boss281
Ultimate Member
Background
Firearms competitions were the norm in my childhood, but the thought of competing again never occurred to me until after I retired in November 2016. With all the free time on my hands I found myself at an outdoor or indoor range once or twice a week, sometimes more, working my way through the ammo hoard and enjoying sighting in the rifles and shooting bullseye. I did this for a few months until I stumbled on a steel shoot, and discovered the steel challenge, USPSA and IDPA organizations and the events that were sponsored at several local ranges. I could do this!
My approach tends to be more “Top Gun” than just diving in, and I sought a qualified instructor to guide and help instill good habits once I realized I was getting serious. In October 2017 I attended a competition-focused 5.56 carbine/pistol caliber carbine (PCC) training course with Dynamic Defense Concepts, an MDS Industry Partner ( https://www.mdshooters.com/showthread.php?t=215768). During this training session using timed USPSA-like stages, Trevor Scheuneman, a Master class USPSA and IDPA competitor, also introduced me to CZ pistols, a Czech brand I had never handled, much less shot. I found them surprising balanced, accurate and a good fit for my hands. Based on this, I purchased a SP-01 Tactical as my first pistol for USPSA events, and since I had also started a part time job in a gun store where open carry was encouraged, I also purchased a CZ P-01 compact for carry in the store.
CZs really are a find brand of pistol, and I suddenly found my range time shifting 90/10 in favor of the pistol over the PCC and other rifles. I spent a few months going to an indoor range with both pistols, at least once a week and sometimes twice. It had been several years since I shot pistol this much, as I was more experienced and comfortable with rifles. The time was well invested as my marksmanship quickly improved and my holster draw smooth and consistent—I felt that adding movement to target practice was now in order. Nonetheless, I wasn’t quite sure my pistol movements were the best and wanted to fix any bad habits early. Top Gun time, once again. I thought it natural to try the pistol competition classes offered through Trevor’s company since I had a great experience with rifle and PCC, and we found a date in May to give it a go.
Approach
Note Trevor’s training model has changed since working with him last year, and he now focuses on training others privately for competitive shooting sports only—he has left Dynamic Defense Concepts to form his own company. In fact, the “defensive” side of carbine and pistol training is absent from his curriculum. He offers two options instead. The first option provides personal competition tutoring at a $75 hourly rate, and the other option is a once or twice monthly training session where you can accompany Trevor as he practices, and you get to practice at the same time for $25/hour. The second less expensive option is an opportunity to drill at your own pace in a realistic competition “stage” setup at a local private range, timed and all—that alone is worth the (reduced) price given local ranges don’t provide the setup for practicing run and gun (at least the ones where I have a membership). We agreed to 3 hours of one-on-one training. Trevor’s new website and descriptions of his training options can be found here: https://www.targetfocus.net/.
Gear
I’m not a “gear” guy, at least not until I know what I’m getting in to. Since I’m new to competitive pistol, I haven’t yet acquired much, although I was keenly aware of all the options the pistol shooting sport vendors offered for belts, magazine holders, even shoes. For this first training session, I brought my SP-01 Tactical and my P-01 compact. I wore my Kore Essentials X1 Tactical every day carry pants belt, which I love since it has a ratcheting system that allows you to adjust the belt tension on the fly. For holsters and magazine pouches, Bladetech IDPA models were used. I brought several hundred rounds of Speer Lawman 124g 9mm, a round that I found shot well in the two pistols and was clean burning. Hearing protection and shooting glasses rounded it out on the firearm hardware, and I brought a hat, water, lunch and sunblock in the gear bag.
One note on shooting glasses: being nearsighted, the irons on factory pistols (as they are on my ARs) are a challenge to see clearly and have a fuzzy but discernable target (especially in indoor ranges)—the target side of it tends to be a complete blur at 25 yards or so. If I’m working targets inside 10 yards or so, I remove the prescription lenses and instead shoot with clear lenses, as I can see both the sights and target clearly enough to be productive at the range, but I’m also experimenting with a new prescription that corrects my right dominant eye for front sight focus and leaves the left weak side eye with my normal distance correction to help out at both short and longer shooting distances common in the pistol shooting sports. I’ve since heard a prescription that meets those distances half way can also work well. We’ll see.
