Apr 15 2010
From Ben Stoeger, a top GM shooter.
All the videos, and an FAQ on what you need to do it, can be found here.
These drills will dramatically improve your gun handling, footwork, position entries/exits, draws, weak and strong hand shooting, sight acquisition.
BTW:If you don’t have a timer. MattBurkett.com has an online one.
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Apr 12 2010
Bob Vogel won the Production Nationals in 2009, and he just missed nabbing Limited 10 by a fraction of a match point. This video is from a clinic he gave last year at the 2009 South Carolina IDPA Championship.
The targets are IDPA, but the movement and other things he discusses certainly apply in USPSA as well.
One thing, a bit controversial, is round dumping. He talks about shooting “3 into the first moving target” to “make sure he got a zero”. This is so he will go to slide lock and not have to do a retention reload (slower). This practice is somewhat controversial in IDPA circles. You’ll note that when he actually runs the stage, he drives down the first popper with 3 shots, instead of dumping three into the first target while moving. I’ve SO’d stages in IDPA where round dumping would be a “Failure to Do Right” (FTDR) penalty of 20 seconds – effectively zeroing any stage. You would issue it if you found 3 zero (A zone) hits in a target and the shooter had a slide lock reload.
Rules like this keep IDPA from growing, IMHO. IDPA has a lot to offer practical shooters, but in trying to introduce a controversial tactic (tactical reload) they cause a lot of shooters to shy away because of concern over learning an unsafe tactic. Better would be to stick to certain tactical advantages – like shooting from cover, from odd positions, weak handed/strong handed, and while moving.
But hey… I just like to shoot and if they want to make me reload and keep my bullets, I’ll oblige. (-:
This video, also of Bob Vogel has some interesting grip and arm advice to maximize recoil management – he keeps his left arm higher than the gun and explains why:
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Apr 12 2010
Brian and I started practical pistol shooting with the IDPA in Las Vegas. And we continue to shoot there once a month. This month was a Classifier match. The IDPA uses a 3 stages, and just 3 targets, to classify shooters. Their classifier is deceptively simple but devishly tough.
IDPA uses time-plus scoring. Their targets have 0, –1, –3 points areas. A “miss” is –5. These are points. You shoot the course of fire, then add up your points down * .5 and add that many seconds. The classifier uses 90 shots and tests the core of IDPA shooting, including weak and strong hand, shooting from cover, and of course the controversial “tactical reload”.
I shoot a Glock 34 in their Stock Service Pistol Division. He shot a Canyon Creek customized XD Tactical in their Enhanced Service Pistol Division. Here are the breakouts of times needed and rankings:
My goal was < 1 second per shot hard time (90 seconds), and no –3’s or misses. Alas, I scored 111 seconds with about 13 penalty seconds. Brian got 117 seconds, but with substantially more penalty seconds due to misses early in the strings.
I was in the middle of Expert. And Brian in the middle of Sharpshooter. ESP is a tough division, as it is mostly made of people shooting custom 9mm 1911’s with very low power factors (125). If Brian wants to compete there we will have to reload or buy 9mm with a softer punch.
Brian actually shot at the high Expert level after the first 3 strings, but he so botched those (missing 3 head shots) that Expert was out of reach by the 10th shot of the 90 shot classifier.
As to me… I trained at the IDPA Master level and expected to make it easily. BUT… it took an inexplicable 7 seconds to get my first weak hand shot off on one string, and I’d practiced Bianchi barricade 30 yard shots, but was presented with a stacked barrel barricade instead. They require different positions and movement (not just leaning) and I didn’t adjust and had a very awkward stance with resulting penalties.
Oh well…. c’est le guerre!
We will put this practice to test at the IDPA Arizona State Championship at the end of the month in lovely Tuscon, AZ.
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Apr 08 2010
Tim Tucker and Brian have been working together for a couple months now. Tim is a great coach: knowledgeable, patient and helpful. Brian’s made great strides. How? Lots of dry fire and LOTS of live fire. Today we burned about 300 or 400 rounds in a simple stage that emphasized hits, good footwork. And of course some slow group fire and strong/weak hand work. The results have been showing – Brian finished 2nd in Vegas last week (beating me handily). And his fastest time today was a good 1.5 seconds faster than mine. In my defense… new gun, and I mainly load magazines at these practices. I may have to change that going forward…
Here is a video of both of them running today’s practice stage.
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Feb 05 2010
Brian is working on movement now in his training. It turns out small steps are faster than big steps, usually, in our sport. Speed from target to target is the time to leave one spot, move to another, and shoot. Smaller steps work better because you arrive ready to shoot. The trade in speed covering the distance (small) is more than offset by being ready to shoot when you get where you going.
To show this in video form, we’ve been looking at top shooters on You Tube. They all move in quick, cat like steps, unless the running stretch is quite long. What you could cover in 3 steps, they take 5 or 6, and keep their bodies and guns largely in the athletic shooting position. Thus, when they arrive, they simply extend (or press) to the target and bang!
Timing it out last evening in practice, it is quite a bit faster. It is quite counter-intuitive until you break the steps down and actually time it.
