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Mr_White
02-27-2015, 03:38 PM
Week 101: Mag Retrieval 500

Results may be posted until March 27th, 2015.

For this drill, all you need is your spare magazine in whatever you carry it in – no pistol, target, or safe direction is required (for purposes of the drill, if you are wearing a pistol it will remain holstered.)

When working for a faster reload, one of the areas where many people have an opportunity for gains is in more efficiently retrieving the spare magazine. This is a very simple drill for use in working to retrieve that magazine reliably and at the full speed you can move.

Start with your hands held out in front of you as if gripping a pistol, even though you are not actually holding a pistol. Retrieve your spare magazine with your support hand as rapidly as you can, taking care to acquire a consistent index on the magazine, and bring the magazine toward your strong hand as you would if you were going to reload a real pistol. Repeat ~ 500 times.

It's not important that you do exactly 500 repetitions. Do more or less if you prefer.

What is important: Explode into motion. Get moving as abruptly as you can and drive your hand to the magazine at the full speed you can move. Clear any concealment and acquire a clean and correct index on the magazine. One of the clearest kinds of feedback that you have not gotten a correct index on the magazine is having difficulty cleanly inserting it into the magazine well. Since inserting the magazine is not part of this particular drill, you need to be mentally disciplined in indexing the magazine properly. When you make a mistake, try to notice what you did wrong and pay attention to correcting it. If you carry more than one spare magazine, retrieve the spare magazine from all your pouches over the course of this drill.

Please report the magazine, magazine pouch, and concealment used (if any, concealment is optional), and anything you noticed during the drill.

Training with firearms is an inherently dangerous activity. Be sure to follow all safety protocols when using firearms or practicing these drills. These drills are provided for information purposes only. Use at your own risk.

ssb
03-05-2015, 08:47 PM
For the time being, I dug up a CCC Basic Mag Carrier for the Glock. I've got it flipped around and I'm wearing it at the appendix position, IWB, and using a G17 mag w/ a Vickers floorplate. Why? Even though it's a clip-on OWB, both mag retention and concealment are much better doing this. I plan to repeat this once JMCK sends me my new mag pouch. But, in the mean time...

1. I'm a big fan of reverse-canted mags at this position. Grabbing the mag when straight up and down at the ride height the BMC puts it at forces my wrist into an unnatural position. Since concealment of a spare mag sucks anywhere else for me, I'll be keeping the mag at appendix.
2. I'm at a bit of a loss here. Option A) I can treat the mag just as I would a one-handed draw, where I'll yank the shirt up to about my nipple height and then rush down and grab the mag. This results in a slower draw, but also a more consistent (read: no shirt in the way) draw. Option B) I can grab the shirt forward of the mag pouch (roughly 12 o'clock), bring it up and over towards my side, and drive back to the mag. This is a faster draw, but there's more risk of the shirt binding on the mag. Speed is a goal for me, but since I'm not a competition guy reliable access will always take priority.
3. At the end, I did about 100 of these with an empty pistol and magazine. I split it in half with slide-locked and slide-closed. If I'm all dressed up, I may as well...
4. I do not have a reliable way to time dry fire, so I'm stuck with par times. At the end of this process, I'm hanging out on the beep with a 2.5s par time for the completed reload. I don't know what constitutes a "good" or "good enough" time on reloads, so I really can't tell you where that leaves me.

Range1
03-07-2015, 11:04 AM
Glock 34/17 magazine using a CompTac single magazine holder under open front jacket

Spread this out over several days and honestly lost count of how many reps. I just did them until I could not do another one or my concentration was non-existent. I did this a couple time a day.

Noticed the usual for me, it is easy for my mind to start wandering during repeated tasks so I have to really force myself to concentrate on the job at hand. Staying somewhat relaxed made movements smoother. Really concentrating on little things paid big dividends. Tried to keep moving at a speed that was just barely in control. Movements seemed to be a little bit smoother and faster each day.

