Eric Gambill Shooting Log

I'll look those books up tonight. Robert what do you think about the theory behind the "deliberate practice"? I was throwning around the idea of developing a new dryfire routine around it.
 
Eric Gambill said:
I'll look those books up tonight. Robert what do you think about the theory behind the "deliberate practice"? I was throwning around the idea of developing a new dryfire routine around it.
If you have the discipline, 'deliberate practice' (aka Deep Practice) is fantastic. Its a matter of working on itty bitty things and chipping away until you achieve the goal.

'The Talent Code' (Dan Coyle)
'Outliers' (Malcolm Gladwell)
and 'The Art of Learning' (Josh Waitzkin)

These books are the most interesting performance books I've ever read.
 
you are making too much of a deal over switching divisions. Good shooters only need a couple weeks, tops to transfer over to another gun.

Ill look over the "deliberate practice" article later today, and see if I can add anything.

Saw you invited me to like your fb fan page. I will, of course, but I think its a little narsissistic to have one of those, but regardless, make sure your ego isnt telling yourself some lies. I mean this in a helpful way.
 
I might be Mike. I have never owned anything but a glock so i've never tried it.

I got a good laugh when I read "fan" page. I guess I could have expected some people to look at it like that. Truth is, I was starting to get more and more facebook friend requests from shooters and I needed a way to seperate it from my family life. I have two young daughters that i post pictures of all the time for distant family and friends....the father in me I guess.
 
mike cyrwus said:
make sure your ego isnt telling yourself some lies
I had to come back because this statement was sticking in my mind. I "grew up" in practical shooting in the Enos Forums and Steve Anderson era. Steve and all the guys over at Enos have always been a huge fan of Lanny Bassham and his books like With winning in mind. Steve especially was big on not letting any negative thoughts into your shooting and telling yourself that you can do anything. It reminded me of a lot of the major sports stars that have been out there over the years. I think of people like Muhammad Ali who could never allow the thought of being anything but the greatest in the world.

I've had many discussions about this topic over the years and Mike's statement above was the way that I described what I thought of it most of the time. I just felt like these people were lying to themselves. Obviously its a way to become successful, you can look at professional sports to see that.

I believe there is a fine line between confidence and ego. I believe I can hit any target that I am going to see at a major match because I have proven to myself in practice that I can hit very hard targets.....but if I walk up to a stage and see a 4 inch piece of steel at 50 yards I'm going to plan accordingly and not make myself believe that its going down in one shot. Can I hit it in one shot? Sure. Is the mental image I carry that I'm probably not going to hit it in one shot keeping me from doing just that? I don't think so. I know what my rested groups are at 50yards so I can expect that my freestyle will be a little more loose.

Now that's just an example that I came up with. The difference is that I'm going to walk away from that stage and that match and set a goal. I now want the skill level to know that I can go out and hit that 4 inch steel in the first shot....and I'm going to work until I get there.
 
Bassham is/was totally against telling yourself you can do anything. He was big on affirmation statements, but only if you werent writing bad checks.
-gotta keep it reallll.


10-4 on the separate fb accts; wish Ida thought of that.
 
So thats why you unfriended me;-)
I keep all the gun stuff and hardcore, right wing, anti-govt stuff on my FB to keep my relatives away.

Basshams stuff is awesome, but kinda complicated.
Waitzkin has the same ideas, just simplified. His 'building your trigger' chapter is incredible.
 
Took my daughter to the range yesterday and we both got a chance to shoot the new CZ. First impression: its pretty freekin awesome (and its my daugters new favorite lol).

After she had her fill I ran a couple drills real quick. Initial bill drill times were 2 seconds and I was running plate racks clean in 3 seconds. Not far off the current times I have now with the Glock. Draw times were pretty salty even though I've never run a DA trigger. I was consistent at 1 sec on the 7yd bill drills and 1.3 sec to the first plate on the plate rack at 10yds. The big concern right now is reloads. You gotta be a little more precise with this gun as its magwell opening is a little smaller and sharply blocked off (no bevel).

My normal end of season break has been cancelled. I'm really excited about this gun so I'm starting dryfire now. I'm going to spend a week or two working on just draws and reloads.

Found this little nugget earlier today, its a good read:
http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=169004
 
Beat a 1.6s partime on 7yd bill drill in dry fire yesterday. I also started beating a 1s par time sight pic to sight pic on my reloads. Not bad for 4 days of dryfire.

Im working one drill a day out of Stoegers dryfire book. Doing a lot more reps than stated in the book because im trying to cement in the fundementals with this new gun. Looking forward to taking it out to Steel Challenge on Sunday.
 
Reload Challenge today. First set of the drill is draw, 1 shot, reload, 1 shot, reload, 1 shot, reload, 1 shot. Broke the advanced par time of 4.5s on my 8th rep.

I was decent on the last two sets of the drill, kept fumbling my grip on the second and third mag.
 
Shot Steel Challenge at ITPSC yesterday. Overall I felt comfortable with the gun after having a little under two weeks with it. Its going to take a little more work to get used to drawing a gun with a beavertail.

