That's what I like to hear

I received a Facebook message this morning from a shooter that had trained with Steve and I last month through our training operation, Standard Deviation Arms. I'll copy and paste it below. Hopefully it speaks for itself.

• Want to give you guys a big thank you. My IDPA classifier has dropped almost 20 seconds. I shot my M&P pro9 in esp yesterday and shot a 129.55. Thats moves me up to sharp shooter in esp and less then 10 seconds from expert in ssp. If you remember in the beginning of your class you asked us what our goals were. Expert is my goal. With your help I feel that goal is in reach this year. Thank you.
  Oh I was only 31 total points down. So I think I have to keep pushing myself.
  
  

This is the kind of stuff I love to hear.

To schedule a class, contact me through this site, or SteveLockwood at StandardDeviationArms.com

(click for full size)

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Fire up the excuse machine

Today Steve and I shot at Eastern Shore Practical Shooters USPSA match in Sudlersville, MD. I shot my new Open division build, a Glock 22, with Trijicon dual illuminated RMR.  The match was fun, and we had a good time as we always do at this club. Stages were broken down and results printed out (hooray for electronic scoring) by before 2PM.
I finished 4th in Open, 96% of the Open division winner, and something like 92% of the match winner...a GM who was shooting an 8 round gun. That crap is embarrassing.  There's no reason I couldn't have won this match, and if I didn't drop the two mikes that I did today I would have.

What I learned during this match was
1- trigger control needs work
1a- yes the trigger on this rig is gritty and creepy for some reason, but excuses are like assholes...
2- half assed Open division builds are not ideal
2a- see 1a
3- need to work on trigger control
4- my practice regimen in the off season has kept me from getting rusty while shooting, but I forgot how to break down a USPSA stage, sort of.
5- need more dry fire practice
6- For some reason I aim low on the target with the dot sight. Had a few targets with good center hits, but 2 inches below the A zone
7- Practice will fix #6

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And now for something completely different

Boom!

I sent my Glock 22 slide to Mark Housel at L&M Precision last week, he received it on Thursday, and today I have it back in hand. His turn around time was amazing and his work is perfect. The sight looks like it came mounted that way from the factory.

Machining of the slide to accept the sight makes for MUCH quicker dot acquision when coming out of the holster. I shot the gun earlier in the month at SJIDPA(see match video below) using the mount that fits in the standard Glock dovetail and it was tough at times to find the dot, being that it was so abnormally above where you usually look for your sights to appear.

Now most of my USPSA Open division rig is built. I'm still waiting on a threaded barrel and compensator from KKM, but for now I will shoot it as shown in the photo.  First match is going to be Saturday at Eastern Shore Practical Shooters in Sudlersville, MD.

I don't think I will shoot a ton of matches in Open, but I will be carrying this slide on my chopped g22 that takes g27 mags. I really like this setup.

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Grip strength challenge! (do you want some of dis!?)

   Grip strength is something Steve from Standard Deviation Arms and I have discussed a fair amount over the time we have known each other. Steve even wrote an article about it.  How much pressure to apply to the pistol while you are shooting, which hand to grip harder with, 60/40, 70/30, etc are just some of the things that are up for debate. What is not up for debate is the fact that the stronger your hands are, the harder you can hold onto the gun. Most anyone would say this is going to be an advantage when shooting a pistol at high speed.  Many people involved in the shooting sports and elsewhere are familiar with the Captains of Crush grip trainers. These are rated from 60 all the way up to an insane 365 pounds.  I have the 100 and the 140 pound grippers and, although I have slacked off on serious training with them, plan to use them a lot more.  

    This brings me to the point of this post, the digital hand dynamometer. For those gearheads out there, yes, this is a dyno for your hand, used to measure the peak gripping force you can produce.  The particular model I picked up was only $29 on Amazon and will record up to 200 pounds of force, which is plenty for me for now, but really not all that much in the grand scheme of things. There was a post on Brian Eno's forum written by "CHA-LEE", a GM class shooter, where he discussed using one of these tools to guide his training. He also has tested a bunch of other shooters, from beginners, up to other GMs, and he was able to see a very clear trend. The GMs were generally able to grip the hardest, usually over 150 poounds, and the beginners and D class shooters the weakest. He also noticed that Open division shooters of the same skill level generally did not grip as hard as other shooters of similar skills. This is an example of why Open is for girls! (just kidding, mostly) 

     I was thinking about doing my own testing with my shooting buddies or whoever else was interested in giving it a try. Should I keep track of everyone who participates and give a prize to whoever demonstrates the most impressive feat of strength, maybe another Steve Lockwood signed Red Ring hat?  I have an idea for something else but would have to check with my sponsors to see if they would be interested in participating.  I encourage anyone reading this to pick up your own grip-o-meter, or find me at a match and ask to try mine out. Can you beat 148.8? (my current best)

SAFETY UPDATE: It's super easy to over train with the higher weight crushers, so start out slow and only practice with them a few times a week.  I gave myself a sore left wrist trying to post a "high score" with the grip dyno the first two days I had it, so be sure to take it easy.

