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
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
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.
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.
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.
