013 7/22/13 Dry Fire 45 Minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals Single Target Gun Handling (x2) Kept it pretty simple this morning given my gun handling problems at the match. I was having trouble staying focused but draws/reloads were pretty crisp and I noticed how solid my front sight was staying during the trigger work on the 6x6 drill. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 23, 2013 Author Share Posted July 23, 2013 7/23/13 Dry Fire 30 Minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals Single Target Gun Handling Did some extra draw work on STGH. Had a pretty good practice going & started in on the El Presidente block and just completely physically spaced out. Dizzy, ringing in ears, lethargic. Sat down for a few minutes and called it done. Went and ran some brass through the GRX for the remainder of my practice time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 24, 2013 Author Share Posted July 24, 2013 7/24/13 Dry Fire 45 Minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals Single Target Gun Handling Wide Transitions Still felt a little spaced out this morning but put in some time anyway. Gun handling was a little hit & miss. I am working on getting a more conistent strong hand position to accept the mag on the reload which is throwing my timing of a bit right now but will be better in the long run. Wide Transitions... moved the array further apart 5 times and was still making the initial par 70% of the time on the last run. I am sure this is telling me something, probably that I can be more agressive when the targets are closer together. Getting some elbow pain creeping up in the support arm, mostly when grasping the slide and when reloading. Need to get on top of that as I know it can get out of hand quickly. Live fire tonight if all goes according to plan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 25, 2013 Author Share Posted July 25, 2013 7/24/13 Live Fire PM Shot "Frank Garcia's Dots" tonight. A lot of chatter about how difficult this is so I was fully expecting to turn in some true shit-house times but I was really happy overall. My best "clean" run was in the low 6.x range. I had several mid-5.x runs that were in a 2" group, but not all shots were in the dot so not a clean run. These "shifted" groups were reliably left and low. These were of course all "warmed up" times. I shot it a total of 18x. Light conditions were tough on my eyes, and I'm looking forward to shooting this again when I am not getting the "staring at a light bulb" effect off the target. Otherwise did some more experimenting with my support hand grip... I reserve the right to change this opinion as I get better, but I am finally convincing myself that a lot of the minutiae I tend to obsess over is the equivalent of pissing into the ocean. Grip it high, grip it hard, get on with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 26, 2013 Author Share Posted July 26, 2013 7/26/13 Dry Fire 45 minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals Slow Draws & Index Draws Slow Reloads & Index Reloads Started in on Single Target Gun Handling and my reaction time was just molasses this morning. Turned the par time off and just worked on smooth reps that were as technically perfect as I could get them. Then I moved on to doing them with my eyes closed and verifying my sight alignment. My index off the draw was pretty solid in terms of horizontal alignment of the sight in the notch, but it varied more vertically. The index off the reload was the exact opposite, good vertically, but more often not the front sight was off to the right. I need to spend some time looking at how I am building the grip after the reload. No pain in the elbow, I think taking the day off from handling the gun on Thursday helped. Hoping to get out for live fire on Sunday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 29, 2013 Author Share Posted July 29, 2013 7/29/13 - Dry Fire 60 Minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals El Presidente Close Target Gun Handling Advanced Gun Handling Good practice. Picked up on a little hop in the front sight during white wall, assuming that has crept in since I've been doing more live fire lately. Draws were very good, reloads were a little spotty. Figured out that I am way too slow getting on the trigger. Did a little casual live fire with my brother in law on Saturday, and it was good to just go shoot for the fun of it, without a timer or drills or a practice/training mindset. About all I really paid any attention too was tracking my sights which I did a pretty good job of. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted July 30, 2013 Author Share Posted July 30, 2013 7/30/13 Dry Fire 30 Minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals El Presidente Close Far Close Getting really frustrated with El Pres as I am making zero progress on the par. It must be my transitions but I'm not sure how to go about shaving time off them, I'm doing things 'by the book'... snap the eyes to the next target spot, then the sights. I feel like I'm moving the gun agressively and I am not having to hunt for the sights so my index is decent. On the bright side, I am really happy with how my draw has improved. Ben gave me a simple little tip that really made me rethink my mechanics. I've been working with that for over a month now and it is finally getting to where it feels consistent and repeatable, and taking less of my attention. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted August 1, 2013 Author Share Posted August 1, 2013 07/31/13 Dry Fire 45 Minutes PM White Wall Fundamentals El Presidente Single Target Gun Handling Been stuck at 5 seconds on El Pres so I decided to start eliminating variables to see where my time was being lost. Ran it from a regular hands at sides start and was able to work it down to 4.3 or so. My turn & draw is obviously a little slower than a hands at sides start, but what I determined was really costing me time is not getting a good stance after the turn on the draw, and not having a good solid base to drive the transitions from. Beyond that I just need to continue to shave time from my draw & reload. My reloads have not been hitting since making my technique tweaks. In the long run I think the changes will result in more consistency, but for now my timing is just off, and when I am reloading in the middle longer drills I am still regressing to the old way of doing things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted August 1, 2013 Author Share Posted August 1, 2013 08/01/13 Dry Fire 30 Minutes AM White Wall Fundamentals Reload work Just worked reloads this morning since I've been struggling with them. Planned to put in a hour but just couldn't maintain a productive level of focus. Sometimes I am just slow to wake up or physically run down, but this morning I felt fine and just couldn't keep my mind in the room with me. Installed new springs (Wolff +10%) in my live fire mags, boresnaked the gun, and recorded some loading data with the rest of my time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted August 2, 2013 Author Share Posted August 2, 2013 08/01/13 Live Fire PM Pretty basic trip, 1 target 10 yards. Started off with a little group shooting, then some draw 2/ reload 2, Bill Drills then a little more group shooting. There was a big group shooting so basically no opportunity to paste and also why I had to run such a simple setup. Really didn't shoot all that great becuase I was kind of distracted and annoyed by the other group, but... I was seeing the sights really well, they were tracking very consistently, and I just felt really aware of what was going on physically in terms of my girp, stance, trigger control, etc while I shot. No AM dry fire on 08/02, had to get in to work a little early and just plain needed some extra sleep. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garyg19 Posted August 2, 2013 Share Posted August 2, 2013 (edited) Aha! Now I know why you kick everyone's ass at the club matchs! Good stuff Jay, I've got my own struggles with the White Wall drill. Personaly, I blame Ben Stoeger..... What I need is for someone to come kick my ass for a while, maybe I would learn something. You need to get one of Matt's guns, I hear that white wall drill is a lot easier with one his triggers. You're right I do! But I still don't think thats enough beat you. So, my plan is to buy one of Matt's gun's AND hire Matt to shoot against you at one of our matches! I'm here for you man. Anything to help out:) P.S. Unfortunately at my current rate of savings it will be several years before I can afford the above Edited August 2, 2013 by Garyg19 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted August 6, 2013 Author Share Posted August 6, 2013 08/05/13 Dry Fire 45 Minutes PM White Wall Fundamentals Reloads Been missing reloads too much lately since making a technique change so decided to just spend an entire session on them. Various combinations of full speed reps, slow motion reps and partial reps. Felt pretty snappy & smooth at the end, time will tell how much of it sticks. Took the weekend off from practice. Had hoped for a live fire session on Sunday, but 4 hours of running a chainsaw pretty well cooked my forearms. Will get out for a live fire session through the week, and have a local on Saturday if I can make it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted August 7, 2013 Author Share Posted August 7, 2013 08/06/13 Live Fire 250rds PM Discouraging practice, didn't really do anything particularly well. I started typing up the take-aways below, and realized they are all the result of rushing. 1) See the sights. 7 yards & in I am relying way too much on index to get the first shot off quickly. If I don't have a good sight picture on the first shot I never really pick the sights up clearly for the remainder of a given string. This become painfully obvious on Accelerator. I don't know why I struggle with this so much in live fire. 2) Grip consistency. Missed my grip a lot, both with the strong hand out of the holster and with the support hand coming on to the gun. Just need to continue working this in dry fire and make sure I'm not cheating myself on the grip trying to chase par times. 3) Reloads. I am not doing a good job of shifting my attention to the reload. I don't know where my mind is because there is nowhere else for it to be during that time, but it sure isn't paying any attention to process of getting a fresh mag into the gun. I had a feed malfunction twice from the same mag. It had already hit the dirt a few times so i'm not ready to relegate it to dry fire duty yet, but its on the watch list. I need to do a spring service on the gun this weekend so will clean all the mags while I'm at it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted August 13, 2013 Author Share Posted August 13, 2013 08/12/13 Dry Fire 30 Minutes PM White Wall Fundamentals Draws Lots of partial rep work on the draws, trying to get better consistency with the strong hand grip out of the holster. Payed a lot of attention to tension. Had a long 4 day weekend this past weekend and took a break from dry fire. Also missed the August local match on Saturday, it had been rescheduled from its usual 3rd weekend of the month spot and I had a conflict. So, next match won't be until mid-late September unless I decide to make the 2.5hr+ trip to the next nearest club downstate, and looking at my schedule that is not likely to happen. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay870 Posted August 14, 2013 Author Share Posted August 14, 2013 08/13/13 Dry Fire 30 Minutes PM White Wall Fundamentals Single Target Gun Handling Worked in some extra draws & reloads with the STGH block. Gun handling felt really solid and I was doing a good job of staying relaxed and isolating tension to the grip. I need to get back to some longer sessions, just struggling to make the time. When I DF in the morning I am usually up around 4:00 - 4:30 am, that gives me a solid 1-1.5 hour block of time, but I'm groggy to start and tweaking on caffeine at the end probably only end up with 45 minutes of "quality" time. On the other hand, I'm much sharper in the evenings, but have trouble consistently setting side the time, or at least as much time as I would like. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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