Last minute, I got an opportunity to attend a two day class in Las Vegas with JJ Racaza. For those not familiar with JJ, he is one of the very best sport shooters competing today, and he formerly worked as a FAM and contractor. I never did catch the name of the class. JJ is an incredible human being and a complete delight to spend time with. He literally becomes a friend from the first minute and it is sincere. He is also incredibly modest. Interesting class of some gamer friends, active duty marine, a guy running an antiterrorism team, LE, and the obligatory doctor.
The first morning was all about trigger control. JJ is absolutely a trigger control nazi and believes it is the foundation to high level shooting. Starting off he had each student, while dry firing, identify how many walls there are in their pistol. My Glock 34 had three, even with an excellent (for a Glock) trigger, and JJ remarked a stock Glock might have as many as five walls. This related to JJ's primary trigger focus, which is properly prepping the trigger. While you would not prep to all five walls, in a stock Glock for example, you would want to prep more than one wall for a difficult shot. He wants the trigger prepped while the gun is in recoil, so as not to disturb the sights. His take on shooting fast, is you get your speed by prepping fast and efficiently, more than by pressing the trigger fast. JJ said he has spent thousands and thousands of rounds shooting ten shot sequences at one inch targets out to ten yards. His goal is all ten shots in and to do that he concentrates on shooting each shot as an individual shot, with proper prep and sight alignment, and not falling in the trap of just firing at a cadence.
The first afternoon was about transitions. JJ differentiates between "flat lining" where the sights go up, down and then transition, versus an aggressive movement to the next target while the sights are still lifting. JJ is incredibly physical and his transitions are violent, with his arms looser, right up until he clamps to decelerate the pistol while prepping the trigger onto the next target. He is not a super fast split-er, and feels shooting the first and second shot at similar speed is more predictable and allows him to better aggressively transition. He believes there is more time to be made up with transitions than fast splits.
We shot numerous six shot Bill drills from 10-25 yards, and he wanted every shot in the A zone or it was a fail and to be repeated. Even though JJ is a game shooter, many to most of his drills were one attempt with 100 percent accuracy required to pass.
Day two started with JJ's philosophy on movement. JJ described his focus on movement as a necessity when competing with Max Michel and Eric Grauffel due to his circumstances. Max and Eric were shooting every day, where JJ was working full time as a FAM. One perk of being a FAM was he could carry his competition gun and rig with him in his baggage, and he would dry fire in the hotel room, focusing on movement. His belief is he would never be able to shoot as well as Max and Eric, which is partly his modesty, but that he would try to blend his athleticism with best practice technique to move better than them. He breaks down movement into 90/10 percent. He believes the ninety precent is after you exit and before you enter a shooting position, and thinks it hardly matters beyond moving as aggressively as you can. The technique part falls into the 10 percent which is shooting out, shooting on the move and shooting into position.
JJ started us off with a 48 shot drill, which is eight strings of shooting six shots (two each target) into three targets while moving between 5 and 15 yards. String one is six shots moving forward. String 2 is six shots moving backwards. String 3 is moving diagonally from left to right. String 4 is diagonally from right to left. Strings 5 and 6 are the same just backwards. String 7 is moving left at 10 yards and string 8 is moving right. You fail if you have more than 4 C hits (that means 44/48 A zone hits) and if you shoot a D, you have to give him (temporarily) a magazine. You start holstered, and step one is to get a firing grip on your pistol before moving (more on loading your body later). He is very picky about good sight pictures, prepping the trigger, and shooting each shot individually. He mentioned that you are generally more stable shooting with one foot in the air, as the impact of a foot touching can disturb the sight picture. Fair amount of discussion of body mechanics shooting different directions, beyond the scope of this review.
Next up was shooting out of position, which involved a lean, causing you to end up after the shot, several paces in your intended direction. Discussion of shooting upright versus down and loaded, with a general rule that each time you end upright costs you .25 to get down and loaded to move. Shooting into position, as opposed to crashing in, with the gun up with much of the aiming and prepping done as you come in.
We spent the bulk of the afternoon on a variety of different field courses that involved difficult shooting with movement opportunities to save time. I quickly figured out that I need to learn the movement part to a subconscious level, as trying to focus on movement buggers up my shooting. The day ended with a drill shooting 6 six inch plates, running backwards seven yards, repeating, and repeating again -- except one miss on a plate and you were done. Despite being a hit factor oriented gamer, JJ placed a very high priority on one shot/one hit accountability throughout the course.
In summary, this course could be reduced to trigger, transitions and movement, with the movement instruction from JJ the best I have been exposed to. I put JJ right there with Robbie Leatham and Manny Bragg in terms of his ability to instruct at a high level, and this course was just what I needed now to both help me with my USPSA skills and reinforce my ongoing interest in trigger control. JJ is highly recommended!
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Originally Posted by GreggW
