Draw/Fire and Reloading Practice...

After reading the Brian Enos forum for awhile, I saw that they have a place where people can post videos of themselves practicing, and get feedback from others. Of course, it is important to be the type of person who can actually appreciate and use feedback, because when you post a video, that is exactly what you get---from many, many sources, picking apart tiny little details, and critiquing everything you do. If you are the type of person who takes everything personally, it isn't for you. :)

Anyway---in this case, I thought it would be handy for me to record myself doing various draw/fire sequences, and also some reloading, so that I can carefully take a look at exactly what I'm doing. I know what I think I'm doing, but that doesn't mean that is what is actually happening.

I don't think I'll post this one on the forum, but I will probably in the future, after I've had awhile to work on what I see as wrong. If I can fix those things, then I'll post another video on the forum site to let the experts comment. I realize that it would be smarter to get the expert's views first, and then practice it right from the start, but I really want to see what I can do on my own.

After all, I've gotten this far on my own. We'll see how far I can take myself.

So---the video. At the end, you can see the sorts of things I believe that I need to work on fixing immediately. Smaller details will come later.



...so that's what it looks like. Feel free to comment about things I should be fixing that weren't on the list.

April 2009 3-Gun Match...

I mentioned that I am the 3-Gun Coordinator for ENPS this year, right? So it is my responsibility to make sure that we have all three stages covered for each 3-Gun match.

For this match, Ron had a pistol stage, Doug had a rifle stage (and he thinks up good ones---always something a little tricky in them) and James was going to set up a shotgun stage. I'd verified this with each of them, everything was fine---until it was past 8am and our shotgun stage person hadn't shown up...

[sigh] So Rob grabbed a bunch of steel and two stars, and I grabbed some walls, and we set up a stage. James showed up later, and apparently there had been a miscommunication between him and Terry, so he thought it wasn't his month for a stage. Well, at least this way I know I have a shotgun stage for next time.

I started on the rifle stage, and I'll note that I haven't practiced rifle at all since the last time (which did NOT go well). That would have been the time when I clipped no-shoot targets all over the place, had to add extra shots, etc...

This time, however, I actually did some aiming, and it went well. I did still clip one no-shoot, but it also broke the perf into the A zone, so it counted for points also. Other than that, had all my hits in a really good time. (Matter of fact, the second fastest time.) I ended up with 3rd place overall. Taking an addition full second on my run for more precise aim would easily have put me into 2nd place, though probably not first. (Would have had to shoot many less C hits for first place, even with my fast time.)

But went well.

Pistol stage---was interesting. Had entirely too many C hits, plus one D (which is effectively a no-penalty miss, in my opinion) and there was one steel that wasn't too far away that it took me 5 shots to knock down. Yanking the trigger, I believe.

Even so, I was fast and accurate enough to get 3rd place overall again. So the results were good, even if my shooting was occasionally poor. Not how I'd like to run things, but in this case, it sufficed.

And then there was shotgun. Before I talk about shotgun, I'd like to mention for the record here that I was extremely sick during this match---sinus problems, coughing, couldn't breath or talk--and I'm sure that was why my shotgun stage went so badly.

Or maybe I still reload like an arthritic sloth.

Actually, my reloading IS still slow, because I haven't had made time to practice it. However, my aim is normally surprisingly good with the shotgun--I don't tend to miss very much.

This time, however, apparently was an anomaly. I certainly put plenty of misses out there. Had to reload much more than I should have, due to the many, many misses. It took me 73 seconds to run the shotgun stage---which was only 23 targets. That's over 3 seconds per hit!

Yeesh.

Well, I've got two months until the next 3-gun. And the next middle-month match is the Steel Man-vs-Man match, so I'd better also work on quick precision---which is what I need to work on anyway.

Precision trigger work, and shotgun reloading. Sounds like a good focus for the next month.

Here's the match:


Oh---I also rented Matt Burkett's Shotgun Mastery DVDs. After I watch them, I'll let you know how it helps.

