What/Who are recommended trainers for PRS/NRL style match. My prone shooting is coming along, need help with positional shooting. Time for some training. DOn't care where. Old man, has $$ will travel. My local PRS match is kinda tapped out--I have a motely crew of misfits I RO for, but I am not learning--need some pro help.
Competition Training
- Thread starter DocRDS
- Start date
We do group trainings at Gravestone with myself (Jake Graves), Morgun King, and Shayne Ward. I also do 1:1’s if a group date doesn’t work for you.
Email me at [email protected] for more information.
Email me at [email protected] for more information.
JC steel has some online videos that you can watch on your own time. Derek at DI precision does 1 on 1s, Gravestone, K&M, Altus, and Jtac are some of the more class based style.
1: Rifles Only
2. Andy Slade of Riflemans Path
Either will ground you with a foundation of fundamentals first. Those are necessary as they become more important as you get higher off the ground, which there will be plenty of as well with either of those two. I really enjoyed training with Andy because he also gives you personalized training tips and techniques.
Then when you are on your upward climb, look at doing a class with JTAC. My experience with them was excellent but it was all positional and lip service on fundamentals... that said they gear toward what the class body wants to get out of the class and my class was mostly shooters with lots of experience. Another class may be different.
2. Andy Slade of Riflemans Path
Either will ground you with a foundation of fundamentals first. Those are necessary as they become more important as you get higher off the ground, which there will be plenty of as well with either of those two. I really enjoyed training with Andy because he also gives you personalized training tips and techniques.
Then when you are on your upward climb, look at doing a class with JTAC. My experience with them was excellent but it was all positional and lip service on fundamentals... that said they gear toward what the class body wants to get out of the class and my class was mostly shooters with lots of experience. Another class may be different.
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My mistake. The OP said he was comfortable in prone but needed help with positional shooting and wind calling, and that he was comfortable with paying for good instruction and was willing travel.
Caylen's Long Range Skills Progression class seemed like it might fit the bill, even if it's not specifically described as a competition prep course.
I don't know if you made it to any high dollar training but me and some buddies have gotten a little more serious about training lately and have begun to formalize our training days. Last Sunday we worked on positional zeros.
I think one of the most assumed and undervalued abilities is to shoot the same zero in every position you shoot. Your data is flawed if it isn't dialing out of the same POI. We know that in some different shooting disciplines shooters may have a different zeros for a different positions. Classic example is High-power or service rifle standing offhand vs prone. Of the 4 marksmanship (MMS) fundamentals (Position, Aiming, Breathing, and trigger squeeze) position building is far more impactful than the rest. And within Position, Natural Point of Aim(NPOA) is most important. I think you remember in that other thread where I talked about traditional Natural Point of Aim and mechanical Natural Point of Aim. With 24lb PRS guns, off of props, you're going to drive it a little differently than you would a carbine AR, traditional hunting rifle, or even an 11lb M24. But you have to have the same zero.
Almost everyone zeros their rifle in the prone. But I suspect much fewer shoot 100yd dot drills off tripods, tank traps, and PRS barricades. Most of the time guys throw 5rds on paper to confirm zero and then they just go to town on steel. When they have windage or elevational misses they first look at wind or try to true their BC. And this is where people begin to struggle maintaining their zero. When they start driving the gun differently off props.
So here's what we started to do:
100yd zero board full of 3/4" dots.
1. 5rd zero, prone. If you're not zeroed, get zeroed. Shoot at least one 5rd group with a good zero for a POI and group size baseline.
2. Pick a relatively stable prop like the crotch of a tank trap. Classic kneeling, bagged position. Shoot a 5rd group on a dot. Slow fire, no time limit. Compare POI and group size. If you have a different POI from prone, you need to figure how you're driving the gun is different than prone. I'll have to talk more about this later for the sake of typing.
3. Start in the Ready position. For the sake of brevity for the rest of this post, "Ready" will be defined as standing behind the prop, mag in, bolt back, all gear in hand. Using a ProTimer, drop down on the same prop and fire one round in a fresh dot. Repeat for 5rds in the same dot. Compare group size, relative POI, and flyer tendencies.
