Lee King

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 7/20/2008 8pm

OVERVIEW:

Focus on fundamentals. I didn't note this in my diary last time, but I had 3 AD's during live fire practice. All 3 were almost on target and would probably go unnoticed in a match, but *I* knew about them and I don't feel comfortable shooting until I resolve this. I think it was because I ran the tape for my finger (I did a post about the blister I get in the main technique forum) too far down my finger so that it was partially on the pad and I couldn't feel the trigger until I applied pressure. This session was primarily targeting the weakness I feel on the grip at draw and trigger control.

DRILLS:

Draw - Anderson #2

Surrender Draw:

2-2-2:

Transitions on targets of various sizes and locations:

SUMMARY:

Draw: Felt much better. I still can't straighten my arm to completely relaxed. But I can make the move to the gun and from holster to meeting the weak hand stronger. I used my timer and got this closer to my original par times. It is still not natural. I have to concentrate to not have the "throw the gun" feeling. But I can feel progress.

Surrender Draw: This one is tough. There are still movements and positions where my arm feels extremely weak. Holding my hand "up" near my face or head is one of those. I struggled to get my arm moving down to the grip. It felt like I was more relying on gravity than a good strong motion. I will need to focus on this if I have a hope of doing any steel matches.

2-2-2: Oddly enough I played the Wii shooting game a lot over the weekend. This really seemed to help my transitions. My best score on the Wii was when I moved the reticle to where my eyes were looking and not to follow the reticle. I felt like I was consciously snapping my eyes. The sights take too long to settle. But I feel good that the exercises are starting to become more natural.

Transitions on targets of various sizes and locations: Mostly I do this to practice conscious gear changes for simulated "far" targets. I try to focus on slowing down for far then speeding back up for closer, all while calling "A" hits of course. There is definitely some rust. I think that I can't fully extend my arm make the sights wobble more than I'd like. I just have to keep working on this.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 5 - I'm happier with my draw. The AD's from last week are perplexing because the draw is the only thing that feels really weak to me control wise. I think I definitely wrapped the tape too far down my finger. But I definitely feel like I'm making progress towards being able to shoot again.

PHYSICAL: If only couch sitting were "exercise". Going to try to run tonight. I took a few tentative "run" steps over the weekend. The only jarring on my arm was when I tried to hold it too high. Maybe if I let it hang down just a little bit it will be more comfortable to run.

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 7/22/2008

Fundamentals

DRILLS:

Steve Anderson's 2-5 from relaxed and surrender

2-2-2

Transition

Bill Drill with sim reload

SUMMARY:

SA 2-5: Sight focus sucked. I had a hard time locking in a good sight picture. I caught myself pushing left, right, up, down. I'm pretty sure this is because I can't extend fully. Surrender draws feel weird because I still lack strength with my right hand up by my head. Strong hand - forget it. I could probably do it in a match if I had to. But without the support hand I have a fair amount of pain. I tried a little angle gangsta style and that REALLY hurt. The best is to have my elbow in tight almost in front of my stomach. If I have one in a match, I'll just have to remind myself to dry fire it a couple of times to find the right elbow position again. Weak hand felt good. But I'd have to live fire for confidence.

2-2-2: I slowed down to get my A hits. I need to remind myself, you can only shoot as fast as you can see. SEE faster is my new goal.

Transitions: I replaced the fiber on my front sight. I think this will need to be a regular thing. WOW did that help. It highlighted how my sights were all over the place. But it also helped me to focus better. My eyes were snapping back and forth much more naturally.

Bill Drill: I watched the videos of the last match I did before the injury and I remembered how my finger locked up on the 5 reload 5 classifier. Then again during live fire. I wanted to do just a couple of reps of this focusing on trigger movement, resets etc. I think this one would be useful to throw in the middle of live fire because I catch myself slapping the trigger. Kind of a refocus of fundamentals so to speak.

CONFIDENCE: 5 - I want more progress and I hate that I went backwards with the injury.

I am hoping for some live fire this week, either Wed. or this weekend to focus on fundamentals.

PHYSICAL: This is why I like having a structured class like karate, too many distractions.. too lazy... did nothing. MUST DO SOME KIND OF EXERCISE!!

OTHER SHOOTING: Picked up my shotgun for the first time. I decided to expand my training to 3 gun as Ft. Benning is coming up. Studied the AMU Vids on shotgun reloading. I worked on Robbie's weak hand technique. Good thing for me I'm left handed for long guns. I'm going loads in the 2 sec range. MUST IMPROVE IF I WANT TO BE COMPETITIVE IN DEC. Got to a consistent 2 sec reload. Goal is 1 sec by Dec.

Edited July 22, 2008 by Lee King

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 7/22/2008

Introduce Fanio to dry fire. She is planning to shoot next weekend. It will be her 3rd match ever, her first with her gun. I wanted her to dry fire to work on some fundamentals. Smooth SAFE draw. Sight picture. Grip. Reload. ALL SAFELY. We focused a lot on fundamentals.

DRILLS:

Draw:

Reload:

Bill Drill (for me):

SUMMARY:

I spent a lot of time breaking each thing down to baby steps for Fanio. It was a good refresher for me. I.e. on the draw, good position, hand move to gun, weak hand to chest. Repeat...repeat...repeat.. Then add draw gun, move to chest, meet weak hand... reverse and holster... repeat.. repeat... you get the idea. Finally add push to extension. We probably did 50 reps of simple draw breaking down each move.

Reload: Same deal. Started with gun high, broke down each move. Gun up high, weak hand falls to mag, strong hand hits button. Repeat...repeat.. We only did a few reps of these. I just want her to develop a comfort level with basic gun manipulation. HOW to drop the mag. HOW to rack the slide etc. etc. For me this was good to test the motion with my arm. I haven't really worked on reloads because the motion was uncomfortable. It hurt a little, but I was pretty fast (for me).