Looking forward to getting out to the range for live fire work since the weather is finally improving here. I am anxious to see how this translates to actual performance.

EricM
03-26-2015, 12:12 PM
Completed with G17 mag under a T-shirt in JM Custom Kydex AIWB single pistol mag pouch. Split this up into a number of sessions last week and this week. After getting several hundred reps in, I started transitioning into Reload 5000 by doing 25-50 mag retrievals at the beginning of each session and then moving on to in-battery reloads.

I don't normally carry a spare mag but have been meaning to find a decent way to do it; tried a few different options prior to "officially" starting this DOTW and I do like the JMCK AIWB SPMP. I'll be ordering a couple more, with lower ride height than the one I've got now.

I was honestly surprised at how smoothly the reps went; I credit the recent grip and draw drills for getting me in the groove for consistently clearing the concealment garment and moving quickly. I felt my index on the mag was very repeatable, hopefully that doesn't change too much with a lower ride height. If my mental focus slipped, not aggresively clearing the shirt was the symptom.

Corey
03-26-2015, 02:41 PM
I used my usual Blade-Tech mag carrier with M&P full size mags. I spread it out of a few days and did a mix of open front concealment and no concealment. I did notice that as I progressed through this drill, my index on the magazine got a lot more consistent. I hope this translates to more consistent reloads for me. I also noticed that my arm movement to the magazine has not been consistent. This drill really helped with breaking down the movements and not only eliminating wasted motion and slow movements, but getting consistent with it.

ssb
03-26-2015, 11:49 PM
Had some unexpected free time tonight. Todd's blog post from last week (http://pistol-training.com/archives/9426)caused me to revisit this drill.

I'm now using a JMCK AIWB-SMP for a G17 mag which I had him cut for a lower ride, as that's necessary to prevent rollout for me (especially if/when I decide to add +2 baseplates to my G17 mags). The pouch works equally well with my two G17 mags and my two G19 +2 mags. The G17 mags use Vickers baseplates, as the extra width and thumb grooves help me grasp the mag a little better.

On the list: buy more mags. I only have seven right now, and four of them are dedicated range mags that I keep in my car. Since it was raining, I decided to be lazy and unload my carry mags.

On the list 2: do more reloads.

First, I started the session with a few cold slidelock reloads. I wanted to get a baseline, and I was running at about 2.7s simulated shot-to-shot using my normal technique, which involves using my strong hand to ensure the mag comes out, and basically involves tossing it behind me as I drop my arm for the spare (IIRC, I saw this way back when in one of Southnarc's PSPs and incorporated that into my technique). I've decided to play with changing this up by immediately running for the spare mag once the slide locks instead of ripping it out, and that was the end of this evening's session.

In keeping with that potential modification, I started the drill with the pistol at full extension and at slidelock, in order to get some reps in going for the mag from that position. Concealment was my usual casual wear (Oxford + jeans).

Observations:
1) This is the first time I've worked up a sweat doing dry practice, FWIW. I'd estimate about 250 repetitions before I was burned out. I worked hard on really getting moving once the first beep sounded (using a par timer). This portion got about 100.
2) I think I'd benefit speed-wise from a slightly higher mag position. Basically, I'm losing time getting a firm grasp on the mag (i.e. thumb and base of index finger into the grooves on the Vickers plates, index finger along the front of the mag) because it's lower. However, I'm not willing to sacrifice concealability to get that at this time.
3) Grasping and clearing the concealment garment was more refined. I'm almost moving my arm in a circle motion, grabbing the left half of my shirt and pulling up and back and then releasing and moving quickly to the magazine. No fumbling about here after a few repetitions, which I was pleased with. Further, the movement to the mag is in line with the cant of the mag pouch, which is probably why this technique works for me.
4) I've taken to cutting my reload practice into timed increments to work on each individual part. From slidelock to grasping the magazine takes about 1.3s (par) when I'm worked up. I'm going to guess it's more in the 1.5s range cold, but that'll be revisited in subsequent sessions.

