[trodrig]

Up to this point shooting IPSC and Steel I haven't done a great deal of actual focused 'practice'. Starting this year I'm working to change that.

I haven't shot much since before Thanksgiving due to hunting season . Now I'm back to it! I'm focusing on Open division, shooting an STI Trubore.

1.11.09:
First day of live fire practice. Started with slow fire freestyle accuracy shooting at 10, 15, and 20 yards with two 5-shot groups at each distance. I've never shot slow fire accuracy groups with my open gun and this was a bit of an eye opener. But, I have a good baseline now to track improvement. Group sizes of the total 10 shots at each distance were 1.6", 2.1", and 3.8" respectively.

Next I worked on shot calling exercises #6 and #7 from Saul Kirsch's book. I shot these drills at 15 yards. I found this quite difficult. I started getting a little more consistent a little later in the day. I need to work more on seeing the dot. When I would draw and fire the first shot, it felt as though I were looking through the sight and to the target while not completely focusing on the dot. As a result, I would instantly see the hole in the target but wasn't completely aware of where the dot lifted. Any comments on how to approach the shot calling exercises would be greatly appreciated!

I ended the day with some more slow fire shots watching the dot's path as intently as I could during recoil. I noticed that depending on the tension in my hands the dot behaves differently...duh! I need to work on obtaining the grip that I need to see the dot track straight up and down.

Goals for next live fire session: Improve accuracy, work on calling 2 shots on 1 target, work on drawing to various distances.

Thomas

[trodrig]

1.12.09:
Did about 45 minutes of dry fire tonight. Worked on 10 yard draws both hands at sides and surrender. Then worked on some Burkett Reloads. I felt as though I was doing pretty good reacting to the B in beep. Had many reloads where I really saw the mag well and the tip of the mag just appeared in the right spot. That felt really good! Next dry fire session I need to add some turning draws into the mix!

Thomas

[trodrig]

1.13.09
No practice last night. Work had me down....

1.14.09
Work still got me down...but I did about an hour of dry fire practice anyway! Great therapy to forget about work, layoffs, economy, etc!

I included 10 yard turn and draw this time. Towards the end I started feeling a bit more comfortable with the snap of my head to the target and the turn. I'll need to post video at some point to get feedback on the position of my feet, head snap, etc.

On my draws facing downrange I'm finding that I'm missing my grip more with hands at sides than with hands above shoulders. Seems kind of counter intuitive but I intend on working on both draws so I feel comfortable with both of them.

Thomas

[trodrig]

MAN...life gets in the way and shooting practice suffers!! Had grand plans of getting some live fire practice in Saturday morning and then going to a club match Sunday morning. Neither happened...but, I was able to get out and do some live fire practice Sunday afternoon!

First, sighted in the Cmore. After my last live fire session I noticed it was shooting a bit to the left. Shot some groups at 20 yards, slow fire, freestyle. Got a good 2.75" group at 20 yards but I know I can do better with more practice and focus!

Worked again on calling shots. I'm getting a little better at recognizing the sight picture for low, right, left, high. I need more practice on differentiating between A's, C's, D's and Mikes though.

Worked on reaction to the beep. Starting with gun aimed on a target, waiting for the B in beep, I didn't have any over 0.25. 4 out of 7 shots were in the 0.15 - 0.16 range!

Next I worked on drawing and firing one shot on targets at 20, 15, and 10 yards. Consistency needs improvement. At 20 yards I'd have a 1.17 A followed by a 1.49 C!!

Spent some of the last bit of my time with 10 yard, 6-shot bill drills to compare how the gun felt with 3 different powders, Longshot, N105, and N350. I started with the gun aimed at the target. N105 felt pretty good but N350 might actually be a bit softer. I'm going to have to shoot some drills with target transitions a bit to see which I prefer. Longshot seemed to have the worst dot tracking.

All in all it was a good session. I would've liked to shoot more but I found myself getting hungry and figured I'd save the ammo. Felt as though I was losing focus towards the end and felt a little rushed/distracted the whole time due to all of my plans to get out earlier being screwed up.

