{"id":10960,"date":"2011-07-29T17:51:13","date_gmt":"2011-07-29T22:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/?p=10960"},"modified":"2011-07-29T17:51:13","modified_gmt":"2011-07-29T22:51:13","slug":"team-erhardt-project-blazing-saddles-here-i-come","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/team-erhardt-project-blazing-saddles-here-i-come\/10960\/","title":{"rendered":"Team Erhardt Project: Blazing Saddles Here I Come"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is the latest installment in the Team Erhardt Project series which appears on The Shooting Wire<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Look up slow in the dictionary and you’ll find a reference to my draw.<\/p>\n

It’s god-awful.<\/p>\n

But what could I expect when I did zero prep before shooting my first Steel Challenge. I don’t think I even had my holster and rig that year until it arrived direct to the hotel in Valencia, California from the maker.<\/p>\n

That gives you an idea of how much time I put into my draw. If not, then my 223rd place time of 203.56 seconds does.<\/p>\n

I know the mechanics of the draw but I never, ever practiced. Besides, how hard can it be to do it fast, right?<\/p>\n

One or two summers later I shot a local New Hampshire match. As I pulled into the lot I saw Dave Sevigny, who had moved from New England down to Georgia to work and shoot for Glock.<\/p>\n

After my shocked ‘what are you doing here?’ greeting, Dave explained he was in the area for an ice hockey power skating clinic and decided to shoot the match.<\/p>\n

A buddy and I followed Dave around before squadding with him when he shot his second gun.<\/p>\n

Watching, and shooting with, a shooter at Dave’s level quickly puts into perspective how slow your draw is – and all the other crap you’re doing wrong like grip, transitions and missing a lot.<\/p>\n

While I secretly thought I was Blazing Saddles fast<\/a>, I was really Mongo slow.<\/p>\n

Of course Dave’s speed comes from a certain amount of natural athleticism, that’s obvious, but more from what I am sure has been countless hours practicing his draw. The kind of practice that my crippling disease, chronic laziness, often prevents me from doing.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately there’s no escaping the fact that I have to improve my draw. Which means there’s no escaping the fact I have to practice.<\/p>\n

What I’ve learned over the last two months is that repetition really does improve your mechanics. My last competition showed me that as I felt much more comfortable, and smoother, reacting to the buzzer and coming out of the holster.<\/p>\n

Of course it ain’t fast, but it is, at least, more confident. From there I can push for speed.<\/p>\n

However, in order to push the speed I’d need one little piece of equipment that I had as yet failed to acquire – a timer.<\/p>\n

I knew I needed a timer to train with. The whole ‘if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it’ thing isn’t new to me, I was just, well, procrastinating.<\/p>\n

The pressure to get a timer got so bad I had random people on Facebook telling me I needed one because it improved their speed, so it’s got to help you, dummy<\/em>… that’s kinda what they said if you read between the lines.<\/p>\n

They were right of course.<\/p>\n

\"PACT<\/a>

All I can say is, Praise The Lord I got a timer to train with.<\/p><\/div>\n

On the advice of Smith & Wesson’s Tom Yost, I called Ronin Colman at PACT<\/a> about getting a Club Timer III<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Either out of kindness, generosity, admiration for my noble effort, or just because he wants a front row seat to the train wreck that could be my 2011 Steel Challenge performance (I know, I know… think positive), Ronin boxed up a PACT Club Timer III while I was still on the phone.<\/p>\n

Two days later I found a UPS box on my doorstep, and one less excuse not to practice.<\/p>\n

After a quick, and surprisingly easy, read of the instructions I had the timer running and a par time set. It was a crazy fast<\/em> 1.50 seconds.<\/p>\n

For me this is a good starting point. I have been tracking at matches my time to first shot since May. My average stage draw ranges from 1.86 (Pendulum) down to 1.31 (Smoke & Hope).<\/p>\n

\"PACT<\/a>

A 2.06 first shot? Sounds like they timed me.<\/p><\/div>\n

My worst single draw was 2.24 seconds on 5 To Go and my fastest was 1.16 on Smoke & Hope, of course.<\/p>\n

Now to put this into ugly perspective, those are times from the sound of the buzzer to my first shot. By comparison, Max Michel has run Smoke & Hope – all five targets – in a time of 1.69 seconds.<\/p>\n

My worst recorded Smoke & Hope first shot was in 1.82 seconds. By that time Max has cleared his gun and reholstered, and I still have four targets to go…assuming I hit the first one.<\/p>\n

Clearly a 1.5 second par time works as a starting point for me because I know I can do it and still process whether or not my grip is solid and that my sight picture is good.<\/p>\n

Working with the timer I quickly realized that 1.5 seconds really is a lot of time. Before I turned up the speed I practiced breaking the trigger on a good sight picture on the first target and transitioning to a second target before the second buzzer.<\/p>\n

What do you know? That worked.<\/p>\n

Feeling confident at 1.50 seconds I began to decrease the time starting with 1.40 seconds. Then down to 1.35 and 1.30.<\/p>\n

At each stop on the decreasing par time scale I focused on a solid grip, a hard look at that front sight and a controlled dryfire shot I could call a hit – on a 3 inch target at 15 feet.<\/p>\n

I even flirted with 1.20 seconds last night and was getting the shot off in time. Progressing at this rate I figure I’ll pass Sevigny to challenge Michel and K.C. Eusebio for fastest draw.<\/p>\n

So what did I learn with the timer? Well, I hate dryfiring, and you’re an idiot if you don’t get one too.<\/p>\n

Trust me, I speak from experience.<\/p>\n

– Paul Erhardt<\/p>\n

Follow the Team Erhardt Project on Twitter at @TheShootingWire<\/a>, use hashtag #TeamErhardt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Down Range TV regular contributor Paul Erhardt finds out he’s not Blazing Saddles when it comes to drawing a gun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":10964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[116,9,193],"tags":[1954,50,246,1953,59,56,1886,989],"class_list":["post-10960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bloggers","category-paul-erhardt","category-scsa","tag-club-timer-iii","tag-dave-sevigny","tag-glock","tag-pact","tag-smith-wesson","tag-steel-challenge","tag-team-erhardt","tag-tom-yost"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.downrange.tv\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}