USPSA draw and mag change split times

[DLrocket89]

FINALLY got to do some dry fire practice...work/life balance hasn't been what it could be lately. A few observations:

1) the concept of moving the weak hand to the front of the abdomen while the strong hand grabs the pistol from the holster makes 100% sense having tried it. That one should be easy to incorporate into my routine because it feels right.

2) my grip for the last 14 years has been completely incorrect, as diagnosed. The correct way feels better...however my natural instinct is to stack my thumbs incorrectly. So, that one is going to take some time to break myself from. Hopefully it takes less time to break the habits than it did to form it in the first place.

3) magazine swaps are going well. I'm doing more looking than is needed ultimately, but it makes the swap successful, so over time I think this'll get better.

My "baseline" on 4 aces is about 4.3 or so seconds. That's with a half-mile long, 7 pounds DA trigger pull, so I'm actually feeling pretty good about it.

Thanks again for the help everyone...this'll be interesting going forward

 

[9mmepiphany]

Hopefully it takes less time to break the habits than it did to form it in the first place.

Unfortunately that isn't usually the case

 

[DLrocket89]

Unfortunately that isn't usually the case

Yeah. Think a key there is to slow it down...think it through every time and do it that way a thousand times and see where that gets me.

 

[LiveLife]

Try this mental exercise to get "over" your difficulties.

Remember that two column paper? One that listed all the mistakes on left column and all the corrections on the right column?

IMAGINE yourself running through the stage using all the corrections in SLOW MOTION with emphasis on key corrections. Then imagine doing it backwards slowly. Repeat running the stage forwards and backwards until it is clear in your head.

Now gradually increase the speed.

Then run the stage (or mock up) slowly and gradually increase the speed.

 

[DLrocket89]

Another question that came up talking with a friend.

When doing the draw portion of a stage like El Presidente, most people turn into their gun. So, gun on right hip, turn right.

I've always turned left, or away from the gun.

Thoughts?

I feel most comfortable shooting with a weaver-type stance (at least I think that's the name), where my left foot is forward. If my goal is to get into a Weaver stance, my left foot swings behind me and rotates. My right foot rotates, and there I am. If I turn into the gun, I frequently end up shuffling a third time in there. I clicked it with my friend, I'm about .1-.2 slower going into the gun than away.

I bring it up because the only negative experience I had when I shot USPSA back in the day was this RSO who read me the riot act for going away from the gun. And it wasn't a safety issue (I told him in advance so he knew what I was doing and I didn't sweep the crowd or anything, i know when to draw safely). I told him what I was doing, he went off on this rant about "well, I've been doing this for 25 years, but what do I know, nothing apparently".

Was the dude just having a bad day, or is there a legit, scientific reason for going into the gun vs against?

Thanks again as always, this has been a fascinating thread.

Dustin

 

[waktasz]

It should be faster going the other way, but if you haven't practiced it and there's a match tomorrow just do whatever is most comfortable. There must be a reason nearly everyone does it that way, right? That's how I look at a lot of things. If you're the only person in the room doing something either you are smarter than everyone else, or....the opposite of that

Also this is the weaver, which you aren't doing (thankfully). Even though they call it a Weaver "stance" it has more to do with how your arms are positioned than your feet. Most people would agree they want some amount of weak side foot forward, but not bladed off to the target with your right foot pointing 90 degrees away like this guy

 

[DLrocket89]

That makes sense. I'm an engineer and as such have an ego problem...but even I'll say that me being the only one right on this is not likely.

Yeah, what feels most comfortable to me isn't that extreme...I just don't like standing completely square to the target. ...and I know that whole conversation is moot on pretty much any stage that isn't a small subset of classifiers, just thought it was an interesting topic.

I'll keep practicing the turn and see how things shape up. Thanks again!

Dustin

 

[9mmepiphany]

The reason most folks turn into the gun is because the pivot foot becomes the trailing foot. That foot never has to move other than to shift weight to enable the pivot. If you find that you have to shift your feet again, it is because you're not stepping far enough with your swinging leg. The reason it is consider "safer" is because there is no chance that the gun will clear the holster while not facing either down or down range.

