IPSC Basic Drills / Black Badge Prep

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PB_Adikt

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Hi folks, forgive me if there is a stickie or something with this info, as I did not find it.

I am looking to take my Black Badge this upcoming spring (I don't see one being offered locally prior to this). As I am itching to get out and get some practice in, just looking for some basic drills I could do myself to build some skills prior to my course. Probably nothing too fancy, as I don't want to be teaching myself any bad habits before course. As far as equipment goes, I have a Shadow, plus a holster and mag pouches on the way from Hammer Armaments. Was advised against getting a shot timer at this point in time, so drills that use a timer are out at the moment.

Any tips or pointers appreciated. Thanks!
 
Practice ,keeping your finger out of the trigger guard,while moving,doing mag changes,etc.
Also ,keeping your gun pointed in a safe direction,while moving.

I think the most important are finger off the trigger,always keep your gun pointed in a safe direction.

And take your time :)
 
Practice the basics of sight alignment, grip and trigger manipulation and maintaining a sight picture for the whole trigger press.
Get some decent instruction on proper grip as well. Stick to the basics, it will mean less bad habits that the instructor will have to break on the course.
 
What Mrclean said; also get very comfortable operating the controls of your firearm; mag release, slide lock.
Make sure the ammo you will attend the course with works perfectly.
Make sure your rig functions correctly, the holster & Mag Pouches allows for a smooth seating and removal of the gun & Mags.
Make sure your belt & the gear attached to it is going to be secure. (ie A 1" belt with 2" pant loops doesn't work. ;-) )

Leave the moving, mag changes and holster techniques to the BB instructor to show you the correct way.
It's harder to unlearn bad technique than learn the right technique.
 
I would say don't worry about a lot of those drills until you took the BB course. After that you will have a better idea what to do with drills.

Focus more on the equipment, setup and make sure you understand and remember all the safety rules like no ammo in safety area and what you should do if you dropped your gun etc. You know, things that happens outside of running a stage.

I might try to practice load and make ready but then... better to get the proper procedures from your instructor first to avoid any bad habit. You will get plenty of opportunities.
 
Don't worry about being the best or fastest shooter there. Most of the important tips have been already mentioned.
-make sure your belt, holster, and mag pouches are adjusted properly.
-make sure the ammo you bring cycles in your gun.
-work on your draw and reholster.
-pick a wall and work on moving forward, backward, diagonally, changing directions without your muzzle ever leaving that wall (downrange)
-pay attention to your technique and make sure you never have your finger on the trigger during any point except when you are actually shooting.
-don't do anything unless the instructor tells you to.
- have reasonable accuracy. Not expecting snipers but they do want you putting rounds on target and not into the range floor or over the berm.

Any live fire drills basically test many of those things listed. You probably know all this but that's pretty much what they are checking for. Match pressure makes us do strange things. So 2.5 days helps their safety lessons become part of your fundamentals.
 
As pointed out above, as long as you have decent accuracy, familiar with your pistol and have safe skills, you will pass easily.

Keep in mind, if you are not engaging targets, your finger needs to be out of the trigger guard and your pistol is pointed downrange and must never break the 180deg rule. Whenever in doubt, stop, get finger out of the trigger guard and muzzle pointed downrange.

Some skills are timed and needs to be completed with x percent hits in the A zone to pass and move on.

Practice 10yr strong, 8yrd weak, holster draw and reholstering and lots of mag changing until you can do it in your sleep.

It'll be the funnest 3 days of shooting.
 
Trinimon said:
As pointed out above, as long as you have decent accuracy, familiar with your pistol and have safe skills, you will pass easily.

Keep in mind, if you are not engaging targets, your finger needs to be out of the trigger guard and your pistol is pointed downrange and must never break the 180deg rule. Whenever in doubt, stop, get finger out of the trigger guard and muzzle pointed downrange.

Some skills are timed and needs to be completed with x percent hits in the A zone to pass and move on.

Practice 10yr strong, 8yrd weak, holster draw and reholstering and lots of mag changing until you can do it in your sleep.

It'll be the funnest 3 days of shooting.
Click to expand...

Great advise throughout the posts! Definitely recommend the weak hand/strong hand drills.

Lots of people struggled at this portion of the testing.

It was an amazing course! Lots of learning and lots of fun!
 
Practice a smooth draw:
1. Positioning Gun hand:
- goes to grip - make sure it's a perfect grasp everytime. If you continue to draw the gun, and it doesn't feel right, you need more practice.
- Trigger finger up the side of the slide as you grasp. Never allow a hooked finger.
- Do this hundreds of times - you don't have to be in front of a mirror or anything like that.

