Does it make me a yuppie if I already have a bunch of the stuff on that list?
Tam casts "summon fanboy"
There really isn’t much difference between the big name 1911 makers these days except apparently that Kimber has a really good marketing department. I’ve shot Kimbers, Colts, Paras, STIs, Springfields, etc. Out of that bunch, the only two that have worked 100% were the Para and the Colt. Does that mean I think that Para and Colt are objectively better than Springfield Armory and STI? No, it just means my samples ran a little better.
3 drills
I had someone ask me what drills I’d focus on if I wanted to parse my training down to the bare fundamentals. Obviously, I’d work on my press-out but I was asked specifically how I’d do that. To pick some fundamental skills for IDPA, I’d have to say that in addition to having an accurate foundation that I would use the following three drills extensively. These drills are all things I’ve picked up from other trainers and instructors because the focus on the fundamental skills. Note, these are also all live fire drills – dry fire is a great time to work on everything else.
Drill 1: 1-on-1. From the ready or holster, fire one shot on an IDPA target. Only -0 hits count. This drill focuses entirely on your press-out. Do 50 reps.
Drill 2: 1-on-2. Same idea, but add a second target. This works on the incredibly important skill of shooting transitional shots in IDPA. The idea here is to have your gun travel to the second target while recoil is happening. Do 25 reps.
Drill 3: F.A.S.T. Drill. I throw this one in because it really is a good assessment drill. You have to do a lot of different stuff, and it’s an opportunity to bring everything you worked on both in live fire and dry fire. Do not do FAST more than three times! In fact, what you can do is do a FAST drill at the start of your practice, then do it again two more times at the end of your practice to see how you’re improving.
Doing those three drills will give you an excellent base for more advanced drills. Plus, it’s a cost effective way to train, as you only fire 118 rounds in the entire practice session.
Breaking the wall
In the past week (Saturday to Saturday), I shot the IDPA classifier three times for official score. My times on those three runs were as follows:
- Run 1, CDP: 89.15 – Master
- Run 2, SSP: 91.86 – Master
- Run 3, ESP: 86.08 – Master
So what happened? The short version is that I broke through a wall, and it certainly wasn’t because I was hypnotized to feel safe with my gun – it’s because of consistent training and practice. For the last month, all I’ve really worked on in practice is my press-out, and when I’ve shot the classifier I have been extremely focused on the press-out on each presentation. On my most recent classifier, my times on the first three strings of fire (which are 2 shots to the body and 1 to the head) were all under two seconds, for the first time ever. I’ll have video of my SSP Master run posted on the Quest For Master Class in a couple of weeks, but I really want to pound on this training issue.
My practice had been very unfocused for a while. Not having a lot of shooting opportunities had put me in a rut of shooting low round counts and not really using my time to wisely work on fundamentals. In the last two months, instead of dividing my practice time between several different skill sets, I have religiously worked on the press-out. On a timer, off a timer, just countless reps over and over and over to drill it home. Is it perfect? No. But I’ve practiced it enough that I had a breakthrough, and was able to get a level of consistency in my performance on the classifier I hadn’t reached previously.
Every shooter has breakthroughs like that. I’ve had several breakthroughs at several different times as well; the press-out and the consistency developed there is only one of them. The point though is that it’s important to analyze what you’re doing with your practice time to make sure it’s beneficial. My practice time was helping me in certain areas, but I was neglecting the area that would produce the most rapid gains in the areas I was concerned about. With that in mind, what are you practicing for? More importantly, is your practice time actually helping you reach your goals as a shooter?
IDPA Nationals shooter breakdown
I’m always interested to see which divisions are the most popular at IDPA Nats – this year IDPA saved me the trouble of having to add all that up by hand and posted the numbers on their website. Here’s the breakdown:
- Custom Defensive Pistol Total: 88 Shooters
- Enhanced Service Pistol Total: 121 Shooters
- Stock Service Pistol Total: 149 Shooters
- Enhanced Service Revolver Total: 14 Shooters
- Stock Service Revolver Total: 20 Shooters
- Total Shooters: 392
- Total Masters: 72
- Total Experts: 100
- Total Sharpshooters: 107
- Total Marksmen: 113
392 is an awesome number. I’m really happy that my shooting sport of choice is able to draw that kind of crowd. As usual, SSP and ESP were the most populated divisions, bringing in an average of 135 shooters. CDP was only 65% of the average of SSP/ESP, although it dwarfs my beloved revolver divisions considerably. I’ve always found that to be an interesting statistic, because it’s been my anecdotal experience that at local and club level matches, CDP usually splits with SSP as the most popular division. But that doesn’t repeat itself at the state and national match level, something I’ve always found curious.
