CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

Wow, I didn't realize that you've only been shooting uspsa for a couple years. You appear like you've been doing it for much longer than that.

I've shot two matches so far and I'm hooked. My second match was the last HPPS event. Your stage killed me. It didn't help that I had to shoot it first in my squad. I wish I could have watched glen and then copied his strategy. It was a good stage though. I'm finding that I like stages that require movement covering further distances. Being relatively quick on my feet helps make up for being slow on the draw, target transitions, slow follow up shots, and only being able to TRULY call about 30% of my shots.

Your success is inspiring. What were you originally classified as?

I started out shooting Production division in USPSA and was initially classified as a “C”. I only shot a few matches in Production before switching over to Limited where I have competed in ever since.

It is cool to see a new shooter like you be introduced to USPSA match shooting and get hooked on it. USPSA match shooting is a very difficult thing to become really good at but the challenge in getting better is what drives us all to keep coming back. Or that is what keeps bringing me back week after week. There is always something that we can do better, faster or more efficient in order to improve our performance. This never ending evolution of skill honing is what drives me to keep pushing for the next level.

Keep at it and if you always strive to do better then the sky is the limit.

[CHA-LEE]

I did a trigger job on a buddies gun and had to drop it off to him in Boulder on Friday night so I figured I would participate in the evening Indoor Combat Pistol match. This is the one off IDPAish style match where everything is dictated for the stage runs. They had two stages to shoot and both of them were mind benders when compared to USPSA matches.

The first stage was a three box to box stage where you had to engage both shoot and no shoot targets. All of the targets required two hits in the body but the brown targets also required one shot to the head. Needless to say shooting no shoot targets is different and then engaging the heads on only the brown targets was another mental challenge. I went with the plan of shooting all of the bodies then the heads in each shooting position to keep it simple. This plan worked out well.

The second stage was another three box setup with two groups of targets to engage from each box. The targets were setup in groups of two or three and the stage procedure was to engage one group or the other (Sets of 2 or 3 but not both) then when you are done with the one group go back through the boxes and engage the other group. This was yet another mind bender because you were forced to not shoot specific targets in specific positions even though you could see them. I went with the sets of 3 first and then came back and did the sets of 2. This worked out the best for me. Even though I planned on doing a reload I completely lost track and ended up shooting the gun dry forcing me to do a standing reload. I can live with this mental screw up as keeping track of which targets to shoot or not shoot was consuming all of my attention.

From a shooting challenge stand point this match was really easy. From a mental planning stand point this was a really hard match. Keeping track of which targets to engage in which order was hard to plan for. It sounds simple but being able to shoot whatever targets you see in USPSA style matches makes you jaded to target engagement order. At least it does for me.

[CHA-LEE]

I didn’t have a match planned for Saturday so I figured I would sleep in and then get some breakfast with my lady. We have a nice sleep in and finally get up and head out to get some breakfast and on the way to the restaurant I start having this pain like someone kicked me in the nuts. The pain keeps increasing more and more and moves up to my lower left abdomen. I had to pull over and let my lady take the wheel because I was doubled over in pain. We head to the emergency room and by the time we get there the pain in my gut is overwhelming. This is the most painful thing that I have ever experienced in my life. It literally felt like there was a knife stabbed into my gut and then someone was trying to pull out my innards with a meat hook. I can’t even put into words how painful this was. The pain was so intense at times that it would literally make me puke. The people in the emergency room loaded me up with some morphine and it didn’t even take the edge off the pain. They finally ended up giving me a horse size dose of Demerol and the peak of the pain started to recede. Blood and urine tests were run along with some X-Rays and the Doctors conclusion was that I was passing a kidney stone. They pumped me up with some IV fluids and sent me home with a basket full of pills. I spent the rest of the night in a drugged coma like state fighting through the pain. Needless to say I was down for the count and even though I was suppose to help host the Sunday match there was no way I was going to be able to do it. I finally came to around at noon on Sunday and most of the pain was gone and I am in wait and see how it goes mode. I hope that the worst is over as I don’t think I can handle another bout of gut pain like that. Thankfully my lady was there to help me through this situation. She was awesome and took care of me like a pro. I can’t stop thinking of what would have happened if this would have hit while I was at the range attending a match somewhere out in the sticks like I usually am on the weekends. I would have been screwed for sure. Maybe its luck or fate that I wasn’t shooting a match this past Saturday when it hit. I think I should run out and buy a Lotto ticket given my luck on it happening on a non shooting weekend day. When people say that they are passing a kidney stone it now has a new meaning of pain for me. I feel sorry for anyone else that has had to experience this. I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Hopefully I will only need to experience it once myself.