From this point, I moved to an empty (no magazine, slide locked) pistol indexed where it would be when performing a reload. I wasn't inserting the magazine at this time.

1) Overall, I felt my movements to the pistol were very clean. Much like my drawstroke, I've focused on using my index finger to point at where I want the mag (or gun) to go, and that works well here.
2) Estimated par time from grasping (start) to completion (at the pistol) was about .5-.6s. Again, I worked hard on keeping that momentum going.
3) I'd say I did about 50 reps of this. Again, overall I felt pleased with where I was at. Unfortunately, now comes the next part...

Now that I'd gotten here, I went forward with inserting the mag into the gun. This is where the wheels started to come off.

1) That clean movement described above? Turns out it isn't always in line with the magwell, so I'm missing every now and then.
2) Once I'm done playing isitinyet?, I run into another issue: the magazine wants to hang up at the mag catch on occasion. I've reversed the Gen 4 mag catch for trigger finger activation, which I'm pleased with. However, I've really got to slam the mag home to overcome that hang up if it occurs. It doesn't occur 100% of the time (I'd say 2/5 times I'll feel a little resistance, and maybe 1/10 I'll actually get a hangup that needs to be slammed through). I'm wondering if there's something I can round off without affecting function, but that's another topic.
3) I worked with actually inserting the magazine at a slight angle and, as I apply pressure, letting the curve on the side of the mag do the rest of the work for me WRT insertion. The good news is that this is smooth on insertion. The bad news is that my mag-in-hand isn't always in the right place (see 1).

I gave this about 25 reps. After that, I moved to a full slidelock reload. One observation with the change discussed above (not taking the empty mag with me as I went for the spare) was that mag ejection was not consistent; sometimes, the mag does not drop free. I think this is more of a function of how I hit the mag release than anything else, because if I'm sloppy with my finger position/where I'm applying pressure, it will hang up. Experimenting, I think the issue is that I'm not applying consistent pressure to it, and occasionally coming to the release at a bad angle. So, overall, I'll chalk that up to a me issue and not a gun issue and will work on getting a good release off.

The good news: I was down to 2.2s on the par timer, and I can do 2.3-2.4s on demand from simulated shot-to-shot. After the mag practice, I gave myself 50 draws from concealment and then revisited the full slidelock reload. With that break in practice, I did five reloads right on the 2.2s par beep, so I'll call that 2.3s elapsed. All five were fumble-free. I decided to leave the practice happy with those results. Cf. my last FAST (Wednesday afternoon), where my first on-demand reload was a 3.14 (6.64s clean) and my fastest of the three was a 2.97. I'm effectively wasting half of my time on that particular drill fumbling about with my reload. I'll have to see how this plays out in live fire.

Mr_White
03-27-2015, 12:25 PM
Did the drill, spread out over a number of dry fire sessions.

Used G17 magazines with OEM + 2 extensions, Blade-Tech single magazine pouches, and a t-shirt or polo shirt depending on the day.

It is so easy for me to short stroke clearing the shirt. Clearing the shirt is key to getting consistent grip on the magazine, and consistent grip on the magazine is key to the rest of the reload. And that's what the drill was about for me more than anything else - cleanly clearing the shirt. Tension is a killer on that.

40Green
03-27-2015, 03:47 PM
Did this spread out in a few places with duty gear and concealment with P2000 magazines. Sitting in the drivers seat of the truck presented the most challenges. Seat belts get in the way more than I expected they would, the closed flaps provided the biggest issues (truck was parked the whole time I did this). Once clearing the seat belt was worked out it was fairly easy to index the mag just took more time than I wanted it to take. I also did some strong hand only magazine draws. The motion still feels strange but I got comfortable performing the draw with my strong hand.

Fumbling the shirt on the concealment draws slowed me down there. I slowed that down and took the time to figure out where I was getting hung up. I need to shoot more from concealment in general and practice this reload more as it isn't something I spend a lot of time practicing.