* Note: Run at a relaxed and natural speed. Don't try to rush. Don't use a par time. The protimer is there to put a little bit of stress on you to challenge your brain pathways but don't worry about your time right now. After each shot, stand up and verbally review what you did. Make observations about bag placement, how much shoulder input you were giving it, how much wobble zone you were seeing, nite whether you had good trigger follow through or not, think about your buttstock placement. Call your shot. If you shanked the shot and saw the reticle break somewhere, did it correlate to the actual POI? The goal is to be aware of all the nuances of grip, position, aiming and trigger squeeze. A bad sign is if you can't recall these things after the shot. If you're succumbing tongime pressure you won't be able to remember these fine points because you aren't consecrating on them. Your ability to resist the stress or jitters and subconsciously feel and remember the nuances of your position building is what I mean by building those brain pathways.
* Points of performance on this drill are did you see the impact? How much and where did your reticle jump? Are you maintaining your zero? When you call your shots, is it correlating to the POI?
After you shoot 1-3, walk downrange and look at the three 5rd groups. Do you have a consistent zero? Do you have flyer tendencies? Dropping rounds low right for instance? Consider your average 1st round from "Ready" time. This is now your planning factor. How long does it take me to get in position and break a shot with a consistent POI in what would be a 1/2 moa group of it were 5rds? Is that time satisfactory. I was at 18 secs in the beginning. That's on the high side for a 2 min stage. I really needed to speed up to 11-12 secs. The fastest in our group was consistently around 9 secs but he was also dropping shots low and right out of the dot.
4. Now, if you're ready to progress, choose another position on the tank trap like one of the tips and shoot three fresh dots with one round/ one dot per position, three positions. Left dot - crotch of tank trap, middle dot - the second position on the tank trap, right dot -back to the crotch. So from "Ready", on the timer drop down and shoot crotch one Rd on the left dot, one round in the middle dot from the second position (tip of trap), and then go back to the crotch and shoot the right dot. Again, make verbal observations and review your position and shooting before your bro tells you your time. Don't get time focused. Done? Good, repeat that two more times on the same dots for a total of 9 rounds and you should have three rounds in each dot, from the same positions. Walk down range and check them out. Have you formed a group? Maintained a consistent POI? How did you deal with the increased wobble zone of the tip? Did that effect your group size or ability to see your shot on paper? You might be surprised that it's the latter but not the former.
This is all about position building and shot accountability. We don't need wind, spindrift, AJ clouding up the results. The feedback of paper is going inform your ability to maintain a zero. You're also building the muscle memory of position building through reps. Which are you going to be able to think about as you hear the timer and drop down to shoot? Building the position? Bag placement? The reference point of where the target is and seeing gun-target-line before you drop your head down in the scope? You're trying to ritualize the position building so you can use your cognitive thought to think ahead about wind calls, target engagement sequence, where the next position is, etc.
As you run this drill, think about how your placing your bag, settling it down, how much you're pushing into the gun, consistency of buttstock placement, how much support hand are you applying on the fore end to drive the gun and counteract recoil. Focus and think about watching for the hole to appear in the paper and note how many mils up and left the reticle jumps. Recount this verbally after each shot or run.
Hope that helps.
I think one of the most assumed and undervalued abilities is to shoot the same zero in every position you shoot. Your data is flawed if it isn't dialing out of the same POI. We know that in some different shooting disciplines shooters may have a different zeros for a different positions. Classic example is High-power or service rifle standing offhand vs prone. Of the 4 marksmanship (MMS) fundamentals (Position, Aiming, Breathing, and trigger squeeze) position building is far more impactful than the rest. And within Position, Natural Point of Aim(NPOA) is most important. I think you remember in that other thread where I talked about traditional Natural Point of Aim and mechanical Natural Point of Aim. With 24lb PRS guns, off of props, you're going to drive it a little differently than you would a carbine AR, traditional hunting rifle, or even an 11lb M24. But you have to have the same zero.
Almost everyone zeros their rifle in the prone. But I suspect much fewer shoot 100yd dot drills off tripods, tank traps, and PRS barricades. Most of the time guys throw 5rds on paper to confirm zero and then they just go to town on steel. When they have windage or elevational misses they first look at wind or try to true their BC. And this is where people begin to struggle maintaining their zero. When they start driving the gun differently off props.
