My Competition Journey

[z7]

Finally got around to editing some footage from a December 30th match. I had not shot 3 gun all fall and was not actively practicing. it shows. I only got film of 3 stages, one was ugly, one I had a malfunction, and one I did ok.
speaking of the malfunction: I have identified a few headstamps that will not reliably chamber in my lone wolf "alpha wolf" 9mm barrel for my glock 35. they work in my other two lonewolf conversion barrels but not this one. I was able to clear the weapon and continue with the day, but I didn't want to be messing around too much on the clock, better to stop the stages, take the penalty and safely clear the weapon.

anyway, enough rambling, I hope you enjoy and feel free to comment.

 

[thomas15]

I'm glad to see you are still at it. Hope you keep at it.

I've been thing about starting a thread like this, a training/range diary. On the brian enos forum there is a place where guys have their threads like this.

For the last two weeks I was dry fire training every day working on the basics. On Sunday I shot in a match. Was doing great then disaster so in the end not a day I want to remember but I'm back tonight to the training. My next opportunity to excel should be in about 2.5 weeks so we shall see. I have as one of my goals 2019 making Master in OSR SCSA. As I get closer it gets harder. Need to pick up 8 seconds.

 

[z7]

I'm glad to see you are still at it. Hope you keep at it.

I've been thing about starting a thread like this, a training/range diary. On the brian enos forum there is a place where guys have their threads like this.

For the last two weeks I was dry fire training every day working on the basics. On Sunday I shot in a match. Was doing great then disaster so in the end not a day I want to remember but I'm back tonight to the training. My next opportunity to excel should be in about 2.5 weeks so we shall see. I have as one of my goals 2019 making Master in OSR SCSA. As I get closer it gets harder. Need to pick up 8 seconds.

I guess the saying goes “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. But in reality, fast is fast. It seems to be all about stage planning and making that plan survive the start buzzer

Please share whatever video you have, I’m sure we could get a single thread started for “action shooting” where Guys can share and comment on various competition/stage film
I have film from a prs match i shot on Sunday I’ll Link shortly as well, there is always so much to learn

 

[thomas15]

I guess the saying goes “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. But in reality, fast is fast. It seems to be all about stage planning and making that plan survive the start buzzer

Please share whatever video you have, I’m sure we could get a single thread started for “action shooting” where Guys can share and comment on various competition/stage film
I have film from a prs match i shot on Sunday I’ll Link shortly as well, there is always so much to learn

I will try to get a few vids in the upcoming weeks and put them up, thanks for the offer as I don't want to hijack your thread.

Regarding "smooth-slow" in Steel Challenge where speed is vital there is a saying that "slowing down is never the solution, accuracy is". But there is also a saying that "you cannot miss a plate fast enough". So we find hopefully a place where we are "fast" and "accurate" enough to put a smile on our faces.

Keep up the good work z7!

 

[z7]

I will try to get a few vids in the upcoming weeks and put them up, thanks for the offer as I don't want to hijack your thread.

Regarding "smooth-slow" in Steel Challenge where speed is vital there is a saying that "slowing down is never the solution, accuracy is". But there is also a saying that "you cannot miss a plate fast enough". So we find hopefully a place where we are "fast" and "accurate" enough to put a smile on our faces.

Keep up the good work z7!

I guess the question for your training is, are you missing? last match how many misses did you have? last summer when I was shooting 3 gun quite a bit and was pushing for speed, if I didn't have at least one miss or paper target that I didn't neutralize, i assumed I was going too slow. i am not making the time for action shooting right now, I've been putting more effort into PRS, but for me trying to get faster means I need to be uncomfortable, yet still make a majority of my hits.

and I have no concern with thread hijacking, in fact if enough people want it, I say we make an "action shooting" thread and all post match footage and offer critique and advice. I have learned a lot by watching video of myself.

 

[z7]

Speaking of PRS:

I don't have much technical feedback for myself on this one. I have a few things I need to do better, kneeling/supported and sitting supported both need more practice, I was much more wobbly on the the kneeling portion of the PRS Skills Stage than I was standing. I need to work on that because kneeling SHOULD be more stable.

I will start using a wrist card to write down elevation and windage, would have really helped on the 700 yd tank trap stage. I dialed 4.5mils when I needed 5.5mils, if I had written my elevation on my wrist I could have checked that during the stage and not lost all those points (12 misses)

my big takeaway is I need to learn to read the environment a little better. if I can see the bullet splash I can correct, but during the stage I am not picking up subtle changes in the wind and that cost me this match.

I think a good pair of binos or a spotting scope on a tripod would help me while I wait to shoot, being able to spend 3 minutes on glass watching the target and other shooters would go a long way in helping me notice how the environment is changing and see if there are any key indicators for each target. the mirage was helpful sometimes, but bullet trace was not visible most of the day,

I have a 22lr match on the 16th so i will try to get more video if it, that should be very fun.

 

[thomas15]

I just got this brilliant idea for motivation. I'm going to institute a "50 Day Challenge". Will commit for the next 50 days to dry fire every day that I don't actually shoot live. I have identified 4 steel challenge matches within the 50 days that I will enter, provided the weather behaves itself. Then see where it leads to.

