Practice Thread

I didn't think I was this bad...........

I have been dry firing 3 to 4 days a week, about 20 minutes a time, for the past 3 weeks. After some self evaluation, I was having problems getting a consistent and repeatable grip on the gun. I started reading and following Steve Anderson's Refinement and Repetition, I have been working on 10-yard index, 10-yard surrender index, and turn and draw. This morning I went to range to do some live fire, draw and fire 1 shot at 10 yards. Boy, do I need some work. First shot cold was 1.77 and the last after 50 reps was 1.66, I kept able to keep hit the A-zone 40 out of the 50.

I have decided that I need to dry fire more. I'm going to increase the dry fire to 5 days weeks, 45 minutes at a time. Live fire will be twice month, unless I shoot a match, the match will be the second live fire for the month.
 
AR10ShooterinNC said:
I'm going to increase the dry fire to 5 days weeks, 45 minutes at a time. Live fire will be twice month, unless I shoot a match, the match will be the second live fire for the month.
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If you can dry fire for 45 minutes straight you are doing it wrong. You should be gripping the pistol as if it were going to go off. If not, you're just polishing the action by cycling the slide and pulling the trigger. My hands hurt after 10 to 15 minutes.


*Edit for typo*
 
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AR10ShooterinNC said:
I didn't think I was this bad...........

I have been dry firing 3 to 4 days a week, about 20 minutes a time, for the past 3 weeks. After some self evaluation, I was having problems getting a consistent and repeatable grip on the gun. I started reading and following Steve Anderson's Refinement and Repetition, I have been working on 10-yard index, 10-yard surrender index, and turn and draw. This morning I went to range to do some live fire, draw and fire 1 shot at 10 yards. Boy, do I need some work. First shot cold was 1.77 and the last after 50 reps was 1.66, I kept able to keep hit the A-zone 40 out of the 50.

I have decided that I need to dry fire more. I'm going to increase the dry fire to 5 days weeks, 45 minutes at a time. Live fire will be twice month, unless I shoot a match, the match will be the second live fire for the month.
Click to expand...
I'm not sure if you're working on other pieces of the puzzle but don't forget that you only draw once per stage.
 
AR10ShooterinNC said:
I didn't think I was this bad...........

I have been dry firing 3 to 4 days a week, about 20 minutes a time, for the past 3 weeks. After some self evaluation, I was having problems getting a consistent and repeatable grip on the gun. I started reading and following Steve Anderson's Refinement and Repetition, I have been working on 10-yard index, 10-yard surrender index, and turn and draw. This morning I went to range to do some live fire, draw and fire 1 shot at 10 yards. Boy, do I need some work. First shot cold was 1.77 and the last after 50 reps was 1.66, I kept able to keep hit the A-zone 40 out of the 50.

I have decided that I need to dry fire more. I'm going to increase the dry fire to 5 days weeks, 45 minutes at a time. Live fire will be twice month, unless I shoot a match, the match will be the second live fire for the month.
Click to expand...
If you're not getting a consistent grip, don't bother working on the draw too.

Literally stand there, and on the buzzer, get your hand on the grip, properly, over and over again. Once you get that, start putting it together with the whole draw.
 
Travis B said:
I'm not sure if you're working on other pieces of the puzzle but don't forget that you only draw once per stage.
Click to expand...

I think I have my grip down now, I played with it for a few days off the timer, just grip draw and grip with support hand. As I get the grip and draw down better, I plan to expand, doing the 1st through the 14th drill which Steve states are the most helpful to improving.
 
FlatFender said:
If you're not getting a consistent grip, don't bother working on the draw too.

Literally stand there, and on the buzzer, get your hand on the grip, properly, over and over again. Once you get that, start putting it together with the whole draw.
Click to expand...

I spend 3 days just working on my grip last week. I started slow, just walking through the grip, draw, support hand grip, aim and press trigger, no timer. I think I have my grip down now. This is just going to be a work in progress thing.

I have been a listen to your show for a couple years now. Between your's and Steve Anderson's show, you guys have motivated my to get out of C class. The only way to that is to dry fire on a schedule.
 
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Worked on movement to SHO/WHO yesterday. Wasn't as awkward as I thought.
 
I have alot of work to do with WHO. Everything else went really well
 

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I spent this past week working on my gripe and draw. I have my draw and index at 10 yards, down to 1 sec on the par timer. I went out to the range this morning, to do the live fire part. I set the target at 10 yards, was doing draw and fire 2 rounds. Fired 200 rounds total. I have my draw and 1st round at around 1.6 seconds with my split for for the 2nd shot at .5. One thing that I did really notice, was that having a proper, strong gripe helped in my control of the gun. I could tell by the time and groups on the target when I had the pistol griped properly. With the proper grip I was keeping all the shots in the A zone.
 
