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CHA-LEE's Tale


CHA-LEE

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You know..that GM card is pretty funny..it makes a great carrot to chase. work hard, practice hard.

but in the end..we all strive to shoot/perform our best at a match..GM or not

Shoot the way that has been successful for you, shoot the way the gives you your best performance. don't get into the head games of what the numbers will be. just shoot.

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It's amazing how well I shoot when I don't give a crap. There's something to that. Zero or hero requires caring. Just shoot them like any other stage. Leave the emotional baggage for us B class shooters to carry for you.

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SA Friday> I understand that I can only shoot as fast as I can call my shots or everything degrades to ultra suckyness. But I can conciously work on speeding up my draw and reload during a stage run. If I can get some urgency behind my draw and get it at 1 second instead of 1.2 - 1.3 seconds thats a lot of time savings on a classifier. I do agree with you though that once you start to put crazy expectations on anything under pressure it usually turns to shit. I have to let it happen at its own pace just as I have been doing :blush:

But it is fun to unleash the angry panda blasting every once in a while :devil:

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SA Friday> I understand that I can only shoot as fast as I can call my shots or everything degrades to ultra suckyness. But I can conciously work on speeding up my draw and reload during a stage run. If I can get some urgency behind my draw and get it at 1 second instead of 1.2 - 1.3 seconds thats a lot of time savings on a classifier. I do agree with you though that once you start to put crazy expectations on anything under pressure it usually turns to shit. I have to let it happen at its own pace just as I have been doing :blush:

But it is fun to unleash the angry panda blasting every once in a while :devil:

Some day you will listen to me and dry fire those tenths of a second away on your draw and reloads. .2 seconds per draw over 10 stages is two seconds. You give your competition two whole seconds every major match. That's easily a couple of percent overall. Also, you don't have to 'try' to go faster on the classifier then. You just shoot it. But, as with your arms while shooting, speed vs hits, and make-up shots, you will hear me now and listen to me later. Stubborn Panda.

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Dude,

You've worked you butt off to get where you are now,and the GM classification from what I see will only be a formality to reward that work. The numbers don't lie. Congrats when it comes!!!

As a new shooter, reading your 'tale' has given me a lot of pointers and motivation to try to get myself on that path. This forum and your posts have really made me appreciate now the fact that hard work,seeing and calling the shots as fast your skill level allows is more important to being good at this sport than just stroking that trigger as fast as you can.

Congrats again man!!

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It's amazing how well I shoot when I don't give a crap. There's something to that. Zero or hero requires caring. Just shoot them like any other stage. Leave the emotional baggage for us B class shooters to carry for you.

zero or hero requires trying. some can, most can't.

hear me now and listen to me later

nice!!

sidenote:

I love that you are here, so I can give you crap. :sight:

Edited by eerw
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Zero or hero requires caring.

zero or hero requires trying. some can, most can't.

sidenote:

I love that you are here, so I can give you crap. :sight:

Very nice. You are right, trying instead of caring. Subtle but very important difference there.

As for the crap giving... Between work and college, I'm not really sure you can really say I'm "here" anymore. I'll take the crap giving any day from you though. B)

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This was a busy weekend of shooting. On Saturday I got some live fire practice in and mainly focused on shooting on the move from right to left. Once again I shot L-10 to force mag changes during each practice run. We ran stage like practice with some challenging COF’s which pushed the limits of 10 round magazines. This was good and its always an eye opener to figure out how to break down stages to make them 10 round friendly. Shooting Limited with 20+ round magazines makes planning for reloads a lot easier. We finished up the practice with some accuracy stuff and I found that my sights were off by 3 – 4 inches to the right at about 20 yards. Double checking the zero of my sights is something that I really need to do on a regular basis. I always seem to neglect this and end up with shooting misaligned sights for who knows how long. Live fire practice sessions always seem to work really well in finding some kind of flaw to work on or improve. I just wish that I had more time in the summer to get more practice in. With so many local club matches along with the major matches in the summer its hard to set some time aside to get some life fire practice in.

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The match I help put on was this past Sunday. Lately we have had a serious amount of rain and that combined with 90+ degree days made for a really hot and humid day of shooting. There wasn’t much wind either which made it feel all that much more hot and sticky. But regardless of the weather conditions we still had 70 shooters come out to have some fun in the sun. I setup stage 5 for the match and due to a mini lake of water in the middle of the berm I had to change up my stage a little bit to make it all fit. I think the stage turned out pretty much the way I intended it to though so that was good. Listed below are my stage runs as I shot them.