The First 30 Minutes
I arrived at the range about 20 minutes early, and Trevor greeted me as he put the finishing touches on a several USPSA like “mini” stages, complete with steel and cardboard silhouettes on stands, and shooting boxes. One stage had several stacks of barrels to run around to shoot from both left-hand and right-hand sides. Nothing I hadn’t seen before. He had already unloaded his gear from his vehicle, so I unloaded as well, and presented my gear. Since I had only signed up for 3 hours, we agreed to stick with the USPSA approach and rules for the 3 hours (no covering garment, etc.), and cover IDPA some other time in the future once I had progressed and competed a few times.
I figured as a novice in competition pistol my hardware would be lacking, but Trevor indicated what I had would be a good start for running the day’s drills. The SP-01 Tactical was a good choice, but Trevor questioned the P-01, a compact carry pistol typically used in IDPA. I simply indicated that I wanted to test the SP-01 stock sights against the aftermarket fiber optic set I had installed on the carry pistol and see if one or the other felt more natural when lining up the target picture under the stress of running a stage. Note too I had upgraded the P-01 carry pistol with a Cajun Gun Works Defensive Carry package, which reduced the effort on the double and single action pulls and decreased the reset of the single action. The SP-01 was still stock.
My holster and mag pouches would work for the day’s session, but Trevor presented his own rig of competition-oriented belt (both inner and outer), and angled mag pouches. His CZ pistol, too, had been modified to make the most of a competitive event, much more so than my carry pistol. He offered me a chance to dry fire it, to get a sense of the crisp break and shorter reset. Nice.
After signing a release form and going over the usual safety briefing on firearms usage and safety under USPSA rules (sweeping, finger in the trigger guard, the 180 rule, etc.), we warmed up shooting in place.
Two and Half Hours Later…
…I came away with a good understanding of how the pistol approach differed from PCC, corrected a few grip issues and becoming aware of shot placement while under the stress of time, and started working hard on the “dance” that starts with dropping a magazine and reloading while moving quickly. What was so natural to me in PCC was much trickier using the pistol!
Trevor’s approach is to dive into shooting the first stage cold with a timer, so we did. Like any other stage, we discussed the strategy for the approach, and went over several alternate sequences to shoot the targets. I went first, and Trevor followed so I’d have a good understanding of the time and accuracy gap between a beginner and seasoned competitor. After observing me a few times, Trevor noted several skills that could use improving, which I practiced slowly until mastered, then would run the stage again, concentrating on the skill and not worrying too much about speed or accuracy (but not throwing those out, just not the priority of the moment). In most cases I could adjust quickly on the fly. The areas of improvement included what you could and couldn’t do under the USPSA command structure, the holster draw, the grip on the pistol, shot placement awareness, firing twice when sights are on target, reloads and planning to reload with a chambered round, and target sequence strategy. That’s a lot to pick up in 3 hours, and even though I had familiarity through PCC, I found translating this to pistol quickly turned my brain to mush. I could focus on one skill and do well, but the other areas of improvement took a back seat. I didn’t have muscle memory yet, so the constant drilling started working the problem.
My grip, for example, a fundamental part of shooting pistol, needed a slight adjustment that immediately improved my scoring . When we first warmed up and shot standing still at targets, Trevor remarked “you’re a bullseye marksman, aren’t you?” as I had nice little tight groups. But the grip I was using to shoot bullseye wasn’t working well for shooting on the move. My first attempts to run the drill ended up with a number of hits in the C and D zones off to the left, especially under Trevor’s shouts of encouragement to move faster. To help with accuracy, he suggested a slightly modified higher grip with my left weak side hand, and I found all my hits improved immediately, moving back towards center target.
