Dry Fire - Week 2 Tuesday - What cover works best?

All right, Echo is here, ergo I can start early. That's my thought since Echo is looking forward to the show, so I figured I'm just gonna hit that go live button because I can. And honestly, I am pressed for time today, so if I start a couple minutes early, maybe we'll end a couple minutes early. So hello all, um, it is Tuesday, right? Yes, I have meetings after this, that's why I'm pressed for time. Welcome to a Great Start Shooter Schools dry fire series. It's a 2-week long. We did Monday, Tuesday last week, Thursday, Friday last week. Gonna do the same thing this week. It is currently Tuesday. We just started with some simple drills to get you— knock the rust off. And it wasn't about you, actually. It's all about me because my first competition is going to be coming up on Saturday. So Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. I got 4 days left really. Um, because today is already toast. So, aha, Tara, how you doing? I think I should invite you over just so you can cook for me. That's what I think. Um, so anyway, today I got a bonus link down there for y'all because I don't know if you know, but yesterday our president got up and he talked about stuff and Let's say it was hard to watch as a gun owner. But anyway, I will not get crazy political, but if you want, you can check out the link that I threw in here in the description. So today we're going to talk about gear and how to deal with the gear. My event on Saturday is an IDPA match. What that means is in IDPA, you must have a cover garment for a majority of the stages that you shoot. So For those of you who are interested, this is the most common cover garment there are. We call it the tactical fishing vest for the most part. You can get a basic fishing vest just about anywhere, or you can get all super fancy and get one of those armadillo vests that a lot of IDPA folks use and that sort of thing. All right, hi DJ. Yeah, I owe you a phone call, man. I'm sorry. And then PNW Woods is— I was told that you have to put the W in there for the West because apparently there's also a PN Woods. But anywho, all right, so this covers your firearm and your mags. When you go through your equipment check at an IDPA match, they have you go like this, and the safety officer is is looking to make sure they don't see any part of your firearm. Oops, sorry, helps if I show you the right side of your firearm. So that is the purpose of the COVID garment. So once you figure out what cover garment you're gonna be using, now you have to start practicing your clearing. So I have to get the vest out of my way. Before I can get to my gun. So the first person taught us was this 6-foot-plus gorilla of a guy, very large man. And yes, tactical— sorry, let me click on it. You know, tactical flannel. So I'm going to get to that actually, because first I just want to talk about like the average. So here's the thing, one of the reasons why I love IDPA is you have to get the least amount of gear for it. So as much as this is what you're going to see on the IDPA range, when you are starting, you can do anything. So if I don't already have my tactical vest, I can just go with one of my flannels, right? So this is just anything as long as it covers when I go like this, that you still cannot see the bottom of my gun. So this one doesn't quite work because— I know you can't see it really well on the camera because I've got black pants on and my holster is black, but when I go like this, right, um, that's— that— this doesn't work. Now the other challenge with this is it's really, really light. So now when I go to get it out of the way, it's a matter of I have to work a little bit harder to get it to move. Some people love wearing their everyday clothes for IDPA, so you will see them in a jacket. I am not 100% sure, but I believe it's a possibility that it might rain on Saturday. So my raincoat is actually still my husband's, I think. I have to check and see. Again, arms out. You see the bottom? No, you can't because it's under there. So your regular jacket that you have will work fine. And I know lots of people hate MDPA. Don't hate me for liking it for certain reasons. So, um,. But again, you went out, you have your firearm, you had to get a holster for it and mag pouches, and you probably already have a belt. You don't have to go out and get a super cool tactical belt, although most of us love shopping for our sport, so there is that. Um, so yeah, so those are the basics. Um, in IDPA, most of our courses of fire have a cover garment required. The standards in like the classifier that I did last week that I'm going to do again on Friday do not require a cover garment. However, since you know most of them are going to, you have to work on clearing so that you can get that clean grip. This comes to another thing that I absolutely hate about shooting in general. See my belt? See my shirt tucked in? I hate having my shirt tucked in. It is not my favorite thing, but for safety we have our shirts tucked in because we do not want to have fabric or anything else getting stuck into our holsters. The other part is, as we are moving and shooting, it's not going to get caught in anything. Right? So as much as I love wearing off the range, I will never have my shirt tucked in for anything. I