TRAINING LEAD-UP
Tuesday, Jul 7:
45 min Power Zone Endurance Ride with Matt Wilpers on the Peloton with 38% ave resistance, 89rpm ave cadence, 359 cal, 12.9 mi, 117 ave watts, 17.2mph ave. 15 min arm strengtheners afterwards.
For dry fire, I tried a series of drills that someone on Youtube had described. You break down the individual components of the draw-and-shoot, to refine and speed up each step. I do draw-and-shoot a lot in dry fire.
- 30 reps of going from index to defeating the ALS
> I must consciously relax my shoulders
> I must consciously relax my shoulders
- 30 reps from post-ALS defeat to the clamp grip
> the clamp grip feels very natural and good, doing this drill
- 30 reps compressed clamp grip to on target with slack pulled out of the trigger
> It's hard to get right on target
> I realized that I might enjoy having my left pinky on the grip below my right pinky, to get better leverage and control of the gun
> The second 15 reps felt better than the first 15 reps
> this has been the hardest of the three drills so far, since it requires precision and not just speed
- 30 reps of surprise break (from an uncompressed trigger)
> it helps to do the final push-out right before doing this, so that I'm not holding my arms out forever before the beep goes off
> the sight tends to yank up and right a bit as I pull the trigger, as usual, but I'm not sure why
- 30 reps of putting it all together
> I ended up hitting some PRs, with my fastest being 1.28s, with a few 1.3Xs and a similar number of 1.4X's... about 0.2s faster than usual
This series took about 40 min to work through. It requires focus the whole time, since you're only doing each thing for 30 reps. I'd definitely do this again!
Wednesday, Jul 8:
Tried out Red Ball Tennis with my dad for the first time. It's like a mixture between tennis and pickleball, but maybe even easier to hit than pickleball. The ball is a bit bigger than a normal tennis ball, and the racket that we had was really light. It's good for a pretty low-key but still fun social activity.
Yoga for When You Are Overstimulated & Home - Day 2 - Intend with Adriene.
Then, 18A "Upper Body Prep" in 20:25, then "My Invention" the normal rep version to keep it light before the TPG RNG in 31:30, which felt like cardio
Friday, Jul 10:
Finished reading Practical Pistol Reloaded by Ben Stoeger. It's my second book by this author, although I watch his Youtube videos often. Red Dot Mastery was pretty high level and just introduced you to many concepts quickly. Practical Pistol goes into much more depth. Ben's humor comes through every once and a while, too, which makes it an enjoyable read.
For dry fire, I tried the draw-and-shoot breakdown series of drills again.
Differences/new discoveries vs 3 days ago...
- The first time I did 30 reps of post-ALS to clamp, I forgot to put the weighted mag in, and it didn't feel right, and I wasn't able to clamp hard. Once I put in the mag for a repeat 30 reps, it felt better.
- For getting sights on target, i want to think of it as going fast for the first 95% and then floating the last 5%, to avoid overshooting or having to jerk-stop and have rebounds to deal with at the end
- wide-legged stance feels good
- not as fast when I put all the steps together today, and I was less consistent
- two major thoughts that stand out to me among all the steps are "quick to grip" and "push out"
Saturday, Jul 11:
I discovered the day before that I had not actually registered for the TPG Gun Run, so I ended up doing a trail run instead. Not a bad thing... sometimes, I do a lot of competing, but just doing training is important, too, since you don't always work everything you need to work in competition, and you end up not doing the training you need to do since you're tired from or spent time on the competition instead.
10.5 mi at Latta, mainly in the Hil Trail section, in Brooks Mazamas. I went at 15:49/mi ave, 127bpm, 811 feet of ascent. My left achilles was tight later on, which is weird, since I do these runs once every month or two, and normally, it's fine. Nothing was different about this one or my recent training volume and stimulus. I drank one bottle of water and ate a Gogo squeeze pouch. I got a second wind towards the end of the run, but my dad was waiting, so I ended at the expected time.
Bunnies and interesting-looking yellow birds that matched the flowers that they liked, were out and about early in the morning. So was the fog, which looked really cool before the sun burned it off.