He also made me aware of “knowing where the shot hit by becoming aware of where the front sight was when the shot broke”. I’d never thought this way and tended instead to check the target after each shot to verify shot placement. After hearing this, I had to force my brain to watch the shot from the front sight, and I immediately knew what hits were good, what weren’t, and what make up shots I needed to make up when I was really outside the “A” zone of the target.
We spent a significant time on reloading on the fly. My PCC rig, prior training and experience didn’t mean squat here. And having a nice short thumb made matters worse, since I had to shift my grip to drop a magazine. Trevor assured me this was a common scenario, and we worked on how to shift, drop, place the elbow, twist the pistol 90 degrees, remove a magazine, reload and continue shooting smoothly, albeit at 50% speed (I’ve since upgraded all 4 of my CZ pistols with extended magazine releases).
After identifying these areas needed for improvement, we ran the stages over and over, with my accuracy and timing improving each time and inching closer to Trevor’s scores. By the end of the 3 hours, my scores would place me in the middle of a typical USPSA meet, assuming I could keep it all together going forward! We’ll see, very soon. We had a lot of fun during this session, and I was at least thankful no obvious movement was a DQ’able offense!
Takeaways
I think for many at my experience level in competition pistol, the areas that need practiced or improved are all too familiar, and the fundamentals can’t be discussed enough. With that, here are my focus areas:
1. Reloads. Again, the sequence is to drop the loaded magazine while reaching for a fresh one, orient your shooting arm and pistol to accept the new magazine, and continue firing. This is the skill I need to practice the most. I am not smooth and tend to chunk the movements into discernable steps since I haven’t practiced reloads this way and tend to lose a lot of my time during this step. Practice will make perfect.
2. Holster Draw. I didn’t do too badly in this area, as I practice this often, although not at maximum “competition” speed. Ensuring a consistent high grip under the beavertail was somewhat problematic when trying to draw faster, so that’s a point I need to improve.
3. Double Action/Single Action. The two pistols mentioned are decocker-based with double action first shots, and single action shots that follow. My DA shot at speed was almost always resulted in a flyer with the SA rounds placed where I wanted them. Here, dry and live fire practice with holster draw will almost certainly nip this in the bud.
4. Vision Challenges. As mentioned above, my nearsighted eyes are a problem. There are lots of opinions out there on solving the problem, and not all suggestions work for everybody—I’ve tried several with mixed success. I could go carry optics with a red dot and solve the problem like I did with PCC, but for some reason I want to see if I can find a balance with vision and scoring using the irons in pistol. Trevor said to settle on one soon, or I’ll be chasing my tail at the expense of the other areas noted for improvement.
5. The Home “Range”. I bought an airsoft pistol (SP-01 replica) so I can practice my movements on the home 3 acres. The practice pistol shoots at 400fps and cleanly penetrates splatter targets at modest distances, so there will be some feedback, although the focus is on the stage movements and times, not accuracy.
6. Range commands. For some reason, I forget to load my pistol on Make Ready several times. I have no explanation for it but and Trevor just let me the mistake until it finally sunk in by the end of the 3 hours. Weird.
7. The Pistol. Bone stock, the SP-01 did well enough, but I will “Cajunize” the internals like I did with the P-01 compact (upgraded trigger pull and reset and a fiber optic front sight). Also, the grips have since been replaced with nice grippy Lok-branded replacements. It’s night and day.
8. Other Gear. I’ve since ordered a double competition belt, competition magazine pouches that can be oriented two ways, and went ahead and ordered a competition holster. I want something with a Trak-Lok belt attachment system, as the BladeTech belt loop put the holster out to the side a bit more than I liked.
And That’s It, For Now
As expected, I came away with a better appreciation of the fundamentals, and a short list of the key movements and skills I needed to practice and improve upon. Trevor has an easy-going educational style, never negative, always positive. I appreciate his ability to break down the required movements so they are readily identifiable and thus targeted for improvement. I look forward to further time with him, and it will be interesting to see how quickly I can improve my scores going forward as I begin competing. And these eyes, I’ve got to fix these eyes!
Next up, Defensive Pistol with FPF Training in Culpepper.