[frunkenstein]

Sorry to hear you are sick. I hope passes soon for your wifes sake. The match went well , we had to stop for the anual election, but from there my match was 80 % clean. The classifier was my nemesis strong hand and weak hand are things I need to practice, BADLY. Get well so you can set the pace next week PPPS. PS 32 lbs. and 6 inches (minmal pain). Soon I may be able to start moving easier. See you soon.

[NickJ]

Charlie, are you feeling/getting better today?

I shot like crap yesterday, in slow motion...

[CHA-LEE]

I am back to normal today. Still drinking a lot of fluids and straining pee for stones though. Only one stone has shown up so far an it really wasnt that big. Its hard to believe that such a little stone like that can cause so much pain

Either way, I am heading down to Whistling Pines tonight to get my blastin fix in. I am bringing my heavy meds just in case it strikes again

[frunkenstein]

Saw you were at super star status again Monday glad you feel better.

[CHA-LEE]

I attended the indoor USPSA match down in Colorado springs last night. It was nice to get back into the saddle of shooting again. I was still a little exhausted from the weekend and felt it during the match. Once again I wasn’t able to see my front sight as well here. This is a conundrum as the Green FO front sight has been working great everywhere else. It worked great at the Boulder indoor match so I am not sure what is up with this place. I think its because there are flood lights right where your gun is indexed and it lights up the rear sight a bunch which distracts me from seeing the front sight. Either way I was basically left with point shooting the whole match. I would try to see my sights but it was nothing but blurry on blurry every stage run. It was fun to push the limits on my point shooting though even though my hits suffered. We shot three stages and I have listed them below.

The first stage was the long field course stage of the match. You started in a box on the far left and had to engage three targets while in the box. Then you moved to the middle section of the stage where there were two different shooting positions that had you engaging three targets in each. This middle section was actually pretty tricky to figure out. The targets were just outside of your shooting on the move comfort zone but you didn’t want to waste time standing there flat footed while engaging targets. After that you moved to the extreme right to another box where you engaged three more targets with varying hard cover. I was going to try and shot the middle sections on the move but since I couldn’t see my sights I figured it would be better to do some stand and shoot. I tried to offset the stand and shoot time by unloading on the targets quickly and was rewarded with a miss. The rest of the stage flowed well for me and I had a decent time.

The second stage was classifier 99-33 called Raw Deal. I had shot this classifier not long ago in Steamboat Springs so I told myself that I needed to shoot slower. Well the buzzer went off and once again I couldn’t see my sights so I decided to let loose. This resulted in a miss on one of the targets. Funny enough, the miss was on the same target that I missed the last time I shot this classifier. It sucks not being able to call your shots due to not being able to see.

The third stage was a short stage where we started seated with your unloaded gun and mag on the table. You engaged four targets from behind the table then moved to a box on the right and engaged four more targets. Most of the targets had no shoots or hard cover blocking them which absolutely punished everyone. I think that everyone was in hoser mode as there were only a couple of people that didn’t have a miss or no shoot on this stage. I racked up two no shoots and a miss myself which wasn’t pretty, but fun to shoot fast.

It was nice to get another match under my belt but I think I will swap my front sight over to the neon red fiber optic rod for this indoor match. That should help pull my attention to the front sight where it belongs.