Stage 2 – This was a long 30 round field course that was pretty much an all hosing stage with a couple of pieces of steel. The key to this stage was to keep moving forward as you shot the front section of the stage. I shot the first section well then struggled a bit on the two poppers each needing an extra shot. I edge hit the second popper and it didn’t go down so I ended up with a miss. Other than the miss I felt that I shot this stage about as solid as I could. Changing gears between hosing the paper then engaging the steel was really hard. Something I need to practice more of.

Stage 3 – This was a speed shoot stage with not many options on how to shoot it. There was one target blocked by a barrel that you had to lean around to engage so you really only had the choice of shooting the open target first then the tight around the barrel one or the other way around. I chose to shoot the tight one first because that would allow me to shoot the open one as I was moving towards the door. Once you opened the door a swinger presented its self along with two other static paper targets. The swinger was easy to hit on its first pass so that was engaged first. I think I shot this stage solidly but a little slow in my splits on target through the door. I ended up with one D hit on the swinger which was a waste of points because it wasn’t that hard of a swinger to engage with two solid A’s.

Stage 4 – This was an interesting run and gun speed shoot where each target was blocked by a barrel. All of these targets were within a yard of your gun so maximum points while shooting fast was needed. The biggest challenge to this stage was to time the target engagement and foot speed so that you wouldn’t be breaking the 180 as you engaged the side targets. I shot this stage really well and was down zero points.

Stage 5 – This was the stage that I put together for the match. This was a 30 round stage where you could start anywhere outside the shooting area. The targets were placed so that you had to go to each corner of the shooting area to engage targets so it was really up to you to figure out the best path on how to get it done. To me the biggest log jam of the stage was engaging the four targets at the front of the stage. Some people were saving the last set as they backed up range to get them and others were engaging one side first then the other side immediately after that. To me it made more sense to engage both sides first so I wouldn’t have to backup and flirt with the 180 while engaging the last two targets. The stage had a varying mixture of easy and tight shots as well so you had to vary your shooting speed continually or you would be punished with misses or no shoot hits. I feel that I shot the stage as well as I could even though I might have been a little over cautious with the down range targets. The only screw up I had was during the reload where my mag wouldn’t drop free and I had to rip it out of the gun before I could complete the reload. This killed at least a second but I feel that I did a really good job of not getting into the “OH CRAP!!! I AM BEHIND SCHEDULE!!” mindset. A lot of people had misses or no shoots on this stage so shooting it clean was top priority with speed playing second fiddle.

Stage 1 – This was the classifier stage for the match called Thunder and Lightning CM 09-09. Three fixed time strings of fire on three fully open targets with five seconds to complete each string. First string at 25 yards was two shots on each freestyle. Second string at 15 yards was one round each, reload, one round each. Third string at 10 yards two shot on each strong hand only. The first and third strings were plenty of time to get all of the shots in. The second string though was cutting it close on time for me since my draw and reload are not very fast. I shot the first string well taking my time to get decent hit. The second string was going well until the reload where I botched it a little bit and it took me a little longer to get back on target. I tried to finish up fast and still get good hits but my last shot was at 5.35 and I ended up with a Late Shot penalty. The last string was easy and I got all alphas with a few seconds to spare. When all of the points were tallied I had 80 out of 90 possible points but since I had a late shot that knocked down the points to 75. This gave me an 83% run nationally which will probably throw a monkey wrench into my average. Oh well, that’s how it goes some times. I didn’t get any footage of this classifier so no video to post.

Overall I felt that I had an “Ok” match. Nothing to write home about as I had some minor mistakes. This performance was good enough to give me the win in Limited but I know that I was off pace because Henning Wallgren was shooting his Limited gun as well but signed up in Open division because he had mounted a gas petal on the side of the gun testing it for his up coming IPSC Nationals. He was 7% ahead of me in his match results and would have won Limited decisively if he were signed up for that Division. The cool thing was that I was on Henning’s squad so I was able to see how he shot the stages. Much to my surprise he did a lot more standing shooting positions than I expected. There were a couple of stages where I thought that he would lose a lot of time by doing the stand and shoot verses shooting on the move, but it really didn’t hurt his times. This is really something to think about as I think there are a lot of people that try to overuse shooting on the move. Finding the balance of when to shoot on the move or not is all about experience though. More experience is always needed.

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The match I help put on was this past Sunday. Lately we have had a serious amount of rain and that combined with 90+ degree days made for a really hot and humid day of shooting. There wasn’t much wind either which made it feel all that much more hot and sticky. But regardless of the weather conditions we still had 70 shooters come out to have some fun in the sun. I setup stage 5 for the match and due to a mini lake of water in the middle of the berm I had to change up my stage a little bit to make it all fit. I think the stage turned out pretty much the way I intended it to though so that was good. Listed below are my stage runs as I shot them.

