CHA-LEE's Tale

[CHA-LEE]

Cha-lee, What would you recommend to help someone,just starting to shoot 40% classifiers, call shots at speed.

If you are shooting 40% classifiers your shooting speed is probably not your number one road block. Usually shooters at this skill level have significant issues with their fundamental gun handling mechanics. I would suggest that you work on optimizing your basic gun handling skills first. Once those skills are solid your ability to observe your sights while shooting at speed will become a lot easier.

Find a local USPSA shooter/trainer to assess your skills and help you formulate a training plan. Doing this will cost some money but it will be the most effective way to get on the correct skills improvement path.

[Richc2048]

Well worth taking his class. I've taken two of his and contemplating a one on one session before I go to area 2.

I learned a lot. I'm slowly getting rid of my bad habits and replacing it with stuff I learned and it's made me a waaay better shooter. Low D class to almost a B in about 5 months. I'd be stuck in D or lucky to get into C if I didn't do training.

[d_striker]

Classes with a competent trainer are the best way to progress at an accelerated rate. Even if you have a pretty good introspective mind, it would take you years and tens of thousands of bullets to realize all of the little things that go into getting good at this game.

A good class costs money, but you'll maximize your progression in terms of time AND money spent versus figuring it out on your own.

I can attest to CHA-LEE's classes also. There are quite a few local shooters that have went from D to B in a short amount of time after taking classes with CHA-LEE (I'm one of them.) While I can't say that everyone will progress at this rate, if you can truly digest the material presented and apply it to your shooting, it's certain you will progress at an accelerated rate.

I'll add the caveat that you have to want it though. You've got to put in the time if you expect results. I look at it as the guys that are beating me every weekend are working harder or have put more time in than me. That's what motivates me to practice.

Edited December 22, 2014 by d_striker

[Vanniek71]

Classes with a competent trainer are the best way to progress at an accelerated rate. Even if you have a pretty good introspective mind, it would take you years and tens of thousands of bullets to realize all of the little things that go into getting good at this game.

A good class costs money, but you'll maximize your progression in terms of time AND money spent versus figuring it out on your own.

I can attest to CHA-LEE's classes also. There are quite a few local shooters that have went from D to B in a short amount of time after taking classes with CHA-LEE (I'm one of them.) While I can't say that everyone will progress at this rate, if you can truly digest the material presented and apply it to your shooting, it's certain you will progress at an accelerated rate.

I'll add the caveat that you have to want it though. You've got to put in the time if you expect results. I look at it as the guys that are beating me every weekend are working harder or have put more time in than me. That's what motivates me to practice.

I agree, I took a class with CHALEE too, was a D now a B and hating upwards. Dry fire is your friend, and it's an even better friend if you actually do it.

No guns, gear or the like will make you better, gotta put in the work!

[Smitty79]

I've been working dry fire/live fire program developed from Ben Stoeger's books. I hope that will lead to better classifier scores at the match next month. I'd love to take a class from a local teacher. So far, I haven't found one. I'm signed up for a class with Ben in May.

[CHA-LEE]

I've been working dry fire/live fire program developed from Ben Stoeger's books. I hope that will lead to better classifier scores at the match next month. I'd love to take a class from a local teacher. So far, I haven't found one. I'm signed up for a class with Ben in May.

Use the USPSA website to find out who the section coordinator is for your section. That or either talk to the Match Director of your local match. Ask them who would be a good local resource for competition pistol training in the section. I think you will be surprised by how much local training talent there really is if you simply ask around. A good trainer doesn't have to be a Top GM shooter either. There are plenty of good trainers out there that may not be GM's but are great trainers and can get you on track.

Being signed up for Ben's class in May is a good thing and attending will help you get better. But there is no need to wait until then to seek instruction on the proper way of doing things. You would do more harm than good by doing Ben's dry fire dills using the incorrect mechanics from now until May. Once you burn in bad mechanics it takes 10 times as much effort to fix the bad mechanics.

Edited December 22, 2014 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

This weekend was a busy one. The weather was decent enough to have outdoor matches on both Saturday and Sunday which was good. It was a little cold in the mornings being in the 20’s but it wasn’t horrible because there wasn’t much wind. On Saturday I served as the Match director for the HPPS match and that was a busy day of working and shooting. We setup 6 stages to shoot and it was a lot of fun. For this match I also coordinated a fund raiser for a local charity and we were able to generate a $300 donation from only 24 shooters in attendance. It’s nice to give back to the community during the holiday season and I am super proud of the shooters for supporting a great cause. I am happy to say that Practical Shooters ROCK!!!