[CHA-LEE]

I attended a USPSA match down in Pueblo this past Sunday. My wife also attended the match and shot her new M&P 40 that I recently built up for her. This was her first outdoor USPSA match and that combined with using a new gun made this match all about her. I really didn’t have time to focus on my own shooting as I was busy making sure that she was on track and taken care of. That combined with ROing a lot of the time pretty much absorbed all of my attention. My shooting suffered due to my attention being focused on everything else. It was frustrating that I couldn’t shoot the stages to the level I knew I could, but it was worth the sacrifice to have my lady experience the match and get use to shooting her new gun. Her new gun ran flawlessly and she really likes shooting it so I am really happy with how it turned out.

[CHA-LEE]

This past Saturday I volunteered to be the Match Director for the High Planes Practical Shooters USPSA match since the vast majority of the clubs officers were not going to be able to make it to the match. Me and my friend Matt came up with six fun stages to shoot and I did my best to enlist some extra help for setting up the match. We were really lucky to have a bunch of help in the morning and all of the stages were setup right on time. My lady also wanted to shoot the match so she was there helping with sign up as well. It was a lot of work but it went smooth and was worth the effort. We have to make these matches happen to I did my best to do just that. Since I was running around tending to everything in the morning, along with setting up a whole stage by myself I didn’t get a chance to check out the stages from a competitive stand point. This combined with walking my lady through the match I knew that my own shooting would be playing second fiddle to everything else. This showed in my shooting performance but even through I wasn’t able to shoot as good as I knew I could I still had a bunch of fun. My lady also had a lot of fun and did better than the weekend before so that in its self was worth all of the effort. I didn’t get a chance to video any of my runs and I am not going to even waste the time to try and break down each stage since my head really wasn’t in it for this match. My focus was on making sure that the match went smoothly and that my lady had fun. I didn’t hear any whining about the stages or match flow by the other shooters so I figure that the match went well. I am going to consider this match a win in my book

[d_striker]

I am going to consider this match a win in my book

The cherry on top is that you DID win.

[CHA-LEE]

I shot the ICORE style match last night down at the indoor range in Colorado Springs. We basically shot the same stage three times but used different scoring methods to make being more accurate more important. I tried to follow along with the different scoring methods but to me this is counter productive to shooting USPSA style matches. That and shooting at the funky “Tombstone” style targets is harder anyway because you really don’t know where to aim. I shot the stages pretty much like it was a USPSA match so I took a lot of time + penalties but I didn’t care. My main focus for this match was to explore using different sight pictures to try and over come the front sight vision issues I have had at this range. That and pushing the limits on shooting on the move which is always a good skill to hone. We shot two stages with the lights all the way up and I noticed that the rear blade of the sight was reflecting a lot of the light and distracting me from seeing the front sight as I should. On the third stage we turned down the lights and only had the targets partially illuminated. In this lighting condition my sights were darker due to the lower light but I was able to pick out and see the front sight a lot better. Its crazy how dynamic vision and seeing is.

On another note I have been working hard to get my Primary and Backup pistols setup exactly the same. I have proven that my backup gun works flawlessly by using it the past month. So I decided to switch back to the Primary gun after changing the trigger to match the backup gun. I used the Primary gun at this match and it worked great and shot just like the Backup gun. Its cool to have two separate guns setup exactly the same. My goal was to get these two setup and tested before heading out the to Area 2 match in November so I am ahead of schedule on that project.

I haven’t done much live fire practice lately that was dedicated to simply shooting and honing skills so I think I need to schedule some more practice time in the up coming weeks. It will be nice to give my full skill set a shake down before heading out to the Area 2 match. Knowing what you can do is a lot better than hopping you can do something. Or worst yet, assuming that you can do something that you can’t.

[frunkenstein]

Hey Cha-Lee did you get rsults from Icore I didnt . Not that I'm going to win but I would like see the results. If you did I'll give you my e-mail tommorow if it happens.

