My wife and I just finished up a two day tutorial with Manny Bragg at Universal Shooting Academy in Frostproof, FL. This is the fourth visit we have trained with Manny, and besides being a great shooter, he is a superb teacher with unsurpassed diagnostician skills. Day one, we each shot 1,300 rounds, and with some weather delays this afternoon, shot a leisurely 850 rounds on day two. The Universal Shooting facility is world class, with near unlimited shooting bays and range equipment.
Each day followed a familiar pattern of Manny demoing drills, then my wife and I performing the drills as he measured, critiqued and encouraged. Morning one started with shooting a subset of the Garcia dot drill, drawing and firing six shots into a two inch dot at seven yards. Next was draws at 7 yards to an open international IPSC target -- part of a recurring Bragg theme of intermixing fast and slow. Manny then set up a speed reload drill, with two shots to a 5 yard open target, followed by an 8 inch steel at 20 yards after the reload.
I described an issue I was having with transitions, using the El Prez as an example. My splits would be high teens, but transitions in the .30’s. Manny first demoed an El Prez, in 4.5 seconds with excellent hits, and transitions in the low .20’s. After shooting a mid 5’s El Prez, with .30 +/- transitions, where he noted I was allowing the gun to settle on the transition before breaking the shot, Manny set up a drill he uses to work transition speed. Using the El Prez, target array, you would fire a careful shot on the right target, pin the trigger, leave the muzzle there, move your eyes to the next target, and then snap the gun to the next target, breaking the shot as the sights crossed into the A zone. After a few iterations of this, we repeated the El Prez, and I drove my transitions down into the mid 20’s. Manny also commented that very fast (sub .20 splits) on the El Prez could be disorienting, to properly tracking the sights, and have the effect of slowing down transitions. His view is more parity between transitions and splits leads to a better overall result.
Manny set up a barricade drill, with shooting positions at 23, 15 and 10 yards, with the requirement to engage two 8 inch steel at each position. The twist was it was support hand only. My wife flat out kicks butt support hand, and put down three runs that neither Manny nor I could touch. Here is one Manny filmed, not her fastest, but representative.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QouSzUa51E
Later, she celebrated by cleaning the plate rate at 50 yards, six for six, support hand only. We did a ton of plate racks, free style, strong and support hand at varying distances. I was shooting a CZ, and Manny was all over me when I would get a bit too much finger into the trigger shooting one hand. Shooting one hand, lock-up is critical, because even if your sights are on, and the trigger press is good, different levels of lock-up produce dramatically different results, since you don’t have a second arm to steady the shooting position. I also found I needed to be very diligent in watching the front sight lift one hand, because with the longer time it took to break the shot, it was easy to have my eyes start to go to the next target before the press was complete.
Throughout the day, either Manny, my wife or I would announce the long challenge was on, and we would each turn and fire a fixed number shots, often split between freestyle, support and strong hand, at either an 8 inch steel or a mini BC target at 90 yards. By the end of day one, after 1,300 rounds, I had no dings on my hands, although I could faintly see the pattern of the aggressive VZ grips in the palms of each of my hands.
Day two started with waves of support hand only targets followed by, what else, the Garcia dot drill.
A few weeks ago, Manny shot, captured on video, a new personal best of 1.95 on the plate rack at 10 yards, using his 2011 Limited gun and major .40 loads. When we last visited, his “money” or on demand plate run was 2.4-2.5 seconds. Lately, he has whittled that down to 2.3 seconds. I asked him to shoot the rack this morning. Here is a 2.23 run from this morning -- he makes it look pretty casual.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9gczXETbP4
Next Manny set up a drill that involved firing two shots at an open target at 5 yards, a transition to a steel at 25 yards, moving to another box with two to an open target, another 25 yard steel, and continued moving with mixed open targets and long steel. Here is Manny demoing it. I was caught off guard by the last rearward movement and had to run out of the way.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JPsU4s-7Hrk
Here is my wife running a subset of the same drill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJ7TKo67CjY
And me, running the drill and thinking the drill was over before the last plate fell!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zd8UfmVwlLw
Last thing before the lunch break, we shot a “polish plate rack” with Manny demoing the ideal way to shoot it, and then how to deal with disaster, if you shot it improperly and has a spinning mess. The key to hitting the spinning rack, was a combination of tracking and aggressive prepping of the trigger.
After lunch, we had a thunderstorm come through and relocated to a bay with an awning, where Manny set-up a drill that involved a draw to a close paper with two shots, a transition to an 8 inch steel at 30 yards, back to the paper, and back to the steel. It is really hard mentally to go from hammering to precision, to hammering, to more precision. Here I am running it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VikcQ-mdYTU
With the weather improving, we went on to shooting stages from a recent major tournament held at Universal. It was very interesting to see the difference in philosophy Manny has between practice, which is often balls to the wall, and stages, where he shoots at what some might call a “guaranteed hit” pace.
We finished up the day by putting the timer away, and shooting “money runs” on the plate rack freestyle, strong and support hand only, with the objective of three successive clean runs before moving from freestyle to support hand to strong hand only. Out of ammo, we were all scrapping up rounds out of our pockets and off the ground, to finish with the 8 inch steel at 90 yards. By the way, Manny’s PR is .97 from the draw at 90 yards to the 8 inch, although it took a number of attempts and is not a repeat on demand ability.
Great experience, and I highly recommend either a tutorial or general class with Manny!
PS: I have worn contact lenses for nearly 40 years, and almost never shot in glasses. Recently I got Rudy Project glasses with RX inserts, and had my regular progressive prescription put in the inserts. I shot both days with the Rudy RX glasses, and I could see my front sight like I used to be able to 20 years ago. What a treat!
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Originally Posted by Al T.