I shot my primary Full Bull Limited blaster for this match and shot an “ok” match. Not being able to fully assess each stage from a shooting perspective did leave some rough edges on my stage plans, but I was able to execute the plans without too many mistakes. I had a miss on the classifier which I called really marginal and it ended up being a miss. Virginia count stages are frustrating because it sucks to not be able to make up your shots when you know they are not good enough. Other than that I ended up with an OK match. I can’t expect much more than that when I am running it. After the match I was able to get my backup Full Bull sighted in so I decided to shoot that gun on Sunday to see how it would run after getting coated.

On Sunday I attended the Weld USPSA match and had to serve as the score keeper due to their normal guy being out of town. Since I was stuck in the score shack doing registration the whole morning I didn’t get a chance to see any of the stages before the start of the match. This was another good test of my last minute stage breakdown and programing skills. Luckily all of the stages had pretty straight forward stage plans so I was able to get them figured out and programmed effectively before shooting them. The weather was ok but a little cold and overcast. Since it was overcast I put more importance on being patient with seeing my sights and that resulted in some really good points shot on all of the stages. Overall I shot a pretty solid match with only a couple of execution mistakes. It was fun and the backup gun ran like a champ all day.

Since the backup gun is running solid I tore down the primary gun when I got home so it could get the same cerakote treatment. I was able to get it dropped off at Rick’s house in the evening and hopefully it will be all done by the end of the week. It will be nice to have both Limited blasters “Done” and ready to rumble for the new year. Once those are done I can put some more focus on my own training so I can get the 2011 gun handling and shooting process ingrained to the point of my EAA blasters. I am really looking forward to the 2015 shooting season as I feel like I am preparing myself and gear to do well at the matches. If I can just get past this weak left arm situation I will be golden.

Edited December 22, 2014 by CHA-LEE

[CHA-LEE]

Christmas is over and I had a great time with my family. It’s fun to see your loved ones be surprised by and enjoy their gifts. I enjoy spoiling the crap out of my wife with gifts and this Christmas was no different. She rocks and deserves every single bit of the spoiling I give her!!!

We got some snow today and for forecast isn’t looking so good for this weekend so the outdoor match this coming Saturday has been canceled. It sucks to have the weather get in the way of blasting but it is what it is. I am planning on attending an indoor USPSA match this coming Sunday evening at the Centennial Gun Club. We will see how the backup blaster does in the less than optimal lighting conditions.

Over the past month I have been doing daily Gripper exercises in an attempt to increase my left hand grip strength and maintain my right hand’s strength level. So far I can only tell a minimal improvement in overall strength but the endurance of my left hand is getting quite a bit better. I can go a lot further into the reps and sets before my left hand starts to call it quits. On my Grip Dyno my left hand is up to 145lbs of griping force. That is only about 15lb – 20lb’s up from the start of the month, but some improvement is better than none. I am planning on keeping at the daily exercises through January. Hopefully my left hand grip strength continues to improve even if it’s happening at a slow pace.

[thermobollocks]

Have you altered your workout at all with a focus on endurance or on recovering strength?

Comedy option: Creatine

[CHA-LEE]

I have been altering the reps & sets often so I don't get into a rut. The basic requirement is to end up with really wore out forearms by the end of the exercise and I can achieve it every time. I am trying to keep the work outs within reason so I don't injure myself in the process.

[drewbeck]

You may feel like you've made minimal progress but an increase of 15% in a month is a pretty solid amount of strength gain for the body.

To put it in perspective, bodybuilders are willing to give up two nuts and premature hair loss for that type of monthly gain.

Comedy option: roids

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[CHA-LEE]

