No, really, they do.
With Les in town for Thanksgiving, we hit the 3-Gun match, and then went to the range for a practice session on Tuesday with Tim Meyers, my practice got cut short because of some work issues that came up, and at the time I was not complaining, because in live fire practice I got to see first hand how sloppy I have become. My aim with the CZ was off, I was shooting low, and I realize that's in part because I was back aiming at the lower 1/2 of the A-Zone, that's something that I have not done in a quite a long time, or at least I have not caught myself doing in quite a long time. I suspect that I've been doing it in matches for awhile, and just never really noticed.
My transitions were slow, my splits were slow, and frankly I was just slow and bad. I left the range feeling really discouraged, almost all the skills that Les had given to me when we trained back in Winter 2013/2014 were gone, they just were not evident in what I was doing. I was just spraying bullets again. My discouragement was made worse after Les left, and I started analyzing video from during that progress, to events that I had shot this past season, and the changes for the worse were starkly evident. I'd say that my confidence was near an all-time low in terms of shooting.
The truth was tough to hear, but I have not hardly practiced this year, or much after we moved to Texas. I've gotten settled into life, I've tried to help get Lauren and Linda both settled in, and I've tried to be both a better dad and husband. I've gone all-in at work, and committed to achieving the goals the company laid out, because this job has been a life changer for all of us, and I'd really like to spend the next 20 odd years here before I retire, it has had that kind of impact on who I am.
Anyone can make the argument that there was time to dry fire, or hit the range for a weekly practice session, but being honest it was not a priority, and with it my motivation was not there. I made some excuses, but by in large my commitment was just not the same. Sure, after a match I'd be pissed about how I did, and I'd put in some time to "not let it happen again", and for a week or two I did it, but then it would taper off. The truth is, I'm not upset about it, life sometimes forces you to adapt, and your priorities change, even if you don't want them to, or think that they are changing. This isn't the end, it's just another place to start.
As usual, shooting with Les re-lit the fire, and in the past ten days, I've gotten back to some dry fire, tonight was the 5th session of dry fire, and I'm actually seeing some progress brushing off the rust. No, I'm not expecting to make Grand Master in the spring, but the good muscle memory that I had is still there, it's just rebuilding it. In addition, it's good to focus on a few things that I'm going to fix, like how my grip turned awful in 2015. I don't see things taking 6 months for me to get back to a "B" level of performance, I'm hoping that with 8 good weeks of dry fire practice, and at least once a week range sessions that I can relearn some of the good habits, and get a lot closer to where I was June of 2014, before we made the move.
I also realize that one of the biggest things I did wrong last year, was set longer season goals, without setting step goals to measure my progress. I wanted to get exponentially better, but if I did not make the jump, it was that much easier to feel discouraged and give up. I'm going to put down some longer term goals for next year, but I'm also going to have some mid-range, and short term goals as well. If I'm running El Presidente in 7 seconds, with 10 Alpha, I may say that I want to cut off 15 seconds a month until I get down to 6 seconds with 10 Alpha. That's just an example, but I need this little goals to help me stay focused.
With the idea that I'm going to shoot a significant amount of 3-Gun next year, I do have a custom 6" 2011 coming sometime "soon", but after talking with Les, I'm not going to shoot it in USPSA, shooting Limited Minor is not a winning proposition, and honestly it leads me to bad habits, where I squirt bullets to make up for poor aiming, and poor fundamentals. Instead of going back to Production, I bought my first 1911, a Dan Wesson Pointman Nine, and I'm going to shoot Single Stack Minor. It will be the same game as I played in Production, start with 10+1, and 10 rounds in the mag, so I'm going to work harder on my fundamentals, and I'm going to have to focus harder on making my shots count. I know more than a few folks disagree with this choice, but I'll go with Les on this, anything that makes me work the right way is a good thing, and he's right, it's a lot harder for me to lie to myself in Single Stack than in Limited.
Whew, big changes on the horizon, and I think there will be a dry erase board or calendar coming for the reloading room, so I can track what I'm doing, and stay on target. I feel like I lost some self-respect, and respect from other shooters for my lousy performance this year, and while I know I can't fix it in a few weeks, I can get on the right path. I know I've said it before, so I don't expect anyone to buy all the way in just yet, but see where I'm at in 8 weeks, and then in 12 weeks, 16 weeks and so on, and we're going to see a nice trend of improvement. One step at a time.
No comments:
Post a Comment