This house I’m renovating just has been a nightmare. Far worse than any of the others I’ve done, very clearly occupied by people with zero “owner pride”. Unfortunately, that means I’m being pushed back further and further on getting back to the normal daily routine. Good thing I have all summer to work on my shooting before the next match.
Anyway, I have NOT forgotten about my blog, I do feel quite sad and guilty about devoting nearly all of my spare time to my new home. If you stumble upon this and think it’s abandoned, please check back hopefully in June (yikes! Yes, I think I’m still Another month out from finishing the house).
3/4: 90 minutes live-fire, one match. Unfortunately, I’m writing this on 3/10 and I don’t recall exactly what was going on. Whatever it was, it wasn’t what I would classify as “good”, so perhaps it’s a good reason I forgot.
3/6: 30 minutes dry fire training. Not much to comment on here either, I didn’t do much other than dry hold and fire into a blank wall between other tasks I was doing through the day.
3/7: My wife and I bought a house… a fixer-upper house, and I didn’t even realize that it was the end of Saturday until a reminder popped up on my computer. I don’t see a whole lot (read, none) of training or practice happening until this house is finished up. Mind you, this is the most renovation needy home we’ve been in yet, and the Last one took up 3 weeks. I can see the next 5 weeks being sunk into finish work. Heck, after 30+ hours already, we still haven’t finished with demo work, mostly because we’re trying to carefully remove things that will go back up later. Anyway, I think I’m going to skip working on the blog until I get some time to really devote to it again. I’m on the fence about taking a day to shoot in a match next Saturday as I suspect I will be Very sore and not up to par. Plus, I could save myself $1000 on roofing if I strip off the existing shingles, and that needs to be done over the weekend.
2/26: 2 hours live fire. I’m finally feeling good enough that I decided to start back up again, though it was apparent that I had taken a break. It took me the better part of the first hour just to get myself settled mentally and physically.
The one group on the top right of the right target isn’t too bad other than being off center. But then I started getting into the groove. One of the bulls below isn’t like the others, and it is because I failed to retain my attention for those shots. I was having to shoot the gun instead of just letting the shots off on their own. But I’m not worried about those, the other bulls where I DID have everything clicking well are the ones I’m going to remember and focus on as positive feedback.
3/1: 1:45 hour of dry fire and RIKA training. Lol, I don’t know what it is with me and my body lately, but on Monday I managed to do something to my neck and it has been all but locked up for the past few days. Painful to sleep, stand, walk, and move type locked up. I finally managed to get it warmed up and stretched out enough today that I could get into shooting position. And I watched this video from Olympian Keith Sanderson about training and it put some motivation into me:
3/2: 1 hour dry-fire. Trying to keep the ball rolling, I put in another hour today. First 30 minutes were on dry-hold only. Basically a dry-fire against a blank wall, then hold position for the next 90 seconds. Take a minute break (maybe a little more if needed) and repeat. Last 30 minutes I dry-fired against a target, 10 shot strings where I’d dry-hold the 10th shot for as long as I could keep the sights on target, then take about a 3~4 minute break and repeat. I know that my hold is a weak area, so I’m hoping this will help with strength/stability.
3/3: 1:30 hour RIKA training today. I had some ups and downs, got my mind on task only to have to fall off task. 2 good sets of groups though:
While series 3 was a bit off center (I re-calibrated after that, must have knocked the sensor), I have no complaints about the group. And for series 5 was a bit more strung out with the high and low shot, but the group is nicely centered. I’m constantly amazed at just how Far the RIKA will push a shot when there’s a flinch (or you try to force the shot off). I guess that’s a good thing, because the tighter the group/shots, the better my real world scores. Over my 60 shots, I did average a 10 hold and the average shot placement (center of the group) was also a 10.
Brian
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