[lcambre]

Hoser has the mailing list for the Whistling Pines matches. Since he wasn't there the results weren't sent out.

[eerw]

Hoser is also pretty busy with work at the moment.

Edited October 23, 2010 by eerw

[CHA-LEE]

frunkenstein> I have not seen the match results from the Monday night ICORE match either. I think we will have to wait until Hoser gets back from his trip so he can send them out. We just need to be patent.

[CHA-LEE]

The match on Saturday got canceled due to rain in the forecast and sure enough there ended up being no rain. Since it was a decent day I decided to head out to the range to get some live fire practice instead. Its been a while since I did much live fire practice and my buddy Conrad was with me and he really needed to work on calling his shots. Since we all need more help with calling shots we both ran through a series of shot calling drills. We setup five targets at varying distances, starting close at 7 yards and progressing out to 35 yards for the last target. We then tried purposefully misaligning the sights in varying amounts then shooting each target the same way to see how the sight misalignment showed up on target. This testing was really interesting on a bunch of different levels. The first was that it was HARD to overcome my natural tendency to align the sights. I had to force myself to shoot with the sights misaligned. The other thing that was interesting was that if I used the fiber optic dot as my misalignment gauge it really didn’t matter where the FO was within the notch to still have a hit on the target out to about 20 yards. I really expected there to be less misalignment needed to start missing the target at 20 yards. The last thing that was really interesting was that I would get different hits on the target if I misaligned the sights by moving the front sight verses moving the rear sight. If I moved the front sight out of alignment then my hits would be off accordingly. If I tried to keep the front sight steady and move the rear sight notch the hits would be closer to center of mass. The whole time I would be focusing on the front sight so I think misaligning the rear sight made me less effective in actually misaligning it.

All of this testing started to make me think about what I really need to see when breaking the shot. I have been trying to see the front and rear sight on the same visual plane in order to process a front to rear sight alignment and call my shots. Since my natural tendency is to align the rear notch to the front sight without really looking at it, I tried shooting the same series of targets at normal shooting speed by looking only at the front sight and just assuming that it would be aligned to the rear notch. Basically I was keeping a hard front sight focus and breaking the shots as soon as I seen the FO on the A zone of the target. Doing this produced some very interesting results. I would be able to shoot a lot faster splits on further away targets out to 25 yards. But the hits seemed to completely go to shit past 25 yards. Past 25 yards I would need to do my old front to rear sight alignment shot calling process to get my hits. But anything within 25 yards I was able to shoot by simply aligning the FO of the front sight to the A zone and breaking the shot. This results in a lot faster on target splits since the shot calling process is more simplified. This is a pretty significant break through for me in “Seeing only what you need to see” during the shot calling process. I planned on using this new shot calling methodology during the match on Sunday.

[CHA-LEE]

On Sunday I headed up in the mountains to attend the Clear Creek Practical Shooters monthly match. This is a little ways up into the mountains so the weather was a little iffy. It was pretty windy in the morning, so much so that a lot of the steel was set really heavy and it was mandated that you had to hit the steel but it didn’t have to fall in order to count. This rule only applied to the full size poppers but it was a pretty good mental twist on the stages. Shooting poppers that ding but don’t fall without going back to it and shooting it again to try and make it fall would prove to be a difficult challenge for me. This bit me on one stage which cost me some time but it is what it is. My main focus for the match was to leverage my newly found shot calling skill on the medium distance targets to see how it would work in match conditions. The winter weather is soon to come and you could feel it in the morning wind. This might be the last match this year up at this range due to snow so I was good to be able to participate. I was able to get my stage runs filmed which I have been slacking on for the past month so they are listed below along with the stage breakdown.

