Mario Mosin, Dryfire, & how to suck less.

3, 2, 1. Ta-da! Um, so yes, here we are. It is 7:30. Surprise, everyone! Um, we got— so far, the people I've been talking to on the YouTube side is Crabby Turtle, um, gave us some thumbs up already, and then C&T. We've been having literary discussions. All right, so what is the name of this? Mario Moe's Dry Fire and How to Suck Less.

You had one bad day, that's all that is.

No, no, no, no, no, no. But it's like, I think it talks to the masculine side of my stu— of my students, the suck less thing. Because, uh, like, one of the most common things we say in, um, in competition is go fast, don't suck. So yeah, it was— it's competition, and I'm not trying to save my life. I'm just trying to put holes in pieces of cardboard.

Yeah, no, that's fine. Yeah, everybody has their own ways, I guess.

Exactly. Um, so yes, there you go. Mario, what's up?

What up? What's cracking?

So you've been putting much up on your, uh, on your channel, which I just dropped the link to moments ago. Oh my God, I think we're actually like live live. I'm gonna put it up one more time since I forgot to put it in that thing. All right, thank you, thank you so much. All right, so why are we here? We are here because Mario happened to pop on one of my pop-up lives last week, and, um, I don't know, I love seeing Mario. He's adorable. See how adorable that is?

Oh my God.

And, um, I find that when we set out goals, it is always best to bring our friends along.

Absolutely.

Friends that can maybe hold our feet, our accountability. So, yeah, so Mario's my accountability buddy for the next 30-ish days, 28 days, whatever the heck it is. Oh, well, here you go. Do you see this? See, he thought he had already subbed, but now you got one more subscriber.

Go ahead with your best. So thank you. Appreciate that.

George wants to say hi.

What up, Jorge?

Oh, yeah. Sorry, that I can say Jorge too. Sometimes I'm just not in California right now.

So that's all good.

I did have a really good Mexican lunch for, you know, burrito for lunch today, though.

Was it Motherland? Was it Motherland?

No, no, it was.

It was wishy-washy crap.

Yes, it's New England, New Mexico, quote unquote Mexican food.

It's not brown people approved, is it?

In the restaurant only speaks Spanish. So maybe. But it was actually really yum.

All right, a lot of Puerto Ricans over there too. They don't count.

Oh, okay, don't tell them that. They don't know. All right, so Mario's here to keep me accountable.

Yes, accountable.

Mark, Mark, I was looking at something else. Mario and I were talking a little bit earlier offline on the phone, you know, that thing, and how important dry fire is.

Absolutely.

And my goal over the next month is to get better than I am today. Uh, the thing is, is that in competition, I know there's a scoreboard, but the reality of it is you're always just looking to get better than where you are right now, right?

I wanted to ask you a question on this. Take me back to that day, the day that you suck so bad. What were you thinking too much that day? What was happening? What was going through your head?

Ah, all right. So no, no, no, no, it is exactly why we're doing this challenge is because I had not touched my gun. I had not prepped probably for the previous month. I don't think I touched my gun or practiced. Whereas, so it was more that literally my skill set had fallen down. Because I hadn't been doing the things I needed to do beforehand. However, I will say for real, the last two stages, I had the possibility for three reshoots. And so end of the day, already tired, wet. Oh, it rained on and off throughout the day. No excuses, we shoot in the rain, we don't care. But then the second to last stage, there was a prop malfunction. So like literally the second to last shot, and it was an okay stage. When I got my reshoot, I did actually shoot better. And then the last stage, um, there's another prop malfunction, so I had to do another reshoot. And then someone taped one of my targets ahead of time, so I could have had that third reshoot, but I was done for the day, so I took a zero for that. Um, so yeah, some— so parts of those things are what played into dead last. But my goal is always just to be a little better than I was. And I know I can be better because I'm usually mid-tier between top and bottom, and I'm content being there. So I want to bring my skill set back up to that. And I think with your help and your accountability and the rest of our YouTube folks here, like DJ and, uh, Chris, and who else am I missing? I said hi to George already, so Jorge, sorry, my bad. So yeah, so that is my plan, Stan. So yeah, my, my usual mindset going into any competition is do the best that I can.