Bill Drill: Did about 20 reps. Felt good. I wanted to time myself but Fanio was still dry firing and I didn't want to add anything else to her session like a timer beeping.

PHYSICAL: Ran at lunch yesterday.

LIVE FIRE TONIGHT WEATHER PERMITTING.

[Lee King]

LIVE FIRE 7/24/2008 6:00pm

Focused on basic fundamentals. Now that I have a timer I wanted to take some benchmarks. Not sure how accurate these are since they were minor loads. But it's a good start.

DRILLS: All were at 10 yards

Draw relaxed:

Draw Surrender:

Turn and draw relaxed:

222 reload 222:

Quick 6:

Draw and 2:

SUMMARY:

Draw relaxed: 18 reps. I surprised myself a little. I threw a M and 1 D, but I didn't have a good grip when I broke the shot and called them as such.

Best 1.01

Worst 1.77 (also a M)

Avg ~1.18 (didn't write them down so this is a quick mental average)

1m, 1d, 1c, 14a

Draw Surrender: 18 reps. Clearly I need to work on this.

Best 1.25

Worst 1.49

Avg ~1.32

1d, 8c, 9a

Turn and Draw: Only did 10 of these. Need even more work than surrender draw. I felt like I was all over the place on this one.

Best 1.25

Worst 1.54

Avg. ~1.35

1m, 2d, 3c, 4a

222 reload 222: 4 passes. These were 3 targets set about 10 ft. apart at 10 yards.

1st 6.65, Draw 1.14, Splits ~.32, Reload 1.66, transition ~.45

2nd 7.82, Draw 1.33, Splits ~.32, Reload 1.54, transition .55 Struggled with the draw on this one

3rd 8.39, Draw 1.46, Splits ~.25, Reload 3.74 (fumbled it), .40 transitions

4th 6.45, Draw 1.26, Splits ~.32, Reload 1.56, transitions .38

Quick 6: Just finished my ammo with 1 pass

2.29, 1.25 draw, .21 splits (very consistent).

Draw and 2: I timed these, but I was using production ammo and I was just working on consistency. My draws were fast (for the day) averaging 1.13 with .25-.3 splits.

CONFIDENCE: 7 I felt good about the numbers. I can improve a lot. But I feel like this is a good solid base to work from.

Edited July 24, 2008 by Lee King

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 7/25

Focused on getting Fanio ready for her match. Added reloads to her practice.

LIVE FIRE 7/27 4pm

I tried to install some fiber optic rear sights and royally F@#$ed them up. My goal was to re-sight in my old sights. Work on some movement. Do a lot of live fire with Fanio focusing on fundamentals.

DRILLS:

The drills were really for her to simulate a match. We started off with general marksmanship. She got to the point where she was shooting all A's. I set up a little COF for her to run. I didn't time myself or even check scores, I focused on transitions, sight picture, staying low moving into a box. The COF was set up to draw to a plate, I struggled with hitting it on the 1st shot so I did a 1 shot draw drill for about 10 reps until I was hitting it more consistently.

For fun we ran the plate rack a few times.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: Since I wasn't scoring myself I'd say a good 7.

PHYSICAL: My elbow really aches after a session. I think I push it passed discomfort when I'm shooting and don't realize it. I haven't run.

[Lee King]

LIVE FIRE 8/1/2008 and LOCAL MATCH - Palmetto Gun Club 8/2/2008

8/1

Took a friend shooting. Just ran a couple of drills in prep for local match on 8/2. Tried the WOD on Jakedavita.com. 4 boxes 1 target with no shoot partially covering A zone. 2 shots from box A, move to B, C, D. Next rep start at B so on and so on.

First run was bad. Put 3 into the no-shoot. Next 3 reps were much better.

Did a couple of reps of movement drills. Started on 2 plates, then moved while engaging 3 targets forward and backward.

Ended practice with a couple of reload drills.

8/2/2008 LOCAL MATCH - Palmetto Gun Club

First match since I messed up the elbow. Went ahead and ran major. No problems throughout the day. I'm paying today though. The 'bow is pretty stiff.

SUMMARY: 5th over all out of 23. 2nd in Limited out of 8. Shot 79.02% of 1st place (GM). Not bad for being 'rusty'.

We started on stage 4 so I'll go in order.

STAGE 4: Steel hell. 1 popper and texas star through barrel. Move up to plate rack on left through port. Back to center for 6 plates on stands. Far right for 2nd plate rack around barricade.

Struggled with the first shot on each array. The popper went down ok. But I missed the 1st plate on the star twice. Then the 1st plate on the left rack. I tried to take the far left 3 plates in the middle moving from the star position to the left rack. Bad idea. I should've just hit them in the middle position. You had to stop there anyway for the right 3 of that array. They really held me up. 48 secs. 7th overall. REMEMBER, IF YOU HAVE TO STOP IN A POSITION ANYWAY, DON'T TAKE TARGETS FROM FARTHER THAN YOU NEED TO. I lost count of rounds in the middle and decided to do a reload while transitioning from the left side of the barricade to the right. SUPER smooth reload. One of my best. So much that one of the other shooters said so after.

STAGE 5: Very similar to the miss classic stage I stole for the match I ran. The COF was an oblique run from right to left. 3 arrays separated by walls on the right. 3 targets behind a low wall at the end.

I should've knocked 2-3 seconds off of this run. I locked my trigger twice. RELAX. This was run and gun. I finished in 15 sec. I should've been at 12-13. I thought this would've been my best stage, but in the end I took 6th overall.

STAGE 1: Bill drill plus. 3 targets progressively farther. 1st with only A zone showing. 2nd with C. 3 wide open. 6 reload 6 reload 6 COMSTOCK.

Took the only M of the day on this one. Again, trigger locked twice. I rushed the shot after the trigger lock and threw one into hard cover. Actually, I threw 2 into hard cover but because it was comstock I made up the 1st. Didn't see the 2nd. Tied with worst stage at 7th overall.