Monday, Jul 13:
A trip to Blackstone, to test two things:
1. The suspect mag that might be causing the slide to lock to the rear when it's still half-full of ammo, on my CZP10C 17 rounder, to see if I can reproduce it
2. New 15rd metal mags for the G43X
I tried all 4 17rd mags that I use at USPSA. I got the slide to lock back once. I did note that the slide lock wasn't pushed up. The other mags worked fine. I was using a different gun.... the CZP10C ported w/ the Aimpoint Acro, since I had wanted to see what the holds were at 10yd. They tended 1" low vs my point of aim. I switched over to doing shots with cadence at 7yd after a while.
Next, I used the G43X, comparing how the 10rd polymer mags worked and felt, vs the metal mags. With the polymer mags, I often have issues with getting the slide to go all the way forward into battery after recoil. Based on the Blackstone staffs' help, they think it's that my grip is too loose. I think there's something to that. With the metal mags, though, I never ran into that issue, for whatever reason. Metal mags are the way to go, then... more capacity and fewer user-induced malfunctions.
I went back to the CZ Acro for slow aim fire. I need to do better about remembering to reset the trigger as soon as I finish firing. You don't get a chance to really practice that in dry fire, unless you use something like the TitanX, maybe.
Tuesday, Jul 14:
18A "Lower Body Prep" in 17:16, then "Lower Push BW" in 39:46
Wednesday, Jul 15:
I did the draw-and-shoot component series of drills again (third time).
New discoveries / experiments:
- Having a loose right hand on the grip helps me force my left hand to grip hard
- I tried having my left pinky pre-separated to help it more quickly get to the right spot on the pistol grip, but it was too much to deal with and think about, so it's a no-go for me
- Starting from today and going forward, I'll plan to do the first 15 reps on the Appalachian Syndicate dry fire target for a consistent control group, but for the second 15 reps, I'll switch to other targets (bigger and a little farther), to work other angles and speed allowances
- I seem to have a big lag between when my sight is on target vs when I finish pulling the trigger back... there may be an opportunity there to save time
I finished with some mostly static multiple target work. I videoed myself doing wide transitions and look really goofy and seem to have way too many moving parts around my waist. I also did some transitions while leaning around a vision barrier.
Thursday, Jul 16:
Yoga at the USNWC with the ruck club, followed by a 3 mi ruck in 1:04:16 on South Main with the v2 Rucker with 30# plus a yoga mat, wearing MACV1s.
Friday, Jul 17:
Pharr Yarns Family Trail in MACV2s with 30# in the v3 rucker (there was bird poop or something on the v2 rucker so I had to wash it). It was fartlek-y due to Ingress, which was good for cardio and for minimizing time in the heat. I got very sweaty, even with having shade most of the time.
Saturday, Jul 18:
Went kayaking with my dad at Goat Island, pretty much going through the same areas that I had covered during the South Fork Sampler. At one point, I towed him for fun for maybe 10 min, using my junior-sized kayak. I felt like I was going about half the speed I was before.
We saw cool birds, a turtle, a dead fish, and a deer by the water. It was a good time.
We covered 3.5 mi in a little under 2 hours.
Sunday, Jul 19:
Biked 9.75 mi in 1:36 at Airline Bike Park and a surrounding neighborhood. I went on Flight School for the first time. You can get a little air there if you go fast enough. With my hard tail, I don't really like getting air, though, and I don't like feeling like I'm not in control with momentum taking me wherever.
On my second ride through Kitty Hawk, I clipped a tree and hit the ground hard with my left side and head, though. I might have at least a bruised rib. At first, it didn't feel catastrophic, since I've fallen many times before, but this was at greater speed than usual (not just tipping over at a slow speed). Glad I had a helmet on. Let's hope my ribs heal up ok.
