Showing posts with label training logs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label training logs. Show all posts

Monday, March 25, 2013

Training Logs - Do You Keep One?

If so, what do you include in it?

I've just recently started thinking about this.  In the past, it has crossed my mind that I should maybe track my training, but I was getting way too in-depth and making it far too difficult and taking all of the fun out of my range time.  I think I lasted maybe two weeks of trying to log each and every time I handled my gun.

I know that keeping a training log can be beneficial if I am ever involved in a shooting (which, like most people, I hope I never am), but how in-depth does it have to be?

I know people who log every single round they fire, what they were working on, the brand of ammo, the weather, which position they were shooting from, the wind (rate and direction), if their arthritis was acting up, if their hair was down or in a ponytail, what color underwear they were wearing, etc.  I can't do that - it takes all of the fun out of training.

We've been talking about professional development logs at work and what is involved in those.  So instead of adopting a "Training Log", I'll be doing a type of a professional development log, keeping track of:
  • all defense related classes (knife, carbine, handgun, etc)
  • dates of Defensive Pistol matches I've competed in, since I use them for training
  • all reading (articles, books, blogs) pertaining to defense
I'll have to do some back-tracking for some of this information.  For example, I don't remember the date of the first pistol class I took, or the first AR-15 class I took.  I just vaguely remember that my pistol class was the week before my first Defensive Pistol match nine or ten years ago and that my AR class was during a weekend when it was crazy hot (104+ all day long).  My more recent courses won't be too hard to dig up the dates, because I've blogged about them, so it's just a matter of digging through old posts.

What I probably will not do is keep track of my range time, as I look at that like I do my job at work; it's just what I do and not out of the ordinary, whereas classes and such are above and beyond what I would normally do at work.

What kind of training logs do you keep?