STAGE 2: Classifier Nuevo El-press (99-22).

Made myself relax and shoot 'slow'. Not a blistering speed but no trigger locks. Smooth splits and transitions. Smooth reload. 5th overall. This one should bump me to B class. I'm at 59.6x% right now. Anything in the upper 40's should do it. According to classifier calc I shot a 66.xx%. I think it's safe to say I'm a B now.

STAGE 3: Up the middle. Barrels all along either side hiding targets at extreme sides of the bay. Mix of poppers and paper at end. You could see all poppers except 1 from the far front corners behind the barrels.

I had good plan during my walk through. I just couldn't figure out the last popper. Chester's idea was the saving grace. Step around barrel to the left. Hit the 1st right target. Then the extreme LEFT popper (you could see it from this position). Far paper next to it and closet left target next. Move up 2 steps hit the next 2 left targets while backing across the bay to the right. Turn and take the last 2 right targets while driving to right corner. Reload. Work across the back of the bay with the paper and all of the poppers remaining. SWEET plan. Lots of interesting movement while shooting. Solved the problem of the hidden last popper. The timing of movement was such that there wasn't much wasted time. Best of the day. 3rd overall. Only 10 points behind Jerry (GM).

OPPORTUNITIES:

This is the 3rd match where I locked my trigger. I need to do a lot of bill drills to work on relaxing my right hand while hammering AND driving the gun. I grip it like I'm trying to choke it once the adrenaline hits me. Bill Drills in dry fire too focusing on longer resets.

Keep practicing on steel.

Edited August 3, 2008 by Lee King

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 8/5/2008 - 9:15pm

GOAL:

Focus on trigger control. I trigger locked too many times in the last match. I wanted to work on letting the trigger out more to be more consistent. Riding the sear is fine when I can feel it. But in the heat of the moment, when I'm going full tilt like on a run and gun stage or a bill drill type stage, I need to do a fuller more consistent reset.

DRILLS:

Draw:

Bill Drill:

222:

Transition:

SUMMARY:

This is the strongest I have felt since the injury. I felt like my speed (Didn't time it though) and more importantly the "snap" of the gun was close to where I was at the peak pre-injury.

Draw: The gun was snapping to position. I didn't have to search for the sights. It felt fast.

Bill Drill: This one took some effort to get down. Doing a longer reset felt like I was squeezing the trigger hard. It took some reps to get the follow through to a point where the sights weren't moving after. Longer reset does not equal slap or break the trigger off. Light but solid consistent touch.

222: Felt really good. Fresh new fiber seems to be key for this. I didn't feel like I was overswinging or hunting for the A zone.

Transisiton: Solid tonight. I ran through various size, placement, and angles of targets on the wall through a combination of sequences. One day I'll post a pic of the target array for better understanding. I felt like the gun flowed from target to target settling on the A zone immediately. I was very aware of the change in trigger pull and reset.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 8 - None of this may translate to live fire, but it feels good for the moment.

PHYSICAL: Ran 3 times last week. I'm off this week and I'm having a hard time being motivated. But I forced myself to run tonight. Still missing karate due to elbow.

Edited August 6, 2008 by Lee King

[Lee King]

LIVE FIRE 8/6/2008 6:00pm

GOAL:

Work on relaxing. Trigger control. Address trigger lock problem.

DRILLS:

Bill Drill:

Plate rack:

SUMMARY:

Bill Drill: Still locked a lot. If I told myself to relax I could run 6 reload 6 clean and fast. But if I got carried away I would grip the gun like I was choking it and trigger lock. I made progress but I need to keep working on this.

Plate rack: We now have 2 at the club. I started on one, then sprinted to the 2nd. Something interesting happened. My fiber came out of the front sight. I didn't have replacement with me so I just shot it as is. I could see the plate through the hole where the fiber was. When this happened, I ran the plate FAST and clean. 1 for 1 in about 3 seconds. I may experiment with this at the next steel challenge. Take out the fiber on purpose.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 5. Didn't make as much progress on trigger control and stopping the lock issue as I wanted.

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 8/7/2008 7:30pm

GOAL:

Continue to work on trigger reset to stop trigger lock problem. Relaxation.

DRILLS:

Draw:

Turn and Draw:

Bill Drill:

222:

el Pres:

Transitions:

SUMMARY:

Draw: Little sloppy at first.

Turn and Draw: Felt smooth. I was focusing on limiting foot movement. I noticed in vids of the last weekend I still moved a foot after I turned. SLOW.

Bill Drill: Did a lot of reps on this one. Focused on relax. Squeeze with left hand. Need live fire to judge progress.

222: Good sight focus. Got a little sloppy at the end. Had to refocus.

El Pres: Just wanted to do a few reps to reinforce reload and transitions. I bobbled 1 reload on the whole night (including Bill Drills).

Transitions: Worked the target array left to right, right to left. Little to big. Every combination I could think of. Felt strong. Tiny bit of overswing at first but I was better by the end. This is why we practice.

PHYSICAL: Gah! On vacation. Still didn't get motivated.

[Lee King]

LOCAL MATCH - Mid-Carolina Rifle Club 8/9/2008

Decent match. My goal was consistency and to relax. 5th in Limited. 1st C. 10th overall. I don't have the exact scores, but I think there were 40ish shooters overall and 15-18 in limited. The match was 4 stages and felt a lot like "standards". Every stage had shooting boxes or positions. Not a lot of movement per se.

SUMMARY:

Stage 1: 3 boxes from back to front staggered. 3 target arrays. Last array had a lot of no-shoots.

Had a decent time. Wasn't the fastest. But it was up there. I pulled a shot into a no-shoot at the end. Only penalty of the day. I felt like I had great vision on this one. Saw the sights. Saw the transitions. I got cocky at the end and hammered when I should've taken my time because of the no-shoots. I finished somewhere around 10th overall.

