HEY, LETS GET PRACTICING! Post videos/evidence of your practice HERE!

I've been dry firing, but slacking on the video. I'll try to get something up this weekend or early next week.

I can't seem to get my El Prez down to 3.5 where I want it. I'm more in the 3.7 range, I know the time is in my turn and draw. I may need to force the speed up at the expense of "hits" until I get used to the pace I need to be going.

Racinready300ex said:

I've been dry firing, but slacking on the video. I'll try to get something up this weekend or early next week.

I can't seem to get my El Prez down to 3.5 where I want it. I'm more in the 3.7 range, I know the time is in my turn and draw. I may need to force the speed up at the expense of "hits" until I get used to the pace I need to be going.

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Cool, looking forward to seeing the footage. Let's try and squad up for the ESPS match on the 25th.

My goal is to post 1 video a week here. I got mine in this week just in time and was laid low by the plague which has swept over our household. Too sick to even dryfire for the last couple days. Hopefully I'm past the worst of it and can get back to practice soon.

Where are you guys doing this filming? Every range I go to prohibits photos and video!

tomrkba said:

Where are you guys doing this filming? Every range I go to projibits photos and video!

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Mine are just dryfire in my basement so far. But many of the ranges I frequent allow you to film yourself but not other people.

BigT5g said:

Mine are just dryfire in my basement so far. But many of the ranges I frequent allow you to film yourself but not other people.

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What ranges do you go to? I will be moving to Baltimore soon. I went to one place but it was bad (forgot the name).

tomrkba said:

What ranges do you go to? I will be moving to Baltimore soon. I went to one place but it was bad (forgot the name).

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Give this a look: https://associatedgunclubs.org/

And if you want to get started shooting matches in the area check out: http://www.aafgidpa.com/

Ok...so which ranges are good? Which should I avoid?

So I went to the range over the weekend shot some El prez with a buddy, I took my camera, but never used it...lol I ran El prez a few times, my turn needs work and I struggled a bit getting good hits on the 1st target. My best run was about 4.85 sec. T1=2A-2D/T2=4A/T3=4A I think that came out to 102% as a classifier.

To me the more exciting part was my buddies shooting. He is a C class open shooter and his first couple runs were around 7 seconds. His transitions were killing him and really his draws and reloads were to. I told him I thought we could fix his transitions pretty easy if he wanted. Here is what I had him do.

We moved up to 7 yards, had him run a couple bill drills. If you're not familiar with a Bill Drill, it's draw and shoot 6 shots on one target at 7 yards. The goal is to do it under 2 seconds. If you have a solid grip you should have a nice group even at that pace. His first run was something like 2.55. I told him to go faster. We ran it a couple times and he got down to 1.97 all A's.

Now the Bill drill was really just a set up. next I moved him into a blake drill. Again if you're not familiar this is 3 targets set up at 7 yards draw and engage each target twice. The goal here is to get your splits and transitions to be the same. So that means your Bill drill time and your Blake drill time should be the same. So for him that means he needed to draw and shoot two shots per target in three different targets at 7 yards in 1.97. I'm sure he was thinking "yeah right"

I don't recall his time on the 1st run, but I could hear his transitions were not were they needed to be. I showed him on the timer he was still pulling .33 transitions, and told him to go faster. We repeated this a couple of times improving on each one. He got down to a 2.0x, his transitions were getting better but still were not there. Surprisingly his draw was getting faster to, as now I was making it push his speed up. He managed to get a .24 transition on his last run. That is a full tenth of a second gain from where we started, that is HUGE. He was also hitting 1 second draws, which he didn't know he could do.

The some random guy came into our bay with a questions about his gun, we BS'ed for like a hour. Then I told my buddy to run El prez again after this long break. Boom, 5.95 seconds with decent hits, that's a full second improvement. HF came in at like a 74.9% just missing a A class score. That was a hell of a gain. Just imagine how far you can get if you do stuff like this regularly. Maybe this post will help someone else make similar improvements.

Hey Racinready300ex, great post. I'll try those drills and see if I can speed up also. I belong to Peacemakers and AGC and compete in action shooting matches. I am not very good but I am interested in getting faster. I have signed up for 2 days of training with Dynamic Defense and a 1 day clinic at AGC. Can you suggest a progression of drills to become a faster shooter? In your post, the El Prez led into the Bill Drill. There are so many drills on the internet but knowing which ones to use is just guess work for me. I have been working on the Dot Torture mostly. Do you know of any modern shooting books that teach action/combat shooting? It would be great if someone could organize the plethora of shooting drills into a book that presents them in a building block order.

Oh, I also reload Blue Bullets

Thanks,
Eric

If you want great books that can point you in the right direction, I'd turn to benstoegerproshop.com Buy Bens books, read them, then start training. The hardest part is knowing what you need to work on. Taking those classes should be a big help in getting someone to diagnose what you need to work on and help you learn to practice. Then you just have to put in the time.

I'm not sure where you are at as a shooter to know exactly what to recommend. Draws, reloads, transitions are typically a good start and pretty easy to work on. Get a timer, work with par times and try to push your par's down. Draws, and reloads can be mastered in dry fire with out ever firing a shot. You want to work towards a .6-.7 draw to sight picture (no trigger press) and a .8-1.0 reload. El prez is a great drill as it has a draw, reload and several transitions. I'll get a video up of El Prez tomorrow, I tried to film one this morning but the wife started freaking out because she was running late and I had to stop dry firing. But, I'll do a couple runs with a hat camera to give you a better idea of exactly what I'm doing.

