Ace Member Spotlight: JJ Racaza, World Champion
This week, we sat down with World Champion and Team Beretta shooter JJ Racaza. As an early Ace member and ambassador, we wanted to take in all we could and share with you his unique story, insights and tips from his training routines, the drills he likes, and what it’s like to shoot at such a high level.
Q: Alright JJ - let’s start with your background. Give us your story. Who is JJ Racaza?
JJ: “I was born and raised in the Philippines and as a kid, I did a lot of martial arts. My dad was a surgeon and was gone for work often, and he wanted me to learn how to shoot a gun when I was 7 years old to help defend our family. I have two sisters. My dad had a 1911 .45 that held 7 rounds. At first, I worked on practicing with the trigger, learning how to cycle it. Eventually, he took me to the range and I practiced at 7 feet. My sisters learned to shoot too.
At the range, my dad and I watched some of the experienced shooters running drills, practicing tactics and preparing for a competition. We started watching videos of shooting competitions and my dad actually started going to competitions and actually winning trophies (1989).
For the next 5 months, I practiced drawing the gun and dry firing. Lining up the sites and pulling the trigger. I started working on reloading drills, and got my movements smooth and then went back to the range to practice with live fire. The recoil of a .45 was a lot to handle - at this point I was still 9 years old.
As far as competition shooting goes, I started shooting in some local competitions and actually won an IPSC match at the Sebu Pistol and Rifle Association at 9 years old. After that, we started traveling outside our local area for other competitions.
At 13 years old, I’m winning overall matches, and got to travel to Manilla to compete for a chance to go to Brazil - qualified 6th overall, against grown adults and no other junior shooters. I didn’t make the cut, but got a lot of good encouragement to continue shooting.
Later that year, we moved to the USA and had to sell the guns he’d been training on and start over. Once we’d gotten settled here, we called around and found out there were competitive shooting opportunities near us. My first gun in the US was a Millenium Custom .40 S&W 2011 - the first and only gun I’ve ever actually purchased. The rest have been gifts or sponsorships.
Johnny Lim helped me get into Open division. In 2000, in Pittsburg, PA, I placed 10th overall at Nationals. I got to shoot in the Shoot Offs and nobody had heard of me. With that success, USPSA called and interviewed me. They put me on the front page of Front Sight magazine in May 2001. My spikey hair is where the nickname came from - The Razor.
After 9/11, I got recruited to help with training for US Air Marshals and started making good money teaching shooting for 3-4 years. After the contracts ended, I tried for a position in law enforcement, but I wasn’t yet a US citizen yet. I had less than a month to get my citizenship before the position closed. Luckily, because I’d met the right people, they called it a “specialized skill set” for the government, to fast track my citizenship and I got it in less than a month. I was the first person in my family to become a US citizen.
So I got the Field Agent DHS Field Agent job in 2006 and then won my first world championship title (Steel Challenge) at the World Speed Shooting Championship. Around that time, I started getting calls from brands wanting to talk about sponsorships. I won another World Championship in 2008. At work, I became a firearms instructor and then Training Officer at DHS.
Fast forward a few years - the Government day job was picking up pace and they wanted to move me to DC. In 2015, I decided to leave DHS and move to Vegas to really start my professional shooting career as a civilian. We started a gun shop in Las Vegas. Keeping busy with the gun shop and my kids, I didn’t get to shoot as much for a while. But I got the opportunity to shoot World Shoot 2017 and placed 2nd after all that time away. This was the 3rd consecutive World Championship I placed 2nd at.
In 2018, I won back to back Nationals and finished 2nd on another one, and I won “Best Shooter of the Year”. I felt like I had some good momentum and a few life changing offers from gun companies before SHOT Show 2019. I had 6 contracts when I got back from SHOT and ended up signing with 3 major brands.”
Q: How and when did you get involved with Team Beretta? Was this around that time?
JJ: “Yes, they approached me and wanted me to shoot one of their new guns but couldn’t get it to me due to ATF issues with the new gun. So they flew me to Italy to try out the new gun - the Beretta 92X Performance - in person. I wanted to get through 1,000 rounds, and after 300 rounds, I’d basically fallen in love with it and felt like I could win competitions with it.
When I joined Team Beretta, I was the only Team USA shooter they had in America and I felt like I could standout more and do something different. We worked on the gun some more and they refined it some to make it suitable for Open division. I signed with them officially in July 2019. This was the start of being a true professional, competitive shooter for me. A few months later, I sold my stake in the gun shop and stepped away from that to focus on shooting full time.
In 2021, I won a National title with Beretta. In 2022, I won my first World Championship title with them. After all that time chasing it, I had finally achieved that dream. It was really special. In 2024, I won Production Division USPSA Nationals with Beretta.