In the meantime,
2. Positioning the support hand:
- As you grasp for the gun with the strong hand, the support hand goes to your belly button.

Once you have both movements fast and accurate, next step is to draw the gun, and press out, getting the support hand in place during the movement, and up, getting the sight alignment and sight picture.

Mastering all of that will ensure you have safe draws that can be controlled. It'll teach trigger finger discipline, right out of the box. This is the draw you're going to need 99.5% of the time, in IPSC. Yes, there are one-handed draws, and starting with gun on table, and these always look awkward, as nobody practices them, but focus on the two handed, for now.
 
Lot's of good info here. Since you must belong to a Club to shoot restricted may I suggest to talk to your board and find a very experienced IPSC shooter that will spend time with you going over basics. It is NOT easy to self learn or try some of this stuff just by reading. Good luck and shoot straight !
 
Since you have a Shadow, you will need to learn how to lower the hammer safely, if you don't know how to do that already. Here's a video you can check out:


Here's a good video of the pistol grip style you'll want to use. The instructors will most likely adjust your grip when they see you in person, (one of the benefits of the course - very talented eyeballs looking at you), but it should be fairly close to this:


mrclean and Freedom Ventures made great posts. Reread them again. :)
 
Decocking... good for me to learn too... I had a striker gun and, very very shortly will be practicing this too on the new shadow. I did pay attention to Slavex demonstrating this a few weeks ago though.

Thanks for posting jimbo.
 
I'm glad this started. I too am looking at doing my BB soon. (Next availability in Edmonton at Phoenix is last weekend of January).
I got to sit in and watch a League Night. It was incredibly eye opening. So if your range offers something like this, I highly recommend it. I learned so much just by talking to the people and watching what they do. There was also a guy there who was participating in his first League Night - which made it a little less intimidating for me. Not everyone is fast. In fact, most of them focused more on hitting their target rather than being faster than someone else.

Another poster mentioned to keep your gun in a safe direction. Some of the courses include running backwards. One of the competitors got DQ'd because when he turned around, his gun was no longer pointing in a safe direction. It happens quickly. It's something we all fundamentally know, but it's another thing to put it into practice when you're moving forward and backwards during competition.
 
Have a look at the DQs in this vid. When that buzzer goes off, for some shooters, all they think about is racing that clock and safety gets tossed out the door.

 
PB_Adikt said:
...I have a Shadow...
Click to expand...

They'll expect you to know how to operate your pistol, and they'll expect you to be able to shoot with accuracy.

See these threads:

Production Start DA/SA
<https://www.canadiangunnutz.com/forum/showthread.php/1645591-Production-Start-DA-SA>

Decocking a Shadow for production
<http://forums.brianenos.com/topic/248704-decocking-a-shadow-for-production/>

Depending upon your instructor(s), they may expect you to run it DA/SA, with the hammer down to start, or they may expect you to run it SA-only, i.e.: "cocked and locked", with the hammer 'cocked' and the manual safety lever 'locked'.

You should be prepared to do either on demand, with proficiency, and with accuracy.


 
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Good point there Wendell.

OP, add practice lots of DA to your list. Everyone in my class ran Production, four Shadows and Tanfoglio. Everyone shot their first shot DA. The only exception was doing the table pickup skill where you start with an unloaded gun. Mind you, I shot a match were there was a table pickup, gun loaded, hammer down. Guess who forgot to load a full mag after loading up with my Barney mag?! I tell ya, the longest two seconds of your life is when your gun goes CLICK CLICK after the first BANG just before the cogs in your head start spinning. lol
 
PB_Adikt said:
Prince George, BC. There is some activity in Kamloops this winter, if I wanted to drive 8 hours. I think I seen a BB course there in a week or two.
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Could try Ft. St. John too, it's only about 4 hours away from you. Chuck Mercanti and his son do the black badge course as well as PAL courses, and they're pretty good. They'll do a black badge course pretty much any weekend that they can get 4 people and they aren't doing a PAL course. The gun range there has an indoor pistol range, so cold isn't an issue. PM me if you'd like a phone #.
Kristian
 
Greatly appreciate the vids and assistance folks. Thanks! Checked the FSJ calendar and didn’t see anything scheduled. Probably won’t stray from home too much in the next month though as my wife is due with our next baby in the next few weeks.
 
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