Lessons Learned from The Tactical Games National Championships Part 2I competed in The Tactical Games National Championships Nov 4-6 in Texas and have shared with you my lessons learned from the first day of competition. Lessons from Day 1 are: LESSON 1: ASSUME SOMETHING WILL BE OFF WITH EQUIPMENT AFTER AIR TRAVEL LESSON 2: ALWAYS CONFIRM ZERO WHEN SHOOTING IN A NEW PLACE LESSON 3: TRUST YOUR TRAINING AND ABILITY AND VERIFY THAT EQUIPMENT IS WORKING PROPERLY Disasters are often the result of a cascade of bad decisions or things gone wrong. Usually, It’s not just one thing that leads to a catastrophic failure, but rather a chain of small missteps that amplify over time. I had plenty of small missteps on the first day that grew and amplified on day 2. Day 2 had two aggregates (one physical and one 2-gun stage) and two battles (CrossFit + shooting). I started the day in 6th place, not at all where I thought I "should" be. How many of you have heard me say "Don't should all over yourself?" There's a reason for that. When you "should" on yourself you're creating an expectation that might not match the situation. In my case, my confidence was shaken and I was chalking it up to sub-par fitness. I never even considered something could be wrong with my equipment. I began the day with the speed 2-gun aggregate. The furthest distance of this stage was 15 yards and I had no rifle misses. I felt really good about this stage and it ended up being my one and only stage win of the weekend. Again, the lurking issue of my scope being messed up did not impact my close-range shooting. I completed the other aggregate, the physical one, before my first battle. I had to use my strongest muscle to over come a short arm problem. It's important to remember that creativity can help improvise, adapt and overcome a problem. This was a lesson I learned in the Marine Corps that served me well in this event. My first battle of Saturday was Stage 5, The Dwindler. I was not looking forward to shouldering and carrying the 100-pound sandbag. I knew I could do it, but I just knew how much it was going to suck. This stage was 4 rounds for time, with a 12 min time cap of, of 4 x 25 yard 100# sandbag carry with a step over the parallette and 9 pistol and 9 rifle shots at the end of each sandbag carry. The sandbag carry distance decreased by 25 yards each round. I did not make the time cap. At the end of the stage, I realized I should probably look at my rifle target to see how I shot. One of the things about TTG is that you can clearly see your pistol shots as they are mostly close-range (15 yards or less). But the rifle I have never been able to see. My first TTG in Utah in March 2022 I ran a red dot without magnification and could see nothing. My second TTG in Oregon in July 2022 I had a red dot with a 3x magnifier and again, could see nothing. That is why I was eager to use the new rifle, it had a 1 x 4 and I was running it at 4. I could still see nothing and was frustrated. So I figured I should look at my rifle targets and see how things were lining up. Short story: they weren’t. This is when I knew something wasn’t right. However, a rifle scope issue was not the first conclusion I came to. I blamed my lack of fitness. I thought I must be pulling all those shots to the right because I was tired and not shooting well under stress. LESSON 4: IF IT LOOKS WRONG, RULE OUT EQUIPMENT MALFUNCTION FIRST I mentioned to James that I missed damn near every rifle shot in that stage. He found that strange knowing that I’m a good shooter. He went back to the judges' booth and asked to take a photo of my target. LESSON 5: TAKE PHOTOS OF ALL TARGETS I had several hours before my next stage and most of that time was spent with James trying to convince me to confirm zero. He was focused on ruling out a problem with my scope. I was focused on blaming myself for such terrible shooting. Refer to Lessons 3 & 4 We were able to use the Sons of Liberty Gunworks demo bay to confirm zero. Sure enough, I was at least 3 inches right at 25 yards and those 3 inches right turned into 6 inches right at 100 yards. We adjusted my scope 15 clicks left and went on to the next stage. (Lesson 2 & 3). Stage 6, The Medley, was the last stage of the day. This was the longest battle of the day broken up into two 12 minute segments. The first segment was fitness and shooting. We had to do lateral burpees over the axle bar and carry the bar 25 yards in a different way for each round. Rond one we Zercher carried the axle bar, round two we front rack carried it and round three we overhead carried it. The axle bar weighed 75 pounds and we shot 10 rounds pistol and 10 rounds rifle at the end of each round. I did not make the time cap. After the fitness and shooting 12 mins was up we immediately transitioned into 12 mins as many reps as possible of 20 yard Husafell stone carry, 8.5 foot wall climb over. This was just a long slog and I completed 5 rounds and 1 carry in the 12 min time cap. At the end of this stage we looked again at my rifle target (Lessons 3 & 5). I was finally getting some shots into the target despite not being able to discern the square at 100 yards. However, we noticed the bulk of them were still to the right. At this point, I felt I had nothing to lose as I was already in 6th place. We might as well move more clicks left and hope for the best (Lesson 4.) At the end of day 2 my total lessons learned were:
LESSON 1: ASSUME SOMETHING WILL BE OFF WITH EQUIPMENT AFTER AIR TRAVEL LESSON 2: ALWAYS CONFIRM ZERO WHEN SHOOTING IN A NEW PLACE LESSON 3: TRUST YOUR TRAINING AND ABILITY AND VERIFY THAT EQUIPMENT IS WORKING PROPERLY LESSON 4: IF IT LOOKS WRONG, RULE OUT EQUIPMENT MALFUNCTION FIRST LESSON 5: TAKE PHOTOS OF ALL TARGETS You'll read about the remaining 2 lessons learned in my #mentaltoughness Thursday post next week.
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