Goals for the coming week are dry fire EVERY night and start exercising at least 2 nights a week.

Thomas

[trodrig]

1.20.09
Dry fired for about 45 minutes. Just worked on 10 yard draws, turning draws, and Burkett Reloads. I felt really good tonight initially but kinda ran out of steam while doing the reload drills. I'm starting to feel more comfortable with the turning draws and plan on incorporating them into some live fire practice at the next available opportunity!

I still need to get off my arse and do some jogging!

Thomas

[trodrig]

1.22.09

Did some dry fire yesterday. Mostly just draws.

Today I ditched out of work at 1pm and went out for some live fire! Shot about 200 rounds. Worked on draws and reloads at 10 and 15 yards. Draw to left target, fire two shots, reload shoot right target. Then reverse directions. This was the first time I really practiced reloads and recorded some good baseline times. I need to work on speeding things up while also keeping the accuracy up! My main goal for this session was to see what I could do and record baselines. Now I can work on getting it down.

Ended with some Bill Drills to work on relaxation and not getting trigger freeze. Really started seeing some improvement after a few iterations. I did this at 10 yards and my accuracy was ok, only down 2 points for my fastest run which yielded a slightly better HF than my best -0 run.

I want to work on some dry fire reloads to try and get some improvement in that area.

Thomas

[trodrig]

1.26.09

Shot a local match this past weekend. I made several mental errors which cost me pretty bad. Not sure what the problem was, just felt kind of distracted. My biggest blunder was on the third stage where I completely forgot to engage one target and engaged another one twice! Trying to keep a positive tone here, I feel that the best thing I did throughout the match was put that dismal stage behind me and not even think about it going into the next stage. Not that I smoked the next stage, but I didn't let my previous error affect me and just focused on shooting the targets at hand. Next match I really want to work more at visualizing the stage and shooting my plan.

Thomas

[trodrig]

1.28.09

Worked on some new dry fire drills tonight. 2-reload-2 and bill reload drill from Steve Anderson's book. Basically just trying to establish some par times for these drills as I've never run them before. I'll work on them again tomorrow night and Friday and then hopefully get a chance to run'em in live fire over the weekend.

Thomas

[trodrig]

2.1.09
I love live fire weekends! Started with draws to different distances (5, 15, and 25 yards). Then I worked on target transitions with targets at 5, 15, and 25 yards. 4 strings starting on the 5 yard target and 4 strings starting on the 25 yard target. First time I shot this drill and this is much more fun than shooting at just one or two targets!! Next I did a little more work on reloads. Then I burned up a good bit of ammo on the '20-Alpha' drill. Never quite made it to 20 A's but got close. Finally I shot a couple of strings of the El Presidente.

It was a great session! On the 20 Alpha drill I really was able to notice how subtle changes in my grip and my overall tension impacted the dot movement. I saw this as well on El Pres. If I tensed up, the dot was not tracking straight up and down and tended to not return but rather dip down somewhat as the slide closed. When I was more relaxed the dot tracked much better! I felt like I was very aware of things like this throughout the session.

Thomas

[trodrig]

2.3.09
Worked on some dry fire draws and reloads tonight for about 45 minutes. I feel as though I'm definitely getting better at presenting the gun to the target and having the dot just 'appear' right where I'm looking on my draws. I think that the dry fire repetition is really helping with my consistency in this department. Hopefully speed will follow.

On reloads I'm still not feeling real consistent. I especially want to work more on getting back on target after the reload. I think at the next dry fire session I'll do some work with either a really long par time or no par time at all and just focus on seeing A's both before and after the reload.

Thomas

[trodrig]

2.14.09

With a little sweet talk I was able to get my wife to be ok with letting me sneak out today for some live fire! Been a while since I've practiced anything because the gun was down for the thumb safety I broke!

I didn't shoot a whole lot...just a quick hundred rounds. I did some 10 yard bill drills and some 2-Reload-2 drills at 10 yards as well. For not having touched the gun all week I was pretty happy with the results. Also, while the gun was down I followed Bart's instructions for undercutting and stippling so this was the first time using the new grip. I might have gone a little too aggressive with the stippling...it's a little rough on the hand. But the gun sure doesn't slip!

