Saturday turned out to be a beautiful day for IDPA, and the club put together six great stages to celebrate. Most of them had enough room to play around with strategy a little, and leave you wondering if a different path would have provided better results.
I was the Safety Officer for the squad, which is always a distraction, and given how fast we were moving through the stages I barely took the time to reload between, much less go through a proper match-mode prep. Still, I managed to hold on to a good overall time, and actually won the overall by way of misadventure. Brent and his pistol-flavored rifle usually win the overall, but took a spill on stage 4 (probably should have earned him a re-shoot, honestly) which ended up putting me ahead by 0.69 seconds. It’s not an honest victory, but since no one seemed seriously injured, I’ll take it. Get well, Brent!
Click Here to view the results.
Let’s review the video, and cover the “Great“, the “Okay“, and the “Needs Work“.
The Great Stuff
- Stage 2: Fast movement, transitions, and visual flow was purposeful.
- Stage 3: Going right to moving and shooting.
- Stage 4: Fast engagements, quick 2 hits on drop turner on it’s first exposure.
- Stage 6: High accuracy under speed.
- All Stages: Speed is improving across the board. Moving well, transitions and splits are progressing.
The Okay Stuff
- Stage 1: Zero down but would have been faster without extraneous shots.
- Stage 3: Shooing on the move was accurate enough, if still a little slow and uncomfortable.
- Stage 4: Two quick hits on drop turner but both were high and one was long.
- Stage 5: Speed was good, but draw and reload could shed weight.
- Stage 6: Cadence was fast but could get a little faster for dumped rounds. Work on calling shots on moving targets.
- All Stages: Hasty planning and execution have improved.
Stuff that Needs Work
- Stage 1: Support Hand cadence. Dot acquisition.
- Stage 2: Magazine Grab and stow. Failed to call a shot and ended up with a hardcover hit.
- Stage 3: Visual patience under momentum (T5). Stop returning to cover unnecessarily.
- Stage 5: Dropped 5 points on an otherwise master classifier run. A little more discipline.
- All Stages: Sticking to the Process – Analyze, Strategize, Memorize, Visualize. Much of my shooting skill is subconscious, my process needs to be too.
I think that’s the meat of it anyway. I still owe you a recap of the 2021 Gulf State Championship and soon we will have footage from the March 2021 BRRC Match as well.
Until then, shoot straight, and stay safe!