EP45: Charlie Perez from Unclassified to USPSA Grand Master in 18 months

Conversations I Wanted To Have Anyway

This episode is packed with the genius of Charlie Perez as he shares his brilliance on the sport of practical shooting and the art of discovering your Suck List.

For more on Charlie, visit him on Instagram or his website, www.bigpandaperformance.com

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WHAT CHARLIE HAS DONE AND IS CURRENTLY DOING (10:00…)

-currently a Grand Master Limited Shooter in USPSA, with several top 10 rankings in the last few years, Charlie unprecedentedly went from an unclassified shooter in 2008 to Grand Master 18 months later

-he was new to shooting at an aggressive pace and needed to re-learn the game and how to shoot at this new speed

-he spent a considerable amount of time at indoor ranges and booked himself at first at the slowest and then the busiest times in the range to practice blocking out the inputs from other shooters

-in his practice he discovered that there were several abnormalities (like your shooting stance and pistol grip) that were not automatic to human nature, and that if he put those abnormal things into his daily practice they would become second nature to him

INTEGRATING AN AGGRESSIVE PRACTICE: DRY FIRE SHOOTING (20:00…)

-in his dry fire practice Charlie started focusing on how we grip the pistol

-what most people aren’t doing is using the same grip on their dry fire practice as they are in a match or live fire practice.

-any time a gun is between Charlie’s face and a target, he is practicing his grip — and doing that until it’s natural for him every time he holds it.

-if you are practicing dry fire well, you will only be able to do it for about 15 minutes before your forearms are annihilated.

THE ART OF A GRAND MASTER (25:50…)

-any stage performance is an orchestra of skills — and Charlie deals with which of those skills are leveraged in each match, adding the time and frequency, and create a training plan based on all these metrics.

-looking minutely at the stages and the skills combined to create them gives Charlie access to shaving off those half second time donations that no one wants to give.

-you can compile a collection of these skills and put together a training plan based on the performance value and then put what is costing you the most at the top of your list.

-bottom line: make a Suck List. Love your list. Add to your list. When your list is done, you’re done. So if you want to keep playing, keep up with your Suck List and prioritize what you suck at.

-your training is going to be the most effective when it’s customized to what you need, not what someone else is doing

-when Charlie trains people, instead of “giving them a fish,” he is focused on teaching you how to see, observe, and feel what you are doing that’s not working, so with our without him, you now have access to adjusting yourself.

CHARLIE’S CURRENT SUCK LIST:

-Retreating / Shooting backwards on the move

-Getting into contorted positions with a limited range of motion (after a knee injury last Spring)

-Re-learning how to call his shots as his vision changes over the years

MARK’S NEW SUCK LIST:

-I don’t assess my shooting

-I don’t know how or have a way that I would measure that

-Pistol performance

Charlie’s bottom line with training: EVERYTHING WE DO IS MEASURABLE — from the movement of your feet to how fast you raise your pistol, to the number of steps you take and the way you move to the next target. Get interested in all of it and get to work.

You can grab a copy of Charlie’s book, “Path of Focused Effort: A Learning Guide for Practical Shooting” on his website, as well as other product recommendations.