Right, right.

And I did not do the best that I could that day.

Okay.

Makes sense.

It does. I mean, everything that we do, whenever we make mistakes, we learn from them, right? So The fact that you're doing that right now, it's, uh, and you're pretty much holding yourself accountable. I'm not even saying anything. You're pretty much the only one that's saying everything. But it's good that you realize that you made those mistakes, right?

Oh yeah, for sure. And we know lots of things we do wrong. We don't always correct the things we do wrong.

So, but let's, let's stop and think about the aspect of Um, having to use your firearm to defend yourself, because in reality, that's, that's what a shooting competition is. It's, is to, to get folks ready if for some reason they ever have to encounter a person and they're actually firing at them. Um, it's, it's no different than what we did in the military. Um, we called it in the military, we call it reflexive fire. And it gets to a point that it becomes muscle memory. You do the same task over and over and over to the point that it's— you're not even thinking about it anymore. The same thing as dry fire, is the same thing. So there's a couple things that, that you, that you said that really touch bases with you. One, the fact that, uh, you had not touched your firearm in months, right? Okay. Two, there's another thing you said. You said that you were tired. So I'm just wondering, how much have you been working out in order for you to get to a certain point where you're— you have that stamina in order for you to be able to compete?

That is actually— yeah, that's actually— I'm willing to bet that by this time next month I will be lighter. No, no, see, well, because part of me is— because part of it is, uh, I am also working— that's another goal that has to do with my 25th wedding anniversary, which is next year.

Oh, nice. So I just celebrated mine.

Uh, your 25th?

Yeah, yeah, no, I did. Yeah, yeah, we went to Hawaii. Yeah, it was great. It was great. That was awesome. Um, but, um, going back to what I was saying, it— there's just a lot of little things that we tend to do in order for us to get us to that point. And I'm just going to use the military as an example, okay? The military, I mean, we, we work out every day, right? There's a reason why we work out every day. One is, you know, obviously just to be in shape and whatever the case may be, but two is in order for you to deal with the strenuous, uh, exercises and, and training that you do while you're in the military. And God forbid if you ever need to go to combat, all that stuff really pays dividends into everything that you do. Yeah. Um, I can tell you that when I was training, like, I would tell you my first deployment, we were training up in Fort Lewis, and this is in Washington, And I was having a hard time learning to breathe with a vest on because I've never had to use a vest until that timeframe, right? And it got to a point that I became very persistent on it. And it got to a point that I was just going jogging with a vest on. And it got to a point that my lungs expanded, got used to the weight, got used to the restriction that was put on them. And yeah, we were able to survive Fallujah because of it. So it's just, you know, stuff like that that you stop and think about, um, you know. So it's no different than when you do it in civilian world. Civilian world is the same thing. You're a professional shooter, right? You— yeah, you go out there. No, no, no, no, you are, you are. The thing about it is you got to get yourself in that same mindset. I am who I am, right? I mean, you don't go and spend all that money for nothing, right?

Right.

So might as well get yourself thinking that, get yourself in that mindset, you know. I can tell you Gabby doesn't think that way. Guarantee you Gabby goes out there and—

I mean, Gabby, I'm not ever gonna compare myself to Gabby.

No, no, but I'm just saying, I'm just saying, I'm just using her as an example. Gabby, Gabby is studly, man, you know. And I know she's—

oh yeah, but you know, no, Gabby kicks ass.

Gabby is—

she's just got her doctorate, she's got— yeah, mom, she's an Olympian. And she's got everything. And those of you don't know, look for Gabby in my instructor interviews because we chat.

Yeah, she is. Yeah, she's amazing. Um, but my thing is that we all can learn something from everybody, you know what I'm saying? And, and, and those are just like simple things that you're doing right now, um, that I think are admirable. The fact that you get on YouTube and you say, hey, I, I suck at whatever is it that you suck at, and you admit it and you want to get help. That is the hardest thing for anybody to do and to say that they need help with. So congratulations for doing that, because in reality, many people will never say that. They'll say, oh, I don't suck, you know, there was something wrong with the course, the weather was messed up.

