From the range.

Two take away’s from this weekend’s day at the range:

1 – the most dangerous person on the range is the new shooter.  We did a Women on Target day and it was a great success.  Everyone had a good time and was safe.  That is because we make sure to have one instructor per shooter when we do the pistol.  Now, this is not a safety class, just the basics on safety then we move on to a closely supervised chance for women to try their hand at Pistol, Rifle, Shotgun, and Archery.  There were lots of happy faces at the end of the day so that was a big win.

As I said it went well and was a success but we did have a couple of times we had instructors pushing guns back down range before anyone got swept with a loaded gun.

Getting new folks into the shooting sports is critical, but safety is too.  When you have that new person at the range stay extra vigilant on safety folks.  I find I spend most of my time watching the gun until I know they have the safety part down, then I will move on to helping them with the group and getting on the paper.

2 – I need more range time.  During a break the head instruction let us take a few round with the range guns.  Now I could blame the dirty gun with a stock trigger but truth be told I was not happy with my shooting.  Yes, it was all on paper and good enough for self-defense but not up to the standard I want.

Time for more dry fire practice with my laser trainer and more .22 range time is called for. . . . 

Training Training Training

Had a great night last night working with our kids rifle group at my gun club.  We had a new adult club member who had experience as a competitive shooter in college stop by to help out.  He had a lot of good points and did help a lot but learned quickly you can overwhelm folks with fixes. . .

What do I mean?  When you are teaching someone a martial art (or anything for that matter) you need to limit the number of things you correct to the critical few at that moment. 

What I mean by that is give the student the safety corrections first, then work on the one or two things that will make the biggest difference in what they are doing next.  Then step back and let them work on them for a while.  Let them make the fix and internalize it. . . . only then do you go to the next item on the list of corrections.

Think about it. . . . If I give you two things to work on for the night and let you go I bet you will get better.  If I give you 10 things to work on I bet you will not only forget most of them, but will get discouraged and think about walking away. 

Everyone seems to think teaching is easy. . . until you do it.  Teaching things that deal with muscle memory are no different.  It is all about repetition so you learn the right way to do it and eventually you do it right without thinking. . . . So don’t rush your students, let them learn at their pace and you will both be happier with how quick they pick up that new skill. . . .

Trying to get moving again

OK, been a while since I have been active here. .  posts now and again but that is it. . .

Well I am going to try to fix that.  Going forward I will be posting on various martial arts, from shooting to hand to hand stuff. . . .

Also I may start putting up some of my photos and stuff on the models I have started building again. . .

Anyway we will see how it goes, so hang on folks!

= )