can't imagine. So it's just one of those things. Um, hold on. If we did that here in Washington, you have to, to go jacket. Oh, like an actual warm jacket? Yes, that happens as well. I just grabbed the most common things that I had in my closet to come down for today, but Again, my whole thing with IDPA is it doesn't have to be the tactical vest that you'll see a lot of competitors who've been doing this for a while. Um, a couple of ways to enhance your cover garment: when I go like this, I'm trying to get it out of the way as quick as possible before I drop. One of the things that can help you— ready? Are y'all ready for a gamer, gamer thing? Is having something heavy in your pocket. Right now my pocket is empty, and if I have hands relaxed at sides, do this to get to my gun, it's not that bad. However, not that I have a part-timer because we didn't get into the whole part-timing thing this week, but if I can do this and it goes a little bit further and out of the way, I'm ultimately going to become faster. So the way I can get this to move a little bit faster is put something that has some weight in it. So now, hands relax the sides, when I go to flip it, it actually goes back a little bit further. And I'll show you from the back. So this is with something in it. Hopefully you guys can see this because I know it's black on black and stuff, but, and relax the sides. And you can feel it hit me in the back, or I can feel it hit me in the back. I hope you guys can see that, right? So now if I take my weight, which can be anything, it can be your car keys, it can be anything along. So it can, so here's the thing. I would not do a full mag. And the reason I would not do a full mag is because IDPA also has lots of different rules and they keep changing. And one of the rules at one of the points of time was you could not have a magazine forward of your holster and your, your mag pouches. So by putting a full magazine, technically you could be breaking a rule, although it's been a long time since I looked up that rule. So I'm not sure. That's why I say keys, something you just happen to have. I know when we all go to range day or we're at the range for a day, we usually have tons of stuff with us anyway. So that's why I wouldn't do a full mag, just because I really don't— I'd have to look up the ammo rules again, but there was something about changing divisions or something like that if you had anything forward of your hips. So now I took the heavy thing out, and hopefully you guys can see this again, is I just, I just know it's not getting fully away, right? It's still out of the way because I've done this a lot, but I like— I don't mind having that full movement. Um, the other thing about should you go all tactical vesty Sometimes people will just simply sew something heavy into the pocket so you don't have to worry about carrying anything or remembering something, or did you or didn't you. So when you get to the point where you have a vest specifically for shooting IDPA, you might adjust it accordingly. And the funny thing is, is like some vests are just naturally heavy. Like this is a pretty thick fabric, so it's actually got a reasonable amount of heft to it. So when you're picking stuff out, you want to think about these things. Not that anyone told me when I first started, but these are just little things. So yeah, so for today, that's my, my information download for you. Figure out what's going to work for you, ideally something out of your closet, especially if you're brand new. Because you just need to get started. You don't have to have all the gear. I know we love to shop, but, um, and just again, just like when we broke down the draw last week or yesterday, I don't know, it's been a week already, um, that you just do each piece. Like, so now with your cover garment, we're gonna do our draw to our gun, and we're going to clear, make our, and then push out. But you can practice each thing individually. So that being said, it's kind of what I got for you. I thought I had updated all of the, um, descriptions to have links in there and stuff. I'm not sure that I did. Um, I know in StreamYard I updated today's rant link, so feel free to go check that out. Um, and that's kind of it. I will be back on Thursday at 6 o'clock. And oh, only 2 thumbs up! Gwebs is at least the 3rd or 4th person, although I do know that DJ does not give a thumbs up until it's actually done to validate it is actually a true thumbs up worthwhile. Um, and yeah, and so the idea of the way Piano is Woods is simply that, um, a roll of quarters, um, anything thick, heavy. And again, it depends on how it feels anyway, because like this one is super, super light because it's just nylon. Uh, this, not crazy light. So do I need it? Do I not? Again, this is where, you know, down the rabbit hole of buying more stuff It's one of the reasons why people love the armadillo IDPA vests because they're thick. So, all right, so second thumbs up. Oh yeah, just going through here. You're welcome. And thank you Echo Through the Learning Chamber. And I'll see you later, Tara. I know she was here too. And I will see you all Thursday, 6:00 PM Eastern. And then Friday, man. Super bam, time never stops. It's super quick. All right, love to y'all. Stay safe, be good, and I shall see you Thursday, I think. Yeah.