JULY BLACKSTONE THIRD MONDAY MATCH
Stage 1: <Virginia>
- Start with feet on XX's, hands above shoulders, gun hot and holstered, facing downrange
- Start with feet on XX's, hands above shoulders, gun hot and holstered, facing downrange
- On the beep, run up to the left box and shoot through the port at 1 partial and 1 full IPSC @ 7yd
- Run to the right lane and shoot 1 full @ 7yd and 1 1/2-obscured with NS around the barrel @ 1yd
- Then shift right and shoot 1 full @ 1yd, 3 @3yd around the barrels on the ground, then go to the far right and shoot 1 full horizontal target behind the barrel @ 3yd
Learnings/Outcomes: 11/16 div, 16/27 overall
- 18A in 23.36s = 3.8527% HF
- All A's but probably messy sometimes, so I was probably at the edge of accuracy and might not be able to push that much faster
- I did a slight walk and shoot for the second to last target to move to the last target, but I probably could've started walking as I was engaging the third to last target.
- It took me a while to lean for the target behind the barrel. I forgot to bend my left knee like I had planned to do in rehearsal.
- I stuck the gun too far, too fast/uncontrolled into the window and hit the window with the muzzle (before firing), which took a little time to recover from
- I topped off before the stage since it needed exactly 18 rounds and was VA count
- I intentionally did not use the suspect mag today
- I planned to land with wide feet at the first spot to get an optimal height for working through the port, and wide feet offers a more stable shooting position
- I followed my movement plan for where I wanted to go to engage the targets
Stage 2: <Virginia>
- Start with hands on hips, feet on XX's, facing uprange, gun hot and holstered
- Run left to box B (ignore box A for this stage) and shoot 6 full IPSCs @ 3-6yd, where the first target must be engaged strong hand only.
- Run right to box C and shoot 6 full IPSCs @ 3-6yd, where the last target must be engaged support hand only.
Learnings/Outcomes: 14/16 div, 22/27 overall
- 24A in 26.14s = 4.5907% HF
- Lots to think about and remember on this stage, but it went according to plan
- The transition to weak hand felt slow with finding the sight, but that's somewhat expected. It looked not that bad on video, though. It just feels slow in the moment.
- I felt like I was on the edge of staying in the A zone with all the odd target angles to stay aware of. This felt like a stage that was testing visual speed!
Stage 4: <Virginia>
- Start standing on XX's, facing downrange, hands on your head, gun hot and holstered
- On the beep, shoot the 2 middle targets on either side of the perpendicular wall from Box A (one is a full IPSC and one is a half-head only) at about 20yd
- Run to the left box and shoot 1 head, 2 partials, and 1 full with NS @ 6yd and 1 head @ 3yd
- Run to the right box and shoot 3 full and 1 partial with NS @ 6yd and 1 full @ 3yd
- 19A, 4C, 1M, 1NS in 28.99s = 3.0010% HF
- The 20yd was hard... I yanked the first show low but managed to get the second one on target
- I didn't stay throttled down after that head shot when I went for the full IPSC and got C's on that... I think I was frazzled by the NS. Gotta stick to the plan and do what's right for maximizing hits, regardless of what happens before
- The rest of my shots were a bit too fast to guarantee A's on the close head shot, I think.
Stage 3: <Virginia>
- Start anywhere outside the shooting area, with hands by your sides, unloaded and holstered
- Shoot 1 head and 1 partial with NS through the port @ 7yd from the first box
- Run to the right lane and shoot 1 1/2-covered target leaning around the barrel @ 1yd
- Shift right to shoot 1 1/2 head @ 1yd, 1 partial w/ NS @ 7yd (vs getting it from the previous spot but having to lean), and 2 partial heads on the left side of the barrel @ 4yd
- Move to the right side of the barrels and shoot 2 more heads with NS's @ 3yd
- 16A, 2C in 26.94s = 3.1923% HF
- Started cold, so no top-off opportunity and had to plan on a mag change
- Chose to tackle the middle target from the middle of the right lane this time to avoid having to lean. The distance was about equal from the two spots
- I did do my deep left knee bend this time as planned... I didn't have to worry about shooting a different target first, which helped, I think.
Overall 10/16 div, 18/27 overall
- Glad to do a bit of walk and shoot today, though I could've done more
- Good avoiding mental mistakes on the memory- and vision-heavy stage
- Borderline accuracy but mostly good speed today
- Avoided the suspect mag, and no malfunctions today
- Also took today's match as a no-pressure, have-fun-after-work activity, like I did last match... much more enjoyable this way