Stage 2: 1 box. 3 arrays. Mandatory reload between arrays. Again, no shoots in the middle of farthest array. Learned my lesson from last stage. Take my time on those. Too much time. I felt good about this run, but it was actually my worst finish of the day. 18th overall.

Stage 3: 3 barrells. Similar to the first stage except instead of boxes you shot through barrels. No no-shoots though. Metric targets. Each barrel got lower to the ground.

I ran this one really well. The only thing I could've done better was to start shooting faster in the first barrel. I waited until I was in position to start. I should've already cleared the 1st target. I went to the 2nd barrel with a good wide stance just the right distance out of the barrel to clear all of the targets without having to move. I almost slid into the last barrel on my knees to get low enough. Good cadence. I took 2 extra shots on the 1st 2 arrays because I couldn't call the shot. Don't think I needed them. I think I was 10th overall on this one.

Stage 4: Classifier 99-21 Mini-Mart

I smoked this one (for me). I took all of my mags off of my belt so I wouldn't try to grab one out of habit (you reloaded from a shelf). I still went to my belt. Cost me about .2 seconds. I immediately corrected. If I wrote my hit factor down correctly, I shot this one in the 78% range according to the classifiercalc. 3rd overall. Best stage of the day. This was the only stage where I was "wide open". No trigger locks.

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 8/12/2008 5:30pm

Did some "fun" shooting over the weekend so I haven't dry fired in a day or two.

GOAL: Prepare for steel challenge at Mid-Carolina this weekend. Focus on transitions, wrist above shoulder draw.

DRILLS:

Draw:

Surrender Draw:

222:

1 shot transitions across the target array mixing up target order.

SUMMARY:

Draw: Warm up. Wasn't really pushing speed.

Surrender Draw: Struggled with the first couple. Pushed the sights to the left.

222: First few passes continued to push the sight to the left. Pushed the speed. Got pretty sloppy for a bit. Settled down for last couple of reps.

1 shot transitions: I went from right to left, left to right, small targets first, then med, then large left and right. Felt strong. I had ironed out sloppiness by this point.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 6 - Too sloppy at the beginning.

PHYSICAL:

Ran Monday. It's raining today, but as long as it's just a sprinkle I plan to run. If it's too heavy, I'll run the stairs.

UPDATE:

I finally got the vids of Palmetto Gun Club oriented the right way.

Stage 5 - 2 trigger locks -

Stage 2 - Classifier

Stage 1 - More trigger locks -

Stage 3 -

Edited August 13, 2008 by Lee King

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 8/14/2008 9:30pm

GOAL:

Prepare for steel challenge saturday.

DRILLS:

Draw:

1 shot transitions:

SUMMARY:

Sloppy sloppy sloppy. Couldn't get the sights to settle. Pulled off of shots. Felt like I did just about everything wrong.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 4. I think I was trying to push too fast.

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 8/15/2008 8:30pm

GOAL: Prepare for steel challenge. Sight focus, transition, surrender draw

DRILLS:

Draw:

Surrender Draw:

1 shot transition across array. Mix up order and sizes.

SUMMARY:

Draw: Warm up

Surrender Draw: Much better. I focused on making a strong, fast move to the gun. Pushed the speed until I felt like I was missing the grip. Did a few reps "on the edge", then backed off for consistency.

1 Shot Transistions: WAY better than last night. Initially I was pushing left. But I quickly corrected. Good snap. I was calling non-perfect sight pictures and correcting. I would probably give up .10 here and there. But it's better than .25 for a 2nd shot or miss. I'm learning the steel challenge is all about perfect sight picture fast.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 7. Much better than last night.

As an aside, everything I read says when you start to lose focus, stop practicing. I was definitely out of focus last night. But I look at this as a mental drill. In a match, when you lose focus, you can't just quit (well... you can but *I* don't). It seems like refocusing is a good exercise in the mental game. Maybe I'm wrong.

[Lee King]

STEEL CHALLENGE 8/16/2008

I have mixed emotions about this one. I won Iron Rimfire out of 15. 5th in Iron Centerfire out of 27. 2nd overall with my rimfire finish and 19th with CF. Though I think Jack should've won rimfire. Stage 3 had a couple of things that have stuck with me and I have a hard time celebrating. First, Jack's first pass came in at 4.99. He missed the first plate and took a 2nd shot to hit it, but if I remember correctly he shot fast and clean after the 1st. The RO reached back with the timer to show me the time and hit the clipboard with the timer. I said "That can't be right. You bumped the clipboard". But he said "Yeah it's right. He missed the first plate". Then another shooter who shall remain nameless because of a beatdown he may get (ahem), said "No he missed the first plate, that's right". The 2nd thing, and I'm not convinced Jack was right, the last pass he ran clean until the final plate. This was Speed Option where the last plate was set at 25 yards (supposed to be 35 but the bay isn't long enough). He ran a fast pass, but then missed the stop plate. I saw the dirt fly to the right of the plate. He stopped, I wondered what he was doing, then he said "I hit that right?". Donnie and I both said "No", then Donnie added "You did NOT hit the plate". Jack took another shot. His time was 7.9x. What confused the issue (and it's my fault) was there was a 5th hit at the bottom of the plate from the previous shooter I missed when I painted. I saw the hit on his 1st pass. I know that one wasn't his hit. But he said "Well there are 6 hits". I told him about the previous hit I missed. He went down and said "There's an edge hit". Ok, I KNOW I saw the dirt fly, and at that distance hearing an edge hit is a tough one. It IS entirely possible he hit the plate and we saw the ricochet in the dirt. Or it could've been there before. It's hard to say. But between the timer bump and the questionable last pass, I'm having a hard time celebrating 1st because I only beat him by 0.11 seconds total. I would've felt better if we had at least checked the splits on the timer on the 1st goof to be sure the bump didn't record.

