The last BP2/DPS1 class I helped with at KR Training generated a bunch of thoughts in my head. I thought I’d make a small series out of it.

Take a Breath!

This is pretty simple.

Breathe.

You’ll see people on the line, they hold their breath and shoot the whole string without ever taking a breath.

Depriving yourself of oxygen isn’t good. Just listen to the song above. 🙂

This is very understandable. I do this myself. Pressure goes up and the breath gets held. Ideally we should breathe naturally, but when fur is flying, what’s naturally? And note, this isn’t precision rifle shooting, so it’s a different sort of breathing. Really, the goal here would be to just keep breathing and breathing in a natural way.

In an attempt to combat this, in my practice (especially dry fire practice) I make myself inhale deeply on the draw stroke. Even if I end up holding my breath, at least I’m getting a fresh lung-full of oxygen. Plus getting that big lung-full tends to force me to exhale, which tends to force me to inhale, and so the cycle continues. If I don’t do this, often I end up not breathing, which typically ends up on an empty set of lungs and thus already oxygen deprived. No, I’m still not perfect about this, but it’s something I work on.

The last BP2/DPS1 class I helped with at KR Training generated a bunch of thoughts in my head. I thought I’d make a small series out of it.

Gear

For many folks, DPS1 is the first venturing into that world of concealed carry, especially since one thing discussed in the class is not just how to draw your gun but how to draw it from concealment.

So there’s discussion of holsters, clothing, locations, all manner of things.

There’s no way I could write a simple blog posting to cover it all — there’s just too much information out there. But I did want to address one issue: that of changing your gear.

First, you should be willing to change your gear. Pick something and try it out. If you find it doesn’t work, do not be afraid to dump it and try something else. This might be getting a whole new product, or it may just be adjusting the product you have. When I first got my MTAC holster, I went through almost every possible adjustment setting until I found what worked for me. Yes, maybe the first setting was good, but I had to be willing to try setting two, three, four, etc. because who knows, maybe setting five was the best of all. Yes, this can be annoying and expensive, but this isn’t something you can do half-assed. For instance, as I write this I’ve learned the Werner Carry System isn’t working well for me and I’m back to the Uncle Mike’s grips and pocket carry for my snub. I’ve got an appendix holster from Comp-Tac on order to see if that might address the situation for me; it may, it may not, won’t know until it gets here and I can give it a try. But I’m willing to experiment until I find the system that works for me.

Second, once you find your gear setup, be sure to practice with it. My personal opinion is to be reluctant to change from it. I know some people who change what gun they carry and where/how they carry it more often than most people change their underwear. If that system works for you, go for it. I recently read an article where a highly qualified instructor was involved in a realistic training scenario; for the scenario he carried in a manner different from his normal carry. When the fur flew, what did he do? He went for where his gun — but it wasn’t there; he went for his normal carry location, not his new one. Monkey brain kicked in, he dropped back to his ingrained habit, and in the scenario he got killed. Take that for whatever it’s worth.

I grant that we can have different circumstances in a day that may necessitate us to change. Whatever your personal case may be, I’d say the key factor is to be practiced in your circumstances. When the shit hits the fan, you’re not going to think, you’re just going to do… make sure that things are ingrained well enough that you do right.

I like my Springfield XD-9, and while the factory trigger isn’t horrible, there’s certainly room for improvement.

I sent one of my XD’s to Springer Precision about a year and a half ago (wow, has it been that long?). It received what Scott calls a “competition” trigger job with a 3# pull weight. Let me tell you this trigger is great. It’s tight, crisp. There’s as little movement as possible, just that minimal amount needed to still allow the gun to function. No, it’s not a gamed-out 1911 trigger, but it’s still pretty darn sweet. Compared to a factory trigger? It’s a monumental improvement.

I’ve wanted to get a trigger job done on another of my XD-9’s, but I must admit the cost is a factor. It’s $175 for the trigger job, then nearly $100 in round-trip shipping costs. Ouch! Thus if you want to send a gun to Springer for work, you get a lot of work done and get it all done that one time. Please understand that Springer Precision does excellent work, it’s only my ability to afford it that is the issue here.

But lo… Springer Precision sells a trigger kit. From their website:

The kit includes a polished sear, sear spring, trigger spring, and trigger bar. The results of the kit is a shorter, lighter, crisper trigger pull. This is the kit gunsmiths are using, and does require minor fitting of the trigger bar and very minor fitting may be need to fit make sure the sear move freely. (see the videos in our VIDEO section for fitting details.) Don’t be fooled by cheap kits that only reduce trigger travel, if you want a serious upgrade, this is what you are looking for.

$130 and a little of my time? I figured to try it. I ordered the trigger kit, some punches (yes, get the #3 roll pin punch), some extra roll pins, and a few other odds and ends from Springer. Shipping was timely, and it sat on my desk waiting for a time to install it.