The idea here for me is I have set up a 2019 goal to achieve Master class in 1 gun (SCSA OSR) and A class in all the others I shoot (in steel challenge). Some of the guns I have a fairly long way to go to A. I have been thinking about concentrating on just 1 thing for now and that OSR class. I'm going to see how much headway I can make towards my goals by turning up the heat on myself.

50 days...

 

[waktasz]

Finally got around to editing some footage from a December 30th match. I had not shot 3 gun all fall and was not actively practicing. it shows. I only got film of 3 stages, one was ugly, one I had a malfunction, and one I did ok.
speaking of the malfunction: I have identified a few headstamps that will not reliably chamber in my lone wolf "alpha wolf" 9mm barrel for my glock 35. they work in my other two lonewolf conversion barrels but not this one. I was able to clear the weapon and continue with the day, but I didn't want to be messing around too much on the clock, better to stop the stages, take the penalty and safely clear the weapon.

anyway, enough rambling, I hope you enjoy and feel free to comment.

I'd have cleared that thing and kept going. No reason not to unless there is a squib in the barrel.

 

[z7]

I just got this brilliant idea for motivation. I'm going to institute a "50 Day Challenge". Will commit for the next 50 days to dry fire every day that I don't actually shoot live....

Beyond sight picture and trigger control, how will you push your training to the next level?

I struggle to find good drills beyond “draw-aim-fire” drills, I’d be interested in hearing some of your DF drills

 

[z7]

I'd have cleared that thing and kept going. No reason not to unless there is a squib in the barrel.

Yeah maybe, I had to slam it down on a cable spool, just catching the edge of the slide to eject it, I didn’t want to start doing weird stuff like that on the clock and freak out the RO

 

[thomas15]

Beyond sight picture and trigger control, how will you push your training to the next level?

I struggle to find good drills beyond “draw-aim-fire” drills, I’d be interested in hearing some of your DF drills

My DF "range" is in my little basement for the winter. Hopefully I can get back to either the garage or outside in the next month.

I use a bunch of scaled down targets. For Steel Challenge I have the "Banners", from steel shoot banners, for everything else I have 1/3 targets from the Ben Stoeger Pro Shop and some homemade ones. I have boxes that I made from PVC pipe. I have a shot timer and I use the par feature to push myself into faster.

For drills I have most of the popular books out there but the one I use is by Steve Anderson titled "Refinement and Repetition: Dry-fire Drills for Dramatic Improvement" and I use some of the drills in "Do you feel the need for speed" by Ken Vanderame. The timer with par is really the main thing.

You can really only train to speed up draw and build accuracy and movement skills and so fourth because you never know what the stage will look like until you are ready to shoot it. So you practice target acquisition, trigger control grip, reloads, strong hand/weak hand shooting and so forth. You will have to set u something that works for you because the kind of shooting I do is different rom what you are doing. But marksmanship skills are marksmanship skills. I shoot mainly DA revolver so that kind of action lends itself well to dry fire.

Another thing to try is to set up some USPSA classifier stages using either full size or reduced size targets.

One last suggestion get an account at the Brian Enos forum, this is mostly competition shooters asking about and talking non stop about competitions.

 

[Doublehelix]

@thomas15 : I thought that in USPSA you automatically get upgraded on all of your divisions to one level below your highest division. For example, if you are at "Master" in OSR, all of your other divisions automatically get upgraded to "A Class". I am not sure if SCSA works this way as well, but I thought it did.

 

[thomas15]

@thomas15 : I thought that in USPSA you automatically get upgraded on all of your divisions to one level below your highest division. For example, if you are at "Master" in OSR, all of your other divisions automatically get upgraded to "A Class". I am not sure if SCSA works this way as well, but I thought it did.

It is IDPA that has a rule (equity promotion) that similar guns have the 1 classification spread (for semi-auto), does not apply to PCC, BUG or Revolver.

 

[thomas15]

The 2019 USPSA (NROI) rule book is 120 pages. If there is something about a 1 classification gap I'm not aware of it. Funny this should come up today, I'm taking the Steel Challenge (65 page rule book) RO endorsement class tomorrow. My NROI yearly re-cert exam was due in December and so of course I put it off until today. A mad scramble to get it done as I need a valid NROI cert to take the SCSA endorsement class.

I shoot very little USPSA these days so the rules are a bit vague to me. I wanted to read over the rule book and download the questions before I took the test but I messed up and lost my opportunity to do both, that is read the rules and download the test. So I ended up taking the test by the seat of my pants which is a high stress maneuver.

20 questions on-line test. They ask a question and you get 1 point for the correct T/F or multiple guess and 1 point for citing the correct rule (ex 4.3.4.1 or D7 1 (for appendix D7 item 1)). So there are a total of 40 answers. I somehow managed to get 39 correct (97.5% you need 85% to pass), the (1) I got wrong had to do with, of all things, revolver. I spent about 2 or 3 hours on this, which is nothing, when I took the initial class to certify NROI, the class was 2 days, 9 hours per day, two hours drive each way and the take home exam, 50 questions, I spent literally 20 hours on that.