I tried running the Limited gun without fiber and looked for the white. It felt really good at first, but everyone said I was looking for the white instead of snapping the shot. I'll need to compare times to see.

SUMMARY:

Stage 5: Roundabout

This one felt really good with my limited pass. 4th in Iron CF. 17.36 sec. 3 seconds off of 1st place. Rimfire, 1st place, 12.57 sec.

Stage 1: Smoke and Hope:

Ugh... 1/2 of the runs I was looking for my sights, the other 1/2 I was pulling off of plates or overswinging. I was very consistent though. 2, 3.55's, 1 3.56 and 2 4's. 7th in CF at 15.01. 2nd in RF. 11.88. 2's and 3s.

Stage 2: The Pendulum:

My goal for this stage was to be patient and consistent. 4th in CF. MUCH better than last time. 1 4, 2 5's, a 6 and a 7. 5th in CF at 21.54. My worst finish with RF. 4th with 18.33 sec. I did so poorly on this one last time I wanted to see the sights, be patient. I think I did that. This stage could've hurt me much worse.

Stage 3: Speed Option

Not sure how I felt about this one. I was just happy to be through with the Pendulum. 21.54 and 4th in CF. 1st in RF with 14.06.

Stage 4: Accelerator

First time I remember shooting this one. I had a hard time doping this one out because it is so deceiving. Small plate, Big plate, Small plate, Big Plate. The big plate really sucks you in. I ran this one from left to right, 1,2,5,4, S in CF and 2,1,5,4,S in rimfire. The idea of running different with RF was to draw to the big plate because at low ready, you were almost there anyway. But I think it may have been too big of a swing for me to come back from the small plate to the far right. Next time I think I'll try them both the same. Best finish in CF, 3rd with 17.06. 2nd in RF with 15.36.

Edited August 18, 2008 by Lee King

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 8/18/2008 - 6:30pm

GOAL: Push speed. I'm too comfortable with the pace I run. I'm always about 3 sec off the pace for 1st place. It's time to push the envelope.

DRILLS:

Draw:

222:

Move and shoot:

Move box A to B:

Transistions:

Reload:

SUMMARY:

Draw: Warm up. I mixed in some surrenders.

222: I really pushed the speed with this one. I would go faster and faster until I started to get sloppy, then I backed off a hair and did 10 reps. Push it again, back off again. Every time I backed off, it would be just enough to be able to call solid A's. I felt faster. Will need to try live fire to see if any of it is "taking".

Move and shoot: I started at the end of the hall on a 1/2 size IPSC on the end door. I started with simple movement down the hall. Timing my footsteps. 10 reps. Then I pushed the speed for 5 or so. The first 3 were all over the place. The last 2 were better.

Move box A to B: My goal was to explode from position A and brake hard while firing into position B. I think "explode" is relative. I need to work on foot speed. I'm trying the little "hop your feet out to get moving" technique instead of leaning while snapping the 2nd shot. At this point in my game, I don't need to start throwing mikes because I'm too focused on moving. If I call a miss, I think it would take way too much time to get back to position for a followup. I may try some times and video to see which actually is faster for me.

Transitions: I tried mixing up the order of my array. 1,4,2,3. 4,1,3,2. Add little targets 1-8. Draw to small,small, med,med, large 1-4 etc. etc. Pusing speed on transitions. At first I kept pushing the sight to whichever direction I was moving. I.e. transitioning right the sight would be pushed to the right. It took about 10 reps to smooth that out. Overswinging big time. Settled that eventually. But I'm not too confident I wouldn't in a match. Need to keep working big swings.

Reload: Again, pushed the speed. Fumbled a lot. Suddenly had trouble hitting the button. Good by the last few reps. I need to remember to relax.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 6 - I felt like I made good progress for speed.

PHYSICAL: Short run Thurs. Ran Sun and this morning.

Edited August 19, 2008 by Lee King

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE - 8/22/2008

Fundamentals and speed was the goal of the day.

DRILLS:

Draw:

Surrender Draw:

222:

Transitions:

SUMMARY:

Draw: Started off as warmup but I was struggling to find the sight. Did a lot of reps trying to settle down.

Surrender Draw: Same thing. Trying to settle down

222: Really sloppy at first. Finally started feeling better after about 15 reps. Pushed the speed a lot.

Transitions: Focused primarily on snapping to each target. Trying not to overswing. I am catching myself bringing the pistol in tight for long transitions. Not sure if this is a good thing or not. I snap to target, but I don't know how much control I would have of the gun.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 5 Felt way too sloppy.

PHYSICAL: Ran Tues and Fri night.

LIVE FIRE LATER TODAY

[Lee King]

LIVE FIRE 8/24/2008 4:30pm

I had 3 goals for this session. 1. Speed in general 2. Movement 3. engage targets sooner. 1 and 2 are general skills. 3 is a specific problem of which I am becoming aware. There have been a couple of stages recently where I know I could've shaved a 1/2 second here or there by engaging targets sooner. I.e. when coming into a position, have the gun up and ready to fire the second the first target appears instead of waiting until you set up. It's a subtle change from regular shooting on the move. But one I think will shave maybe a second or 2 off of some stages.

DRILLS:

Draw:

Draw 2:

Surrender Draw 2:

2-2-2 reload 2-2-2:

Oblique movement from left:

Oblique movement from right:

side to side movement:

Approach a wall (to work on shooting the 1st target visible as soon as possible) left and right side:

Bill Drill:

SUMMARY:

Draw: I was drawing to a 1/2 size plate from GT Targets. Kept pushing to the left.

Draw 2: finally settled down a bit. Was really trying to push the split. My goal was to make myself uncomfortable with speed.

Surrender Draw 2: Still pushed the first shot left some. Will need to work on draws in dry fire. I struggled to get a consistent grip.