While looking at videos these “fun” stages came up. They show Dave Sevigny working through obstacles and on a platform. Note that on the platform his movements are much like on terra firma. Anyway, these looked fun to me. Let us know if you think we should try something similar. (=:
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Jan 22 2010
This article, by Walt Rauch, tying competition to skills you can use as a concealed carry holder, or any defensive pistol use, spurred me to find IDPA in Las Vegas, and the USPSA right here in St. George.
http://www.handgunsmag.com/tactics_training/compete_0309/
Walt, a former director of the USPSA, and a co-founder of the IDPA writes:
If you are serious about developing and maintaining defensive handgun skills, regular participation in the formal competition of one of the practical shooting sports is the best way to do this. Simply put, in these formal shoots there are no excuses. You have to do it right the first time, on demand and when the timer goes off. Before you tune out, thinking, "This isn’t for me; I get enough stress in my everyday life; I don’t need more," consider this: What is a real-world encounter if it’s not a situation where you have to do everything right the first time and on demand?
Thank you Walt. I’ve never had to defend myself with a handgun, but I do feel like maybe I could pull it off if I had to.
BTW: We just celebrated our 1 year match anniversary. Yippee!
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Jan 11 2010
Can one DVD change everything? Can it have so much impact that it helps you distill a bedevilingly complicated sport into 4 simple things? Can it take an upper C class 12 year old shooter an have him shoot with the “big boys” for 5 of 6 stages yesterday? Saul Kirch’s “Mastering the Mental Game” can.
Yesterday, Brian and I shot an IDPA match down in Las Vegas. The evening before Brian had watched, on my enthusiastic recommendation, the DVD. Or part of the DVD… I’ll explain how watching only 1/2 of it impacted things in a bit. But first, lets cover the video…
The video, which is just Saul Kirsch – a top rated IPSC shooter shooting mostly in Europe – talking to a class in Sweden. No shooting. Not a gun in sight. But what he says is magic.
Here it is in a nutshell:
Brian has been working since Christmas with his new airsoft to make fundamentals like drawing, movement, transitions and picking up the front sight be subconscious. I knew that was important before the video. So we started him on a daily training program to build those subconscious skills.
But the video showed him to visualize properly. And he did that to good effect on 5 of 6 stages, putting in top 3 to 5 scores (of 50 shooters).
But as the final stage came, he knew he had a great run going, and he was stressing. And what part of the video hadn’t he got to yet… how to reduce stress. He tanked the last stage, and while he had a good match, if he had just shot in the middle of the pack on that stage, he would have finished 4th of 50 shooters overall. He just didn’t have the stress management skills yet to handle the brink of success.
So we plan to finish the video this week and integrate some stress into his training using drills like 10 alphas, where you have to draw and shoot an alpha, repeatedly until you get 10 in a row. The stress you get at shots 9 and 10 can be significant, since you have to start again from one if you miss.
In summary, the DVD was a pleasantly helpful surprise. It will be available for loan at the next match.
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Dec 25 2009
Santa brought Brian a Western Arms gas blowback replica of an SV Infinity 5”:
Thrown in a CED Air Soft timer, and some 1/7th scale USPSA steels and plate rack to make a complete training system in garage, basement or backyard.
The system uses “green gas”, which is basically propane without the scent. One $19 tank of actual propane and a $5 dollar tube of silicon oil will keep him shooting for a few thousand airsoft shots.
The system blows back the slide and is an exact replicate of an SVI Infinity 5”. They fit in my 2011 holster system and the magazines fit in the magazine holders on my belt as well.
Once we sorted it out (the manuals are in Japanese) we found it quite realistic and very accurate. Using a USPSA target sized to simulate 20 yards, he got 1.30 second draw to A zone hits in our first tests. Hitting pop cans at 15-20 yards is no problem. We have the system dialed down a bit now, but we can rev up the gas it uses to better simulate recoil.
Driven by the popularity of airsoft IPSC in Japan and Asia, there are many after market options for these guns.
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Dec 05 2009
Q: What is the best resource for USPSA/IPSC/3-Gun shooting on the net?
Brian Enos is a legend in practical shooting. And his website is now the central gathering place for USPSA and practical shooters in America and the world.
Here is a set of tips, culled by an enterprising BrianEnos.com reader from hundreds and hundreds of posts in the site’s very busy forum. Enjoy reading them. I refer to them often when looking for inspiration on how to get better at our sport.
Tips Culled from www.BrianEnos.com (isn’t the 3rd one apropos for Stage 1 of today’s match?):
Avoid standing reloads whenever possible. Always plan the stage so you can reload while moving.
Dry Firing every night will drastically increase your confidence level when you get on the line.
You must practice strong and weak hand shooting on a regular basis. You don’t want to be surprised by this at a match. I’ve seen grown men cry…
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Dec 05 2009
I regularly troll the Internet for shooting tip videos and other ways to improve Brian’s and my shooting. Going forward I’ll try to remember to post them here, for all to enjoy and learn from.
If you want to see all the Tips just click on the Category “Tips” on the right side of the website. And please send me any links you have so we can build up a decent resource.
Personal Shooting Coach offers online, home based IPSC/USPSA training. That is an interesting concept. Rob Leatham also offers his “Drillmasters Club” training in a similar fashion.
Video examples from PSC can be found here:
http://www.personalshootingcoach.com/videos/
The videos include help for building a grip, improving timer reaction speed, finding your natural point of aim (very important to learn), how to shoot the sights not cadence, and the four basic rules of safety.
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