Triangle Tactical - Uspsa | 3 Gun | Idpa | Competitive Shooting

Eric Lucas, I have a question for your Q&A if you would like. I know this touches on a subject you have talked about in the past. The closest USPSA club to me is an hour away. They shut down fairly early in the season. Last summer I still wanted to do some more matches and the next closest match is a 3 hour drive one way. Their website said that set up was at 3pm, shooting started at 6pm and should be done by 9pm. It seemed to imply that being present for set up was mandatory. I called them and explained that it was going to be 6 hours of driving for me and asked if set up was mandatory. This resulted in a fairly insulting lecture on how important volunteering is in this sport but the guy never gave me a definitive answer to my question. Now I get how important volunteering is but I’m not sue I want to make a 12 hour day out of this. My response was to skip it and spend the time and money practicing. I’ll spend my money going to some lvl 2 matches next year. I don’t know what kind of stress the guy was d

Been thinking a bit about practice, and where I should be spending my time in practice since I haven’t shot a match in about 4 months. What are the areas that I need to work on? Probably everything, and if that’s a thing, starting can seem overwhelming. I mentioned on the podcast last week that I suck at lifting weights, but because I suck at it, I’m seeing tons and tons of progress, and that’s really motivating to keep lifting weights. I can deal with the sore muscles and trouble walking up stairs because I’m seeing lots of progress. So, back to practice: Things that I suck really bad at, are the things that are motivating to practice. Hammering on table starts, and reloads from my rearmost couple pouches, etc, are things that I’m not good at, and I can spend 10 minutes practicing these things and see a LOT of progress. However, Is spending a bunch of time working on table starts, when I only see one every few months really the best way to spend my time? I got to thinking about this while listening to the mo

[powerpress] I’d like to see ALL of the major shooting sports stop fudging around with the rules all the time. We’ve been playing around with provisional divisions in USPSA for a couple years now, just make them official divisions. The USPSA part isn’t really a big deal, so lets talk about IDPA for a second. OMG. I literally can’t keep up. It’s like every couple months there’s either another rulebook, or another update, or something posted on a random blog at idpa.tech (that I’m still not sure is an official IDPA website, or if it’s just someone who’s a big fan that started a website?) but seriously, the rules have changed just too much in the last year. It was right around January 1, 2017 when the “new rulebook” came out, and it’s been a steady flow of new rules, and changes and clarifications since then. Then there’s 3-Gun. As someone who takes a LOT of questions from people who are interested in getting in all sorts of competitive shooting, not just IDPA and USPSA. The trouble in my opinion with the 3-gu

I always like to do something different for the last episode of the year, so this year I had y'all ask me anything you wanted to ask.  So, thanks for a great 2017! 2018 is going to be great!

This week on the podcast I interviewed Marty Wood, the new NC USPSA Section Coordinator. We talked about everything from the future of USPSA in North Carolina, to announcing the date and location of the 2018 NC Sectional match.  I wanted to say a special thanks to Marty for driving to Raleigh to meet with me to talk about all of this, and I'm really excited about seeing what happens with him at the wheel as the section coordinator of NC USPSA. If you want to get ahold of Marty, his email address is uspsarm@gmail.com, or you can contact him through the NC Section website at www.ncsection.org.  

2018 Goals.  I'm writing it down here, throwing down the gauntlet for 2018: I will make USPSA Production Master before my birthday at the end of June.  I refused to make this goal last year, but 2018 is the time to make it happen. You read it here first folks.  What are your goals for 2018? How are you going to make them happen? What to do with junior shooters who don't help? This question came in from a long time listener who is noticing a trend of junior shooters who only shoot, and don't bother to help resetting and pasting and scoring. What should we do with them? I don't know, unfortunately. I do think that the shooting sports run on responsibility, and when people aren't helping, I don't think they're being responsible.  What targets do you bring to the range for practice? Major asks what targets I bring to the range when I'm practicing.  I have 3 target stands that I built with regular old 2x4's from Home Depot and a couple screws. All told, they cost me about $3 a piece, and they've been great.  I hav

Special Episode Coming Up! I always like to do something different for the last episode of the year, and this year I'm going to do an AMA (ask me anything). Here's the thing: for the last podcast of 2017, I'll answer any questions you have, that ARE NOT related to shooting. Go to http://triangletactical.net/AMA Enter your question in that form. Please don't ask your questions in the comments of this post, or on Facebook or anywhere else, as I will not be able to answer them (I can't track down a bunch of different questions in a bunch of different places...) That's it. Should be a lot of fun! Things that Matter I talk a lot on the podcast about things that don't matter. It doesn't matter if you have the coolest newest thing, or if you have a fancy shooting blouse, or even if you wear brightly colored shoes or have a sponsor, but, of course there are a lot of things in competitive shooting that do matter, let's talk about that. Accurate gun I don’t think you need to be able to shoot single hole groups at 50y w