The combined match results were as close as you could get:

1st place was Doug in Open with 68.10 seconds
2nd was Seth in Iron Sight Pistol with 68.11 seconds
I was third in production with 68.12 seconds
 
Had a productive practice today with the CZ. I'm behind a little on speed compared to the Glock but it was not as far as I thought it would be. I started out with 50 yard groups to test my accuracy with the pistol. I shot a 3 shot group with my 160gr Major match ammo and my 147gr practice/club match ammo. The orange circle in the pictures are 3 inches. Heres some results:

160gr Bayou Bullet
pre_1383952904__photo_1.jpg


147gr J&K lead:
pre_1383953388__photo_2.jpg



So its nothing to write home about but its by far the best groups I've ever shot at 50yds. I moved on to the Accelerator Drill. I averaged a little under 8 seconds on this drill out of 5 runs. All but one run I shot 10 alphas and 2 Charlies. Watching the first person videos I could really see how slow my reloads were and my shots were.

Next I moved to the Distance Changeup Drill. I ran it 6 times and averaged a little over 3 seconds with the fastest run at 2.82 seconds. This one is killer on points because its pretty tough to hit that headshot A at 15 yards. All three runs that were under 3 seconds I miked one of the headshots high. I called the shots high and knew they were gonna be sketchy and they were not there. Need to have a little more visual patience on those shots. Heres a clip of one of the runs, it was 3.06 seconds with 5A and 1B:

http://youtu.be/21qIk2WfSEQ

ETA: I guess I have forgotten how to embed a video...tried a couple different methods and its still just a link.
 
I spent a good amount of time writing tonight. I wrote out my schedule, plan and goals. I came up with a major goal that I want to happen within the next two years and many minor goals that will enable that to happen. I used to keep very detailed written documentation of my training and shooting. For some reason I got away from that practice.

Im also doing a lot of reading now. Im revisiting old books and checking out new ones. I believe this will enable me to be more successful.
 
Its been a very productive week of training. Through all the reading and writing I have developed a new dryfire and training plan for this year. My focus is going to be on technique and accuracy until I am satisfied with my consistency.

I read Bassham's book twice this week and did a high school style book report on it, lol. I just started 'The Art of Learning' (Josh Waitzkin).

I have my first USPSA match with the CZ this weekend at ITPSC. I've been waiting for this since I got the gun....I'm ready to see how she feels in a match.
 
Guess its time for an update. Nothing really exciting going on. I'm training about 3 times a week on average right now. Doing that dirty boring grudge work that I need to do to raise my fundamentals to a place where even my mistakes are better than the competition.

No breakthroughs happening in this phase, just pure skill farming.
 
Off season training is still going hard. I believe I've made a lot of progress. I just started throwing the timer back into the mix this week and things are looking good....

Beat a 4 sec par time on el pres both times I tried it at the end of my session today. Called all alphas on one and two Charlie's on the other.
 
Did some more par time testing after my daily dryfire today. Starting to get a good idea where Im at and how much I've improved over the winter.

I'll log it here for later reference:

All times are what I consider to be where I am at with 95% plus execution and I never count anything but a called alpha shot:

Relaxed at side Draw: .7 seconds
Wrists above shoulders Draw: .8 seconds
Turn and draw: .8 seconds
Strong hand only draw: .8 seconds
Weak hand only Draw: 1.0 seconds
4 Aces (Draw, 2 reload 2): 2.2 seconds

I'm pretty happy with these numbers. I think I'm going to be able to crush some of my personal records for the normal drills I run in live fire. I would really like to see a live fire bill drill in the 1.6 second range and a live fire el pres under 5 seconds with all alphas. The one thing I've noticed here with these numbers is that I am faster than this. I can execute all these drills faster than the posted numbers above, its just not at the execution rate that I need. When running the test on 4 aces today I totally junked a reload but still beat the 2.2 second par time (which I thought would never happen). The timer adds a little bit of pressure sometimes, especially when you start pushing it down to what you believe is the limit of your current skill level. I've found it helps a lot to just take a deep breath and remind myself that I have plenty of time if I just execute the fundamentals of the drill as smooth as possible.
 
Don't know why I didn't remember this but distance was 10yds. Might need to know that later, lol
 
Had the monthly match at ITPSC yesterday. We converted to practiscore for scoring and everything went smooth. The match was a complete disaster for me, I had like 5 mikes and a no shoot in the match. I was really more concentrated on learning the scoring system than actually shooting. Add on top of that, I had changed some stuff in my gun and hadnt gotten to the range to test it. Of course it failed lol

I regained my focus at the 5th stage and threw up a really good run with good points. The last stage was the classifier, 13-04 Roscoe Rattle. I remember shooting this at the 2012 nationals. I shot terrible points on it (68/90) and the time was 9.53 for a 7.13 HF. What a difference a little over a year has made. I threw up a 10.36 HF for the match. After the match I went back and shot it again. I wanted to push on it a little and see if I could get the total time under 7 seconds. I ended up shooting it in 7.19s with a mike. It still came out to a 10.15 HF. If they are basing the HHF off of the scores from nationals, both of those are GM runs.
 
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