Super-Tactical.com Drill of the Week #2: "Keep it Moving"

Building on what we learned last week with the drill "Three Way", we again address shooting on the move with this week's drill. The setup is simple: you start in a box with 3 targets in front of you but must move to a second box to be able to see and engage a steel target.  We run the drill two ways. First, we start and immediately move to the second box, and shoot everything from there. Next, we shoot the entire string on the move.  Based on what we know from last week, it is shown again that it's much faster to shoot on the move when starting at 7 yards.  We then move back to 10 yards and repeat the drill.  Again, it was faster to shoot on the move.  Moving back to 15 yards is where it gets interesting.  It was still faster for us to shoot on the move at 15 yards, but the hits were not always as good.  If you are a lower classed shooter, or not used to shooting on the move much, chances are you will want to post up at 15 yards and shoot from a stationary position....

BUT, don't let that discourage you. The point of this drill is to establish a base line time while shooting from the stationary position, and then work at shooting on the move until you can beat that time.  If you can already beat that time, great. Work on picking up that speed even more and make sure you're getting those alphas!  Some of you may find that shooting on the move at  10 yards or even 7 is already pretty difficult, and that's fine.  Work on it from that distance until you feel comfortable with your footwork and your hits and challenge yourself as much as you can. You may not choose to shoot on the move at 15 yards in a match situation, but it's good to know that you can if you need to.  Additionally, practicing this skill at 15 yards makes shooting at 5 or 7 yards on the move seem really easy.

Remember to run the drill in the reverse direction too!  For most people there will be a preferred direction of movement for this drill and you will need to make sure you are equally proficient in going both directions.

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Super-Tactical.com Drill of the Week #1 "Three Way"

Today marks the first release of our new weekly Drill of the Week series.  In this series,  USPSA Grandmasters AJ Stuart and Matt Olinchak will show both live fire and dry fire drills that can be used to build skills, reinforce fundamentals, or enlighten you in other areas.

Today's drill, called Three Way, includes a simple three target setup with two vision barriers.  The point of this drill is to shoot it in three different ways in order to determine what would be the best strategy to take if this was part of a stage at an actual match.  Sometimes our own thoughts can cloud the truth and the best way to objectively analyze a situation like this is,  of course,  with a timer.

When I first put this drill on the ground a few months ago at a practice session and prior to running this scenario on the clock, I was fairly sure that posting up in the center of the array, and shooting everything from left to right would give the best stage time.  It seemed it would be easier to move aggressively to the designated spot and then set up a good stable platform to be able to shoot the targets quickly while stationary.  We can see in the video that this theory was proven wrong every single time by both AJ and me.

Hopefully you can see from the video that this type of practice scenario can really help to open your eyes to trying different techniques.  Next week,  we will work on a more specific shooting on the move drill that will help not only with technique, but will also help show when and when not to try shooting on the move in a match situation.

I hope you enjoy the video and learned at least a little something.  See you next week.

-Matt

For anyone with issues with the embedded video you can go here http://youtu.be/W_gTE4Vg50w

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With Winning in Mind and Mental Management for the Competitive Shooter

I've been a big fan of Lanny Bassham's book "With Winning in Mind" for a few years. Recently I had a chance to listen to his Mental Management for Shooting Sports CD set. It's a 6 CD set and it emphasizes all of the topics in the book and expands on them while also introducing other aspects of Lanny's mental program he used to win his Olympic gold medal.  It served as a great reminder of what I need to do to prepare for next season and how I have to train not only my body and skills, but my brain for what is ahead.  Super-Tactical.com has partnered with the Mental Management Store to bring you his DVD series and of course his book, which I think EVERY serious competitive shooter should own.  Click the images below to check them out.

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Team Super-Tactical takes top two spots at Maryland State Championship

Team Super-Tactical takes top two spots at Gravitas Tactical Maryland State Championship. Congrats to AJ for taking the win. Super-Tactical man was trying for the tie but failed and managed to finish .06% behind the leader for a nice one-two finish at the last major match of the 2014 season. 

Lots of new things to come starting soon. Stay tuned. 

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New Super-Tactical.com site layout, team member and site contributor, Grandmaster AJ Stuart

Welcome to the new Super-tactical.com site layout. Hopefully this one is a bit easier on the eyes and less cluttered. We have big things planned for the end of this year and going into 2015 and I'm happy to announce the first one right now.

Super-Tactical.com is proud to announce that we have added USPSA Grandmaster AJ Stuart to our team as a site contributor and team shooter.  AJ has been a training partner of mine for years now and is a great resource to have when it comes to reloading, dry fire, gunsmithing and more. He is a sponsored shooter and works for King Shooter Supply in King of Prussia, PA.

You can see his thoughts here as he starts to add articles, range diaries and dryfire drill challenges to the site and also at King Shooter supply on Wednesday and Friday nights or most weekends on ranges throughout south eastern Pennsylvania.

    USPSA Open division Grandmaster AJ Stuart 

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Practice? We talking about practice?

I picked up a Stock 2 a few weeks ago and have just started hitting it hard in practice. This video is of my first "real" structured practice with it.

It's funny what turning on the camera does.  I was trying to get 10 draws (and hits) in a row under .90.  I was able to do it on command until I turned the camera on. Then I started getting tense and screwing up.  That feels a lot like what I do at matches when I start TRYING to go fast (especially classifier stages).  I'm going to try to put some artificial pressure on myself by using the video camera more and more. I told myself I'd post this run to Youtube no matter if I made 10 in a row or not, so here it is.

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How about some bling? (The Cartel Gun)

I received my 6 inch USPSA Limited gun frame and slide back from Calico Coatings this week.  The coating is TiCN (titanium carbonitride) that was laid down on the gun through a PVD process after the parts were prepared using Calico's super micro finishing. The coating is similar to TiN that you see on some of the high end competition shotgun bolts in the 3 gun world, but that is only available in gold, so it was not an option for this build.  

The TiCN coating is very hard and extremely slick. So slick that my front sight that I had to hammer out of the gun slid right back in with only finger pressure, and when I applied locktite to the slide to hold it in place, the liquid beaded up and tried to run down the side of the slide. 

The pictures pretty much say it all. This is not a subdued gun. It is LOUD.  Something that might be found in a drug cartel boss's safe.  It has been dubbed The Cartel Gun.

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