I'm Megan Porsche with High Desert Guardian. Today we're going to be going over how you get into competitive shooting. So, USPSA, IDPA, all that good stuff. I'm new to it, so I've been trying to peg Raul down for a little while now. So, I'm very excited. I think this will be very beneficial for all of you guys. If you want to move past the basics of, you know, self-defense, this is the next step that is going to get you feeling more than confident with your firearm. So, that's why we have Ro here with us today. I think you're going to like it. [Music] [Music] So, I'm so used to my Glock, but it's not a race gun. It's not a competition gun then like right. Well, this depends what what uh division you're going to shoot. Yeah. The division I mean like like your XC over there that would put you in in open division. That is race gun. This is my competition gun. It's not considered a race gun. It's just a basically a little a modified over-thec counter gun. Yours if you wanted to shoot carry optics division, you'd have to take off the magwell. Otherwise, it puts you in carry OP or limited division, which is fine, but then you're shooting against people who are shooting 2011s. One of our highest level shooters, Sam Matt, he's a grandmaster shooter, and he does everything with a Glock. Really? 100%. He made Grandmaster with a Glock. Yeah. Nice. And he beats everybody with his Glock. So, it really comes down to training and just training with what you got. Yep. This is what I'm most comfortable with. I want to become really really comfortable with my XC, but I haven't gotten a holster for it yet. If I have a competition gun, you have to have your match gun. Then you have to have a practice gun. Then if I'm going to car shoot that in competition, that means I'm going to be shooting that the majority of the time in practice. So then I need to have a 2011 carry gun cuz I'm not going to cuz I can't switch from a Glock to a freaking 2011. You know what this sounds like? This reminds me of the women's shoe dilemma. You have to have the right shoe for the right outfit. And you can't always cross that shoe over to this other outfit. All right, we're going to just work on a basic drill here. And this drill is to get you ready for the type of shooting in USPSA. And what you're going to see a lot in USPSA is well, first you're going to see a lot of paper targets and you're going to see a few steel targets. And sometimes they might be some smaller target. A lot of times the steel targets are a little bit smaller and so you're going to be trying to go as fast as you can on these on these uh paper targets and you might have to slow down a little bit to confirm your sights a little bit better, confirm your trigger. So you're going to slow down just a little bit to get those small targets and then you're going to speed up again on the paper targets. And so you're going to see a lot of that where you're having the what we call changing gears. Basically how fast that you are uh shooting the confirmation level of your sights like how how much do I have to confirm my sights? Does it does my red dot have to be perfectly still or can it be moving around on that target and then prep the trigger on a difficult target or do I need to just because it's a close enough target that I can just kind of slap the trigger. Right. So, we'll do a little bit of that. So, what I'm going to have you do here is I'm going to have you face down range here. I'm going to have you go ahead and make ready. So, when you say the term make ready, that typically just means, you know, take your gun out, put your magazine in the gun, rack it, and then put it back in the holster. And that's typically how they'll have you start a stage. So, what we're going to have you do here is I want you to draw and you want to draw as fast as you can on this close-range target. At least two shots to the center mass of the target, which is the A zone. You're going to transition over to the red steel target or the orange steel target there. I want you to get one shot on that. And then you're going to go back over to this bigger target, and you're going to kind of speed up and fire two quick shots on this. All right. I'm going to try to demonstrate this and see how well I can do. I'm going to shoot two on paper, one on steel, two on paper. And all we're going to do, some people call this sight picture or u attack and control targets. You're basically attacking these bigger targets, kind of controlling your sight pitcher and your trigger control a little bit more on the small targets. And so that's why they're called attack and control targets. Some people just call it like a throttle control targets as well. Shooter ready. Standby. Grab that delay. And so you could hear the difference in the the cadence of shooting, right? And that's what we're kind of listening for here. And so what happens here, what you're looking at here is I I got an alpha hit here. And because I was trying to go fast and trying to get to that next target, I'm kind of dragging my sights off and shooting as the gun is moving, which I need to make sure that I shoot one and then I see the sight lift off that second that second shot before I move over. Yeah, this is not signature round. That's