Practice Progress

Practice Progress

I skipped my MISS match on Wednesday night, my ankle is not hurting anymore, but it is definitely tender, and while I can shoot, I felt uncomfortable trying to shift my weight, and I definitely was not up to running and cutting. That's two missed matches, and a total of 5 classifiers that I could have shot the past few days, and I missed. I could say that missing them hurts me, but if I had shot poorly, and I likely would have with the ankle tweak, that would have been worse. Thankfully, there is a MISS match for the first time ever on a weekend, this coming Sunday, and both Linda and I will get a chance to get out there and shoot it. If it was not going on, I probably would have tried to push myself and go Wednesday.

Go Shoot Here!

On Tuesday, Linda and I hit the range (nice being on vacation together, with Lauren in school!) and we got some drills done and shot for a couple of hours. I got my turn and and draw El Presidente going, and she did some low ready to a target, and some groups. She had some pretty nice groups with her XDM, her struggle was with her first shot, it was typically very low, but once she got past that, and was working the reset, it looked very good. She also got in a hundred rounds or so with the .22 just groups on steel plates, and it was good experience for her.

El Pres

I ended up with one pretty baller El Pres run, and I have no trouble beating the 8.45 second time that I need to get my 60% classifier. When everything went right, I was in the mid 6 second's, solid hits, 1.65ish draw, and a 1.70 second reload. All hits were on the paper, and I had a run with plenty of alpha's, that said, there was plenty of inconsistency on both the draw and the reload with times as high as 7.40 total, with a 2.11 draw, and a 2.63 reload. I was a little frustrated, but I walked out feeling that I simply need more repetitions right now to improve both draw and reload.





By Thursday night, I've got my draw to first shot on a target in front, to the right and left in the 1.50 to 1.60 range, and I'm getting the sight picture I want about 90% of the time. I had been struggling with how often I got the picture, and the time, when I again realized that I was so tense that I had a tendency to go straight out, and then my arms would drop a little bit bouncing low. When I'm relaxed, I did not have that issue at all, and I am smooth. It's funny, I always thought I was more relaxed, and odd that I have to remind myself, but truthfully being relaxed is a key to bringing out my best performance.

The XDM 5.25"

My hand sit's below the grip

The other part of my practice, the reload has been an ongoing struggle this week. I have been having an issue hitting a 1.70 second par time, and Les wants me at 1.50 seconds. This was extremely frustrating because I could not seem to break past 1.70, much less 1.50. Tonight though, I did two things, and got self 1, and self 2 together a little bit, and started to see a few 1.5 and 1.6 reloads. What I did, was a rehash of what Les did at our last class, I looked at my reload for the different components. I'm content with how quick I drop my mag, but I realized that my support hand had no urgency going for a mag, and I pushed myself to get that indexed into my hand as quick as I could. That alone made me feel that I was going faster. The biggest struggle still remains getting the mag into the gun. In the picture, you can see that my  hand is bigger than the grip, and unless I get the mag in, I have a tendency to either get my other hand, or pinch it between the mag I am inserting and the magwell. I picked up Linda's XDM, and with the bigger grip, that is not an issue. Mind you, this is not a gun issue, it's a practice thing, where I need to make sure that I'm getting the mag in, and if that means looking it in, I need to do it. I'm also getting my elbow slightly lower, and it's a more comfortable place to get the gun and reload. Objectively, the other thing I know I was doing, was admonishing myself as I was reloading, and trying to tel self 2 what all the steps were, and that was causing me to lose focus. With the few little changes, I was able to not tell myself what to do, I just started doing. My times went down, and now that I've felt where I need to be, I think I'll be able to repeat that tomorrow.



Practice, practice, and more practice! I figured I'd have my draw down to 1.3 seconds in short order, but it's taking me a little more time than I thought, same thing with the reload. Don't get me wrong, I'm not upset with my progress, part of me just thought I could pick things up and instantly I'd be there. I know that is not actually the case, and these are skills that are earned. There really is no substitute for multiple repetitions, and to get some solid coaching. Now that I'm finding what feels right, and works for me, I think some of the road blocks are out the way, and the path is clear for me to improve in practice.

You Do See Some Different Stuff

God I love this sport!