In 2024, I won the Production Division (iron sights) USPSA Nationals with Beretta.
Today, I spend my time training, providing firearms instruction and classes for law enforcement, military, and civilians. I try to be a hell of a father, an amazing husband, and my wife reviews and approves all of my contracts!”
Q: Awesome story and background. How long have you been shooting Ace and how did you get started?
JJ: “I like technology and data, and things that I can measure. I saw a post from someone shooting Ace and I remember thinking – that’s a hell of a way to dry fire. Couldn’t get my hands on it for the longest time. But they ended up inviting some competitors to Texas to shoot and try it out. I remember putting it on and testing it out for the first time and thinking “holy cow, this is the world I want to live in, this is what I want to do over and over.”
I ended up getting it in December 2023. At first, I wondered about how my skills would transfer to VR. Turns out, they did. The only person that beat me was a top world recognized speed shooter. So I realized my real life skills transferred to VR – there was something special about Ace.
I would use it prior to practice to get warmed up and started seeing the results from Ace right away. It’s hard to describe but I’m able to see the sights quicker. Lack of recoil on the handset doesn’t change anything or hinder progress in anyway. It actually allows you to see sloppiness or twitch in your trigger pull and focus on working on that.
Ahead of Nationals in 2024, I said to myself “I need to get on Ace specifically so I can re-learn shooting iron sights for Production competition. Ace was one of the biggest advantages I had going into Nationals… my ability to process the sights gave me a faster response to the sight picture.”
Q: How has it changed your practice / training regime?
JJ: “Ace makes dry fire training way more fun. Feedback is big in dry fire if you’re going to build consistency. This allows me to shoot a couple courses of fire - and now have immediate positive feedback on target - good or bad - so I can make those changes on the subsequent run. Once I get the results I want (accuracy or time), I memorized the movement - speeding up the process of learning a new skillset. This makes it so I don’t have to wait to get to the range to actually connect that movement and visual aspect of the gun moving. It’s a shortcut of getting to the subconscious, competent realm.”
Q: How often do you run drills with Ace? How many rounds fired?
JJ: “I don’t know how many rounds I’ve fired on the platform - not as high as you might think. I try to shoot Ace at least twice a week on Tuesdays and Thursdays - but it depends on my schedule. Mondays and Wednesdays I’m at the range for live fire from 8am - 1pm.”
Q: Do you use any other training tools / dry fire solutions?
JJ: “I do dry fire training multiple days a week. Once in a while, I’ll use Mantis X and attach it to my Ace handset when I’m working on my trigger doing speed stuff. Ace is my primary dry fire training tool.
So I put the Mantis in the base pad, and then run drills in Ace… and compare data. Like I said, I really like being able to see my performance data and know exactly where to focus. The problem with Mantis is it isn’t fast enough to keep up with fast shooting, so I don’t use Mantis by itself.”
Q: What are your favorite stages / drills to run in Ace? What do you enjoy the most?
JJ “Ok, start with warm ups. I use the Accuracy drill in the Skill Section - the plate moves further out after 3 consecutive hits. Then I go to the Transition drill in the Skills Section. Then take a 2-3 minute break.
Next, I run the Steel SHOT Show 2024 drill - it has a bunch of steel. Helps me track my sights as I move, fast shooting, prepping the trigger, set my sights correctly.
I also like Don’t Miss (classic); it’s one of my favorites. I stopped trying to chase the leaderboard numbers… focusing more on trying to repeat my score and my ranking 5-10 times in a row, to build consistency.
I like the Steel Challenge drills like the pendulum and roundabout. It’s fun to chase the time on these.”
Q: What advice would you share with new Ace shooters just getting started?
JJ: “The first part of my answer is for competitive shooters. For A, B or C classification and below - this is the opportunity to go as fast as you can, process things going fast, hit any target going fast - that’s more important in the beginning. You’ll learn to translate that to live fire. Later in your development and progress, you’ll change it up a little – you can still build speed, but the further you go, the more important it is to work on consistency. Get a baseline of your low run, get your high outrageous run, and somewhere in between is the sweet spot you can operate. You don’t want to build bad habits just going fast.
Next part is for everyone else. If you have Ace, you should get your friends involved. Schedule dry fire training with a friend. It’s the most fun thing to do, and it’ll hold you accountable like you’re going to the gym with a buddy. Schedule it. Hold each other accountable. Our wives thought we were nuts, but it was the most fun we’ve had training in a while!
Sometimes I’ll bring it with me to Law Enforcement training classes, we’ll take a break from live fire and go shoot Ace on a break.”
Ready to elevate your dry fire training experience?
