Reload drills at the range

[qua77ro]

Somewhat rusty for not having shot this gun in almost half a year

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YF6Yccj29tg

[Voo]

You should be practicing RELOADING and not firing 7-8 shots and then reload. It should be, shoot, reload shoot. THere's very little benefit in shooting a big string and then popping in 1 or 2 reloads if what you're doing is trying to practice reloads. It's simply not efficient practice.

Also, reloading without a timer is almost moot. You have no measure of whether you're improving or not. That's why I mentioned the shoot, reload, shoot type of practice. If you had a timer, you can measure your shot to shot time and see if it gets reduced as well as seeing whether or not your accuracy suffers after you shift from reloading back to shooting. How long is it taking you, once the gun goes empty, for you to drop the magazine, lower the gun, reach for a new magazine, insert the magazine, raise the gun back up to eye level, re-acquire your target and fire?? Thinking you're somehow faster isn't the same as having an objective device read off a time and going, 'wow, that didnt really help at all" or "wow, I was faster but speeding up made me miss the target completely". It's better to have "Ok, that worked, when I do that, I'm faster as well as not having any detriment in my shot placement"

I shot competitively for a few years. Like most sports, once you start taking it seriously, you start looking at things like mechanics and efficient training regiments. What you're doing, while it may seem useful, isn't really good practice. You need to look at what's happening fundamentally and consider the economy of your motions. Practice is repeating a singular motion, precisely- Good practice is doing it efficiently and correctly. If I asked you where your hands were, where your eyes were, where the gun was, how would you respond? Are the positions ideal for speed? defense? Did you realize you dropped the gun about a foot for the reload? Why? If your eyes need to be on the threat or target, why is the gun out of your view when you reload? Reloading using your peripheral is a recipe for bad/fumbled reloads, which cost you more time and even worse, can cause your focus to shift entirely to the space right in front of you instead of what's "out there"..

You can simply practice dropping magazines without the shooting.. It's really not much different.. Drop the mag, insert a new one, reacquire a fixed target. This way you're not mixing in anything else and purely focusing on reloading.. which is a peculiar skill in and of itself.. It's tedious and boring, but you can see where you can gain time or see if you're doing anything fundamentally wrong..

[9mmepiphany]

i would agree with what Voo has posted...assuming that your goal was to practice reloading

the two obvious changes that i would suggest is to keep your gun higher and to look the mag into the mag well. i seemed a bit dis-jointed, but i only watched it a couple of times. i think you're releasing the mag too early in the process...maybe we just learned to do it differently

[ir0nclash86]

Still not bad. Alot better then your average shooter. I don't even practice handgun drills so youd blow me away easy. One thing to remember though while reloading with any weapon. Keep your eyes and weapon on the target and not on your magazine or gun while reloading.

[Black Majik]

I agree with Vu and Tang here of course. One more bit of advice would be to index your magazines having your index finger along the side of your mag while you reload. This will help ensure a more precise entry into the magwell (while looking in your magwell and gun level) instead of a magazine fumble trying to cram the magazine into the magwell.

[nn3453]

Thinking you're somehow faster isn't the same as having an objective device read off a time and going, 'wow, that didnt really help at all" or "wow, I was faster but speeding up made me miss the target completely". It's better to have "Ok, that worked, when I do that, I'm faster as well as not having any detriment in my shot placement"

As someone who got into competitive shooting not too long ago (so I bring a less experienced viewpoint), I completely agree with this. The timer doesn't lie. When I think "man, that was fast" turns out I was actually slow or made no progress. When I think "wow, that seemed slow," my scores have actually been okay because I managed to hit everything

Good luck!

[BamBam-31]

^^^Economy of motion. Smooth and fast. Travis is amazing.

You don't have to be at the range to practice reloading. Just do what's in the video. There's some guy on the Enos forum that taped a cardboard box on top of a stool to catch all his fallen mags. (I think he also put a towel in there to cushion the fall.) That way, you don't have to bang up your mags or bend over to pick them up every time. Just set the stool in front of you, line up front sights on small target on the wall, perform reload, and re-acquire target. Rinse, wash, repeat.

ETA: Note that Travis "looks" his mags into his magwell. Also note that he hardly moves or lowers the gun during the entire process. It's still up and in his "workspace."

[qua77ro]

Fwiw it's a fun video, my when practicing I usually load the mags up with a mix of rd cts (2-4 usually) each and I don't count. Shoot and when empty reload. That video just had first two loaded up with 10 each.

Another from same trip. Great tips though guys keep them coming. NOt sure how good a timer will work considering there are other shooters there too

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0hmBzOFHuck

[BamBam-31]

^^^Keep your gun up during your reloads.

[qua77ro]

^^^Keep your gun up during your reloads.

Tip noted. Will practice that more.

[9mmepiphany]

One more bit of advice would be to index your magazines having your index finger along the side of your mag while you reload. This will help ensure a more precise entry into the magwell (while looking in your magwell and gun level) instead of a magazine fumble trying to cram the magazine into the magwell.

good catch richard, i was wondering why it looked awkward, but i've got the F1 race starting.

when you just grab the base of the mag with your fingers wrapped around the bottom, you give up any directional sense of where the feed lips/bullets are.

ETA: Note that Travis "looks" his mags into his magwell. Also note that he hardly moves or lowers the gun during the entire process. It's still up and in his "workspace."

also note that he doesn't release the mag in the gun until the fresh mag in the pouch is on the way up

[HighLander51]

All that practice is too much trouble, try this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ityM6mMvpbs

[BamBam-31]

good catch richard, i was wondering why it looked awkward, but i've got the F1 race starting.

when you just grab the base of the mag with your fingers wrapped around the bottom, you give up any directional sense of where the feed lips/bullets are.

You can see Travis doing this in the slow-mo from the front--he's indexing his finger when he grabs the fresh mag.

also note that he doesn't release the mag in the gun until the fresh mag in the pouch is on the way up

^^^Or his weak hand is just faster than gravity.

ETA: To again emphasize keeping your gun up during reloads, look at how little Travis' red dot moves from his line of sight. From the front view, you see his right eyeball thru the optic, he tilts the gun a little for the lightning reload, then you see his eyeball again. Bam. He's on target again that much faster because he literally moved his gun only inches off-line.

[Fishslayer]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLk1v5bSFPw

And yes... his shots are on target...

[9mmepiphany]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLk1v5bSFPw



And yes... his shots are on target...

i'm curious as to how a clip of a fast revolver reload relates to improving someones technique in reloading their semi-automatic...the motions aren't even vectorially related