Well the only match this past weekend was an indoor match at the Centennial Gun Club Sunday night. The mixture of crappy lighting and difficult shots or stand on your head type of shooting positions resulted in shooting penalties on every single stage. I even zeroed the classifier stage..... YAY!!!! I couldn't see my sights at all that night and I had to resort to point shooting in the general direction of the targets. This works ok when the targets are close but not so good on far away no shoot partial targets. I also changed my recoil spring to try out an ISMI 10lb and it felt lighter on the bench verses the Wolff 10lb. During the match the gun had pretty clunky feeding due to the weak recoil spring and even created a failure to feed jam when I was shooting weak hand only. The spring test was a bust so the Wolff 10lb spring goes back in. The match was a bust because I couldn't see my sights at all. The CGC indoor range has just about as bad of lighting as the Boulder indoor range. Not being able to see my sights while attending these matches is not an option. All it does is piss me off and I have zero fun while attending the match. I have tried many times to figure out a solution for shooting in these crappy lighting indoor ranges but nothing helps in an iron sight configuration. I think the only way to shoot these matches is with a Red Dot on an Open gun. I am not willing to spend mega cash on an Open gun just so I can shoot these few indoor matches so I think I will instead choose to not attend them any more. The Whistling Pines indoor range has really good lighting and I can see my sights in there, so I will continue to shoot those matches. But I am done with trying to force myself to perform at the CGC or Boulder indoor ranges when I know its impossible due to not being able to see my sights. Shooting matches needs to be fun for me to enjoy it. If its not fun, then why participate? Some times you gotta pick your battles and this is one of those situations where its not worth the frustration or wast of ammo.

[CHA-LEE]

I have been thinking about my shooting goals for 2015 and I have come up with a couple that I think are valid and would be awesome to achieve. I will work towards accomplishing these goals this coming season and hopefully my hard work will pay off.

(1) Have FUN while attending matches. This also means that I will need to be a little more selective in the matches I attend as forcing myself to attend matches that are run crappy, have poor lighting, or have very excessive heat need to be crossed off the list. Using a 1 - 10 FUN scale, I am going to set the goal of having a level 7 or above FUN at all the matches I attend. Setting myself up to have FUN while attending matches will help keep me in a positive mindset during the match and make attending that much more rewarding. I have ground trough enough crappy matches to know what I don't like, so deciding which local and major matches to not attend shouldn't be too hard.

(2) Finish in the top 3 at all of the major matches I attend this year. This is a lofty goal, especially for the Area and National level matches, but I think its obtainable. I know I can perform to that level when I am hitting on all cylinders. I just need to practice more to even out the consistency of my performances.

(3) Get more proficient with shooting steel. Right now the one target that is hurting me the most at matches is shooting steel. Some of it is not knowing the correct sight picture to use for small plates, and some of it is not picking a specific place on the steel to shoot at for the bigger poppers. I will put more effort into shooting steel in varying conditions during my practice sessions.

(4) Lose weight. I am going to set a goal of losing 30lbs this season. Being over weight sucks and there is no need for it.

(5) Spend more time training myself. Last year I did a bunch of training for other shooters and that was fun and rewarding. But a lot of those classes had to happen on days that I was going to practice on my own, so I lost a lot of training days for myself. I need to find a better balance of training for myself verses training others. Not being able to go out and live fire on a regular basis did hurt my ability to perform consistently at matches.

[Richc2048]

I am with you on 3-5. I'm still hit hard with the USPSA bug so I'll attend any match possible and maybe finishing top three in my class would be a goal I want. I'm creeping into B class so reaching high B would be my goal.

As for seeing sights have you had any experience with the tritium in front of the fiber?

[CHA-LEE]

I am with you on 3-5. I'm still hit hard with the USPSA bug so I'll attend any match possible and maybe finishing top three in my class would be a goal I want. I'm creeping into B class so reaching high B would be my goal.

As for seeing sights have you had any experience with the tritium in front of the fiber?

I have spent MEGA cash on all kinds of different sight setups in the past to try and solve this issue. Bigger, Smaller, Brighter, Fiber Front & Back, Night sights front & back, lights strapped to the bill of my cap. You name it, I have tried it. I just can't see well enough in low lighting conditions to call my shots. This loss of low lighting vision all happened right after I got Lasik done years ago. Some times you just gotta say "UNCLE" and stop bashing your head into a brick wall trying to make something happen that is not going to happen.

Edited December 29, 2014 by CHA-LEE

[Richc2048]

I see. Wearing a light on a hat seems pretty creative. I guess if you've done that you have done it all.

[Vanniek71]

I have been thinking about my shooting goals for 2015 and I have come up with a couple that I think are valid and would be awesome to achieve. I will work towards accomplishing these goals this coming season and hopefully my hard work will pay off

(4) Lose weight. I am going to set a goal of losing 30lbs this season. Being over weight sucks and there is no need for it.

I'm not saying you need or want help with this, but I can help you out with low impact changes to what you're doing already to help lose weight. I cut 45lbs off with little to no major changes, just smarter choices. You've helped me with shooting, I'd love to help you with this if you want some insight.