Yeah, well, I mean, the weather was a little bit funky, but, but for real, I do believe the I am only competing with myself thing.

Exactly.

And here's the thing, I am freaking spectacular compared to the shooter I was 10 years ago.

Why is that?

Because I would— I didn't know anything 10 years ago. 10 years ago I would go to competition and I couldn't even tell you if I hit the targets or not. And now I'm a different level of competition, so now it's more of like, oh, now I'm starting to pay attention, I understand how the game works, stuff like that. So I'm just I'm saying it's like, it's all relative, right?

So let me ask you this. What, what were your scores back then compared to now? Were they any different?

Um, no. Well, so here's the thing is the one that I just shot would be what I would expect 10 years ago, not what I would expect from me today. Do you know what I mean?

So, but I also think you're thinking way too much about it.

Way too much.

Way too much. The thing is, you just got to have fun. You got to, Just think about exactly what you're going to do. So the dry fire portion, it's good, but it's also the rehearsing aspect of it. The, the thing about what you're doing right now is that you already know most of the courses and how they work, or whatever the case would be, right? You can, you can, yeah, you can, you can. Well, you know, and then a lot of it has to do with your, with your feet. I mean, with your being able to sprint from one place to another, being able to use the right footwear, being able to hydrate. You know, it's just little simple stuff that you don't think about. You ever notice that the US Army, um, marksmanship team— you seen— you ever seen them on, on, on, uh, on a competition? Those guys are immaculately good, man. But what is it that they do? They practice every little simple thing. They look at every simple thing and, and they excel at whatever they do. Whenever the U.S. Army Marksmanship Team goes anywhere, they're expected to be top 3, period. There's, there's no way about it. They, they have to compete. They have to be to a certain level because that's what's expected of them, you know. But it's, it's just, it's just the, the amount of preparation that you do that, that's going to get you to where you need to get. So anyways, I'm sublabbing.

No, no, but this is the whole point is like most of us try to get everything. And I know from trying and failing in the past, by focusing on the one thing, right, right now, we're talking about me focusing on my dry fire habits, because the previous month prior to the last comp I did, I had zero. For dry fire habits. And so now we're going to go 30 days into dry fire. But also super important is I need to know where I'm at. So on the earlier one, I said I was going to go shoot a classifier. So I got my times and my score for my earlier— for today. So even part of my thing is once you focus on one thing, all these other things kind of come along. Like all of a sudden it's like, okay, as my hand gets sore because I've done too many draws, I'm like, okay, well, I'll switch what I'm working on. But because I'm focusing on the one thing, the dry fire, maybe my hydration is going to get better over the next 30 days. Maybe my exercise routine is going to get a little better over the next 3 days. So I'm 3 days, 30 days. And that's assuming that I do this for the entire time because we do kind of want your buddies here over at Local Heroes. Maybe, maybe you want me to fail so they can get $100. So there's always that on the other side of it. Yeah. So those of you, if any of you don't know, the bet we have going here is simply that— hold on, let me see if I can make this big. Oh, can I make it big? If I don't follow through with doing this every single day and putting something up here, I told Mario I would give $100 to his favorite veterans thing. So here we have Local Heroes for Local Help, the Wounded Heroes Fund. All right, so Mario, this is where you get to talk a little bit why this is your favorite.

All right, well, the Wounded Heroes Fund is actually a local nonprofit organization that's here in Bakersfield, California. They actually provide a lot of really good programs. They have a program for— they have an equestrian program, for those that are, you know, having a lot of issues with transitioning or in some cases just, you know, just going through a really rough time. Seems to me like horses are always very therapeutic for service members, so it's always pretty cool. The other program that they have is that they actually have a dog trainer, and you can actually bring your own dog and they'll train him for you and make him a certified, you know, service dog for you. Um, yeah, Stable Forces. So it's a— that's a really good program. They also have the food basket program, but they do—

um, sorry, I was trying to get to the dog one for you since that's what you were talking about. My bad.