- CDP Breakdown: 14 MA, 22 EX, 31 SS, 21 MM
- ESP Breakdown: 20 MA, 31 EX, 32 SS, 38 MM
- SSP Breakdown: 30 MA, 37 EX, 35 SS, 47 MM
- ESR Breakdown: 4 MA, 4 EX, 2 SS, 4 MM
- SSR Breakdown: 4 MA, 6 EX, 7 SS, 3 MM
After the S&W Indoor Nationals in February, I’ll break that down as well!
The answer
To the question that I asked in this post on what pet peeve of mine got kicked over by the video? First I’ll tell you what it wasn’t.
- It wasn’t because it’s an airsoft knockoff of a Colt Python
- It wasn’t because they didn’t sweep up the powder in between takes.
- It wasn’t the hammy acting, which I found delightful.
- It wasn’t any of the hilarious theories suggested in the comments (I lol’d all weekend reading those)
No, it was that he shoots it single action. I think one person guessed that. A pet peeve is a pet peeve; I don’t even like it when Danny Glover’s character in Lethal Weapon shoots his Model 15 in DA mode.
New article at Shooting Illustrated
I have a new article up at Shooting Illustrated.Com, this time on selecting a polymer pistol for competition. I have actually run that gamut of polymer pistols, my first competition tupperware was a Glock 24 which was awesome but not legal for IDPA. My next plastic was a Springfield XD Tactical in .40, followed by an XDM in 9mm. This year I’ve shot over 5,000 rounds through Ruger’s SR9c platform and another 1500+ through the SR40, and I’m up to 529 rounds through S&W M&P Pro Series in .40. I’m not sure how it happened, but for a guy that established his competition reputation on a foundation of revolvers, I sure have shot a lot of combat tupperware.
M&P Magazine basepad issues
S&W recently changed the design of the basepads for the M&P series guns. Here’s a picture of the redesigned basepad that I have on all my M&P Pro Series magazines in .40 S&W. Sorry for the picture quality, all these were taken with my iPhone at the range. 
Click any image in this post for the fullsize version. Back to the issue, notice on the basepad the location of the pin/hole that retains the basepad to the magazine floorplate and body. It’s pretty far to the rear compared to earlier models which had the pin located in the center of the basepad. I didn’t think this was a problem until I dropped an unloaded mag doing a reload and heard a “sproing” as my magazine came apart. The spring and follower went one way, the floorplate went downrange, etc. I recovered all of the parts except the floorplate, and started inspecting them to see what happened. When I got to the basepad, I found the following area of concern.
The basepad is cracked immediately to the right of the hole where the pin on the floorplate goes. This caused me a moment of consternation, so I checked my other three mags. Obviously, one mag is fine as I used in the picture, however my other two mags also have the same crack in them. Observe the damaged magazines.
So I have 4 magazines, three of which have cracked basepads. Only one of them has failed, mind you – the other two with the cracks in them are still running just fine and haven’t come apart when I drop them. I honestly don’t know what to make of this. On the one hand, two of the magazines have continued to function flawlessly despite repeated drops while cracked, and so really my failure rate is only 25%. I am wondering though if anyone has bought an M&P recently and noticed that the basepads are cracking, if so it would represent a wider issue than just my mags.
Also bear in mind that I’m hard on gear. These magazines get dropped on unforgiving concrete floors pretty repeatedly, as I do most of my practice at indoor ranges these days. Like I said, I’m curious about this issue, and I want to see if continuing to drop the magazines will eventually 1) crack the one that isn’t cracked and 2) cause the others to fail. I’m also going to order a couple of these M&P 10 round magazines and see if they have similar issues.
I will say that other than that, I’m extremely happy with my M&P in .40. It shoots soft, is extremely accurate, and generally speaking is the ideal of what a competition designed polymer pistol should be.
No blog today
In the meantime, see if you can find what part of the following FreddieW vid made my head hurt. (I like the video, and I really enjoy FreddieW’s work but he nailed a pet peeve of mine).
Facebook link dump
I honestly believe that Facebook is going to be the most important website in the next decade. With that in mind, here are some great Facebook links for you to kill time on.
This is in no way an exhaustive list, as there are many, many, many other FB pages for the shooting sports by companies, individuals, TV shows, etc. The point though is that the internet and Facebook have made finding other enthusiasts extremely easy. If you’re an action pistol shooter, a defensive pistol shooter, a 3-gun aficionado, you name it you can find like minded people on Facebook. It’s pretty cool.