Firearms competitions were the norm in my childhood, but the thought of competing again never occurred to me until after I retired in November 2016. With all the free time on my hands I found myself at an outdoor or indoor range once or twice a week, sometimes more, working my way through the ammo hoard and enjoying sighting in the rifles and shooting bullseye. I did this for a few months until I stumbled on a steel shoot, and discovered the steel challenge, USPSA and IDPA organizations and the events that were sponsored at several local ranges. I could do this!
My approach tends to be more “Top Gun” than just diving in, and I sought a qualified instructor to guide and help instill good habits once I realized I was getting serious. In October 2017 I attended a competition-focused 5.56 carbine/pistol caliber carbine (PCC) training course with Dynamic Defense Concepts, an MDS Industry Partner ( https://www.mdshooters.com/showthread.php?t=215768). During this training session using timed USPSA-like stages, Trevor Scheuneman, a Master class USPSA and IDPA competitor, also introduced me to CZ pistols, a Czech brand I had never handled, much less shot. I found them surprising balanced, accurate and a good fit for my hands. Based on this, I purchased a SP-01 Tactical as my first pistol for USPSA events, and since I had also started a part time job in a gun store where open carry was encouraged, I also purchased a CZ P-01 compact for carry in the store.
CZs really are a find brand of pistol, and I suddenly found my range time shifting 90/10 in favor of the pistol over the PCC and other rifles. I spent a few months going to an indoor range with both pistols, at least once a week and sometimes twice. It had been several years since I shot pistol this much, as I was more experienced and comfortable with rifles. The time was well invested as my marksmanship quickly improved and my holster draw smooth and consistent—I felt that adding movement to target practice was now in order. Nonetheless, I wasn’t quite sure my pistol movements were the best and wanted to fix any bad habits early. Top Gun time, once again. I thought it natural to try the pistol competition classes offered through Trevor’s company since I had a great experience with rifle and PCC, and we found a date in May to give it a go.
Approach
Note Trevor’s training model has changed since working with him last year, and he now focuses on training others privately for competitive shooting sports only—he has left Dynamic Defense Concepts to form his own company. In fact, the “defensive” side of carbine and pistol training is absent from his curriculum. He offers two options instead. The first option provides personal competition tutoring at a $75 hourly rate, and the other option is a once or twice monthly training session where you can accompany Trevor as he practices, and you get to practice at the same time for $25/hour. The second less expensive option is an opportunity to drill at your own pace in a realistic competition “stage” setup at a local private range, timed and all—that alone is worth the (reduced) price given local ranges don’t provide the setup for practicing run and gun (at least the ones where I have a membership). We agreed to 3 hours of one-on-one training. Trevor’s new website and descriptions of his training options can be found here: https://www.targetfocus.net/.
Gear
I’m not a “gear” guy, at least not until I know what I’m getting in to. Since I’m new to competitive pistol, I haven’t yet acquired much, although I was keenly aware of all the options the pistol shooting sport vendors offered for belts, magazine holders, even shoes. For this first training session, I brought my SP-01 Tactical and my P-01 compact. I wore my Kore Essentials X1 Tactical every day carry pants belt, which I love since it has a ratcheting system that allows you to adjust the belt tension on the fly. For holsters and magazine pouches, Bladetech IDPA models were used. I brought several hundred rounds of Speer Lawman 124g 9mm, a round that I found shot well in the two pistols and was clean burning. Hearing protection and shooting glasses rounded it out on the firearm hardware, and I brought a hat, water, lunch and sunblock in the gear bag.
One note on shooting glasses: being nearsighted, the irons on factory pistols (as they are on my ARs) are a challenge to see clearly and have a fuzzy but discernable target (especially in indoor ranges)—the target side of it tends to be a complete blur at 25 yards or so. If I’m working targets inside 10 yards or so, I remove the prescription lenses and instead shoot with clear lenses, as I can see both the sights and target clearly enough to be productive at the range, but I’m also experimenting with a new prescription that corrects my right dominant eye for front sight focus and leaves the left weak side eye with my normal distance correction to help out at both short and longer shooting distances common in the pistol shooting sports. I’ve since heard a prescription that meets those distances half way can also work well. We’ll see.