2-2-2 reload 2-2-2: Pushed too fast on this one. Called 2 mikes right off the bat. I eventually settled down. But I tried to push the speed. I could tell with the groups. Lot of Ds.

Oblique movement: Definitely a fine line between too fast and not. First few passes were strong though. Again, pushed the speed until I got sloppy.

Side to side: This one was a lot harder than I thought initially. It's hard to keep your shoulders square enough and move smoothly. Left to right was ok. I was all over the place going right to left though. This is one I need to hit again.

Pie drill: Calling it pie for lack of better term. I set up a couple of barrels stacked. I would start to the left or right and approach with my gun up. The idea was to snap the shots on each target the second I saw them instead of waiting until I was in position. It always surprised me when the target was visible. I had to make myself shoot. I'm sure I threw misses. I need to do this more. Or figure out a better drill. I see big opportunity if I can get this skill down.

Bill Drill: Working trigger locks. Did about 6 reps. Only locked on 2.

OPPORTUNITIES: Reloads. I wasn't focusing on them today and fumbled too many. Movement. Continue to get more comfortable. Fundamentals. I don't know if my method of pushing the speed some is a good idea or not. I would like to do a couple of sessions where I focus on perfect sight picture, trigger control etc. to reinforce the basics. Pushing the speed is fine to get myself out of a pattern. But I don't want to sacrifice basics overall.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 5. Knowing I'm sloppy "on purpose" is an uneasy feeling.

Edited August 25, 2008 by Lee King

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 8/26/2008 7:30pm

GOAL:

Smooth. I have been focusing on speed at the expense of possibly accuracy. I wanted to hit basics and go for smooth techniques. Relaxed is smooth.. smooth is fast.

DRILLS:

Draw:

Draw Surrender:

222:

Burkett Reload:

6 reload 6:

222 reload 222:

Transitions:

Movement:

SUMMARY:

Draw: Warmup. Smooth felt good. Worked on consistent grip since I struggled during last dry fire.

Surrender Draw: Focused on explosive move to the gun then smooth from there. Relaxed felt fast and natural.

222: Reaffirming good eye focus. Pushed the speed a little bit.

Burkett Reload: Haven't been doing enough reload work. Ground-up drills tonight. Breaking down whole process.

6 reload 6: I felt like I was too comfortable with the pace. Watching vids of Mike Seeklander, his hand moves to the mag pouch so fast it's hard to see. I tried to make an explosive move off of the grip to the magazine. I think I shaved a good 1/2 sec off of my reload.

222 reload 222: Got sloppy at this point. I was breaking the "2nd" shot as I was already moving to do the reload. Had to really buckle down and focus to get good follow through on each shot.

Transitions: Just ran the target array a couple of times to move my eyes.

Movement: Combined some skills into 1 drill. 222 reload 222 move up to point shoot range. I wanted to work on explosive movement and some kind of sight picture at arms length targets. didn't want to focus on point shoots too much. Just threw it in to get some movement in and work on trigger control (no locking).

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 7. Relaxed felt so much better. Even when making the explosive movement during a reload the mag change part felt like it was going in slow motion. Like I was floating behind the gun observing it happen. Now, to translate to competition.

PHYSICAL: Ran Monday at lunch.

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 9/1/2008 6:30pm

It's been a while. Out of town guests. I did live fire some Sunday afternoon. But it was more for entertainment than work. I took my Stepfather to the range and we blasted away with various things.

GOALS:

Fundamentals: I've been focusing on speed. It felt sloppy during live fire. I wanted to go slow and focus on front sight and eye movement.

DRILLS:

Draw:

Surrender Draw:

222:

Transitions across the target array:

SUMMARY:

Perfect timing. Everything was sloppy. My front sight was all over the notch.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 5 - feel like I'm getting slack with practice. 2 more majors. I need to stay focused.

PHYSICAL: Ran thurs.

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 9/2/2008 8:00pm

GOALS: Strong Hand, Weak Hand, Reload, Empty Table Start

DRILLS:

Draw:

Surrender Draw:

Strong Hand Draw:

Weak Hand Draw:

222:

222 Strong Hand:

222 Weak Hand:

Strong Hand Transitions:

Weak Hand Transtition:

2 reload 2:

Bill Drill w/ reload:

SUMMARY:

Draw: Warmup - Fundamental - Sight focus

Surrender Draw: Warmup

Strong hand/weak hand drills: I pushed the sight down consistently. This can be a problem. I really had to focus to get a good sight picture. Will need to work hard on this before the weekend.

Reload Drills: Started strong. I focused on making an explosive move to the mag with my weak hand then relaxing for the rest of the load. This went well until the end. I missed about 5 in a row. I had to strongly refocus to get a few good reps in.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 5 - Struggled too much with weak hand and reloads.

I couldn't resist. New benelli. Had to throw in some reload drills. I don't have an extended tube yet so the most I can load is 3.

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 9/4/2008 5:30pm

GOALS: Strong hand, weak hand. Speed.

DRILLS:

Draw:

Surrender Draw:

222:

222 Strong and Weak:

Strong Hand Draw:

Weak Hand Draw:

Table Draw:

Reloads:

SUMMARY:

Everything felt better. Sights were snapping better even strong and weak hand. I really pushed the speed on the transition drills and didn't feel like I was overswinging. I'm noticing a problem with my gun during reloads. The button is holding up the mag. When I release the button, the mag will drop. But when it is depressed all the way it is catching it. Never noticed this before.

On the table draw I tried something for giggles. I'm sure this has been done before and there is probably a damned good reason not to do it. I couldn't find a rule against it and a lot of times the stage descriptions aren't specific. But I tried standing the magazine up. Pick the gun up, slam it on the magazine. With a little practice, my weak hand was already at the slide to rack it the second the mag seated. Feels a good 1/2 to full second faster than grab, stuff, rack, grip. Sure it's gaming. Probably wouldn't try it at a major. But maybe this weekend... for giggles.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 7 - We'll see how the strong hand/weak hand stuff goes for real.