The dot drill I really like you use 6 - 2" circles at 7 yards. you set a par time of five seconds. On the beep you draw and engage the 1st dot with 6 shots only. Then stop. Repeat for all 6 circles. The goal is to get all the shots off under the par time, and keep all the shots touching the circle. This is a very challenging drill, to pass it you need to clean all 6 dots. This would be similar to shooting a 25 yard bill drill. I have never completed this drill.

If you have any video of your shooting we could probably review it and give you more specific input. And I hope you like the Blue Bullets.

I agree that Ben's books are a must have.
Steve Andersons dry fire books are also worth checking out.

Proper dryfire practice takes serious structure, discipline, and self honesty. But if you put the real work in, you will improve your gun handling exponentially quite rapidly.

I see that you are coming to our gunfighting class. You seem interested in competitive style shooting as well, and you might enjoy our Competitive Shooting Skills course also/or instead. Give this a look: http://www.ddctraining.net/Competitive Shooting.asp

And like Mike said, please post some footage of your practice and we will do our best to help you, and each other improve!

justeric said:

Hey Racinready300ex, great post. I'll try those drills and see if I can speed up also. I belong to Peacemakers and AGC and compete in action shooting matches. I am not very good but I am interested in getting faster. I have signed up for 2 days of training with Dynamic Defense and a 1 day clinic at AGC. Can you suggest a progression of drills to become a faster shooter? In your post, the El Prez led into the Bill Drill. There are so many drills on the internet but knowing which ones to use is just guess work for me. I have been working on the Dot Torture mostly. Do you know of any modern shooting books that teach action/combat shooting? It would be great if someone could organize the plethora of shooting drills into a book that presents them in a building block order.

Oh, I also reload Blue Bullets

Thanks,
Eric

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Racin (and others) has given you some great tips.

Just a little caution - don't sacrifice form for speed. Try to shoot/practice with someone that knows their stuff. Have them watch you for form! If no one is available then film yourself.

One area that always seems to suffer when we "speed up" is the draw. When folks try to speed up they tend to "chase' the gun. Very bad!

Remember smooth is fast (but slow is still friggin slow)

Anyway just adding my $.02

Good luck!

Steve

So first my whining excuses. Still recovering from being sick in bed all last week, and groggy on antibiotics plus stock Glock magwell from hell. I had meant to match Mike's 1.8sec 4 aces from the other day, but got 5 2 second runs down on camera.

Didnt want to practice this morning, but forced myself to. Which is what you GOTTA DO to get better. Notice the pajamas. Badass.

For the record, I drop a mag only when on camera to show that I am being faithful about really pressing the mag release button. Normally I just press on an empty well.

BigT5g said:

So first my whining excuses. Still recovering from being sick in bed all last week, and groggy on antibiotics plus stock Glock magwell from hell. I had meant to match Mike's 1.8sec 4 aces from the other day, but got 5 2 second runs down on camera.

Didnt want to practice this morning, but forced myself to. Which is what you GOTTA DO to get better. Notice the pajamas. Badass.

For the record, I drop a mag only when on camera to show that I am being faithful about really pressing the mag release button. Normally I just press on an empty well.

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Love the tactical PJ's!

You need to come down to Southern Maryland and enjoy our USPSA match. Squad up with Cindi and I.....we always have fun!

Steve

Bigpops said:

Love the tactical PJ's!

You need to come down to Southern Maryland and enjoy our USPSA match. Squad up with Cindi and I.....we always have fun!

Steve

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Hi Steve, Thanks for the invite! I was just down there for your uspsa classifier match, and will be back for many more matches I'm sure. Nice range down there!

-Trevor S.

Steve and Cindi are always fun to shoot with, and believe it or not Steve is pretty fast for a old guy.

BigT5g I don't know what is more baller, PJ's or no shoes. I've dropped a mag on my foot with 20 dummy rounds in it, and even with a shoe it hurt. I do think making yourself do the work even when you don't feel like it is key. When you start putting off training it can snow ball on you and you end up not training at all. I try to remind myself that my competition isn't putting off practice.

Racinready300ex said:

Steve and Cindi are always fun to shoot with, and believe it or not Steve is pretty fast for a old guy.

BigT5g I don't know what is more baller, PJ's or no shoes. I've dropped a mag on my foot with 20 dummy rounds in it, and even with a shoe it hurt. I do think making yourself do the work even when you don't feel like it is key. When you start putting off training it can snow ball on you and you end up not training at all. I try to remind myself that my competition isn't putting off practice.

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"old guy"???? Noted!

BigT5g said:

Hi Steve, Thanks for the invite! I was just down there for your uspsa classifier match, and will be back for many more matches I'm sure. Nice range down there!

-Trevor S.

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Glad you had fun.

I skipped that one. I was spending quality time with my son. Cindi was helping with registration then came home...she didn't shoot.

As long as the weather is nice (Open fair weather shooter) I will be there.

Steve

Finally got around to filming some El Prez dry fire. I did add some hard cover and no shoots to my targets to add a little more challenge. The video is edited to keep it short, but left all the runs, good or bad. This was with a 4 second par, which is probably a little sporty for me with the targets set up like this. Although when I nail everything I beat the par pretty easy, I think my last run was my best.

I think my next goal should be to clean up my gun room, we'll see how that goes. lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to0F239--WM

Racinready300ex said:

Finally got around to filming some El Prez dry fire. I did add some hard cover and no shoots to my targets to add a little more challenge. The video is edited to keep it short, but left all the runs, good or bad. This was with a 4 second par, which is probably a little sporty for me with the targets set up like this. Although when I nail everything I beat the par pretty easy, I think my last run was my best.

I think my next goal should be to clean up my gun room, we'll see how that goes. lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to0F239--WM

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Well your gun room ain't any messier than mine!

Nice work. I'll try and get some dry fire video with the head mounted camera on here too. Adds an interesting perspective.