Smoother, Quicker Reloads with Colors & Shapes

What in the heck are these colors and shapes doing on my mags and in my magwells?

They’re a hack to help you be smoother, more consistent, and quicker with your reloads.

I’ll tell you all about them in the video here:

Pretty cool, huh? 🙂

In summary…

The colored marks in the magwell and on magazines help create a visual handrail to improve the speed and accuracy that you can insert a fresh magazine.

In an ideal world, we’d do our reloads without looking, but that depends on how accurate and precise our proprioception (hand-eye coordination) is.  Using the dots helps to compensate for inaccurate hand-eye coordination AND quickly helps improve hand-eye coordination for reloads.

Keeping the pistol out and the arms in an outside-90 framework is quicker, increases awareness during the reload, and provides a better defense against an attacker who appears around a corner and is closing distance.  < It’s worth pointing out that reloads are a very low probability event in a self-defense situation…let alone getting rushed during that reload.  Awareness during the reload and being able to quickly and cleanly accomplish the reload and get back on target quickly is the biggest advantage.

Keeping the pistol out works better for many ranges where the muzzle must remain pointed downrange into the berm during reloads.

As speed, visual complexity, and cognitive load increases, the likelihood of seeing the colors/shapes drops, BUT the hand-eye coordination that you developed by using the colors/shapes at slower speeds and lower cognitive loads remains.  To be clear, you not only want to practice slowly, but you want to also practice at full speed.  This is a complex motor skill using both hands, so speed and inertia matter…it’s not good enough to only practice slow and expect to be able to execute fast like you can with a gross motor movement.

As you can see, the T4E paintball marker works great for this and other fundamentals drills because it provides 3x more recoil than airsoft, makes training fun, can be used safely in places where live ammo can not, and costs a fraction of what live fire training does.  If you don’t have one yet, check out our T4E paintball marker packages that include the paintball pistol, more than 1100 rounds of ammo, spare mag, AND training for less than the cost of a case of live ammo.  It’s a seriously good deal, but quantities are limited, so click >HERE< now.

 

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5 Comments

  • Cristi Erickson

    Reply Reply May 15, 2021

    Another beneficial use of putting different shapes (or even numbers) on your magazines would be to have a specific shape (or number) designated for your last magazine. This would help you stay aware of how many magazines (and bullets) you have left.

    • Ox

      Reply Reply May 24, 2021

      It may be possible to do that, but not incredibly likely. The biggest value of the shapes is for slow to medium speed training. Once you’re moving at full speed–especially under stress–it’s incredibly difficult (and unnecessary) to see the shapes on the magazines.

  • Phil Rosine

    Reply Reply May 15, 2021

    Ox, got the T4E a while back. Great! How about a blog on the target you are using? I think you mentioned it a few days ago, but it’s not clear in my muddled mind. 😉 Thanks!
    -phil

    • Ox

      Reply Reply May 24, 2021

      Absolutely…here’s the quick & dirty version 🙂

      I get my E-Type targets from this company: https://invprotools.com/product/e-type-military-plastic-target-green/ They’re available on Amazon, but they cost quite a bit more if you’re getting a few at a time.

      I use this Dremel setup for cutting the holes: https://amzn.to/3vhM5sL but you can get JUST the Dremel circle cutter if you’ve already got a dremel: https://amzn.to/3bQqdwB

      The colored targets that I use are BlazePods: https://www.blazepod.com/

      The BlazePods aren’t made to take lots of hits from the .43 paintballs. I’ve made several versions of targets and the most recent one is to replace the 8″ circle (or 7.75″) with a 7.75″ clear circle made out of polycarbonate…I mount the Blazepod to the BACK of the circle and hang the clear circle where the green one is in this video. This protects the blazepod, but allows you to see the light AND the fact that it swings makes the effective target face of the blazepod larger. The ones I’m using right now look ROUGH because I hacked them together for R&D. I’m having nice ones manufactured and I should be able to show them in a week or two.

      • Phil Rosine

        Reply Reply May 25, 2021

        Thank you! Gonna work on it.

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