Hey all! 6-1 here again, bringing some content regarding the illustrious act of reloading in a competition context. With this topic, I’m keeping it specific to non-retention reloads. I will not be covering retention reloads, where one stores the ejected magazine on their person as required by certain shooting leagues.
USPSA is a sport in which mechanical skill, planning, and plan execution under duress marry to drive an individual’s performance on a given course of fire. That said, shooting is the easy part I’d say makes up ~10% of the actual game. The other ~90% is stage planning and execution.
The next moment you hear, “If finished, unload and show clear…”. Aside from going over your plan one more time in your head, you remember little more than a blur. “Two Alpha. Two Alpha. Alpha Charlie…Scoring complete!” You look at your review and see you just took a stage win by a solid margin. However, the thoughts of “I didn’t see my dot most of that time” or, “did I forget my reload?” still linger. These thoughts certainly hung on me, until I got into understanding one of the keys to high-speed, accurate shooting. What is that? It’s performing with no thought, in an almost Zen like state.
I’ve got a short article regarding some important fundamentals of pistol shooting. To get good, these should be revisited, analyzed, and practiced routinely. These simple fundamentals are: Stance, Grip, Sight Alignment, and Trigger Pull. All of these play a role in accuracy and recoil management.