not what you want. Right. And then we got two alpha over there. But you heard if you go back and listen, you know, watch the video, you you can hear the difference in the cadence of shooting, right? I love finding a cadence when I shoot. Like it actually keeps me focused more, but I think it's just because I'm used to working with a metronome as a musician. So if I can lock onto a beat that I know I want to keep, that helps me pace myself. So if I know I have a tendency to just rush way too much, I will, you know, start start out in my own practice and think, okay, I know I can hit this one at a tempo of bup, you know, and so I'll thinkup bup and I'll just keep that locked in my head, and that's what I'll try and and do. But I watched a video of a a grandmaster shooter and he talked about using a metrodome to be able to learn how to shoot fast. Yeah, that's what I've I've actually really enjoyed using a metronome because Well, maybe you need to train me on that because I haven't figured that part out yet. Yeah, I should have brought my metronome. Actually, I do a really good job keeping a beat myself. Five, six, seven. But this is a good way. Again, I know we've said it over and over, but again, if you want to get to that next level of shooting, I really think it's important to go out and compete and get into USPSA or IDP or some, you know, three gun or something like that. I just think it's there's no better way than to get better at shooting than competing. Yeah. And I'll try to take your advice and not not be too intimidated. It's just fun. Just get out and go have fun. Don't take it too serious. Yeah. Ready? Stand [Music] by. There we go. Good. Now, let's uh look at this and we'll we can go by and we'll score it. If you go to your uh phone, you can download if you look up a um hit factor calculator, you will get find an app and it will help you score it. So, these were your two shots here that you just got. So that's we would score that two alpha. All right. And then we go over to this paper here and you got alpha Charlie. Alpha Charlie. And then we got our steel. All right. And it's 3.78. 3.78 was your time. And that gives us a hit factor of 6.08. And so that would go in as your score. Mhm. All right. So, what was the time? 247. 247. Then we had alpha delta. Right. And then over here we had two alpha. Yeah. Two alpha and then the steel. So that was an 8.5. The reason why my mine is higher is because of the speed aspect because I shot Yeah, cuz you were like a second faster cuz I think I was a three something. Yeah. In this type of shooting, I speed is going to be always favored a little bit more than just the points, but you got to have both. Well, and then that's something too I want to touch on is because if you're anything like me, you're really afraid to miss shots. If you're a perfectionist at all, that can that can really hold you back because I just want to make every shot perfect, you know, and you can't do that when you are learning to be faster. Like if you are pushing yourself the way that you should be pushing yourself, you are going to be missing some shots. Shots will not be perfect. When you get out and practice especially, you got to push yourself and not to be afraid to miss. That way you know what it feels like to miss. So you can correct your mistakes later. But yeah, so if you're just always afraid to miss, that means that you're overconfirming your sights. You got to understand that, hey, as soon as I see that color red, depending on the size of target, I'm I'm just pulling the trigger. Mhm. Yeah. And that's that is a weakness of mine is overing my sights sometimes cuz I'm I'll go and practice and I'll be super fast. I'll run a course of fire, you know, maybe in 8 seconds and then I'll see the same course of fire at a match and I'm doing it in 10 seconds because I'm slowing down cuz I don't I don't want to miss but you got to be able to push yourself. So, all right. So, what you're going to see in USPSA is you're going to have a course of fire with multiple targets. You might have to go from left to right and then back to center again. And what you're going to see is you're going to see a lot of what they call shooting boxes. We got this kind of drawn out in the sand here. And they will require you can run outside of those shooting areas if you think, hey, I can take a shortcut and go this way versus this way. You can run run out of the shooting boxes, but you have to be inside the shooting boxes when you take the shots. So if you if this is the edge of my shooting box and I have one foot out and one foot in, that's considered out. So I'd be getting penalties if I'm shooting here. So I got to make sure that both feet are inside these boxes. Yeah. And often times it's like it's like raised like uh Yeah. It'll be like thin boards. Yeah. Piece of wood. And even if you're like you can step on that on that piece of wood. But then if your toe touches down on the outside, that's a penalty, too. We're going to just work on doubles on this target here on the right. Okay. Okay. So, you're going just actually you're going to, this is what I'm going to have you do. We'll start out from this position here. All right. So, timer's going to go off and it's going to be