If you’re local to me, listen up. If you’re not local to me, just bear with me or skip ahead 30 seconds or so. At the end of the year I’m killing the Triangle Tactical competitive shooting calendar on the website.  There are a couple of reasons for this: It costs more than a hundred bucks a year for the software to keep it running. Not a huge deal, but it’s a factor. The time to keep it running is substantial. I can’t seem to keep it accurate. Matches start and stop even when they’re super local to me, and I don’t find out about it, and I don’t want people to get sent to a match somewhere and not have there be a match that day. I received a good bit of feedback on last weeks podcast. A bunch of Match Directors contacting me saying “yes, Lucas, you’re almost exactly right!” So, I want to dig into this a little more in the near future. It’s basically the “off season”, or at least the slow season for most of the country right now and I think this is a good time of year for most matches to startt putting things

I'm not sure if it's because it's nearing the end of the traditional "shooting season" or what, but I've been talking to a few different people about how their match director is about to quit, or they themselves are a match director, and they don't know what to do because they're totally burned out, and they're not sure how to keep that burnout away.  So, on Sunday I released a survey trying to gather some data on what is killing matches.  First, I asked respondents to rank the health of their local match.  The average (mean) score was 7.6. This is exceptionally high, but remember this survey went to shooters, not just match directors. A lot of shooters may not be fully aware of all the things going on with their match. The second question was asking about the biggest issue effecting their local match.  I got answers from people in paragraph format, because I wanted them to really tell me what was really going on. Because of that, I did have to take some liberties when categorizing the comments, but here's wh

Before you enter into a handshake deal for some free stuff, there are a few things that you should consider. Go to the show notes for this episode and get my free .PDF with 10 things that you should think about and do before you pick up a sponsor.  Gear that Doesn't Suck Streamlight ProTac 2L It's the time of year when it's getting darker earlier, and staying dark longer. Having a dependable flashlight with you is a big help. I literally use mine every day. 

Tyler asks: "Hi Luke. I have a question for this weeks Q and A show. My buddy just got a shot timer, and we will be using it this week for the first time. We want to use it as effectively as possible so I'm putting together a spreadsheet to track how we do time wise. What should I track?  Splits?  Total time?  Time to first shot?  I honestly don't know where to start or what all the shot timer can do. I just want to know if I'm getting faster with my shots on that end and how that stacks up against how accurate I am." Yes. And No. I think what’s important is to get the data that you need from the timer, but you don’t need to record all of the data that the timer gives you. So, if your draws are slow as crap, you should (work on them in dryfire), and then put your dryfire to the test in live fire. But, if you’re working strictly on your draw, don’t go work a drill that has a whole bunch of other crap in it. If you’re working on a shot calling drill, you probably don’t want to obsess over your split times and t

Matt asked in the Triangle Tactical Facebook group what to do when the matches in his area wind down for winter. Should he keep practicing and shooting all winter, or should he take the winter off? I think there are a few things to consider here: A lot of people will take the winter off. They'll have a bit of skill degradation, and they'll probably be a little less in shape come spring.  If you feel like you're learning and gaining something from your practice sessions, I say keep practicing. You'll be a step ahead of the other guys come spring time, and there's really not a down-side.  HOWEVER: If you start feeling the burnout creeping up on you, and you feel like you need to take some time off, make sure you set a date for when you're going to start again. Also, evaluate why you're getting burned out. Are you bored? If so, change something. Figure out what is making you get burned out and fix it. I think sometimes we act like it's normal to get burned out and need a multi-month break from practice, but I fe

When is it time to replace gear, even if it isn’t an upgrade? I think everyones answer is going to be different to this question, but here’s my thoughts on it: I’ve got this old Glock 34 that I’ve been shooting forever. It has an unknown number of rounds through it, and I’ve replaced a bunch of parts in it over the years. At one point the gun started grouping really far to the left, and I could actually see wear on the locking block where it was starting to lock up off-center. No idea how or why that could happen, but it seemed like the lockup wearing the left side of the locking block was in-line with the gun suddenly grouping to the left. This wasn’t an issue of me not being able to pull ac Glock trigger and pulling the gun low and left, it was literally the gun wearing funny, and causing the barrel to lock up weirdly. So, I looked around a little on the internet, consulted with a listener who’s a Glock armorer guy at Glock, and then replaced the slide release (not the slide lock/slide stop) the slide relea