Stage 2 – This was a long 30 round field course that was pretty much an all hosing stage with a couple of pieces of steel. The key to this stage was to keep moving forward as you shot the front section of the stage. I shot the first section well then struggled a bit on the two poppers each needing an extra shot. I edge hit the second popper and it didn’t go down so I ended up with a miss. Other than the miss I felt that I shot this stage about as solid as I could. Changing gears between hosing the paper then engaging the steel was really hard. Something I need to practice more of.

Stage 3 – This was a speed shoot stage with not many options on how to shoot it. There was one target blocked by a barrel that you had to lean around to engage so you really only had the choice of shooting the open target first then the tight around the barrel one or the other way around. I chose to shoot the tight one first because that would allow me to shoot the open one as I was moving towards the door. Once you opened the door a swinger presented its self along with two other static paper targets. The swinger was easy to hit on its first pass so that was engaged first. I think I shot this stage solidly but a little slow in my splits on target through the door. I ended up with one D hit on the swinger which was a waste of points because it wasn’t that hard of a swinger to engage with two solid A’s.

Stage 4 – This was an interesting run and gun speed shoot where each target was blocked by a barrel. All of these targets were within a yard of your gun so maximum points while shooting fast was needed. The biggest challenge to this stage was to time the target engagement and foot speed so that you wouldn’t be breaking the 180 as you engaged the side targets. I shot this stage really well and was down zero points.

Stage 5 – This was the stage that I put together for the match. This was a 30 round stage where you could start anywhere outside the shooting area. The targets were placed so that you had to go to each corner of the shooting area to engage targets so it was really up to you to figure out the best path on how to get it done. To me the biggest log jam of the stage was engaging the four targets at the front of the stage. Some people were saving the last set as they backed up range to get them and others were engaging one side first then the other side immediately after that. To me it made more sense to engage both sides first so I wouldn’t have to backup and flirt with the 180 while engaging the last two targets. The stage had a varying mixture of easy and tight shots as well so you had to vary your shooting speed continually or you would be punished with misses or no shoot hits. I feel that I shot the stage as well as I could even though I might have been a little over cautious with the down range targets. The only screw up I had was during the reload where my mag wouldn’t drop free and I had to rip it out of the gun before I could complete the reload. This killed at least a second but I feel that I did a really good job of not getting into the “OH CRAP!!! I AM BEHIND SCHEDULE!!” mindset. A lot of people had misses or no shoots on this stage so shooting it clean was top priority with speed playing second fiddle.

Stage 1 – This was the classifier stage for the match called Thunder and Lightning CM 09-09. Three fixed time strings of fire on three fully open targets with five seconds to complete each string. First string at 25 yards was two shots on each freestyle. Second string at 15 yards was one round each, reload, one round each. Third string at 10 yards two shot on each strong hand only. The first and third strings were plenty of time to get all of the shots in. The second string though was cutting it close on time for me since my draw and reload are not very fast. I shot the first string well taking my time to get decent hit. The second string was going well until the reload where I botched it a little bit and it took me a little longer to get back on target. I tried to finish up fast and still get good hits but my last shot was at 5.35 and I ended up with a Late Shot penalty. The last string was easy and I got all alphas with a few seconds to spare. When all of the points were tallied I had 80 out of 90 possible points but since I had a late shot that knocked down the points to 75. This gave me an 83% run nationally which will probably throw a monkey wrench into my average. Oh well, that’s how it goes some times. I didn’t get any footage of this classifier so no video to post.

Overall I felt that I had an “Ok” match. Nothing to write home about as I had some minor mistakes. This performance was good enough to give me the win in Limited but I know that I was off pace because Henning Wallgren was shooting his Limited gun as well but signed up in Open division because he had mounted a gas petal on the side of the gun testing it for his up coming IPSC Nationals. He was 7% ahead of me in his match results and would have won Limited decisively if he were signed up for that Division. The cool thing was that I was on Henning’s squad so I was able to see how he shot the stages. Much to my surprise he did a lot more standing shooting positions than I expected. There were a couple of stages where I thought that he would lose a lot of time by doing the stand and shoot verses shooting on the move, but it really didn’t hurt his times. This is really something to think about as I think there are a lot of people that try to overuse shooting on the move. Finding the balance of when to shoot on the move or not is all about experience though. More experience is always needed.

Interesting... about 2/3 of our squad shot Stage 3- that "lean around" target- through the space between the door frame and the barrel. Stage 4- I spoke with Paul Jr after the match, he shot the first 3 targets strong hand, kept his body square downrange, instead of turning to the right. I learn something new every weekend...

