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| Modern Samurai Project |
For the longest time I didn’t own a shot timer. I “felt good enough” but I didn’t have a concrete metric to chart improvement or where my skills stood as a defensive minded shooter. That changed when I started competing in USPSA’s Carry Optics division. My score is a direct reflection of my performance and gives me honest data about where I need to improve. One of those areas is my draw and first shot in the A-zone. I hit my plateau at 1.3 seconds. Despite pouring over hours of YouTube videos, blogs, and forum articles on the subject, I couldn’t get consistently under 1.3 seconds. Sure a few times I’d get lucky and shave off a quarter, but I couldn’t tell you why or how I got there. It was time to call in a professional.
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| Scott "Jedi" Jedlinski |
A while back, some guy on the internet called “Jedi” kept
popping up whenever people discussed red-dot optics on pistols. Today, Scott “Jedi” Jedlinski is known as the
“red-dot guy” from Modern Samurai Project. He’s been travelling around the country
teaching shooters how to use a red-dot with accuracy and speed. While not former military or a law
enforcement member, Scott is a Master class shooter in USPSA Carry Optics, holds F.A.S.T. Coin #15, and is a life-long martial artist. His background
in Jiu Jitsu has given him a unique ability to breakdown inefficiencies in body
mechanics that most of us don’t notice.
He comes highly recommended by respected members of the firearms
training community, and after listening to him speak in podcasts and on his
YouTube channel, it became evidently clear that Scott genuinely loves passing
knowledge to others and helping them “get better”. I knew I needed to train with him if I wanted
to expand my performance envelope.
While my schedule wouldn’t allow me to personally attend one
of his classes for a while, Jedi offers online consultations in 60-minute blocks
via streaming services like Skye, Google Hangout, or Facetime. The only other requirements are a gun,
holster, and shot timer. This would be
my first online firearms lesson, and despite positive reviews, I still wasn’t
sure how much could be gleaned through my cellphone camera compared to
in-person. Still, I figured some
training would be better than nothing, so I purchased one hour to see how
things would go.
After a few emails to schedule a time, Jedi rang me up on my
iPhone via Google Hangout. Wanting to
make the most of our limited time, I setup a tripod in a brightly lit room with
good wifi. Within 30 seconds we were off
and running. I told him I wanted to work
on my first-shot draw from my competition holster. Then aiwb draws if we had time. After watching me draw a few times to get a baseline,
Scott began breaking it down into micro-skills.
This is not like the traditional “5-step draw” I learned in fundamental
classes. Jedi explained simple ways to
work with my body’s natural range of motion to shave off inefficiencies. He used simple demonstrations to highlight where
and why my techniques were costing me time.
He also showed me natural index points that helped me accurately locate
my gear. It quickly became apparent why DOH
holsters were so popular, and how the right gear setup would work naturally
with my body mechanics instead of against it.
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| My USPSA blaster in a CJP holster with Tek-Lok |
A specific example of this was helping me quickly achieve a
high grip on the handgun after the buzzer.
By utilizing natural index points on my holster, gun, arm, and hands
along with a combination of the “sweep” and “pluck” techniques, I could get a
consistent high tang grip before the end of the “P” in the timer’s “beep”. Just going from “shooter ready” to grabbing
my gun in the holster was one of the micro-skills he drilled me on. From there we moved on to drawing the gun, marrying
the grip, presentation, seeing the dot, etc.
Each micro-skill bled into the next, until I was thinking of it was one
smooth technique, instead of distinct steps.
Just as Jedi preaches efficiency of motion, his teaching style is equally efficient. He drills down to the minutiae of each technique, using simple references to make the concept perfectly clear in a few seconds. It was a near constant stream of “Ah-Ha” moments. Scott is also refreshingly free of ego. He doesn’t toot his own horn and doesn’t pass off advice and techniques from others as his own. He freely credits other instructors and competitors. He never talks about “His way” or “The way” to do things, but simply “A way” to try things. 45 minutes in, I was clearing the holster, seeing my dot in the A-zone, and pressing the trigger in nearly 0.9 seconds. With the remaining time, Jedi helped me get my AIWB draw down from 1.5 to just under 1.0 second. With such limited time, I couldn’t break 0.9 seconds and he found it amusing that I was frustrated with my 1.0 second draw despite a 1/2 second improvement in under 15 minutes. I realized later that my perspective had shifted, from simply “happy with 1 second” to “I want to get better”. I was ready to purchase another hour to extend our session, but Scott was scheduled to do a podcast immediately after.
Prior to my hour with Jedi, I didn’t consider .15 splits and
.65 second draws to be realistic goals for myself. I was being lazy and not setting ambitious
goals so I wouldn’t have to worry about failing to meet them. I would mindlessly practice draws and
dry-fire, or punch holes in paper at the range.
Now I’m filming myself, analyzing myself in slow motion, reading actual
books, and spending a lot more time deliberately practicing.
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| Practice Lazer Gun |
Three days after my consult, I attended an informal IDPA/USPSA
practice night at my local range. While
my overall shooting didn’t change much, my draws were clean and consistently at
1 second. Jedi’s technique to help me
clear my mind, and the confidence in my draw, set a better tone to start stages
with than my usual nervous energy. Stages
simply flowed more smoothly. His advice
on exploiting “binding” in the body helped me get a 19 Alpha, 1 Charlie stage
by the end of the night. It probably
would’ve been 20 Alphas if I hadn’t slipped on that damn piece of brass and
rushed a shot.
One hour of Jedi’s time is easily worth the few boxes of
ammo and range fee it costs. $1/minute
seems expensive, until factoring in that my magazines hold $4 worth of ammo and
I can burn through them in few seconds while learning nothing in return. One piece of advice I’ll offer is to write
down everything you learned immediately after the session. Practicing a few hours later, I found myself
glancing at the notes and seeing things I had already forgotten about. Without a way to record the session, if I
hadn’t written everything down while it was fresh in my mind, I probably wouldn’t
have remembered to properly index my support hand for example.
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| Practice Night |
In a few months I’ll be attending Jedi’s class at the 2019
Shooter’s Symposium. In the meantime, I’ll
continue practicing to “get better”, and I will definitely be booking more
online sessions with Modern Samurai Project.
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| Carry Optics G34 |
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