Stage 1 – This was a long field course with a bunch of back and forth shooting at the start followed by a bunch of steel at the end. Being the first stage of the day I didn’t feel like I shot this stage as aggressive as I could have and then in the middle when I tried to pick up some speed it resulted in a boat load of misses on the steel. I got all of my hits without any shooting penalties but I probably wasted at least 2 – 3 seconds on this stage by not being aggressive enough on the front half and then being too aggressive on the back half. There was another shooter on my squad that was having horrible light strike issues with his XDm. He just put in a trigger kit and I figured that the light strikes were due to the firing pin block not being adjusted properly for the trigger kit. We went to the safety area and I proceeded to remove the firing pin retaining plate and BOING the firing pin spring and the little plastic retaining piece went flying. We searched all over the place for a while trying to find the plastic retainer but we couldn’t find it. With me losing this piece I took his gun out of commission for the match which made me feel like a complete jackass. I felt really bad about losing the piece and I will replace the part for him but I couldn’t do anything to get him going again for the match and I made me feel pretty bad. I tried to help him out and ended up making the situation worse. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.

Stage 2 – This was another fairly long stage with a bunch of mini poppers waiting to eat your lunch. The main log jam on this stage were the mini poppers and the only way to partially optimize it was to slowly move to the left as you engaged them in order to make the second position of paper targets available to be immediately engaged. My plan had me pushing the round count to 19 on the first mag and trying to shoot 7 mini poppers on the move at about 15 yards which was probably a bad idea in the first place. But since I had spend most of the time before shooting the stage searching for the missing gun part my plan wasn’t fully baked. Either way when it was my turn to shoot the stage I loaded up the gun to 21+1 and hoped that I would get my hits on the mini poppers and not run me out of rounds. This plan didn’t work out so well as I did end up needing too many makeup rounds on the steel and rand the gun dry. This triggered a reload and rack before I could finish engaging a target and then finish off the stage. I wasted at least 2 seconds by running our of rounds and having to come back to reengage the paper target. Not a good start to my match but once again, I got all of my hits so I didn’t do too much damage to my stage run.

Stage 3 – This was a standards type of stage where you had to engage three paper targets that had no shoots blocking them about three yards in front of the scoring targets. You had to engage all three targets with 2 rounds each from three different shooting boxes. Each shooting box presented a different vantage point of the scoring targets being blocked by the no shoots and the shots were fairly tight. The scoring targets were about 15 yards away so this was going to be a really good test of my new shot calling skill. My goal was to put the FO of the front sight on the target and break the shots as soon as it was on the A zone or highest scoring zone visible. The buzzer went off and I deployed my new shot calling process and it worked great. I called every shot as good when it broke and when we checked out the targets I had really good hits. Even though my box to box movement wasn’t the best I was able to net the second fastest stage time in the match for this stage. Its rare that a limited division stage time can keep up with the Open divisions on tight shot stages like this so I was really happy with how it turned out.

Stage 4 – This was the classifier which was CM 99-48 called Tight Squeeze. This is a pretty straight forward classifier. Draw, two on each target, reload, then two more on each target. Most of the targets have either no shoots or hard cover blocking all but the A zone so deviating your shots left or right will be severely punished. I opted to use the same shot calling process as the other stage and it worked out great. Watching the video I can really see a difference in my shooting speed for every target. While shooting the stage I didn’t even realize that I was shooting each target at a different speed. I simply waited for the FO of the front sight to be centered on the upper portion of the body A zone and broke the shot when it got there. This performance resulted in only 1 point down in a time of 6.38. This run ended up being an 89% nationally which is fine with me. I think the only way I could have done it faster would be to draw and reload faster.