Last weekend there was a triathlon here in my little town, and we got to people watch a lot of folks cycling past our neighborhood. Cycling is my first love. Far and away above shooting, and I really cannot wait until I’m healed up enough to get back in the saddle. One guy in particular came riding by, and he stuck me as a little odd, and then I thought the things he was doing related well to a lot of the things people do in the shooting sports as well. Dude rides by. Full on triathlon kit. Not unusual. Tight lycra suit, bright colors, and a fancy Time Trial helmet. Not a regular bike helmet with the vents and stuff that everyone and their brother wears, but a TT helmet. You know, those helmets that are like tear drop shaped to make you more aero, and they stick way out past the back of your head like 12” for more aerodynamics? Again, not terribly unusual for someone to wear one at a high level of competition. However, he was riding a hybrid bicycle. If you’re not familiar with a hybrid, at a high level, they

There's a good chance you're reading this wondering to yourself "What is a drop step?" You're most certainly not alone. In the gif below, notice how I step out of the second box, and push off with my foot? That's a drop step. via GIPHY Some people say they’re okay in certain circumstances, others say that they’re never any good, and somewhat recently I came across an internet argument where people were making all sorts of claims (good and bad) about the drop step. So, naturally, I figured this would be a great junk science episode. I threw it out to the Patrons a week or so ago, and asked how I should test it. Initially, I thought I would only need to test it while making a short step into a box. Something with a starting position like “Standing with toes on marks, outside the shooting area”, then on the buzzer, I’d just take a single step into the box. However, the Patrons brought a great idea that I hadn’t thought about, and that was that it could also be beneficial on longer movement, as it might help you

On Friday, I shot the 2017 Carolina Classic USPSA match. It was hands down, the best run match I've ever been to. I was the first shooter on the first stage, and I started shooting at 12:54PM. We shot 9 stages, and I sent my wife a text saying that I was on my way home at 5:52PM.  9 stages + Chrono in less than 6 hours. Awesome.

Introduction to the Triangle Tactical Podcast Last week's podcast was episode 250, so I figured this would be a great time to re-introduce myself to the audience, and have a good place for people who are new to the podcast to get started. Every now and again I get a question from someone who'd just found the podcast asking where they should start since there are so many episodes in the back catalog that it can be difficult to know where to start, and understand my point of view on things. Triangle Tactical started after I got the idea that I was going to start blogging on my way home from a competition shooting match in early 2012. I got home, setup a Blogger account, and excitedly told my wife that I was going to start a blog. I think she thought that she would hear about it for another day or two, and then it wouldn't ever come up again. Well, it's been 5 and a half years at this point, and I'm going stronger than ever, so here we are! The Basics: I'm a little different than other "tactical" blogs out there

I have 2 range bags. One that I call my practice bag, and another that I call my match bag, although they both go with me to both. Match Bag This is an old backpack, actually the bag that I took to college with me… 14 years ago. Gun rug fits well in the laptop sleeve, easy to carry between stages, etc. Gun, mags, outer belt, inner belt, ammo, etc. Also keep my eyes/ears/extra eyes/squib stick and gun parts box in this bag. I try to keep it fairly lightweight so I’m not trying to drag a huge bag from bay to bay at a match. It’s rare that I need more than the above stuff at a match, so I leave everything else in my practice bag in my trunk. If I have something more catastrophic happen, I can always walk to my car and get what I need from the practice bag. Gun parts: All springs Extra striker assembly, not because I think I’ll need it, but because for some reason I have one. Extra fiber-optic for my front sight. Don’t buy this stuff from a gun store, or any gun type place online. Measure the diameter of the F/O

Experienced shooters have a duty to help new shooters at their first match.  Before the stage brief is read on your first stage, ask if there are any new shooters on your squad. Once everyone knows who the brand new shooters are, and eliminates the concern about giving advice to someone who's been shooting for 10 years, and just hasn't really made any progress.  Match Directors could start a sort of "ambassador" program, where shooters volunteer right in Practiscore to be an ambassador for new shooters, and then maybe they get $5 off their match fee for taking a new shooter under their wing for the day.  It’s important to “coach” new shooters before their run on the stage about any 180 traps, some pointers about how to move through certain areas, minding their muzzle on reloads when moving right to left, because DQing new shooters sucks.  I don’t think this needs to, or even should rest solely on the RO. The RO has a lot more going on trying to run shooters, score targets, etc, and I think there's a lot of t

What's the right balance between practice and matches? I'm not exactly sure what the *right* balance is, but in an ideal world, I think my practice schedule would look like this: Dryfire every day Livefire weekly 2 Matches a month I like this for two reasons: It's fairly realistic with a little planning and dedication. It's enough practice to really see decent improvement if you're actually doing it. Gear that Doesn't Suck: If you're reloading your own ammo, and you're shooting matches that are above the level of a club match, you should really have a chronograph so you KNOW how fast your bullets are going, and what your power-factor is. I've got one of these Caldwell Precision Chronographs, and I love it. It's inexpensive, and works great.