Yeah, yeah. So this is the service dog program, and they actually have— um, actually, I met the trainer, out of all things. I met him in, um, Petco. And, uh, yeah, he was telling me a little bit about what he does there. So, you know, most people, you can even get a dog from a shelter, you know, and if it's a dog that can be trained, they'll train them for you free of charge, you know, and they'll get, they'll get you all the certifications in order for you to do the, the actual test and, and get him or her, um, certified so that you have a certified dog, service dog for, for a service member. They have a ruck march program, which is basically a, it's called the Regimental Ruck. Yeah. So what that does is they actually go and do, you know, ruck marches around here in our mountains. And it's pretty interesting because they do it kind of similar to like if you're doing a an actual mission, and they actually have an operations order and all kinds of stuff. So they make it—

so you get a little of your past thrown into your present.

Yeah, yeah. And they also have a lot of— they do an annual event where they do big fundraiser for their program. And so it's a very good program. You know, they help veterans if they're looking for jobs. So I really like that, that organization. They've helped me a couple things, like they actually got me to be part of the Veteran of the Game because we have an AHL hockey team here in Bakersfield called the Bakersfield Condors, and they actually do like a, like a shout out. So you basically go out and, uh, in front of the, the whole arena and they introduce you and Sorry, I hit the wrong buttons here. It's pretty cool, and I like the fact that they do the food baskets for the, for the veterans during the holidays. So yeah, the— this organization has, uh, it, it definitely is definitely one of my favorites, one that I love to support.

So gotcha, very cool. All right, so because I try to get better at this whole thing, so G-Webs, who I haven't seen live in a while, 7th thumbs up. So yes, those of you who are here, thumbs up on whatever this is, YouTube and/or likes on Facebook. Ghost even popped in.

Hi, Ghost. What's going on, Maureen?

So, all right, so back to habits, because that was kind of actually the thing that I put as the thumbnail for this is like, when we pick one thing what, like, this is going to be the dry fire thing. I always find when I'm doing one thing, it leads to, like I was saying, the better hydration, maybe more attention to my workouts, that kind of stuff. So that's why I think a singular focus on a single thing, all of a sudden all of these other cool things come around. So it does help. But yeah, I'm, uh, I'm excited. I think it'll be interesting. I think it'll help me on multiple levels just because pop on here every day, um, or at least have this in my head that I got to record, put something up. And so some of these videos might show up at like midnight, I'm not sure, depends on my day because, yeah, it's a busy life. So, um, and that's my— not my excuse, but my reason for why I wasn't making a priority prior to my last competition.

But so the thing is that you're, you're holding yourself accountable, and that's the admirable thing that I'm telling you about. So just continue doing that, you'll be fine.

Thank you. And we got people like Chris and Vanessa Kitty, and Barbecue said I missed him before, so— but he's our 5th thumbs up.

Oh, look at that.

I know, look at them all. They're here to see you.

Really? No, I hope not.

Well, DJ said something about my— that I'm all color coordinated because I've got the blue and the red behind me. I've got my red, white, and blue. Yeah, um, my Aiming for Zero. I figured I should this for, because, you know, it's, it's veteran stuff. So real quick, I'm going to talk about Aiming for Zero. Sure. Because Aiming for Zero is one of the first veteran groups that I found out about. Because in the competition world, we totally support our vets. And one of the Aiming for Zero— oh, what's it called? Competitions I went to, I actually have a video and it's on my web, on my YouTube channel. And it was like, it was so crazy because the gentleman who was running it had 21 veterans come up and stand in front of the group. And he's like, I can't even say this without crying. I'm such a baby. He's like, by the end of this day, we have lost this many veterans. And it was just so heartbreaking that it's just like, this is why, whether it's Aiming for Zero or we're going to help Mario's group of the Wounded Heroes Fund. And cause it's nice and local to him, just help whoever you can. And you know, that is the other thing. So sorry, I just got distracted by somebody else's comment. And I'm going to ignore him. Oh, the Moo is in the room. Um, I know he's not saying hi to me, he's saying hi to Coop, but whatever. So, all right. So I think this next couple of 30 days is going to do a couple of things. One, I will be getting in better shooting form. Two, between the two of us, maybe we'll— oh yeah. So that was the other thing. Rules and regulations here, right? I've got the full 24 hours of the day to get something up each day.

