Call me "Homer"... Sometimes, the stars align and us mere mortals get lucky.

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That is exactly the situation with Straptusa.com asking Eric Grauffel to do 2, 2-day classes, post-Shot Show, pre-Extreme Pan American IPSC in my neck of the woods. Buck and Jordan, the class organizers, curated a list of excellent shooters and extended invites to those interested. The course cost $750.00 for 2-days, lunch and beverages included.

GunCraft, is a gem of a range in Ruskin, FL, about 30 minutes north of Sarasota/Bradenton, and 30 minutes south of Tampa, along the inland side of the bay. They have a gun store, offer gunsmithing services, and do several monthly matches. I frequent the club quite a bit...

The classes were capped at 10 people each. Originally, I was supposed to take the Tuesday/Wednesday class, but had an opportunity to swap to Sunday and Monday. The topics were 100% competitive shooting and EG drew from his considerable experience to create a class that would answer questions that we students had pre-submitted to to him. Comparing notes from what the Sun/Mon class did to Tue/Wed folks (a bunch of us shot a match together last night) we could see that there were differences in the curriculum (more on that in a sec). I will admit that I kinda wondered why some of the shooters were taking the class... It is/was VERY much sport shooting oriented.

The Sun/Mon class had 8 optic shooters and 2 iron sight shooters. Billy from SpectrainNC, Brennan B. from Vortex, long time FL instructor/competitor James Ramos and running-for-Area 6-director Ben Berry were among the attendees.

Ben and I were the only folks shooting irons. Ben shot his Tanfoglio Stock 2 and I shot a LTT 92 with some of my Wilson Combat sights. I used my regular race rig.
The optics guys had a variety of equipment: many CZ's, 2 M&P's, and at least 1 ZEV Glock.

Round count was ~1200. I shot exactly 980 rounds of my 124grJHP/VN320 loads. Some equipment jammed/failed. My stuff, as always, ran great without issues.

We started each day with accuracy work, without any time constraints, then progressed into the various blocks of training.
For us, specifically, Sunday pre-lunch focused on trigger management then mental preparation, match/competition mindset and math. Post-lunch, it was movement.
Monday focused on transitions pre-lunch, then swingers and mock stages post-lunch.
(I know that Tuesday folks focused a lot on shooting on the move and stage performance)

Without risk of exposing some of the specific material, I can list several insights that really resonated with me:

- EG almost never shoots fast. He's entirely capable of it, obviously, but points are so important. The shooting is, surprisingly, not automatic/sub-conscious. It is very deliberate, conscious.

- Trigger prep is basically a cheat code to ensure accuracy. I used to slap, I'm starting to prep... Prep during all the dead space. Prep aggressively whenever I can.

- Far too often we practice the same drill/skills with almost zero-benefit: Bill drills, 1-R-1, Fast Drills. Do them, but do them once, once in a while and call it a day. The better approach is to vary targets, positions, and engagements constantly. Keep programming and re-programming your focus and grow your ability to be mentally flexible.

- Tagging along with the point above - having the emotional control of shooting a drill once and accepting the result, good or bad, is a great way to train "match mode" discipline.

- Most of us shoot far too fast, and move far too slow. It is possible to develop movement patterns without the gun. Brandon Powers is probably the only other person really saying that dedicated practice, without a gun, and using stuff like BlazePods and etc yields big results.

I started the class with a big list of questions... The answers came over the days (they are my words/taken from the notes)...

- What type of training are doing that doesn't involve the gun? If so, why do you do it and how do you believe it benefits your performance?
Blazepods. S&C work outside the gym. Lose weight: it helps speed, helps knees, helps feet.

- Are there any tips/tricks for staying "seemingly relaxed" while moving at the limits of human performance or is this something that you must become accustomed to?
Don't move at the limit if you can help it? When you need to push, it is always a conscious decision that is made to play to your strengths: e.g. if you are good at splitting, shred on the targets you know you can. If there is doubt, don't do it. Being risk averse is way more important than trying to knock it out of the park.

- How do you/did you develop your current, accurate (assuming it is accurate!) system of self-diagnosis?
The boards (targets) don't lie. Calculate a HF for certain target/position combos and examine if you can improve upon that. This is the only diagnosis you need.

- What’s the biggest breakthrough in the format of your training?
Learning not to waste bullets. Be accurate. Have some consequences to your mistakes.

- What is the role of dry fire? Is it just for leaning new skills/manipulation?
This. If you can live fire, do that once you have the basics.

- When does you consider a skill "worked on enough" where shifting to some other skill is more important from a priority standpoint?
Never enough. Always work to get better. But, this must be down in the framework. Muscle memory is BS.

- Speaking of priorities: What are the most important skills in practical shooting that you are concerned with?
Hitting the target reliably and not making mistakes.

- Does this list of priorities shift as a person is progressing?
Not really. Though, once a shooter becomes "good enough", it is time to address efficient movement and build a pattern for executing that quickly.

- Since IPSC has limited time for walk-throughs, what are your biggest cues/takeaways? What visualization do you use, if any?
Make practice 100x harder than what you see at matches and it won't be an issue. Just don't shit the bed. I look for marks regarding position setup.
Practice swingers more and more and more.