So I was doing stage practice this morning. Per a conversation with Aaron Eddins a while back - he does one cold run in match mode, a "hair on fire" run - as quick as possible - accept less on sights - a focus run - trying to get all alpha ignoring time (to an extent) - then a new "match" run. When I do stage work I'll play with this and see what I'm getting from the performances and play with stuff I'm observing to see if I can either get better consistency or better times.

The stage was a little 11 shot stage with a two step move to the left drawing to a no shoot partial at 15 ish yards - open target at 22 yards - probably a 7-8 step move to the middle position with a narrow window coming onto a no shoot partial at probably 6 yards and an open target at the same - 4-5 steps to the right 25 yard open - finish on a 10" or so plate.

Cold run was a 9.48 - 2 Charlie - so would be like a 5.38 factor. The speed mode where I had a mike no shoot on the close no shoot partial - but otherwise "OK" hits - more charlies but it was an 8.84 - a big pick up in time - just have to clean up the hits - so I stayed there and tried to figure out how to keep the same speed and get the hits to acceptable. After 2 or 3 runs - a light bulb kind of went off - the issue wasn't the first shot - typically - it was the second - usually because I was rushing to get the gun up and my grip wasn't set - so I started programming in - before decelerating into the positions - grip real hard with support hand - and when I bring the gun up make an effort to push through the middle knuckle of my thumb. Magically - the hits stayed there and times bounced between about 8.40 and 8.60. I would average about 3-4 charlies - I'd have some deltas on far targets if I didn't have my visual focus dialed in and was just trying to get the shooting over with - so accepting a little bit more on settling the gun in position but with that really hard grip was getting reliable A/Cs. 8.5 call it average time with 4 charlies is a 5.53 factor which is like a 3% bump .

I eventually did the "focus on alpha" thing and the time was abysmally slow - 10.5 seconds and I still dropped two charlies - but that extra hard focusing on points slowed EVERYTHING down with movement. Undergirds the theory that the shooting kind of sets the pace for everything else and we're tough to change gears. internally I was screaming how slow everything was. The better runs were obtained through driving eyes to the point on the target and trusting the grip was there and just observing how the dot was moving.

My last run was 8.27 with 3 charlies - which is a 5.9 factor which is nearly a 10% bump in score. The extra tenth of time was likely picked up by another focus shift of leaving the acceptable hits quicker and getting the transition started as soon as the dot jumped - probably in the middle section. Training vision to focus at a point on the target and not just shooting at the target is still in process - but I'm going to stay dialed in and practice the vision piece in everything.

So my big "ah ha" moment was the cue on deceleration changing to just focusing on footwork to adding that support hand clamp as the deceleration starts and making sure when the gun is up I'm doing the push through the strong hand thumb.

I feel like I can start pushing and exploit this further - excited to get one more in before the Belt concealment championship this weekend.