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE 9/10/2008 8:00pm

GOAL: Prep for upcoming NC Sectional. Fundamentals. Speed.

DRILLS:

Draw:

Surrender Draw:

222:

Surrender 222:

Burkett Reload Drill:

Surrender Burkett Reload Drill:

6 reload 6:

2 reload 2:

Surrender 2 reload 2:

Transitions drills:

SUMMARY:

Need to step up dry fire over the next 2 weeks. I felt like I had a strong practice, but not as strong as I'd like.

Draws: Warm up for 20 reps. Push the speed for 10.

Surrender Draw: All over the place. I was getting a solid grip, but for some reason I pushed the sight all over.

222: Started off slow for about 10 reps. Pushed the speed for 10. Felt like the sights were snapping in place but the picture was too blurry for me. Slowed back down and refocused on sight picture. I'm hoping this progression ultimately results in faster, solid, sight pictures.

Surrender 222: Mainly wanted to keep working surrender draws. Much better when I was focusing on something other than the draw itself.

Burkett Reload Drill: Only did about 5 reps of this one. Solid. Same with Surrender.

6 reload 6: What the hell happened?! I was throwing mags all over the place. Finally relaxed and had some consistent reloads.

2 reload 2: Even worse. It's like I have time to think about the reload with 6. With 2 it's like I'm rushed. Need to work on these a lot.

Surrender 2 reload 2: Still working surrender draws. Settled a little bit and was a tiny bit more consistent.

Transition drills: I have 3 sizes of targets on the wall of the office/gun room. The first is 8.5x11 of targets from GlockFAQ. The second are 70% reductions of the first. The 3rd are 50%ish, about the size of a index card. If I designate them L,M,S respectively, my array is M,S,L,L,S,L,L,M. The last M is on the next wall and I use it for big swings. The M and S targets are at different heights so I'm not just swinging the gun on the same plane all the time. Usually I practice the 222's and draws etc on the 1st 3 L targets. For transition drills I mix it up. I.e. I'll work outside in with left M, right M, left S, right S, L,L,L,L. Sometimes I'll force myself to alternate everything. I go left to right, right to left. S,S,M,M,L,L,L,L. You get the idea. My goal is to move my eyes first, then the gun, then focus on the sights.

I felt good about the variations I went through during practice. I spent some time focusing on my left hand squeeze and the affect it has on transitions. I felt like I could control the swings better with a tiny bit more squeeze. Something to keep practicing.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: 6 - Felt strong in practice. It seems like it's been ages since I actually live fired or shot a match. I'll feel better after the Mid-Carolina local match this weekend.

[Lee King]

DRY FIRE, LOCAL MATCH, LIVE FIRE PRACTICE

I've been slack with the diary. A lot of activity and prep for NC State and the diary has fallen down in the list of things... here's the catch-up.

DRY FIRE - Fri 9/12

Spent a lot of time focusing on fundamentals and movement. Did a few reps for pure speed. Mostly I was focusing on the front sights and transistions.

LOCAL MATCH - Mid Carolina Rifle Club - 9/13

This was a day of extremes. I either shot really well, or really screwed up. 3rd in Limited out of 13. 75% of GM. 1st C, would've been 1st B if uspsa had run the classifiers yet. Only 2 B's though Even though I finished well, I'm disappointed because 3 out of 5 stages felt "bad" to me.

SUMMARY:

In the order we shot:

Stage 4: Barrels on left and right. Lot of close tight shots. 2 over group of barrels at the end (hidden until the end).

Best stage of the day. I changed my plan at the last second. In the middle on the right, there were 2 targets with a no shoot covering the D zones between them. When taking those, you could see the next target on the right side. I believe the intent was to see that target after the next set of barrels. But you could actually hit that target 1st and take the close 2 on the move. Right before I shot Jack said "Shoot it straight up.. it's too easy to miss the far target".. i.e. wait to take it until after you pass the barrel. Good call. I shot it in 10.25. 95% of GM. Hit everything on the move. Smooth reload. Felt great. 2nd in Limited

Stage 5 Classifier: high Standards (3-18)

Ugh... strong hand weak hand. Get's me every time. Obviously I need to work on this skill more. Pulled my first strong hand shot off of the target. Weak hand was the real screw up. I mashed the gun into my weak hand hitting the mag release button. I looked down to grab the next mag from my pouch and the only one left was my barney mag. Jamomatic. I opted to pick the one up off the ground. VERY slow. Oddly enough this wasn't my worst finish though. 5th.

Stage 1: 2 walls parallel to berm with big gap in the middle. 1 popper at the back with 2 paper partial hard cover close mirrored on the right and left side. 2 targets close in the opening. 1 target near the poppers obscured with hard cover (same on opposite side). 2 targets behind a barrel in the middle.

I had this one doped out to start on the left, popper, 2 paper... move to the corner of the wall take the close cross target, far target by the popper, left target behind the far middle barrel... reload while moving across the opening, far target by popper, close cross target by the opening... leave the right hand target by the middle barrel.. move to the end.. paper. popper... lean and take the right middle target from around the wall. When I walked the stage, that middle right target felt like it stuck my feet every time. At the last minute I thought it was taking me too long to lean around the wall and it made it a much tougher shot. I opted to run it straight up. Good idea. My only other good clean run. 3rd place.

Stage 2: Port on the left with door 3 targets... port on the right with door 3 targets... open window at the end with 4 targets.. no shoots mixed in those.