Yeah.

Oh, you're muted. Did I mute you?

Hold on. I muted. Okay. Sorry about that. That's all right. Yeah. You know, start, start with something. I would always say start with something small, but that you find significant to what you're trying to do. And then work your way to other things. Um, the other thing that you're talking about, how sometimes your hand hurts because of the constant— you grabbing the pistol, that goes away after like the first week.

That's not usually a big deal.

Yeah, but also you really stop and think about it. Sometimes, uh, you know, your adrenaline gets the best of you, and sometimes in, in some cases it could— it— that's one of the, the things that does it. Like, for me, I am notorious for pulling to the Right, no, to the left. And that's just because I have a strong, you know, trigger finger, basically, because most of the time you only use an M4, you know, an M4 has a pretty decent trigger. So, um, I mean, then you go to an M9, who was also— it's also very, very, uh, heavy trigger per se. And then when I shot the.320, the M17, I was like Yeah, I keep shooting to the left, and it's just that it's a, it's a newer gun with less recoil on the, on the trigger, and it's just simple stuff like that. And just be able to, uh, to, to, to adjust to it. So it's just little things that you really don't stop and think about until you start to, to really fine-tune little things as to what you're doing right or wrong.

Oh yeah, so it's actually— I should get back to this, so You cannot figure where you're going if you don't know where you've been. So the reason I did the— I'm going to make me big for a second, um, so I can show this. So I ran the IDP classifier, and what this does is it measures my time and accuracy. And while I'm doing this, each thing is a different, uh, thing. So my first one is draw and fire 5 shots. My second one is draw, fire 5 shots with strong hand only. Third one, I got to do 5 shots, reload, 5 shots. And then the last one is 2 to the body, 1 to the head. So each one of these steps is teaching me a specific skill. So the draw and shoot 5 shots is just your basic shooting. When I have to do draw and 5 shots with only my strong hand, now I get to see how accurate I am because I can see my target because it's only 10 yards away.. And then when I do string 3, I get to see how fast my reloads are. So this gives me tons of different data points to start with. And then the last one, draw 4 shots to the body, which is the big part of the target, and then 1 to the head. Now I get to see, all right, how well and how long does it take me to do that precision shot for the head? So by doing this, I've measured both the time and the accuracy. So I didn't, I didn't tally this all up yet, but one of the things I did is I wrote down my draws, for example. So my draw with just my single hand was actually not the slowest draw. It was my last one where I was going for the, for the body, one of the head, because like Mario started talking about, like the mental side of things of getting prepared to do a course of fire, you have to think your brain is part of this. In that discipline of doing the dry fire every day. So I think I'll do one of these every other week, probably, so we get to see the progression from where I am to where I am going. Because as far as what to practice for dry fire, it's like, well, right now I can practice on all of these because all of them need improvement. My first 5 were perfect as far as they were all in the zero ring. After that, some of the wheels fell off just a little bit, but my last shot where I had that really slow draw where I had to do headshot was perfect in the middle. So take what you can do. Like I said, you know, you're competing against yourself, and see, you have to be able to measure that to know what you're actually, you know, what you're actually trying to get better at. So you can pick and choose the dry fire. So this week. I might do just draw, just work on the one draw, or I might do reloads because my reloads kind of sucked. So there's multiple stuff we're gonna go through this week to, uh, figure that all out. All right, Mario, are you ready? You can come back on now. Oh yeah, he's so ready! Wait, I gotta make him big because you guys see the puppy. Um, I'm gonna unmute him though. Are you talking? Because you're muted. Because you muted yourself. I can't unmute you. But yeah, gee, you think that G-Webs was here? Yeah, G-Webs has a pug too. Yeah, that is Bruno right there. Hi Bruno, nice to meet you. He's done doing his— I, uh, sorry, I look over at the comments and I see something, so I start saying what I'm reading. So idpa.com if you wanted to learn more about that classifier that I did. But I have another video that I'll be putting up probably tomorrow. It was today's practice, so I think we're going to be a day behind on all of this. So— oh, Barbecue has got to be funny with his, um, for the body, with the head. Obviously we're shooting 9mm because 4 rounds to the body with a.45 vaporize them. So anyway, I don't know, is that like Biden saying that you're going to blow out a lung with a 9mm? God, sorry, we will not go down there. We're not going there. It's all barbecue's fault.

