Preparing for the Shooting Season

 

           

            It’s late January.  The hectic holiday season is over and the weather is, well, unfriendly at best.  It seems like the shooting season is still a ways off, especially with sub zero temperatures and snow.  I personally don’t shoot much through December and early January.  It’s nice to take some time off and enjoy other hobbies and activities that seem to get pushed aside during the shooting season.  However, now is the time to start preparing your equipment, and yourself, for when the weather breaks.  Some things to take a look at are:

 

Shooting Equipment

Reloading Equipment

Personal Fitness

Practice Schedules

Match Schedules                                                                    

 

Equipment:

 

 

Now is the time to start replacing consumables in your gun and related equipment. You should tear your gun completely down for a good cleaning and inspection. Check every little detail and part of the gun for unusual wear or broken parts. If you’re not comfortable doing this inspection, have a good gunsmith do it for you. It’s much better to find potential problems now rather than during the season. If you don’t have spare parts fit for your gun, consider having a gunsmith fit a back up extractor, ejector, firing pin/pin stop, front sight, etc. I can rebuild an entire gun out of my shooting bag, sans frame and slide. 

Magazines, springs, and small parts are usually the number one cause of malfunctions. I like to put in fresh magazine springs, recoil spring, firing pin spring, and hammer spring before the season begins. This is especially true for Glock and XD shooters with trigger jobs. If you’ve ever experienced light primer hits, you may need to replace your striker spring on a regular basis. I also measure my magazine lips to make sure they are in spec. Check your magazine base pads as it’s not uncommon to find small cracks in aluminum and plastic base pads after hitting the ground throughout a season. After your gun is in tip-top shape, make sure you go out and do some test firing to make sure any new parts are fit right and reliable.

Now is the best time to experiment with any changes you want to make to your gun. Changes in recoil spring rate, trigger jobs, slide lightening, adding/subtracting weight, and different ammunition can affect the timing you have with your gun, and that requires time to re-tune yourself to it. All guns have recoil and muzzle flip. If you watch a fast and accurate shooter with a “flat shooting gun”, it’s not the gun or the load that they are using, it’s the fine muscle control they have from being in tune with their equipment. I say in my classes, if you pull the gun down before the bullet leaves the barrel, it’s a flinch or trigger jerk. If you do it after the bullet leaves the barrel, its recoil management. There’s nothing wrong with trying new things, just give yourself time to adjust to it. You have to time yourself to the gun; the gun doesn’t time itself to you. 

            I like to tear my press down to the bare frame every year during the off-season. (It’s a good idea to load a bunch of ammo before you do this, just in case) It’s a good time to clean, inspect, lube, and replace the small parts that wear out when mass-producing ammo. Make sure that you clean and inspect your dies as well. They do wear out. I usually go through each die with a caliber specific jag and cotton patch to clean out the build up. Pipe cleaners from a craft or hobby store work well for cleaning primer feed and pick-up tubes, and small holes in progressive machines. If you don’t have a case gauge, go get one. There’s no excuse for out of spec ammo to be put into your magazines. When you’re ready to load ammo again, make sure that your ammo is back to your original specs and go chronograph the load. I like to load to 5 points over power factor (170/130). If your power factor and overall length are right for your gun, it should be easy loading from here.

            Hopefully you’ve had a great holiday season with friends and family. Your (insert a favorite family member here) cooking probably added a few pounds. That’s okay. That’s what the holidays should be. Now that the overeating good food days are over, it’s time to start preparing for shooting. We shoot a very demanding sport. We can shoot a five-stage club match or a twenty-stage National Championship over three to five days. Some people have no problem shooting a club match, but get worn down shooting a twelve-stage Area match. For some, an Area match is no problem but a 5-day Nationals wears them down. No matter your skill level or ambition, there are a few important things to work on to improve your shooting: stretching and endurance. 

            Make sure to do a stretching routine for at least fifteen to twenty minutes a day. If you’re on a tight schedule, make your legs and back the main focus. Otherwise, do a full body routine every day. We have to shoot in, move into, and get out of a lot of awkward positions. The more flexible we are, the faster we are. Being flexible also helps prevent injuries and strain on our joints.

            We can improve our endurance in many different ways. Walk your dog for an hour every day. If you don’t have a dog, take a walk anyway! I like to ride a bike when the weather permits. I’ll ride a few miles around town a few days a week, and a few friends and I will make 25+ mile trips on weekends. If you don’t have exercise equipment at home like a tread mill or stationary bike, make some trips up and down the stairs for a few minutes. Anything that you can do to get your heart rate up, and keep it up, will help your shooting and endurance. Also keep in mind that any chores we do can be shooting practice. Shoveling snow, cutting the grass, walking the dog, and washing the dishes all help our endurance and fitness. Okay, doing the dishes doesn’t count for endurance, but if you’re going to do them, focus hard and do them faster and more accurately! You really can turn any task into a “fast and accurate” shooting mentality. Another good practice is to train with weight above your normal shooting equipment weight. Weigh yourself first, then, get a weight with your gun, mags, shooting bag, and ammo. Whatever the difference is put that much weight (or more) in a bag when you go for a walk or do the stairs. Keep increasing the weight every week as you workout. This is a great way to prepare yourself for the added weight and work when you’re at shooting matches. I’ll address drills and exercise in future articles.

Practice and Match Schedules:

            Start planning your practice and match schedules now. The weather is crappy so there is no reason to not be doing a lot of dry fire practice. If fact, it’s a good idea to do some dry fire outside too. Some of the early matches in the season are in cold weather and it can be a great advantage to practice in cold weather. Sometimes I’ll take my equipment to the range, with no ammo at all, and do dry fire drills outside. This is the same for rain or snow. We have to shoot matches in any weather conditions that show up that day, so practice in any weather that shows up that day. Anyone who has shot the Nationals in Tulsa knows what I mean.

            Decide how many days a week you can practice and make a schedule. It doesn’t matter if you can make the same day or time every week, but if you plan on practicing two or three days a week, then go shoot two or three days a week. If you are not helping out a local club, I highly recommend getting involved with a club program because most of the match staff has regular practice sessions. This is a great way to get into a routine practice, learn from other shooters, and have a lot of fun. For those that practice with a group, make sure to fit in some personal practice time as well. Group practicing is great, but you need at least one day per week to train alone so that you have 100% focus and can do many repetitions. This is especially important when working on drills that take more time such as movement drills.

            Try to get your major match schedule arranged as soon as possible. This can help shape your practice schedule even more. We should have a defined practice regimen to follow, but I like to put in extra practice and more defined practice two weeks prior to a major match. 

            Do you get butterflies going to a major match? Sometimes planning ahead can help relieve some of that stress. Remember, it’s not the name of the match that you’ve shot (or are going to) it’s where the match was held. We are more comfortable in known environments. Watching videos or looking at pictures can help make you more comfortable with where you are going to shoot. If I’m shooting Nationals at McDonald, I’ll watch videos from McDonald, even if they are monthly match videos. There’s a reason sports teams like home turf. Try to make any match you’re going to feel like home turf. 

            Chance favors the prepared mind. 

 

 read more ...