My plan was after the ports, to hug the right side while doing my reload. You could see the 2nd target from the left the whole way. I shot it on the move while approaching the window. Shifted more right to take the far left, then moved left and forward to take the 2 right targets. Which worked beautifully. My feet were constantly moving. I had a great time. Except... at "If you are finished, unload and show clear" I saw a miss on the left target. I had dropped my magazine... saw the target. Quickly I brought up the gun and hit the target again. Stooopid move. The whole process of realization... thinking about the 1 in the chamber.. aiming and firing STRONG HAND... cost me 4 seconds. I did the math with the miss and I would've had a 6.7xxx HF instead of the 6.4xxx I took. It wasn't enough to move me up in this match with only 13 shooters. But at a major... could've been 3-4 places. Now I've tried it both ways. Next time I let it go unless I'm down too many M's. already. 5th

Stage 3. Similar to stage 2. Loaded gun on table. 4 paper with no shoot in the middle so you couldn't see all 4 clean. Port with door on the right with 4 targets. Big 1/2 door at the end with 2 poppers activating a swinger and a disappearing drop turner plus 1 static.

Had major problems on this one. 2 mikes. Screwed up the order of the drop turner and got all out of whack. I only took 1 shot at the DT as result. Though.. I'm not sure where my 2nd mike was. I knew about one and the no penalty M on the drop turner. I thought maybe the np M got written as a an actual M but we checked the score sheets and sure 'nuff there was a 2nd M. I can only figure it was in one of the first 2 targets. I grabbed the gun hitting the 1st two while moving to the right port (could've pulled one off here). Port no problem. Moved up the right taking the 2 you couldn't see around the no-shoot at the beginning. SUPER fast smooth reload.. opened the door and don't know where my brain went. Swinger on the right. 2 poppers in tthe middle. DT on the left. Static far left. Should've started L. popper, R popper, static, DT, swinger. I went, L Popper, R Popper, ... wait for DT.. OH S@#$ static... DOUBLE S@#$ I screwed the timing on the turner, get 1 off on it... out of time on the swinger and had to wait for it to swing back out again. 8th

OVERALL:

I feel like I had a decent day. 3rd isn't too bad. Even if I only had the 1 M on stage 3, it wasn't enough points to move me into 2nd. Take away ANY of my screw ups and it wouldn't be enough. At least not at this match. I can't make these mistakes at NC. My biggest problems were 1) match management.. should've taken the M instead of wasting 4 secs 2) weak hand... practice... also need more reliable mags so I could go to the belt in those circumstances.. 3) I got sloppy... 2 M AND I got mess up on my plan... focus.

LIVE FIRE 9/14/2008

Needed to chron ammo for a certain Angry Drunk I had about 200 rounds of practice ammo. I took the opportunity to do a little practice. Mostly shoot on the move. 2 1/2 size ipsc plates and 1 square. I worked front to back. Side to side and oblique movement. I felt pretty sloppy Sat. It seems like it has been forever since I had any real live fire practice. There were passes where I hit the steel with every shot. Others I couldn't seem to get it hit if my life depended on it. I watched the misses juuuust miss the plates. Considering the size of the plates, I guess I feel ok about it. This week I'm going to alter my dry fire plan to do a few reps for speed. Most reps will be for sight focus, trigger control, and eye focus.. transitions. I want to do a lot of movement drills too. Though.. there doesn't seem to be too much movement when looking at the stages. Lot of static ports etc. for NC. We'll just have to look when we get there.

Edited September 15, 2008 by Lee King

[Lee King]

WELCOME TO BEE CLASS!

Classifiers finally posted and not only did I go up to B (knew I would), I shot straight to 65%!

Aight back to regularly scheduled programming: DRY FIRE 9/15/2008 8pm

GOALS: Prep for NC State. Focus. Trigger Control. Movement. Reload

DRILLS:

Draw:

Surrender Draw:

222:

Surrender 222:

2 reload 2:

222 reload 222:

Transition:

Shoot on the move (down the hall on 1 target)

6 on the move reload 6 on the move:

Moving draw:

SUMMARY:

Draws: Warm up. Pushing the sights a little. Took some extra reps to settle down. Did most of the static drills from surrender because there will be a lot of that at GA State.

222: Eye focus. Perfect sight picture. Did 3 pushing the speed. The rest were for focus and sight picture.

2 reload 2: Mostly I wanted to make sure the mods I made to the mag release worked. It was pinning the magazine. I relieved a little from the weak side of the catch. Worked perfectly. Only dropped 1 reload.

222 reload 222: Pretty solid reloads. Sights snapped well. Felt good. Will push speed tonight.

Transition: Struggled a little on long transitions. I need to work on this tonight. Focusing on grip and driving to the target. Felt a little sloppy.

Shoot on the move: I have a 1/2 size target on the door of the room at the end of the hall. I draw and pull the trigger while moving the entire length. The first couple of reps I caught myself letting the sights bounce. Slowed down the movement a little and things settled. Did 7 or 8 solid reps. Then 3 pushing the movement speed.

6 reload 6 on the move: This one actually went better. The sights seems more stable at just about any speed. Strong reloads.

Moving draw: I wanted to practice exploding from a start and drawing. For at least GA, a lot of the draws are moving from Box A to Shooting area requiring a draw on the move. For whatever reason, it's not something I'm aware we do a lot at locals. Need to spend more time focusing on foot placement and the "explosion". The draw was ok but my sights are slow to settle. Something to work on.

MENTAL CONFIDENCE: I'm planning to work on speed tonight. But for the rest of dry fire I want to work on fundamentals. sight picture. Focus. For NC I want to relax, let the shots happen at whatever speed they happen. But shoot solidly. To that end my mental confidence is about a 6 right now. I'll feel better if I have solid fundamentals during dry fire for the rest of the week.

[LChico]

WELCOME TO BEE CLASS!

Classifiers finally posted and not only did I go up to B (knew I would), I shot straight to 65%!

And you will note that MCRC (August match) would like to take some credit for putting you over the top:

8/09/08 99-21 MID CAROLINA RIFLE CLUB 78.1578 %

Linda Chico (L-2035)

Columbia SC