Stage 5 – This was a funky field course stage where you had to engage six poppers before you could move forward in the stage. There was also some paper at the front that kept you pinned in the back portion of the stage so I figured I would shoot half of the stage from the starting position and then haul ass up to the front to finish it. This is the stage where the poppers were set really heavy and they didn’t have to fall to count as a hit. The steel not falling really threw me for a loop. I double shot some of the poppers when it wasn’t needed because they were not falling and I was shooting so fast that the “Ding’s” were happening as my next shot was breaking so I couldn’t rely on the sound as a confirmation on hits either. I knew I missed one of the poppers as I called it a miss as I was sawing out the rounds from right to left and I made it up before I left the first position. I ran halfheartedly to the second position which killed some time but finished strong on the close targets. I ended up with one D zone hit the left down range target which I called good but it ended up being a D. I chalk this up to pushing the limits on my FO sight shooting while trying to engage these targets on the move. Other than that it was an ok stage run.

When the match was all done I only had one D hit for the day and no other scoring penalties. From an accuracy standpoint while using my new shot calling skill I was really happy with the results. I need a lot more trigger time with this new shot calling skill to build confidence with it but I really think that once mastered it will raise my game quite a bit. I have been over aiming on the medium distance targets and it has lead to slower shooting and thus slower stage times. I know that there will be some teething pains as I fine tune and find the limits of this new skill but it is exciting to get my foot in the door on a new level of shooting.

[d_striker]

Stage 1 – This was a long field course with a bunch of back and forth shooting at the start followed by a bunch of steel at the end. Being the first stage of the day I didn’t feel like I shot this stage as aggressive as I could have and then in the middle when I tried to pick up some speed it resulted in a boat load of misses on the steel. I got all of my hits without any shooting penalties but I probably wasted at least 2 – 3 seconds on this stage by not being aggressive enough on the front half and then being too aggressive on the back half. There was another shooter on my squad that was having horrible light strike issues with his XDm. He just put in a trigger kit and I figured that the light strikes were due to the firing pin block not being adjusted properly for the trigger kit. We went to the safety area and I proceeded to remove the firing pin retaining plate and BOING the firing pin spring and the little plastic retaining piece went flying. We searched all over the place for a while trying to find the plastic retainer but we couldn’t find it. With me losing this piece I took his gun out of commission for the match which made me feel like a complete jackass. I felt really bad about losing the piece and I will replace the part for him but I couldn’t do anything to get him going again for the match and I made me feel pretty bad. I tried to help him out and ended up making the situation worse. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.

Not true...My gun was already out of commission. I wasn't going to shoot my gun having to rack the slide every other shot. Also, we're talking about a part that costs $1. My match was done regardless of having that part or not.

I appreciate the help and information gathered from the situation. While I initially had problems when I installed the kit three weeks ago, I thought I had the problem solved. I was wrong.

Unfortunately, I had to learn a lesson the hard way....Always have a backup gun even if you think your gun is running. Murphy's Law will always prevail.

ETA-This also makes me realize how great the camaraderie is in this sport. I know of no other sport where one's competitors are so eager and willing to help each other out.

One guy even let me use his gun on the Classifier and offered to let me use it for the remainder of the match.

Edited October 26, 2010 by d_striker

[CHA-LEE]

This Saturday I attended a one off “Zombie” match down at the indoor Colorado Springs range. This was a low light shooting event with real zombie targets to engage. Everyone shot the same gun division and the only difference was how many times and where you had to hit the zombies based on the caliber you were shooting. If you were using .45, 10mm, or 44 magnum then all you had to do was shoot the zombies once in the head. If you were using .40 or 357 Sig then you had to shoot them once in the head and once in the body. If you were shooting 9mm or smaller caliber then you had to shoot them once in the head and twice in the body. The guys shooting 45’s were at a significant advantage from a rounds needed to shoot perspective, but the lighting was so low that unless you had night sights, a laser or a C-More you were up the creek without a paddle. I couldn’t see my sights at all so I had to resort to point shooting as well as I could but that didn’t work out too well either. Since I couldn’t see my sights I resigned to unleashing a fury of bullets when it was my turn to shoot the stages. It was a lot of fun to do some crazy fast shooting. I really didn’t care where I ended up in the match because not being able to see your sights is a pretty significant disadvantage. Oh well. I had fun blasting the zombies I could hit. The one good thing about this situation is that I am going to get some night sights put on my home protection gun. I don’t think I can rely on the bad guys trying to rob my house in the day time.