The First 30 Minutes
I arrived at the range about 20 minutes early, and Trevor greeted me as he put the finishing touches on a several USPSA like “mini” stages, complete with steel and cardboard silhouettes on stands, and shooting boxes. One stage had several stacks of barrels to run around to shoot from both left-hand and right-hand sides. Nothing I hadn’t seen before. He had already unloaded his gear from his vehicle, so I unloaded as well, and presented my gear. Since I had only signed up for 3 hours, we agreed to stick with the USPSA approach and rules for the 3 hours (no covering garment, etc.), and cover IDPA some other time in the future once I had progressed and competed a few times.
I figured as a novice in competition pistol my hardware would be lacking, but Trevor indicated what I had would be a good start for running the day’s drills. The SP-01 Tactical was a good choice, but Trevor questioned the P-01, a compact carry pistol typically used in IDPA. I simply indicated that I wanted to test the SP-01 stock sights against the aftermarket fiber optic set I had installed on the carry pistol and see if one or the other felt more natural when lining up the target picture under the stress of running a stage. Note too I had upgraded the P-01 carry pistol with a Cajun Gun Works Defensive Carry package, which reduced the effort on the double and single action pulls and decreased the reset of the single action. The SP-01 was still stock.
My holster and mag pouches would work for the day’s session, but Trevor presented his own rig of competition-oriented belt (both inner and outer), and angled mag pouches. His CZ pistol, too, had been modified to make the most of a competitive event, much more so than my carry pistol. He offered me a chance to dry fire it, to get a sense of the crisp break and shorter reset. Nice.
After signing a release form and going over the usual safety briefing on firearms usage and safety under USPSA rules (sweeping, finger in the trigger guard, the 180 rule, etc.), we warmed up shooting in place.
Two and Half Hours Later…
…I came away with a good understanding of how the pistol approach differed from PCC, corrected a few grip issues and becoming aware of shot placement while under the stress of time, and started working hard on the “dance” that starts with dropping a magazine and reloading while moving quickly. What was so natural to me in PCC was much trickier using the pistol!
Trevor’s approach is to dive into shooting the first stage cold with a timer, so we did. Like any other stage, we discussed the strategy for the approach, and went over several alternate sequences to shoot the targets. I went first, and Trevor followed so I’d have a good understanding of the time and accuracy gap between a beginner and seasoned competitor. After observing me a few times, Trevor noted several skills that could use improving, which I practiced slowly until mastered, then would run the stage again, concentrating on the skill and not worrying too much about speed or accuracy (but not throwing those out, just not the priority of the moment). In most cases I could adjust quickly on the fly. The areas of improvement included what you could and couldn’t do under the USPSA command structure, the holster draw, the grip on the pistol, shot placement awareness, firing twice when sights are on target, reloads and planning to reload with a chambered round, and target sequence strategy. That’s a lot to pick up in 3 hours, and even though I had familiarity through PCC, I found translating this to pistol quickly turned my brain to mush. I could focus on one skill and do well, but the other areas of improvement took a back seat. I didn’t have muscle memory yet, so the constant drilling started working the problem.
My grip, for example, a fundamental part of shooting pistol, needed a slight adjustment that immediately improved my scoring . When we first warmed up and shot standing still at targets, Trevor remarked “you’re a bullseye marksman, aren’t you?” as I had nice little tight groups. But the grip I was using to shoot bullseye wasn’t working well for shooting on the move. My first attempts to run the drill ended up with a number of hits in the C and D zones off to the left, especially under Trevor’s shouts of encouragement to move faster. To help with accuracy, he suggested a slightly modified higher grip with my left weak side hand, and I found all my hits improved immediately, moving back towards center target.
