Weekend in Review

Weekend in Review


An awful lot to think about after the two matches this weekend. Sure, I enjoyed having Les here, and it was great running with him again, but I really wanted him to enjoy himself at the matches, and not have him babysitting me, especially when I was starting to struggle. Kozy gave me a mission to sit down and list out everything that went wrong, and take it a step further and plan how I'm going to fix it. My fear was that I was going to watch the video's, take notes, and see an absolute shit show, but putting things in perspective, I watched a match I shot in September of '13, and I realize then that I was doing damn near everything wrong, there was no consistency.


I'm not in that place today, and what I actually saw was repetition of the same mistakes over and over, and honestly that makes me happy because it means that if I fix a few issues, I'm going to see a lot more consistency, and I can improve. It would have been a little disheartening to say that absolutely everything I'm doing is wrong. So let's start the list out.



1) My Draw

I was fairly slow to my first shot, the gun is getting up and out, but I'm not finding my sight, and that's something that repetition in dry fire can iron out. I suspect I'm not getting the support hand on early enough, and I'm thinking about my trigger finger, and how I've managed to get too much finger on the trigger and pushed shots. I see I'm doing it when scoring a stage when I have an Alpha, and one shot low and left, always the follow-up. With that, it's stop bitching, and spend the $30 and buy the longer flat trigger. Gear the right way, and then work with what you have. The other thing I need to go back to, is varying the dry fire, don't just go from the holster, do table start's, unloaded starts, that sort of thing. It cost me on one stage when I forgot to rack the gun.

In the grand scheme of things though, this is not my big killer, and while it's easy to spot, and easy to work on, I don't need to devote endless time to it, get my draw back in the 1.5 range and I'm not going to get killed. This is something I need to do weekly, and spend time on, but not focus.


2) Reloads

In standing dry fire, I always grab the mag on the center of my belt, in live fire I go for the hip, this proves that muscle memory training works, but it's not exactly helping me right now. I consistently was going to the hip all weekend long, and that tells me I need to vary my dry fire, and instead of standing and Burkett reloads, I need to add movement. Reload going right, going left, shoot 4, reload 4. Things that make me do other things, and train what I need to be doing.

Like the draw, this is not going to be a huge focus. My reloads from the hip were not time wise okay, call it 1.6-1.8 seconds, instead of a live 1.2 second reload. At my level a .4 to .6 second time saving is not going to deliver the biggest bang for the buck. I reload once per stage, so working on it is great, making it a focus is not a good time investment.

All that said, indexing the mag is going to be something I spend a little time with, because I dropped mags twice this weekend as the result of a poor index. That's just something I simply cannot afford to have happen in a match.


3) Stage Planning

My plans were not awful this weekend, but I made the D class mistake of changing a set plan just before going to the line. I know better. Once a plan is set in walk thru, it should not change, I'm not good enough to make adjustments. Sticking with a plan usually does not kill you, changing a plan can result in a much higher disaster factor, and that's not worth it.  Rookie mistake can end your match pretty early on.

In addition, make sure that I'm coming in on targets and leaving on targets the right way. A couple of stages left me with back and forth transitions that I did not need. I also posted up in the wrong place a couple of times, and had to shuffle step to see a second target, where if I had hit my mark, it would not have required that adjustment.

I need to make sure that I'm not doing dumb things. On one stage on Sunday I forced myself into multiple long and challenging shots thinking the plan would save me time. Problem was that I struggled with hits as a result and took longer to get my sights respecting that the targets were harder. In the end, I would have been far better off had I kept to my original plan, I suspect I would have done far better on that stage.



4) Movement

Yeah, my foot speed needs to get better, but where I can make some gains is with foot work. I overran some targets, did not come in cleanly, I touched on missing my mark in Stage Planning, but it all goes together. The big one that bit me a couple of times was not getting down lower thru a port. Looking down on your gun or your sights means you don't align your sights. That's sheer laziness on my part, I know better, and have no excuse to let that sort of thing happen.


5) Accuracy/Cadence

When I'm on with my new gun, I'm on all the way. There were a couple of stages with 28+ Alpha's out of 32 rounds, I know I can do this, and I'm more accurate in Limited than I was in Production. Go figure that one.....

That said, I made mistakes out of sloppiness, I dragged the gun across targets, I did not see my sights, and in a few cases I was hunting for targets, I did not decisively go for the targets I needed to hit. Transitions, especially wide ones need some work, and I think the biggest difference in my accuracy is that the CZ was lighter, and easier for me to drive between targets, the Edge is heavy and my transitions are slower, but it forces me to better see my sights. When I get all hot and bothered, that's where I start breaking shots early, but I think this is more the next issue than a shooting issue. Shooting some groups is on the agenda as well.

In Production I loved seeing steel on a stage, and in Limited I'm struggling again. I am however focused on paper, something I struggled with in Production, again a head scratcher moment for me. I need to add steel to both dry fire, and to live fire.

6) Mentality

In a squad of 8 members, 7 of whom are GM's and Masters, it's stupid to try to match them or compete with them. I know my limits, so shoot my own game. The more I shoot, the more the sport because instinctive, and the less thinking I have to do, the easier it is for me to focus on my sights. Mental toughness is not just carrying mistakes from stage to stage, it's also recovering while on the same stage. Don't let a mistake become a train wreck. At the Alpha Mike match last month, I made a mistake, knew it, and kept on going full speed, and tried to fix it by shooting well, on Sunday I made one mistake, made another, and then sank myself. While I'm not carrying stuff from stage to stage as much as I used to, if I'm honest with myself, I can still do better.

Coupled with that, I need to realize that you can't go faster to fix mistakes, what you end up doing is making more. Accept a mistake and keep going. Several times over the weekend I made one mistake, and tried to rush to "make it up", and I made more mistakes. From dragging and shooting into hard cover, (not seeing my sights) over running targets, to sinking myself after a steel struggle. All of those mistakes would not have been made worse, just keep to my game, and I'm okay.


I had some good moments, but I'm not ready for Limited Nationals, not even close. I have just over 5 months, and 4 more majors to get my game in gear. The reality is all the items on the list are fixable, with a little work, the fact they are issues is an indication that I'm cheating in my dry fire, and that I'm not putting in the work that I need to be successful. If I don't start putting in the effort, then my lack of performance will be on my own head. I'm owning it, because by Area 4 in September, I'm going to roll out a solid match from beginning to end when I'm with Kozy and Les again.