My laundry list of practice needs

[Tim James]

I just started USPSA a few months ago and I've got 3 or 4 solid practices under my belt with the XD9 Tactical. I even took notes, and now I have a better idea of what I need to work on.

So far I've been shooting for accuracy at 15 yards and doing a little rapid fire into the berm. At home I practice trigger pull and reloads. I haven't done any movement practice at all since I didn't think it was necessary at this point. I can't even hit some targets no matter how long I take, so I thought I should work on that first.

Things I need to work on:

• Flinching. This actually isn't that bad, only intermittent. Maybe one shot out of every 7 or 8 goes way outside. I use snap caps every now and then to check myself, but I can usually tell when one goes way off anyway.
• Palming/milking or failing to pull the trigger straight back. When shooting right handed at an 8" circle, all my shots are in about a 4" circle in the lower left quadrant of the big circle. More left than low. When I shoot left handed, they go to the same place but on the right side. So it's not the gun. I think this may be a trigger squeeze problem more than milking the gun because I notice it in dry-fire sometimes too. Need to move my first two finger digits straight back instead of pushing left on the follow-through.
• Blinking. Sometimes I even do it with the .22. Already double plugging, although my shades let a little more sound in. Sometimes I can "calmly observe my eyes" (a la Brian Enos) and keep myself from blinking, but it still happens almost half the time.
• Grip. I don't know if it's from sweating in this heat in the middle of the day or what, but I can't maintain an acceptable grip after 2 or 3 shots. Maybe I should try grip tape to keep my support hand locked in.
• My bench rest shooting with the XD9 isn't that much better than offhand. I need to read up on how to do this properly again.

Things I'm doing well on:

• I can see the sights bounce around a bit when I shoot at a moderately fast pace into the berm!
• Accuracy isn't that bad for most USPSA targets, although my groups are all off to the left.

I've read the Enos forums and have a general practice plan. I just wanted to post this for moral support!

[deltafred]

good to see that you know your faults and are willign to accept them. that is the first step to improving. good luck.

just my 2 cents on the low shot groups: your sight picture adn sight alignment may be off a tad bit. i can justify those comments without seeing you shoot and where you are hitting. make sense? remember, this is my opinion.