On begining again

Welcome back!

As for the heavy gun box, many folks carry ammo or the guns or both in separate bags or boxes.  The gun box only holds shooting accessories and it makes an unwieldy box easier to manage.

Distributing the weight of your gear to both sides of the body when toting it around helps a lot and can save a fair bit of wear and tear on your shoulder.

arnold jim wrote:..........I'm trying to keep this short, so... ......Except now I am 77 years old......

Welcome back!   By the way, my two cents worth - don't worry about keeping it short.  The more you write and describe, the better!  If you're now 77, I'm 2 1/2 years behind you.  Where does the time go!!!!!

You might enjoy reading one of the threads in the Fundamentals Forum, where several people are helping me.  

About the heavy box - if you're going to a local range to shoot, maybe you don't need to bring all that heavy stuff with you yet?

mikemyers wrote:

arnold jim wrote:..........I'm trying to keep this short, so... ......Except now I am 77 years old......

Welcome back!   By the way, my two cents worth - don't worry about keeping it short.  The more you write and describe, the better!  If you're now 77, I'm 2 1/2 years behind you.  Where does the time go!!!!!

You might enjoy reading one of the threads in the Fundamentals Forum, where several people are helping me.  

About the heavy box - if you're going to a local range to shoot, maybe you don't need to bring all that heavy stuff with you yet?

I too carried the heavy box... using the only good arm I had. Had to re-evaluate what are the critical elements.

Now I carry just the gun, all my mags preloaded,  extra ammo with dummy rounds (22LR).

No scope to set up or ammo to prep... just the focus and process of one shot.

arnold jim wrote:...but don't expect to make high master...





 

Who would want to be a High Master anyhow? Anyone that can shoot 2600+ can't be of the human race.

I'm just a young guy at very close to 72.  I shot Expert in the Navy back in 82 using a issued 45 that the barrel rattled when in battery but can't do that anymore shooting my custom BE guns.  Sure is fun to to try.  Starting to think this BE stuff for me is now just a excuse to buy target pistols as I had enough SW M&P.  I still can shoot two handed and get very tight groups just need a gyro mounted to my right arm to shoot one handed.  Guess I went 35 years with out shooting I am glad to see people getting back into it.  BTW it is all I can do to life my box with 3 1911s in it.  Don

Magload wrote:........just need a gyro mounted to my right arm to shoot one handed.......

Gosh, I wonder if I can squeeze a gyro into my red dot sight????    More seriously, I wrote up what I plan to do regarding weight training.  Maybe the training concept will be more effective than what I used to do.  I found a thread on The Highroad Forums which I can post here if anyone's interested - it had a lot of ideas on how to build up (or re-build up) one's shooting arm.  People have also given me advice in the Fundamentals Forum.  It took me a while to understand what they meant, which was different from what I first thought they meant.

Do you guys do better with lighter guns, or the same?

If you need to strength train to hold the gun up for 15 seconds then do so until you can BUT from that point forward use dry fire to refine your hold.  Using weights to try and refine your hold as Jim points out can be counter productive because with dry firing you are working on fine motor control which is way different than strength training.
- Dave

arnold jim wrote:......When I started my come back tour, I had some soreness/stiffness, and of course my arm/wrist/shoulder wobbled all over the place.
  I also had trouble keeping the sights properly aligned. That danged front post kept bouncing around in the rear sight gap.


  So I quit dry firing and tried to build up some muscle by holding the gun, and a weight up while keeping the sights aligned for 30 seconds..


A week later, I tried it without the weight. Any muscle I built must have been jumpy muscle because I could not hold the gun still........

The first thing. you wrote is a perfect description of what I felt.  Aligning the sights was meaningless, as my hand/arm were moving/shaking too much.  

The second thing you wrote is also what I did - with a 1.5 pound wrist weight around my right wrist.  That made controlling the gun even more difficult!

Regarding the third thing you wrote, I did it differently.  Basically, I would do the holding drill for 15 minutes (on/off in a cycle), then remove the wrist weight and continue without it.  Invariably, that made the gun feel like it was a plastic toy!  I kept getting better at holding it still.  Three or four times a day I would go through this process first with the weight, then without.

I guess the proper term for this is "training".  On a daily basis, I can see improvement.