The difference between the Weaver and the Isosceles stances isn't in foot placement but in recoil management philosophy. In the simplest terms, the Weaver shooter's goal is to pull the gun down from recoil/muzzle flip with the support hand/arm. The Isosceles shooter's goal is to have the sights return to the the original POA

 

[DLrocket89]

More dry fire practice. I had an "a HA!" moment when working on my grip. The picture of hand muscles got me thinking, and what I concluded is that I was gripping the gun at the wrong angle. Basically, viewing the pistol from the top, I was gripping the pistol too far "counterclockwise". This led to too much of my strong hand fingers wrapping around and making it difficult to get the weak hand in there.

So, when when I go for the draw, left hand is coming up over my abdomen, I focus on getting the right hand "buried" and sufficiently far "left" to get the alignment right. Hands come up, sight picture is immediately "dead on" (which is new), get the right thumb up and the left hand buried, and all is well. Feeling good there. Added benefit is that the magazine release is easier to get to.

Now, just need to do it on the reload...left hand is almost never in the right spot post reload. I assume this is just a "practice practice practice" type thing.

I got 4 Aces down to 3.4 seconds about 50% of the time...basically if I don't dick up the mag change, that's where I'm at.

Working on getting a Saturday morning at work swapped out. If that works, there's a decent chance I can make the first match of the year on March 24. Otherwise it's the end of April.

 

[DLrocket89]

Let me add a good video here:



The biggest part was the way Bob actually wraps fingers around the magazine...I was doing that all wrong. I think someone pointed that out in the videos of my I posted, but I guess I didn't really understand. I get it now. ...now, if only I can actually do it...

 

[ATLDave]

One other reason to turn "into" the gun on uprange starts: It dramatically reduces the chances of being DQ'ed for clearing the holster too soon. Part of that is because your body is likely to screen the RO's view of the gun, so he/she is going to be hard pressed to tell whether it's out at 179 or 181. Turn around to your left and the RO will likely have a clear view until you are well past the 180. Obviously, the right move is to not clear the holster until you are past the 180, but the chances of a DQ call are MUCH higher when you turn to your weak side.

 

[DLrocket89]

One other reason to turn "into" the gun on uprange starts: It dramatically reduces the chances of being DQ'ed for clearing the holster too soon. Part of that is because your body is likely to screen the RO's view of the gun, so he/she is going to be hard pressed to tell whether it's out at 179 or 181. Turn around to your left and the RO will likely have a clear view until you are well past the 180. Obviously, the right move is to not clear the holster until you are past the 180, but the chances of a DQ call are MUCH higher when you turn to your weak side.

Makes sense, except when I tell the RSO I'm going away from the gun they usually move to the gun side so they can't get swept accidentally.

I'm going to do some dry fire practice each way and see what happens. Thanks!

 

[LiveLife]

The biggest part was the way Bob actually wraps fingers around the magazine...I was doing that all wrong. I think someone pointed that out ... but I guess I didn't really understand. I get it now.

Good video of mag change.

Mag change ... I placed tip of index finger in front of magazine to index with bottom of magwell.

I broke down mag change into steps but worked to perform in one swift motion.

 

[DLrocket89]

Got some actual trigger time yesterday before the storms rolled in (north central wisconsin). I put a new sight set in my SP-01, really excellent fiber optics from Cajun, so I was trying that out plus a new load (145 gn ACME coated round nose at about 925fps..going to be lowering that in the future some).

My friend and I shot El Pres, Front Sight, Too Close for Comfort, and Works for Me. Pretty much all of my qualifiers, barring one f*up with a miss on Works for me, were comfortably B's for score. I'm getting more comfortable with the balance between speed and accuracy. Magazine swaps need help yet, but that's always going to be the case. The new fiber optic sights make the headshot in "too close for comfort" a non-event, with the stock sights that shot was always a bit of a pucker inducing shot.

I built a barricade while waiting for my friend to arrive. 6 feet wide, about 6 feet tall, and a port in the middle that's just low enough that you have to "stoop" a bit to shoot. I set up a course of fire and then shot it, videoing it on both sides. You can see the layout in the videos, but the text description would be barricade in the middle, start with hands on said barricade. Three targets to the left up close (10 feet or so). In the middle, two steel plates, one at 15 feet, one at about 30 feet, and one paper at 15 feet. To the right, three paper, 40 feet or so out (didn't measure, just a guess). The steel plates are 8" dia, so they'd match a full size popper at 22 feet and 45 feet.

