Minimum Competency

In this May 14, 2022 live fire session I continue my exploration of the red dot pistol by shooting my Minimum Competency Assessment.

A month ago I went to the A-Zone Range and shot a number of drills to determine my baseline of performance with a red dot pistol. That session provided me with good feedback on what I needed to work on: primarily, dot acquisition. So I spent the past month in dry fire primarily focused upon dot acquisition.

As you can see in the video, my ability to pick up the dot did improve – but no question I still have a long way to go. A few high points for my focus:

• Focus on the Draw To First Acceptable Hit(s) skill
  • Start from the holster and work on that draw to first acceptable hit.
  • This works:
    • Dot acquisition
    • Grip acquisition (primarily dialing in new gear, or going back to old gear and adjusting more)
• Make sure I’m being target focused (establishing that as a new habit, instead of well-habituated front-sight focus).
• Pinky-driven grip
  • Make sure that pinky is engaged, especially on this P365XL

My 10 yard and 3 yard shooting were fairly similar. I’m working to find the dot every time because that’s my current skill focus. What I need to do next is learn what it looks like with the RDS to “see what I need to see”. Because I’m new to this, every bit of shooting is me trying to find the dot and shoot with that “perfect sight picture” – because that’s my skill focus. But of course, what sight picture I need at 3 yards vs. what I need at 25 yards are different things. This is something I’ll need to set aside a live fire session for, especially at 7 yards.

One other thing that I’m not sure what to do with. I realized the act of producing the video is a novel stress. I’m thinking about the shot, staying in frame, am I generating a cohesive narrative, word choice, minimizing ums and ahs, ensuring I look at the iPhone’s camera not screen, etc. Lots of little things while I’m trying to just shoot. I wonder how much the novel stress impacts my performance – not as an excuse, but literally as a measure and assessment of my performance. We want automaticity in performance so that we can have the brain cycles available to focus on the novel stress of the event so…

Anyways, a good session. Told me a lot. Work ahead.