So here's what we started to do:
100yd zero board full of 3/4" dots.
1. 5rd zero, prone. If you're not zeroed, get zeroed. Shoot at least one 5rd group with a good zero for a POI and group size baseline.
2. Pick a relatively stable prop like the crotch of a tank trap. Classic kneeling, bagged position. Shoot a 5rd group on a dot. Slow fire, no time limit. Compare POI and group size. If you have a different POI from prone, you need to figure how you're driving the gun is different than prone. I'll have to talk more about this later for the sake of typing.
3. Start in the Ready position. For the sake of brevity for the rest of this post, "Ready" will be defined as standing behind the prop, mag in, bolt back, all gear in hand. Using a ProTimer, drop down on the same prop and fire one round in a fresh dot. Repeat for 5rds in the same dot. Compare group size, relative POI, and flyer tendencies.
* Note: Run at a relaxed and natural speed. Don't try to rush. Don't use a par time. The protimer is there to put a little bit of stress on you to challenge your brain pathways but don't worry about your time right now. After each shot, stand up and verbally review what you did. Make observations about bag placement, how much shoulder input you were giving it, how much wobble zone you were seeing, nite whether you had good trigger follow through or not, think about your buttstock placement. Call your shot. If you shanked the shot and saw the reticle break somewhere, did it correlate to the actual POI? The goal is to be aware of all the nuances of grip, position, aiming and trigger squeeze. A bad sign is if you can't recall these things after the shot. If you're succumbing tongime pressure you won't be able to remember these fine points because you aren't consecrating on them. Your ability to resist the stress or jitters and subconsciously feel and remember the nuances of your position building is what I mean by building those brain pathways.
* Points of performance on this drill are did you see the impact? How much and where did your reticle jump? Are you maintaining your zero? When you call your shots, is it correlating to the POI?
After you shoot 1-3, walk downrange and look at the three 5rd groups. Do you have a consistent zero? Do you have flyer tendencies? Dropping rounds low right for instance? Consider your average 1st round from "Ready" time. This is now your planning factor. How long does it take me to get in position and break a shot with a consistent POI in what would be a 1/2 moa group of it were 5rds? Is that time satisfactory. I was at 18 secs in the beginning. That's on the high side for a 2 min stage. I really needed to speed up to 11-12 secs. The fastest in our group was consistently around 9 secs but he was also dropping shots low and right out of the dot.
4. Now, if you're ready to progress, choose another position on the tank trap like one of the tips and shoot three fresh dots with one round/ one dot per position, three positions. Left dot - crotch of tank trap, middle dot - the second position on the tank trap, right dot -back to the crotch. So from "Ready", on the timer drop down and shoot crotch one Rd on the left dot, one round in the middle dot from the second position (tip of trap), and then go back to the crotch and shoot the right dot. Again, make verbal observations and review your position and shooting before your bro tells you your time. Don't get time focused. Done? Good, repeat that two more times on the same dots for a total of 9 rounds and you should have three rounds in each dot, from the same positions. Walk down range and check them out. Have you formed a group? Maintained a consistent POI? How did you deal with the increased wobble zone of the tip? Did that effect your group size or ability to see your shot on paper? You might be surprised that it's the latter but not the former.
This is all about position building and shot accountability. We don't need wind, spindrift, AJ clouding up the results. The feedback of paper is going inform your ability to maintain a zero. You're also building the muscle memory of position building through reps. Which are you going to be able to think about as you hear the timer and drop down to shoot? Building the position? Bag placement? The reference point of where the target is and seeing gun-target-line before you drop your head down in the scope? You're trying to ritualize the position building so you can use your cognitive thought to think ahead about wind calls, target engagement sequence, where the next position is, etc.
As you run this drill, think about how your placing your bag, settling it down, how much you're pushing into the gun, consistency of buttstock placement, how much support hand are you applying on the fore end to drive the gun and counteract recoil. Focus and think about watching for the hole to appear in the paper and note how many mils up and left the reticle jumps. Recount this verbally after each shot or run.
Hope that helps.
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