3 Matches in One Week...

It has been a busy shooting week! Last Sunday was a Special Classifier at ENGC--5 classifier stages, wherein I shot both Production and Limited-10 divisions. Yesterday was the first Rock-Your-Glock match of the year. And today was the April Pistol match for ENPS.

Lots of shooting! (Perhaps a bit more than I should have done--quite a few times, I threw a bunch of extra shots downrange that I shouldn't have had to do.)

Starting off last week:

Special Classifier:
I always want to shoot everything in Production, because more practice at matches will always help. In addition, I decided to also shoot the classifiers in Limited-10 division, since I don't have a classification there, and I have a competition rig for my Glock 21 (in .45acp) that parallels my Production rig, but allows me to make Major for score.

We shot the classifiers completely through in one division, switched our gear, then shot it through in the other division. Many, MANY people showed up for the classifier, so we were extremely busy--it ended up being a very long day. Fun, but long. I ended up finishing the first division's worth of classifiers at about 12:30, so we didn't get started on the second run until after that---we didn't have the range clear and all the props put away until 3:30pm or so.

Tiring!

So, how did I shoot Production? High C, low B. Not what I'm capable of---more along the lines of what happens when someone of my skill level shoots badly. (GMs shoot "badly" at M/A class, I shoot badly at C class. [sigh]) The first stage was smooth movement, and decent aiming---but consistently low on all targets, so the points were not high. The second stage I just blasted shots out there, and missed VERY FAST. Matter of fact, to drop 6 poppers it took me 10 shots. Sad. Yet I still managed a low B score on that one---so what would have happened had I actually paid attention to what I was doing?

That seemed to be the theme for the day---80% of attention paid to what I was doing. I have noticed lately that when shooting, I tend to be thinking about what I will be doing next, instead of what I am doing NOW. Not a good plan.

As you can see here:

See? Not great. Fun, but not great.

Rock Your Glock Match:
Then, the following weekend was the first Rock-Your-Glock match of the year. Ardi, Julie, and I all went and worked the match. It was a fun day, though extremely windy. (That got old fast, since the target stands and the steel would blow over.) I shot master division (ug), subcompact, and revolver. (Quit laughing at the idea of me shooting revolver!)

As usual, the revolver went badly---this time even worse than normal. Hint: when you have 90 seconds worth of penalty time just from the plates, it isn't going well. For some reason, the cylinder was locking up periodically---and once it did, even though you could shoot the other rounds, you couldn't shoot the one where it locked up. No idea why. (I'm aware that isn't a good description of the problem, but I haven't had a chance to check over my revolver to figure out exactly what happened.)

As such, I'm not even going to bother posting video of the revolver. Not worth watching. Really.

Shooting the master division with my Glock 34 both went well, and was really annoying at the same time. I shot the whole match in slightly over 63 seconds, which is really good. I can do better, and will by the end of this summer's matches, but 63 seconds is almost my current best ever time.

That being said, it put me in 4th place. First two places were shot by a guy using an open gun (44 seconds!) and third place was Dennis, who beat me by about 5 seconds. He just keeps getting better and better. His average time on the plate rack was under 3 seconds. Not his best time, his average. [sigh] Well, maybe next time.

However, I did manage to get first place in the subcompact division! (That's a new one!) Matter of fact, my plates time using my G26 was 1.35 seconds FASTER than when I used my Glock 34. Think I need to slow down and aim a bit when shooting my regular gun? Perhaps?!

ENPS April Monthly Match:
And lastly, today we had the April monthly pistol match. Ended up being an "all-steel" day, due to wind, rain, and snow. (Quite a bit of snow, actually.) We ran a stage four times (under slightly different rules each time) and while I did decently (won Production, and took 4th overall, being beaten by 3 Open shooters--1 B and 2 A-class--the B won the day) two out of the four stages were NOT up to my skill level. On two I did fine, but two times I just let the gun go and thought about the next target, etc...so I missed a lot. But I missed really fast!

[sigh] I'm working on it.

I've got two weeks to work on my trigger control, focus, and relaxing. Plus reloading the shotgun practice---3-Gun match in two weeks.

Time to go drill!