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NickJ> Thanks for the input. For stage 3 I didn't even see shooting between the barrel and door as an option on how to shoot the stage. I was pretty much playing follow the leader and everyone on my squad was shooting around the outside of the barrel. That will teach me to assume that the squad knows the best way of shooting the stage :unsure:

I watched Jr shoot stage 4 strong hand only and it did seem like his body movement on for the right hand targets was better but he also gave up points on those targets as well. He also wasted a little bit of time building a two handed grip in order to shoot the last two targets down range. I thought about shooting it strong hand only as well but I knew that it would be too risky from a hit quality perspective. On fast low point stages like that Points are king and the only way I knew that I could shoot all A's is if I was using a two handed grip so that's what I went with. I think that Jr could have shot the stage in about the same time with a lot better points if he shot it with a two handed grip. Him shooting it strong hand only did look cool though :surprise:

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What matters in these two examples are the results. Shooting one handed and dropping points definately reflects in the results. Shooting through the gap of the doorframe and barrel doesn't appear to have had an excessively positive result either. Both stage three and four were points stages. Get your A's, burn a little extra time, come out on top.

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I attended the indoor USPSA match down in Colorado Springs last night. While driving down to the range it was raining cats and dog’s most of the way. I wasn’t sure how many people would show up for the match due to the rain but we ended up with a decent turnout of about 20 shooters. We shot two stages that night, one medium size field course and a classifier. I didn’t bring my video camera so I wasn’t able to get any footage of my stage runs. Listed below are my stage runs.

Stage 1 – This was a 20 round COF with three shooting boxes. The first and last box were pretty easy with three targets to engage from each box. The middle box was an interesting challenge though. The middle box was actually a barricade and there were four targets that needed to be engaged from both sides of the barricade. Two from one side and two from the other. This barricade/box position was really awkward to shoot from as the best way to shoot it had you entering the box from left to right but then you had to engage two targets from the left side of the barricade. Then transition to the right side of the barricade to shoot the remaining two targets. This super awkward shooting positions in the middle were where this stage was going to be won or lost because of the funky stance needed and a boat load of no shoots to punish you if you shot too fast. I felt that I shot the stage well even though the middle section felt clunky and slow but I don’t think that it could be optimized much more than I did. I ended up with one D zone hit on the left side of the barricade which really isn’t much of a surprise given the funky stance needed to shoot from there.

Stage 2 – This was classifier 99-12 called Take your Choice. It’s a pretty straight forward stage where you shoot from behind a barricade. Three targets on the right side, reload, then three more targets on the left side. The targets are set out to a little past 13 yards so it puts them just outside a lot of peoples fast shooting comfort zone. I decided to simply shoot it as fast as I could call my shots and I did just that. I shot the stage well and called one shot marginal and made it up quickly. The marginal shot ended up being an outside C zone hit which I thought was going to be a D so I really didn’t need to make it up but I would rather make it up and not needed it verses not make it up and need it. This stage run was almost a 100% run nationally coming in at 99.89%. Hopefully this classifer helps offset the poor one I shot on Sunday.

It was a fun match to shoot and I executed well on both stages which is nice. Now if I could only do this at every match it would be awesome. But I am sure that a lot more practice and experience is going to be needed to shoot at this level with any amount of consistency.

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Its time to get my gear reset and ready for the Area 3 match this coming weekend. We are heading out on Friday for the match and I am looking forward to giving it my best. My performance goal for the match is at least 90% of the Limited winner. Given the current list of GM heavy weights signed up for this match shooting 90% of the winner will be a significant accomplishment for me. All I can do it give it my best and see where I shake out in the results. Time to earn it when it counts :sight:

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I am heading out to Nebraska tomorrow morning for the Area 3 match. I am looking forward to attending this match and will give it my best. Hopefully all of this hard work lately pays off. We will see how it goes.

On another note, I have been thinking about a suitable reward to give myself for making GM when I does happen. I think I will give myself a Life membership to USPSA if I earn a GM classification. That seems like a suitable reward for the accomplishment.

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I am heading out to Nebraska tomorrow morning for the Area 3 match. I am looking forward to attending this match and will give it my best. Hopefully all of this hard work lately pays off. We will see how it goes.

On another note, I have been thinking about a suitable reward to give myself for making GM when I does happen. I think I will give myself a Life membership to USPSA if I earn a GM classification. That seems like a suitable reward for the accomplishment.

I'm throwing a BBQ when I make M. :D

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SA Friday> You have to shoot some matches first before you can move up in classification....... :sight:

Not Really :D

I'm throwing a BBQ when I make M. :D

Here you go Sean..how about this weekend

post-627-065588900 1281045815_thumb.jpg

Edited by eerw
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