That time is now! (well, last night)

The install process was not difficult, and anyone that’s good with their hands and a bit of a mechanical mind ought to have little problem with this. Springer provides numerous videos that are a big help. As well, the XDTalk forum has a great number of resources, such as this posting with TONS of detailed pictures. Let’s not overlook the old HS2000 step-by-step disassembly instructions. I’m also to understand that if you are stuck, you can phone SP for help. It took me a few hours to complete the task, only because I went really slow. I watched the videos all the way through so I knew what to expect. Then I’d replay them as I worked, pausing and rewinding as necessary. The fitting of the trigger bar took the most time, because I took my time and did not want to shave off more than was necessary.

After I got it all back together, I spent some time dry-firing and everything seemed to work OK. I figured, now was a time to compare the first trigger job with this second trigger job.

There is no question, the second trigger job is a big improvement over the factory trigger. However, the second trigger job is not as good as the first. In terms of weight, the second job is certainly less than the factory but slightly more than the first job (which all stands to reason and is as expected). The second job has a tiny bit of take-up whereas the first job is tight and “right there”. Both feel like they break about as crisp and at about the same point. The second feels like the travel back for reset is just a hair longer… it’s the sort of thing where I dry fired the first job a bunch then dry fired the second and my finger would have the sensation of “OK, this is where the reset is, start pulling again” but I hadn’t yet heard the click of the reset. I roughly measured it looks like the overall travel distance is about the same… just a slightly different feel and reset.

So the two triggers feel slightly different — and the first certainly feels better. But this is me sitting here, working each trigger a lot, trying to feel every nuance, going slow and detailed. I hypothesize that when I’m actually shooting the guns on the range I’ll not notice the difference. We’ll see.

My conclusion?

I have mixed feelings about the second trigger job, tho overall I’m OK with it. It’s not the same trigger as the first, which I would have liked. But I went into this expecting it wouldn’t be exactly the same because it’s a kit and not being hand-tuned by Springer himself. I am curious if the trigger bars are different (a disassembly of both guns would tell me that, but I’m not in the mood to do that right now), and if the difference is due to slightly different kits and/or how I fitted the second. Still, I think the trigger is good and certainly a big improvement over the factory trigger: it doesn’t feel as spongey, the travel and reset are vastly improved. It’s still a good trigger. For the money, I think I did alright. Furthermore, I have never disassembled my XD to this level and it was a good educational experience.  So I do think it’s a good buy and certainly and improvement. But if you really want the best trigger and you can afford it, send it to Scott and let him work on it directly.

A few other things:

• Do be mindful when you take the back plate off the slide. That striker spring is under a lot of pressure and things will go flying.
• Do order extra striker retainer roll pins. I had a dog of a time getting mine out, and when it finally came out it was broken. I don’t know if I broke it while trying to remove it, or if it was already broken. On one of Springer’s videos he mentions that the pins do break if you do a lot of dry fire because without a snap cap the striker is being stopped by the roll pin… so I very well could have cracked it long ago. Roll pins are cheap… order a handful to keep on hand. And yes, order the special #3 punch for them too.
• Be patient. Go slow. Those videos are a big help.
• Consider this also a good opportunity to do a deep cleaning on your gun. Don’t forget to lubricate everything as you put it back together.

Can’t wait to get to the range to give it a try!

The last BP2/DPS1 class I helped with at KR Training generated a bunch of thoughts in my head. I thought I’d make a small series out of it.

DVC

The motto of IPSC is abbreviated DVC, which stands for Diligentia, Vis, Celeritas, or accuracy, power and speed. All of these things are critical to successful shooting. We don’t need to discuss power here… the 9mm vs. .45 ACP debate can rage elsewhere. Let’s talk about accuracy and speed.

There are camps that say accuracy is most important. There are camps that say speed is most important. And then there’s the camps that say both are important. Me? I think both are important. It can be the most accurate shot, but if you can’t get it off in the time needed what good is it? It can be the fastest shot possible, but if it doesn’t hit what you wanted, what good is it? The fastest miss is still a miss, the bullseye that hit after it counts doesn’t matter.

That all said, accuracy and speed are opposing forces. The faster you go, the less accurate you’ll be. The more accurate you try to be, the slower you will go. So it’s about finding a balance.

But more important, it’s about finding YOUR balance.

A lot of people in the DPS1 class just blasted away at the targets. Yes they were fast, but they didn’t hit what needed to be hit. I’m sure if there was a shoot-off between Karl and these students, they could both shoot at the same speed but not at the same level of accuracy. You cannot judge by someone else’s standard. You have to find the rate at which YOU can accurately shoot and not shoot beyond that level. You want to go as fast as YOU can to get good hits. If that’s not fast enough for class well, realize again that we’re just going to put pressure upon you. If you are improving and doing better now than you did before, that’s all that really matters.