Thomas

[trodrig]

2.15.09

Shot the Alpha Mike classifier on Sunday. Afterward I went and shot a few drills. Since I threw a Mike on the Times Two classifier (far target on left array before running to the other box) I figured I'd work on a transition drill. Used drill #43 from Perfect Practice with targets set at 5, 15, and 25 yards. Starting on the close target my best run of 3 was a HF of 9.09 (1.06 draw, 3.30 total, all A's). Starting on the far target my best run of 3 was a HF of 8.87 (1.39 draw, 3.38 total, all A's). These results are a slight improvement over the last time I shot this same drill back at the beginning of the month.

Thomas

[trodrig]

2.22.09 and 2.23.09

Didn't get a whole lot of time for live fire this past weekend. Only shot about 75 rounds

Worked tonight on some dry fire trying to get my par times down on some drills. Dry fired for about 45 minutes. I spent alot of time trying to smooth out my turning draw. Towards the end of the session I was feeling alot more comfortable with it than when I started but I still need more work on it.

I hope to be able to get out for some live fire sometime during the week.

Thomas

[trodrig]

2.27.09

Knocked off work at about 1pm and went out to do some live fire on Friday! Ran some drills working on draws and reloads. At the end of the session I setup targets for El Pres. Shot one of my best runs ever at a 9.2 HF!

3.2.09

Tonight was dry fire working on 2-reload-2 at 15 feet trying to whittle down my reload time. I was having some real difficulty seeing A's for the 1st two shots. Basically I was rushing the first two shots to hurry up and get to the reload. I then turned the par time way up and started focusing more on seeing good sight pictures for each shot. Starting feeling better towards the end. I'm building up alot of tension in my shoulders during the reload so I think I need to work more on relaxing during this kind of exercise.

Thomas

[trodrig]

3.3.09 and 3.4.09

Yesterday and today I continued to work on draws and 2-reload-2 to work on reload times. Yesterday was not a good night. Attitude and entire mood was crappy and it reflected in my consistency. Tonight was much better. I slowed down the par time on 2-reload-2 and am doing better seeing the sights in the A zone both before and after the reload. Still needs work though to smooth things out. I also spent some time working on turning draws on a single target at 10 yards.

Thomas

[trodrig]

3.7.09 and 3.8.09

What an awesome weekend! 400 rounds of live fire! Shot the ALSPPC match on 3.7.09. Awesome stages and great folks! Had a win on one of the stages!

For today (3.8.09) I headed out for some live fire practice and shot my best time and score ever on El Prez. 5.78 seconds down 3 points with a 1.57 reload time! After that I worked on some speed transition drills similar to Drill #44 from Perfect Practice. Only difference is I only used 2 steel plates instead of 3. I need to build a few more target stands as I only have 5 right now.

Thomas

[trodrig]

3.15.09

Got out for some live fire practice today. I just changed all my mag springs out and needed to make sure everything was still running right. Also needed to do some chrono work before Double Tap. I wanted to make sure I had a little extra margin so I bumped the charge up to 10.3gr of N105. Everything worked fine!

I worked on some draws, reloads, and target transitions. I broke my best time on El Prez from last weekend at 5.69 down 2 with a 1.48 reload!

This coming week I plan to work on shooting on the move in both dry and live fire practice.

Thomas

[trodrig]

5.22.09

Dang, been a long time since I updated. I haven't been nearly as active since double tap. Down to 3k primers so live fire practice is minimal. I'm signed up for the Texas Open next weekend (May 29th) which will be my second major match for the year! Looking forward to it!

Dry fire practice tonight for about 45 minutes. Working on draws and 2-reload-2. Got my par time down to 2.3 seconds on 2-reload-2. I'm going to keep it at that time and work on seeing better 'shots' and smoothing things out.

Match tomorrow at the Bullet Hole range in San Antonio tomorrow so I'm off to bed!

Thomas