Practice This Week

Live Fire Practice

There are just some days where I more or less groan after a practice session, and yesterday was one of 'em. Not too long ago I was running inconsistent El Presidente's with my PPQ in 6.36 seconds, some were good hits, some were not so good. Yesterday I ran 4 El Presidente's, two of them at the beginning of my sessions, and two at the end. The good news is that I was consistent on my hits, all 4 runs had at least 10 Alpha, and no mikes or charlies. The bad news is that every run I did was between 7.98 and 8.11 seconds. In the scheme of things for a B card, I need to do that drill in under 8.45 seconds, so my time sneaks me thru as long as I get good hits.

What I was seeing was a slow turn and draw, and a slower reload. My splits are still in the .20 to .22 area, but my transitions have gone from .38 to .55, meaning that they are achingly slow. In a way, I'm slowing it down on purpose to insure I'm driving the gun to the center of targets on transitions, and insuring that I get good hits, but this is a lot slower than I think I really am. I'm hoping that as I do this, it builds the muscle memory and I can do it faster, more naturally, and just as accurately going forward. I've already got the time, I just need hits.

This should be a good exercise for a week or so (unless Les tells me not to do it.). I'm going to focus on hits, and then get back harder on reloads, and draw, and get those numbers down, doing that alone could have off another half second or so, and is something I need to do as well. Don't race, get hits, and speed up all the things that I can do better, while not sacrificing hits.

I ran a couple of bill drills, and at 7 yards my draw to first shot was 1.2 seconds, and my reload to first shot was 1.5 seconds. I was slower on the reload on the El Pres, I think because I was trying to shoot slow, and I did not show urgency on the reload. That's a mental thing, and should be quickly fixed.

I'm going to up my dry fire the remainder of this week, and next week in order to drill some of these things home, and to get them polished up a little bit before the next set of matches, and especially before the WIIT. While I care about every match, I'm looking at the WIIT as the first, and best chance for me to prove what I've learned, and put it on display. I'm pretty excited for the match.