PM me if you're interested and want to talk about it, or if you don't want/need help then don't PM me

Either way best of luck!

Edited December 29, 2014 by Vanniek71

[Glock26Toter]

Nice goal list dude. I wish you all the best and anything I can do to help, just let me know.

[thermobollocks]

Come to Golds. I bet we can get you front squatting a Honda in no time.

[CHA-LEE]

No matches this weekend. The snowy winter weather did a good job of canceling the outdoor matches for the weekend and the indoor match on Monday was canceled due to an air handling system issue at the range. I still needed to get my Primary Limited blaster sighted in after the fresh coating job so I drove out to the BLGC range Saturday to get it done. By the time I got to the range it was 25 degrees and there was a constant 15 – 20 mph head wind. I am not sure what the temp was with the wind chill, but it was COLD. I managed to get my gun sighted in and also double checked the velocity difference between the two guns on my chrono. The one thing that was strange is that it was pretty hard for me to stay focused on the top and side edges of the front sight while shooting groups to sight in the gun. I kept getting distracted by the bright orange Fiber rod in the front sight. I am not sure if this is due to the lighting conditions I was shooting in or if my eyesight has changed and now the orange Fiber rod is too bright and distracting. I might play around with using a green fiber in the front sight to see if that balances out the getting your attention vs being too distracting situation back to where it needs to be. I might be chasing my tail once again on trying different color fiber rods, but then again I have been using the orange for the last couple of years now. Maybe my eye sight has changed and it’s time to change the color of the fiber along with it?

By the time I was done with the sight in and chrono stuff I was cold enough to call it quits and head back home. I wanted to do some training drills with steel while I was there, but it was just too cold. I am glad that I packed up and left when I did because it started snowing just as I was heading out of the range. Not being able to do any real live fire training or match shooting this weekend sucked, but I at least got my gun sighted in and it’s ready to rumble for when I do get to shoot another match.

Since the weather sucks I will focus on getting more ammo reloaded for the 2015 shooting season. I am not sure how much ammo I should stock pile as I usually try to keep about 1000 rounds on hand at all times. But since I have settled on a final Limited gun configuration I can probably commit to a specific load setup that will work for both guns and make a crap ton of it. I have enough reloading components to make a lot of ammo, so it may be a good use of this crappy weather down time to just load a bunch of ammo.

During this down time I had a chance to read a new shooting book. One of my friends recommended Steve Andersons new book called “Get to Work: The Practice of More Points Per Second”. This was a good read and had a lot of good information in there. None of it was ground breaking information for me, and I really didn’t expect it to be given my current skill level, but it did a really good job of making me think about all of the different shooting skills again. It also has a good listing of dry fire and live fire drills in the back of the book that do a good job of explaining the “Why” of doing the drills. This is something that I think is missing in a lot of other shooting books. If I had to rate it from 1 – 10, I would give it a solid 9. If the formatting of the text was a little more structured to make it easier to find topics or information it would be a 10. If you haven’t had a chance to read this book, its well worth the money. I have recommended it to several of my friends and hopefully they will find it as interesting and rewarding as I did. It is fun to read a book that gets me thinking about shooting skills that I haven’t thought about in a while.

[d_striker]

Have you tried taking a black sharpie to the top of the FO?

[CHA-LEE]

Have you tried taking a black sharpie to the top of the FO?

Yes, I have done that in the past. I might end up going back to the Orange fiber and blacking it out. But it will be fun to try a different color for a while. I used the Neon Green exclusively for a long time before I switched over to the Orange. Maybe I need the Orange for the less than optimal lighting and then the Green for normal lighting outdoors? More testing is needed to see if my eyesight has actually changed and warrants a FO color change.

[BritinUSA]

I wonder if the focusing issues were related to the cold weather, maybe your eyes cannot focus so well when there a little icicles forming in there. I would leave the sights alone until you have time to test in warmer weather.

[CHA-LEE]

I wonder if the focusing issues were related to the cold weather, maybe your eyes cannot focus so well when there a little icicles forming in there. I would leave the sights alone until you have time to test in warmer weather.

You are probably right. The other thing I was thinking about is that the overall lighting situation was very different because the whole berm was covered in snow making the overall lighting situation a lot brighter than normal.

[drewbeck]

Your eyes were likely readjusting the "white balance" similar to what you do in a camera where all other color becomes a lot more vibrant. Your eyes probably haven't changed but it's something to remember for a similar match condition issue

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