On Sunday I decided to go practice with friends instead of attending the USPSA match up in Boulder. I am glad that I practiced instead of shooting the match because I got a chance to test the limits of my new shot calling process. We setup some stages with a bunch of different shooting positions mixed with close and far shots. Some of the stages were pretty difficult and were pretty much memory stages due to multiple targets being available from multiple positions. Given the higher difficulty of the shots due to the distance or tightness every time I tired to use the “Put the FO on the Target” shot calling I would end up with misses. I had to scale it back and use my front/back sight verification shot calling process for these stages. It was fun to try and push the envelope and learn from my mistakes though. I rebuilt my 22+1 magazine and gave it a run for its money today as well. It ran flawlessly which was nice. Having a 22+1 setup to leverage is a significant advantage some times. I am looking forward to having it as an option to use at the Area 2 match coming up in a couple of weeks.

After we were done shooting stages we decided to do some accuracy stuff so we setup three 6 inch plates at about 45 yards and had a little competition to see who could knock them all off with only 6 rounds. We decided to use 6 rounds because we would shoot at the skinny poles that hold up the plates as a bonus if we were able to get all of the plates off and still had rounds to shoot. I was able to get all of the plates off but couldn’t hit the poles. One of my friends was able to shoot all of the plates off as well but couldn’t hit the pole so we decided to have a shoot off. The next round we figured that we would up the ante and shoot a single plate strong hand only but only had 4 rounds to do it. I was up first and broke the first shot early missing the plate. Then on my second shot I took my time and slowly pulled the trigger back. The rear sight notch was wiggling ever so slightly compared to the front sight and I couldn’t calm it down so I simply waited for the oscillation to cross the center point and then broke the shot “PING” the plate went down. I think it was probably luck more than anything but it was still pretty fricken cool to shoot a 6 inch plate strong hand only at 45 yards. This is probably not even a challenge for the bulls eye shooters but for me it was a cool accomplishment. My buddy didn’t fair so well with the strong hand only challenge and after he missed on the second shot he fired his last two shots quickly basically giving up. It was a friendly little competition and it was nice to finish up the practice with some accuracy stuff.

[CHA-LEE]

I was able to attend the indoor USPSA match down in Colorado springs last night. It was nice to get back into the normal groove of USPSA match shooting. We didn’t have too many shooters attend the match that night but the low attendance also allowed us to shoot three stages instead of just two. My buddy Dominic was able to film my stage runs so that was cool as well. Listed below are my stage runs along with the videos.

Stage 1 – This was a three box to box 20 round stage where you engaged three paper from the first two boxes and four from the last. The first two positions were pretty straight forward but the last box required some crafty moving around to get access to all of the targets. The last box had three no shoots blocking the targets so not all targets could be engaged from the same position. You basically had to enter the box deep to engage the first two targets and then move back to the left to engage the other two targets. I shot this stage pretty decent in the first two boxes but tried to turn on the afterburners for the last box and ended up clipping a no shoot which lead me to making up the shot. Without the no shoot hit this would have been a really good run.

Stage 2 – This was classifier CM 09-02 called Diamond Cutter. It’s a pretty straight forward classifier. Starting facing up range with your hands relaxed at sides. At the tone turn and engage each target with two rounds. This classifier has some pretty tight shots on the A zones so getting all of the points without taking too much time is a pretty challenging task. You could go hoser crazy on this classifier and hope that you get your hits but I think that your points would be so bad that it wouldn’t even matter if you shot it really fast. I picked my standard mode of operation and told myself to simply shoot as soon as I can call my shots and it served me well. I was able to shoot this stage pretty quick with only being down 3 points. This resulted in a 92% run nationally which is cool. My 1.7 second first shot time isn’t so good though.

