Pre-Game

Pre-Game

This has been a busy week, work is pushing us hard to do more the last few weeks of the year, and it's been more hours, and higher stress. On top of that, I came down with a cough, and am feeling subpar. Practice has not felt fruitful, in a way I feel like I've been walking thru it, without making any meaningful improvements. I'm off on Friday, so I'm really going to to focus and get some extra work done.

As I've been reviewing the video from Sunday, it occurs to me that by in large, I've been struggling with the first stage of most matches for the last five or six months. I would always attribute to coming in cold, and not being on the top of my game. This week though, I shot nice and quick, I just did not hit anything in my first run, and that bothers me. I realize that it isn't just me coming into a match cold, it's that I'm not taking the time I need to put myself into "the zone."

(Matt Mink) Anyone Seeing a Theme?

This was an interesting topic of conversation at breakfast after the match with Les, Kozy, and Tony Amici. Les shared that before a major match, he gets between one to two hours of dryfire before he starts. I'm getting the time it takes me to un-bag and holster my gun. What I'm really doing is cheating myself. I need to spend 15-20 minutes, at a minimum, before I leave home just going thru a dryfire routine. Get some time on my sights, my draw, and reloads, get myself comfortable with where I need to be, before I get to my first stage. Then, once I'm there, take a couple of minutes, tune everything and everyone out, and draw at the safe table, get my sights, and get my focus.

That really does look nice

I'm tired of wasting stages, getting myself "ready" to shoot, I'm surprised it took me this long to get my head together to realize what I was, or more to the point, was not doing. It's batting practice before a baseball game, it's shoot around for a basketball team, and it's warm-up's for a football team. What made me think I could come in cold, and skip a crucial part of my routine?

Short blog, back to bed, and hopefully the added rest will kill this cold off, and I'll be back and ready to go for dry fire practice tomorrow, and class again on Saturday morning.