basically a four a four round drill shooting two shots at a time. So, you're going to be one, two, pause, one, two. All right. We're going to just basically they're going to be hammered pairs. You're going to shoot as fast as you possibly can trying to get them all in the A zone. And if your sights are jumping all over the place or your rounds are not going where you need to go, you need and you need to adjust your grip typically tighter in order to be able to get those shots in there. So, it's going to be something like this, right? So, you hear that? So, two, one, two, pause, one, two. Yep. And I'm just shooting as fast as I see that dot bounce inside that A zone. All right. So, go ahead and get the gun out. And this will help you so that you can shoot a little bit faster and make sure your grip is good. All right. On the buzzer. Ready? Stand [Music] by. There you go. Keep the gun up. Do it again. Stand by. So, what are you seeing as far as your sight picture? When you see that dot, you just kind of see it in a red flash. Just kind of do that. Just kind of a flash. Okay. So, that just understand. Look at you're getting them all in the A zone. So one one in the C, but but just understand it. That's really all you need to see. Yeah. So because you're overconfirming your sights trying to get that Azone hit. And here you got them all but one. Right. And so typically what h the reason why you shoot high like that is you your eyes start to follow the dot. Yep. Instead of staring at a specific point on the target. Okay. So find a bullet hole or a piece of tape to stare at. And let's do it again. And don't follow the dot up. There you go. Good. So, USPSA, like I say, I like it because especially like the majority people that I know seems like they want to have a gun at home for self-defense. That's most reason why people come through my classes cuz I teach a lot of concealed carry type classes. And I tell people, you really need to go out and compete because that's where you're going to learn how to shoot under stress. I had a friend of mine who he was a special forces guy. He was over in Iraq and uh he said they were over there. He goes, "We had a lot of shootouts." He goes, "We're killing people." He goes, "I came home on leave and one of my buddies like, "Hey, there's this pistol match, you know, down the road." He goes, "Let's let's go down there." He goes, "Yeah, I was sitting around bored. Nothing to do." So, I went down there and he says that they call his name. He goes up to the box and they say, "Load, make ready." And he starts uh he says he puts a magazine in, racks it, puts the gun in his holster, and he's getting ready to hear the timer go off. And he says he all he could feel was like his heart was going to jump out of his chest. He goes, "I was so much more nervous doing that." He goes, "And being over in Iraq." He goes, "We're over there killing people and getting shot at." He goes, "And I'm standing here to shoot pieces of paper." He goes, "And my nerves," he goes, "We're he" He goes, "Yeah." He goes, "My" He goes, "Man," he goes, "I got beat by like a 15-year-old girl." And he goes, "I'm this special forces dude." He goes, "My heart was getting ready to jump out of my chest." And so he told me, he goes, that's why he felt that USPSA type competition was also very valuable for somebody like him who was in special forces. Yeah. Cuz it'll keep you in that that uh prepared state. And when you you got to not really think about it. It's you're just training the gun handling part, right? It's not learning tactics. It's just learning the gun handling. And people need to get away from, oh, I'm there to train to, you know, for this crazy self-defense scenario. just go out and have fun and just learn how to use your gun because the fundamentals don't change when you're doing comparative shooting versus in a self-defense scenario. You still have to see the sights correctly. You still have to pull the trigger correctly in order to be able to hit your target no matter what the target is. So, don't get all, you know, thinking it's this John Wick thing. Just go out and shoot, compete, and have a good time, and it will translate over to however you're going to apply those fundamentals. Yep. Yeah, I agree completely. And you learn better and uh more effectively when you are having a good time versus if you are learning out of fear. Fear is what I would call like a caffeinated motivator, you know, like it it gives you enough of a, you know, jolt to maybe get you started and sign up for a class, but then it can kind of fizzle out, okay, depending on, you know, how how you're feeling. And so I think it's better to get into this just as a a fun sport because that's what it is. And chances that you're ever going to have to use it for self-defense thankfully are minimal. It's, you know, it's minimal. So learn it as a fun sport. And uh if you get other friends to come and join you, then it's going to be even more enjoyable. All right. So, I hope that you got enough out of today's episode that you are inspired to check out the USPSA website place you can go to get started and find local matches near you and take a friend with you. It makes it all that more enjoyable. So, learn it, train it, own it.