AR10ShooterinNC said:
I spent this past week working on my gripe and draw. I have my draw and index at 10 yards, down to 1 sec on the par timer. I went out to the range this morning, to do the live fire part. I set the target at 10 yards, was doing draw and fire 2 rounds. Fired 200 rounds total. I have my draw and 1st round at around 1.6 seconds with my split for for the 2nd shot at .5. One thing that I did really notice, was that having a proper, strong gripe helped in my control of the gun. I could tell by the time and groups on the target when I had the pistol griped properly. With the proper grip I was keeping all the shots in the A zone.
Click to expand...

If it were me I would not worry as much about the speed of the draw and 1st round as much as I would be working on the proper grip everytime and making sure you are getting A zone hits 100% of the time. Once you can draw and hit the A zone 100% of the time at a slower speed then you can speed it up. If you are training too fast too soon you will develop bad habits that will be harder to train out later. Work on the consistency of the draw and grip to presentation to first shot. Once you have it down 100% then work on speed.

Slow is fast and fast is slow. Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.
 
wvsig said:
If it were me I would not worry as much about the speed of the draw and 1st round as much as I would be working on the proper grip everytime and making sure you are getting A zone hits 100% of the time. Once you can draw and hit the A zone 100% of the time at a slower speed then you can speed it up. If you are training too fast too soon you will develop bad habits that will be harder to train out later. Work on the consistency of the draw and grip to presentation to first shot. Once you have it down 100% then work on speed.

Slow is fast and fast is slow. Practice does not make perfect. Perfect practice makes perfect.
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Fast is not slow. Fast is fast, and slow is slow.
 
FlatFender said:
Fast is not slow. Fast is fast, and slow is slow.
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If you are training bad habit fast is slow because you are slowing down your learning process. If you rush your draw and your grip is off all your subsequent shot will suffer. If you are out of your holster fast but miss the A zone, in gun games you will lose time because of those misses, in real life you might lose more than time on a timer.

How about this instead.

Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast.

People focus way too early on speed IMHO. Speed comes once you have the rest of the draw, grip & trigger control down. I see a lot of people trying to shave time before the fundamentals are in place.

I am not knocking the OP I am just giving an opinion on how to approach training. I stated what I did because he stated his grip is inconsistent and he is missing the A zone 20% of the time.
 
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I will be working the grip until it becomes second nature. Once I figured out how to proper grip the gun, I had to teach myself how to draw and position each hand to get that grip. I spent a few hours just slow drawing, teaching my hand how to get the grip that works for me. I'm dry firing about 4 days a week and pretty much just working the different draw and index drills until I have my grip down 100% of the time. Just in the past few weeks I have seen a major improvement in my abilities, I'm much more comfortable and confident in my drawing and first shot.
 
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FlatFender said:
Personally, I think the old "slow is smooth, smooth is fast" addage is also garbage. Slow is slow. Fast is fast.

Yes, you can learn from going slow, but it's still slow.
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Truth

Never understood why slow is smooth. I've seen plenty of slow that was no where near smooth.
 
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Time, I need to cut my times. Been shooting over 90% of the points at matches but way to much time.

Setup a dryfire sprint in the back yard. 3 shooting positions 15 ft apart with one target each. Starting at one side - 2 shots, middle 2 shots, other side 2 shots, middle 2 shots finish at original 2 shots. 10 sec par time.

Was only getting to middle for 2nd time before buzzer at first few runs. Matty says " you know your not running in a straight line? You look like your rounding bases going into position. You do that on stages sometimes too" Didn't realize I was. Made an effort to go straight. Instantly was getting within a step of last position. Big improvement. My focus is now straight lines.
 
Watch the carolina classic video, my butt was slow on the draw. Real slow. Too damn slow.
Stepping in to position, same thing.


Back to basic for this week. Draw to perfect sight picture and grip. Goal is .7 second standing still and stepping in the "box", step right, step left, step back, step forward.

Snapping transitions to open and partials of all types.
 
This week I'm gonna work on staying with the sights on shots right before a reload. I had three mystery mikes on targets at the state match. The only thing they had in common was that I was moving and they were immediately followed by short movement reloads.
 
I have changed my draw and am working on making it subconscious. I've got it down to .8 seconds with a good grip. I can get it a little faster but good grip only about half the time. I'm also still working on transitions and mag changes while exploding out of my shooting position.
 
Got the range yesterday after a 2 week hiatus. Got Matty Evo grip installed so we had to try it. Wow huge difference. Puts the weight of the gun on your hand. Splits were down to .2. Transitions on 4ft spaced targets were running .4. Now I want one on my gun.
 
Dry fire has been on nothing but partials for a solid 3 months. It took me a while to realize open targets weren't the problem.

@Mike Overlay @FatboyFlash that run the other night bumped me up 4%

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