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Early season review:

With a few matches under my belt, and the full USPSA season on the horizon it's time to reflect a little bit. I've been keeping the below match log on my PC and recently converted it into a Google doc so I could more easily share it here.  So far this year I've shot 4 matches, and all of them went well except for the most recent 3 gun match where I had a bunch of gun issues.  I'm pretty happy with my performances so far but I can see that my focus on shooting super good points all of last year has taken some of the aggressiveness out of my runs. I need to keep my tempo up, while still maintaining good sight pictures for every shot. This is something I can work on in dry fire, and also hit at the practice range, although I don't get much time for that these days.  One thing that has been huge has been really hitting the dry fire practice hard, and working on running stages while working on lowering my par times. I like running short classifiers because I can set them up in the garage and also know what a "good" score is going to be. This was huge for the March USPSA match where I was able to finally make Master in Limited division.

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February Fail: Lessons learned

Let the above video be a lesson to us all.  You cannot throw your semi-auto shotgun into the case for three months and then shoot it dirty and unlubed in 25 degree weather and expect it to run 100%.  The same goes for your AR-15. Furthermore, when changing major components on your rifle (in my case the barrel), it is advisable to test fire more than 5 rounds of the ammo you plan to compete with on the coming weekend to ensure reliable function, especially if the ammunition in question was manufactured in a gulag in eastern Europe.   A little bit of oil and a quarter turn on my gas block fixed all of my problems, but not before I managed to record this embarrassing video.  Enjoy.

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Standard Deviation Arms competition pistol class reivew

I'm reposting this great review of our recent pistol training course written by Kerry of the Angry Pig Shooting Team

This weekend the members of the AngryPig Shooting Team took a break from our usual match rotation, and scheduled a training class with Standard Deviation Arms.

The impetus for this class was simple; I started shooting IDPA in February 2012 followed shortly by Jake then Jamie then Sam. Even though I taught the boys how to shoot and introduced them to IDPA, Jamie and I quickly found ourselves being left in the dust first by Jake and then by Sam. All four of us want to improve our shooting, and since both boys are beating both adults regularly I figured there really is not much more I could teach them. So I started to look around for training.

I looked at the training classes offered by some of the big national names in practical shooting and I really couldn’t find a program that if felt really met our needs. We have been shooting matches for about a year and have had some success, so we were not beginner shooters, on the other hand I didn’t think that we ready for the more advanced classes out there. In short I was looking for some training that could leverage our currently skill sets and show us a path to improvement that we could take and work on week in and week out. In addition there was the matter of cost, with some of the big national trainers you have to travel to them and the per student fee was much higher than I could afford to shell out for 3 students.

Luckily we live in an area with a strong practical shooting community with some very good shooters. I started to ask around to see if any of the local Master level shooters were offering training. One of the first people I asked was Matt Olinchak, right away Matt let me know that he and Steve Lockwood were doing just that and that they would be willing to tailor a class to meet our needs. We have squaded with Matt at several IDPA matches, as well as both he and Steve at a few USPSA match. Both are excellent shooters and have the trophies to prove it. But in addition to that Steve has been in the firearms instructor business either in the Marine Corps, working for the DOD or in the Civilian world for many years, so not only does this pair bring their shooting experience to the table they have the professional instruction background as well. This was important to me in selecting someone to train with, being able to shoot is one thing, being able to train is a whole other skill set. I was confident Standard Deviation Arms had both

We traded information, and then the emails began. I had lots of questions for Matt and Steve, and they answered them patiently and quickly. We regularly post videos of our matches online, and it was clear that Matt and Steve were not just listening to what I was saying I wanted to get out of a training class, they were out there watching our videos and evaluating our performance in order to better tailor our session to our needs.

The day started out early at the Secret AngryPig Training Facility. We started off with a good discussion of what each person wanted to get out of the class and areas where we thought we needed the most attention. We all set goals and then we moved into what I think the most important part of the class was, 1.5 hours of dry fire. Now that may not sound like much fun, and it really wasn’t, but the amount we all learned starting with improving our draw on though presentation, front sight focus and reload drills was invaluable for being able to take advantage of the live fire portion of the class. Next we hit on movement into and out of position; Matt and Steve were able to show us techniques for staying in IDPA cover while maintaining a good firing position and preparing for moving to the next position.

The live fire portion of the class was equally intensive; we did drills that forced you to find that balance between speed and accuracy and then learned techniques on how to push that balance. We worked on transition drill to reduce our time between targets (something I seriously struggled with). We were put through the paces on several live fire drills that really had us riding the harry edge of control followed up with instruction on just how to increase our control and we all watched as our times dropped on drill after drill. But it wasn’t just work, Matt and Steve did a great job of adding fun to the day and if it wasn’t for the rapidly lowering sun we could have kept going, oh and it was cold too.

By the end of a very long day I am confident that the training we received, as long as we do our part and continue to practice, will provide us with a marked improvement in our match scores. In addition I think it was an incredible value as well!

If you are looking for training for any type of shooting check them out at:

http://www.standarddeviationarms.com/

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