Qualifications

From time to time, push yourself beyond your limits. Get a shot timer. Shoot some courses. If you Google around you can find tons of different drills and qualification/standards courses. Some are simple tests, others work out specific skills. Whatever you pick, Karl told me a good way to run these courses. Run the course with no regard to time. That is, a string may say “3 shots in 5 seconds”. Well, just do 3 shots and ignore the time. What you want to do is run the course with no pressure, and clean the course: all A-zone hits, 100% score. What that does is shows you can run the course. If you can’t run the course, the course may be too advanced or there may just be areas that you need work before you run the course (e.g. weak-hand-only shooting for groups at 25 yards), so go address those things. But once you can run the course clean with no time pressures, now run the course again to establish your own par times. So now turn on the timer but don’t set par times… just a start signal and record your shot times. Again, run the course at the same speed you ran it clean, clean the course, and see how long it took you to run that string. Record it. This establishes YOUR par times. Now you can compare it to the established times, and that can give you some measure of where things lie but don’t stress over it too much. What is key is for you to progress. So let’s say you did those 3 shots in 7 seconds. Next time, work to do those 3 shots in 6.5 seconds: set up the timer with a 6.5 second par time and work to get all A-zone hits within time. If you can do that, bump the time down to 6.0 seconds, and so on. Just keep pushing yourself. If you get to 6.0 seconds and are making 1 A and 2 C hits, now it’s time to analyze and work on that level. And so on and so on.

Accuracy and speed are both important. I perhaps edge just slight on the side of accuracy (take that quarter of a second to find the sights… it’s faster than realizing you missed and having to take a second shot), but perhaps because it’s the very thing I’m working on myself right now (reminding myself to take that quarter of a second).

The last BP2/DPS1 class I helped with at KR Training generated a bunch of thoughts in my head. I thought I’d make a small series out of it.

Information Overload

When you take class, you’re going to have a lot of information thrown at you. Typical KR Training classes are a few hours long, thus some days there might be 2-3 classes in a single day. Some people will stay all day for all classes, and that’s certainly going to be information overload.

Can you remember it all?

I can’t.

One day on the range I noticed Leslie Buck pulled a little notepad and pencil out of his back pocket. He jotted some notes, then put it back into his pocket and stepped up to the line. What a good idea! I stole it from him. 🙂

When in the classroom it’s easy to take notes, especially if you’re given handouts. But when you’re out on the range? That’s also a place where you need to take notes and remember things. It may be a specific thing you were told, a specific skill being taught, maybe you want to remember how class flowed so you can run the same drills in your own practice. Maybe you remember something. Maybe you have an “ah-ha!” moment. There’s going to be so much flowing around in the day… chances are good you will NOT remember it all.

A little notepad and pencil in your pocket goes a long way.

The last BP2/DPS1 class I helped with at KR Training generated a bunch of thoughts in my head. I thought I’d make a small series out of it.

DAMNIT!!!!!

I do it too.

You’re trying to do something, you’re trying to do it right, and you blow it.

DAMNIT!

See this on the line a lot. Typically it takes the form of a facial wince, head slightly twisting to the side or slightly shaking in a “no” sort of way.

It’s normal and natural to do this. We’re in class. We take class because we acknowledge deficiency in ourselves and want to improve. When we aren’t seeing the progress we desire, we get upset. Totally natural. If you find yourself doing this, well…. you do. While some will say you ideally don’t want to ever engage this sort of negative behavior, that’s easier said than done. Let’s take a baby step in that direction.

If you find yourself getting mad at yourself for screwing up, allow yourself that moment to be mad about screwing up, and then — let it go.

If you don’t let it go, what happens is you focus upon it. You’re now saying in your head “don’t screw up… don’t screw up… don’t screw up again… don’t screw up….” And when you do that you must realize what you’re now doing is focusing on the notion of screwing up! You’re not focusing on the task that you should be doing (e.g. aligning the sights, good trigger press, putting the hole in the target where it needs to be). And so typically what happens? You screw up again, because all you had on your mind was screwing up.

So you mess up. Acknowledge it, file it away for later, chalk it up for learning, then let it go. Let the emotion of the screw-up go, and refocus back on doing what you should be doing. Mentally phrase it to yourself in terms of what you should do, e.g. “OK… align the sights… slow smooth trigger press….”.  Tell yourself what you SHOULD do. If you get it right, great. If you mess up again, quickly analyze what you did wrong, make correction, let the emotion go, and refocus and do it again.

Admittedly, some days just won’t be your day. That might then signal it’d be better to just call it a day and head home. Don’t let that bother you. There’s still something positive to be learned from the experience. Let the emotion go, learn what you can, focus on what you should do.

And you know what else helps?

Smile. 🙂