The way we set it up, you had to take the two steels and the central paper through the port, then engage the others as desired. We're both shooting production, so 10 rounds in the mag (plus the 10 + 1 for the first mag)...the idea is that if you could take both steels in one shot each, you can shoot the left targets and then reload going to the right. If you miss one steel once, you'll go to slide lock going from left to right. If you miss two shots on steel (which sadly happened), you have to reload going left, then reload again going right. The idea is to get the decision making juices flowing mid run, instead of just blindly blazing away to slide lock every time.

Video one, from the left: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1hmtPJoneldiloZbAgzUsONJ9Uqq22ZbY
Video two, from the right: https://drive.google.com/open?id=12-xeW5ydiOE_rFF7KxOenhc6B8WiDwMR

Actually went...not terribly at least. Hit factor on the left side vid was 7.21, didn't grade the right side video but guessing the Hit factor was more like 6.5, based on slower time. The two issues that came immediately to mind are both on the right side video - I started pulling out on the second steel before I actually hit it, so lost time re-engaging that, and then the last shot on the video really wasn't necessary, and likely added half a second to minimal point gain. General comment, I also really need to just calmly engage the long range targets instead of just throwing 8-9 shots at 3 targets. Inevitably, what happened there is the center target would have 4 or 5 holes in it, and then each of the outer target would have two holes. Would've spent less time and got more points if I just aimed for and executed 6 A's instead of wildly shooting about.

Thoughts? Based on the feedback I got here, I felt a lot better this time out than I did last time, so thank you everyone here very much for your help!

3.5 hours, 600+ rounds of ammo fired between the two of us...absolutely an awesome afternoon.

Registered for my first two matches - April 14 and April 21. Looking forward eagerly!

 

[DLrocket89]

Also - having some trouble getting my weak hand where it needs to be. My friend has a CZ Shadow 2 with Palm swell style fiberglass grips. I swapped then to my gun for a couple mags and they make a good bit of difference. The basic problem is that my right hand fingers wrap too far around the pistol that my weak hand has trouble making it to the grip to get any traction.

So, I ordered a set of grips for my CZ, and then also a 12"x12" sheet of nylon, 1/32" thick. Going to put those grips on and then trace grips out of the nylon to use as shims to space out the grips a bit more. Hoping to have more of my weak hand make it to the grip.

 

[DLrocket89]

Quick update here since so many people spent time helping me out...

Shot my first match in over a decade today. Came in 17th out of 51 overall, 6th of 19 in production, and was the highest unclassified production shooter of 8. Thanks everyone who contributed here, I wouldn't've had as positive result as I did without everyone's help, I appreciate it!

The 4 "field" courses we ran went way better than expected. I came up with a plan, shot the plan, with a couple of mid-course changes but I was generally able to keep my head on and adjust accordingly. Only real goof came on a course where I didn't notice I'd hit hard cover, so 5 lower points there than expected (you can hear it in the 3rd video below where someone is asking for a black paster). Classifier was 99-24, "Front Sight 2". I shot a 6.25 HF on it, accurate but slow. Looks like that's a 54%-ish, so upper half of "C". My goal is to make it to "B" by the end of the year, hoping I can practice enough and make it to enough matches to get there.

Videos of some of the stages:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=12oRl_8fG99ra2HE6a8sr9TwTqVB-Gu1Z (actual shooting starts at 30 sec)
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1HPjerNEyii1pHES6I3wqC8uMh5wRmh6c
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UqhSy5smxWSnLmU4lQkrQ0r1xDWhmbYv

Also - quick shout out to anyone here from NISA (Northern Illinois Shooting Association)...they put on a great match. Fun people, safety conscious, and challenging courses. Good times all around. Best part, one of my friends from work came along to watch. Half way through the match he was on his phone getting a USPSA membership, practiscore membership, and registering for his first match on May 12.

Again, thanks everyone here who spent time helping a random stranger. You all made the restart of my USPSA "career" a great one!

Dustin

 

[DLrocket89]

Sorry to resurrect a zombie thread but I had to share - I'm a bit over a year into my restarting of USPSA and I just got bumped to "B" in Production. Thanks to everyone here for helping me get started, it's been a fantastic time!!