Stage 3 – This was pretty much a rehash of the first stage with a few targets moved around. We moved some of the targets far down the range and shuffled the order of others around. Once again we were starting on the left side but this time we were facing down range with our strong hand finger touching the wall. This stage really pushed my visual limits on the far away targets. The blurry sight picture was in full effect for the back targets as it seemed like I wasn’t able to focus on the front sight due to the rear sight being lit up so well. I ended up nicking a no shoot on one of the far away targets and I couldn’t even call it a marginal shot. Being frustrated without being able to call my shots well I tried to hurry through the rest of the stage which lead to more crappy shooting. In the middle section I ended up with three D zone hits as I was not aiming for the A zone but instead “Brown” and in the last box I tried to go fast once again and solidly hit the same no shoot as before which needed making up as well. This was a pretty crappy stage run on my part. Mainly from being discouraged by not being able to see the front sight good enough at the start.

It was a fun night of shooting and I was able to pull together a decent classifier run which was nice. I need to really work on not getting frustrated during a stage run which allows me to degrade my shooting performance on the rest of the stage. I don’t want to make that my normal habit as that will really bite me in the ass at the bigger matches. The Area 2 match is only a couple weeks away now so I am going to try and get as much practice as I can between now and then.

[d_striker]

The one good thing about this situation is that I am going to get some night sights put on my home protection gun. I don’t think I can rely on the bad guys trying to rob my house in the day time.

That match was definitely a wake up call for me. I have a Viridian X5L coming for the bedside gun. I thought about the night sight route, but I've always wanted a light/laser. Also, I think it would be easier for the ol' lady to use, if she had to, when I'm not there.

[Tom Freeman]

That match was definitely a wake up call for me. I have a Viridian X5L coming for the bedside gun. I thought about the night sight route, but I've always wanted a light/laser. Also, I think it would be easier for the ol' lady to use, if she had to, when I'm not there.

Being able to take something from each match is important.

To me, something like realizing how important night sights can be on a HD firearm is priceless.

[CHA-LEE]

Tom> You hit the nail on the head. One of my goals every match is to learn something in order to add it to my experience tool chest. There are plenty of lessons to learn every match, its our responsibility to stay attentive and observant in order to see and learn these lessons.

Unfortunately I see a lot of shooters at the matches get complacent and stop looking for these lessons. Then they wonder why they don't get better........

[CHA-LEE]

Well, I have been doing a little experiment the past few weeks. About a month ago while shooting a match I felt like I had to physically grip the crap out of the gun in order to manage the recoil. I started thinking about it and it dawned on me that I had not been doing any hand or grip exercises for a long while. So for the last three weeks I have been doing a daily grip exercise while driving to work. I am using a standard spring loaded gripper and I perform 100 squeeze reps on my strong hand, then 100 reps on my weak hand. I repeat this process one more time giving me 200 reps per hand. When that is done I squeeze and hold the gripper closed for 100 seconds on each hand. At first this was a pretty significant hand workout and I would have to take some breaks in the middle of the reps. Now I can complete all of the reps on my strong hand but have to take one break on my weak hand during the second set of 100 reps. I will need to up the rep count pretty soon to keep it challenging.

For every day activities with using my hands I don’t feel like I have gained a significant amount of hand strength or muscle bulk by doing these grip exercises. But I do feel like I don’t need as much effort to grip the gun while shooting. This past weekend I noticed that I didn’t even feel like I was gripping the gun hard but I was able to manage the recoil and muzzle flip a lot better than before I started these regular exercises. So the benefit of this experiment is showing up in my shooting for sure.

My initial goal was to perform this daily grip exercise program until the Area 2 match but since I am already seeing positive results in my shooting I think I will have to maintain some level of grip exercises on a regular basis. I have always had pretty good hand strength so I guess I got complacent in assuming that my every day life would give my hands enough exercise to keep them in top shooting form. Its neat to be able to identify a weakness I didn’t even know I had and find a successful solution. The ever changing learning process churns along…..