He also made me aware of “knowing where the shot hit by becoming aware of where the front sight was when the shot broke”. I’d never thought this way and tended instead to check the target after each shot to verify shot placement. After hearing this, I had to force my brain to watch the shot from the front sight, and I immediately knew what hits were good, what weren’t, and what make up shots I needed to make up when I was really outside the “A” zone of the target.
We spent a significant time on reloading on the fly. My PCC rig, prior training and experience didn’t mean squat here. And having a nice short thumb made matters worse, since I had to shift my grip to drop a magazine. Trevor assured me this was a common scenario, and we worked on how to shift, drop, place the elbow, twist the pistol 90 degrees, remove a magazine, reload and continue shooting smoothly, albeit at 50% speed (I’ve since upgraded all 4 of my CZ pistols with extended magazine releases).
After identifying these areas needed for improvement, we ran the stages over and over, with my accuracy and timing improving each time and inching closer to Trevor’s scores. By the end of the 3 hours, my scores would place me in the middle of a typical USPSA meet, assuming I could keep it all together going forward! We’ll see, very soon. We had a lot of fun during this session, and I was at least thankful no obvious movement was a DQ’able offense!
Takeaways
I think for many at my experience level in competition pistol, the areas that need practiced or improved are all too familiar, and the fundamentals can’t be discussed enough. With that, here are my focus areas:
1. Reloads. Again, the sequence is to drop the loaded magazine while reaching for a fresh one, orient your shooting arm and pistol to accept the new magazine, and continue firing. This is the skill I need to practice the most. I am not smooth and tend to chunk the movements into discernable steps since I haven’t practiced reloads this way and tend to lose a lot of my time during this step. Practice will make perfect.
2. Holster Draw. I didn’t do too badly in this area, as I practice this often, although not at maximum “competition” speed. Ensuring a consistent high grip under the beavertail was somewhat problematic when trying to draw faster, so that’s a point I need to improve.
3. Double Action/Single Action. The two pistols mentioned are decocker-based with double action first shots, and single action shots that follow. My DA shot at speed was almost always resulted in a flyer with the SA rounds placed where I wanted them. Here, dry and live fire practice with holster draw will almost certainly nip this in the bud.
4. Vision Challenges. As mentioned above, my nearsighted eyes are a problem. There are lots of opinions out there on solving the problem, and not all suggestions work for everybody—I’ve tried several with mixed success. I could go carry optics with a red dot and solve the problem like I did with PCC, but for some reason I want to see if I can find a balance with vision and scoring using the irons in pistol. Trevor said to settle on one soon, or I’ll be chasing my tail at the expense of the other areas noted for improvement.
5. The Home “Range”. I bought an airsoft pistol (SP-01 replica) so I can practice my movements on the home 3 acres. The practice pistol shoots at 400fps and cleanly penetrates splatter targets at modest distances, so there will be some feedback, although the focus is on the stage movements and times, not accuracy.
6. Range commands. For some reason, I forget to load my pistol on Make Ready several times. I have no explanation for it but and Trevor just let me the mistake until it finally sunk in by the end of the 3 hours. Weird.
7. The Pistol. Bone stock, the SP-01 did well enough, but I will “Cajunize” the internals like I did with the P-01 compact (upgraded trigger pull and reset and a fiber optic front sight). Also, the grips have since been replaced with nice grippy Lok-branded replacements. It’s night and day.
8. Other Gear. I’ve since ordered a double competition belt, competition magazine pouches that can be oriented two ways, and went ahead and ordered a competition holster. I want something with a Trak-Lok belt attachment system, as the BladeTech belt loop put the holster out to the side a bit more than I liked.
And That’s It, For Now
As expected, I came away with a better appreciation of the fundamentals, and a short list of the key movements and skills I needed to practice and improve upon. Trevor has an easy-going educational style, never negative, always positive. I appreciate his ability to break down the required movements so they are readily identifiable and thus targeted for improvement. I look forward to further time with him, and it will be interesting to see how quickly I can improve my scores going forward as I begin competing. And these eyes, I’ve got to fix these eyes!
Next up, Defensive Pistol with FPF Training in Culpepper.
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