This day at KR Training was a little different for me.

In the morning, we had Basic Pistol 1, and in the afternoon was AT-6: Pistol Workout.

What made it a little different was in BP1 I got to do a little more teaching in the lecture portion of the class than I have in the past. I’m enjoying that, and the more I get to do it the better I get. The BP1 class was small due to some people withdrawing at the last minute, so we had an especially good teacher-student ratio. More than half the class was women. Because of the smaller class size, we got through things a little quicker than usual and Karl was able to field a lot of questions from the class. It seemed to be a very informative session today, and the students seemed pleased.

But what really made it different for me today was I got to shoot! Instead of assisting with AT-6 I got to shoot AT-6. The class size was small enough and the class content is directed and advanced enough that Karl was able to run things and we all just shoot drills and work on skills. The general design of AT-6 is to work on all those things you hate to do, like 25 yard group shooting, shot calling, one-hand-only shooting, and so on. It really pushes you to your limit.

And oh… I stunk up the joint.

I was very unhappy with my performance. I dropped too many shots, where I shouldn’t.

There’s a part of me that wants to double-check some things with the M&P to ensure it’s good and dialed in correctly, especially with my practice ammo. But I’ll be honest… I’d love to blame things on the gun, to say it’s things like me still getting used to the gun, to the heavier and longer trigger, and all that stuff. And I wouldn’t be surprised if in part that was involved in why I stunk so badly today.

But in the end, it’s not the equipment, it’s the shooter. I know it’s me, and even if it’s things like the trigger or other gun things, it still comes down to me improving my use of the tool, not fixing nor improving the tool itself. The only thing tool-wise I might want to improve is mag pouches. The Blade-Tech dual mag pouch I couldn’t stand… dug into my leg, too close together. I borrowed Tom’s 4-pouch Raven, which was OK but like all Raven products they’re a huge slab of Kydex. I did like how tight to the body the inner pouches were held tho. I’ll probably get a Beltfeed from Comp-Tac one of these days.

I already knew I needed work on one-hand press-outs, especially weak hand. I’ve been focusing a lot lately on weak-hand-only shooting, and when it comes to slow fire I’m fairly pleased with my improvement. But once some time pressure is added, I start dropping shots all over the place. Sure I can do tricks like aiming higher so when I slap the trigger on a WHO press-out the shot still lands within the target zone, but that just masks the problem. But what hit me was how much I need press-out work in general: both hands, SHO, WHO. I’ve been working the press-out in a very slow and smooth way, but it’s too slow. So when I had to speed up to today’s speeds, everything went to crap — too wide a jump from the speeds I’ve been doing to the speed I needed.

I have also noticed that I’m retraining myself on a lot of things. I’m finding the way my eyes are working regarding finding the front sight and the target is changing. Due to all my weightlifting, my grip is MUCH stronger and I find myself wanting to use it, really crushing the gun, but all that grip changing isn’t consistent yet and could even be why I’m mashing the trigger (HULK SMASH!).

I really don’t know exactly why I’m doing all that I’m doing. There’s a lot I’ve been working on, that’s changing, but then also because time is limited some things haven’t been worked on and thus have suffered and regressed. So today was a good diagnostic towards things I need to work on more, but I need to do more to figure out just what the problem is and thus properly correct it.

Lots of 25 yard shooting, and that’s improved, I feel more confident in shooting that slow fire… but then I haven’t done much 3-10 yard shooting for speed and obviously that’s regressed. Lots of slow fire doesn’t require lots of pressing out, and that regressed.  I still need more 25 yard shooting, I still need more slow fire, but I need to not neglect these other areas. And at least more trigger time like that should help me figure out and get over my slapping… stop rushing.

In a side note… the grip texturing on the M&P is great. It actually rubbed me a little raw today in some spots, but it’s not overly rough. I like it better than the XD or XDm grip texture. I don’t think I’ll bother getting any stippling or other texturing work on my M&P. It’s pretty nice as it is.

Well, I’ve got homework to do….