Don't, don't get me started with Mr.

C now. Oh man. All right, so I am not paying attention to this stuff on this side, but I saw woodwork. Both have been a saving grace of learning an activity for her. So I don't know what I'm not missing. But anyway. All right, Mario, anything else that we got to think about for the next 30 days? Focus on one thing, get one thing better, go to the next thing.

You know, like I was saying, you just got to keep it simple and look at the things that you need to do. To get yourself prepared. I think honestly, um, the physical aspect, whether you believe it or not, it really does pay dividends because, uh, the better stamina that you have, the more focused you are on what you're doing. So something to think about.

See what happens here? You talk smack online, you say you're gonna have a dry fire challenge, now he wants me to get physically fit too. I don't know, man, you're already stacking stuff on here, but you're not wrong at all. At all. That's why it's like, because before you and I got on here, I'm thinking—

I mean, it's no different than— it's no different than what I, what I told you about me having to get used to wearing a vest. I mean, yeah, I mean, it's just, it, uh, it really is horrible, I'm telling you, because, uh, I've never felt so horrible wearing a freaking vest and having to run. It's horrible. I just, I just felt like I couldn't breathe right, and Yeah, it's like something I, I don't— I mean, for those that have done it, they know exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah, not these YouTube Commandos. I'm talking about the real guys that they've done in the past, you know what I'm saying? But because we know plenty of those guys shooting all that crap with a 9mm.

The hell out of here.

I've seen all those things. I'm like, why are you wearing all that crap with— you're shooting a pistol.

Like, anyways. Anyway, we will— well, yeah, we can have the, the size debate thing another time.

The YouTube Commandos.

Me, I am just like, okay, we are here, we are family-friendly channel here. Um, that's like, yeah, we're not gonna go down there. Um, but yeah, 9mm,.45, I'm happy shooting a.22.

So, you know, um, there's nothing wrong with.22.

I will say, talking to my EMT friends down here in Bridgeport, they're like, yeah,.22 kills lots of people because it doesn't go through, it bounces around, and they Die.

What do you think a 556 does? I don't know. It's the same thing. Jump around. Yeah. No, it just bounces all over you.

Yeah. So, all right. Well, that's another topic another time. So here's the deal. You'll see me every day. Mario and I haven't discussed how many times I'm gonna pull him in. I might just bug him like once a week or something. Um, yeah. We have to figure that out. I don't know. Monday's your day off. Monday's my day off. That might work out. Um, and I was talking to someone else about this challenge, and I do have some challenges because I am going away, uh, for the last week before I go. So, and I can't bring guns with me, so we're gonna talk about different ways to dry fire that aren't all gun related. All right, got any other last tips or inspiration for me, Mario, before we go?

No, that's it. I think I'm done.

I'm done. All right, it was good to see you. Yeah, you too. Um, yeah, I got to talk to you on the phone today, all that good stuff. Yeah. And, um, yeah, we'll figure out when you're coming back on again and we'll see how this goes and hopefully make it all the way there. And who knows, um, DJ had put on the web, the YouTube side, he put my Patreon stuff up there. So I was gonna say, if anybody wants to join my Patreon channel And if I raise $100 there in the next 28 days, I will give that $100 away to Mario as well. So now I'm gonna like cross-promote.

So there I go. Zero's fun.

There you go. That, that's that. All right, sir. Well, I'm gonna say good night. I know it's only like not even dinner time over there, but 5 o'clock here. Yeah, I don't know what— well, some people have late dinners. I don't know. But, uh, thank you. Thank you for your time on your day off. All right, guys, bye everybody. Thanks for everybody popping in.