After the last class I took some time to work on my own shooting.

Per my latest self-assessment, I need to work on my “visual knowledge”. Again, I know that I can shoot at different distances, at different sized targets, with different types of sight pictures (see Brian Enos) and still get acceptable hits. And while I do it, my brain still screams “THIS IS WRONG!”. It gets so ingrained to have that textbook sight picture. I know I don’t need it, I do shoot as I should, but I want to get my brain to stop objecting because the objection, the doubt, it holds me back and creates uncertainty.

So, I just need to shoot a bunch and burn it into my brain as to what it looks like and that this is OK.

So instead of trying to do everything right with sights and trigger, checking the holes on the paper, checking the timer, and worrying more about the location of the holes and if I made time, I need to do it the other way. I have the timer beep to start and record times, but I really don’t care about the times nor the target, at least while shooting. The goal is to shoot “fast”, focus on nothing but the front sight and what it’s doing, and just take in what I see. After I shoot, look at the target. Was anything outside the -0 or A-Zone (depending what target I’m using)? No, then good enough. Now look at the timer, see what the splits and overall time was, realize “OK, that’s what it takes to get that”. So, it’s kinda a backwards approach, but it’s about caring what the front sight is doing, then using target and timer validation to say “OK, that’s what you get”.

Karl suggested I just shoot Bill Drills. I set up at 3 yards because I wanted to start there (I figure, start at the beginning… a very good place to start. Figure 3 yards, then move to 5, 7, 10, 15, 25). Set the timer for a 3 second start delay, then go. I ripped off a bunch of Bill Drills as fast as I could. Start from full press-out so this is nothing but visual focus — eyes can start focused on the front sight, and I’m just ready to go, nothing but working the eyes. I was pulling off 0.15 to 0.20 second splits and having no problems. What did my eyes see? A lot of bouncing. But I saw the sight picture was never textbook perfect. I did see front sight, it was basically where it needed to be, just not like a textbook. I played around a few times and tried slowly down and getting a better sight picture. I found those tended to have consistently 0.20 second splits and felt really slow (weird).

I then stopped doing 6-round Bill Drills and just emptied the magazine. It was about getting more feedback. I’d fire 6 shots and my brain would start to parse things, but then the shots were over. So basically I just kept going to let my eyes and brain have a lot of information flowing in. It was more helpful to shoot longer strings; more input.

Karl then came over and told me to alternate between the near and far target (so about 3 yards and about 8 yards). I did slow down a bit on the far target, but it wasn’t enough shooting to actually register precisely how much sight I was seeing. I just didn’t have enough ammo to run this so I stopped. But all holes were acceptable, so obviously at 8 yards I still don’t need to see as perfectly as I expect, but obviously more perfect than 3 yards. But then, maybe not… maybe I can go faster… that’s still TBD.

What’s next for me? I need to do 1-shot drills from the holster. Same basic drill, just from the holster. Again, it’s about finding how fast I can push myself and how much sight is needed and how much isn’t. Letting my brain know and have permission to do it that way.

After that, I figure repeat the same at 5 yards, tho I might just skip back to 7. And so on from there.

Dry work is going to be much of the same: draw, press out, click. Working on speed and “one shot” drills.