Sights far apart or close together?

[PETE S]

Consider this approach to drills:

1. Your wrist is a movable joint, and few actions are intended to have the wrist joint stay in fixed position. Hence, you have to specifically train the wrist to stay in a fixed position. These drills are around sight alignment.
a. Hold sight alignment against a blank wall
b. Hold sight alignment against a blank wall and move your trigger finger
C. live fire to a blank target, with intensity on the site alignment
2. hold the front sight on a dot on the wall. Now you are training your shoulder muscles to hold your arm steady.

Consider the physical training needed to improve arm, wrist and shoulder strength as part of the training (as well as core body strength).

Continue to develop your own plans. Include why you are doing the drill in your planning.

Shooting is a system made up of little processes. Think about the little processes and how they fit the overall system. Improve those little processes with the end result of improving the shooting system.

When building a better mouse trap, one does not all of a sudden build a better mouse trap, one improves the spring or the release mechanism or the bait holder thinking of how those improvements effect of the trap function.

[Mike M.]

FWIW, here's my target from this month's air pistol match. Shot a 528. At these matches, we shoot side-by-side targets, 5 shots per target. I put my score targets over the sighters, so as to have a cumulative group.

What I'm seeing:
1. No improvement
2. Distinct bimodal shot distribution. Right and left sides of the 9-ring. Plus fliers.
3. Scores from the second 30 shots lower than first 30 shots. Mostly due to more fliers.

Any advice?

[Mike M.]

Got it. Thanks.

[Brian M]

Try hosting somewhere else, like photobucket, picassa, image shack, etc... and then hotlinking via the "IMG" button, it'd look something like this:

Code: Select all

[IMG]http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/ae211/Brian--M/Temp/Target001.jpg[/IMG]

Which then looks like this:

[bijupaul]

Try hosting somewhere else, like photobucket, picassa, image shack, etc... and then hotlinking via the "IMG" button, it'd look something like this:

No Brian, I don't think changing the image host will make a target look like that ;) it may require little more of that so called 'trigger control'.

[PETE S]

Ok, let me get this straight, you trained yourself for how many years by shooting some number of shots each night, and you expected to see improvement trying a new training techniques in a few weeks?

Bimodal distribution...obviously means to different techniques. One distribution represents one technique, the other distribution means you did something different for those shots. So one take away is for you to see that difference. And if you can not see a difference, why can you not see the two different techniques.

I sometimes drop shoots low and left. Typically this means I have let my eye focus someplace other than the front sight and hence the alignment is off. Answer for me is to train a little harder, longer and with better intensity on my sights.

Fliers represent a total departure from your technique. Considering aborting. Aborting a shot is a technique to learn. There is no rule that says when you pick the pistol up off the bench you must shoot! If there is a break in technique, concentration etc, abort.

The other concern I will express is that every single shooter on this list will say they align the sights. I have spoken to some national team members that say they became resident athletes etc, and then learned to align their sights. The fact is that most think we align the sights, but only those that achieve the higher scores really are aligning the sights.

[gtrisdale]

FWIW, here's my target from this month's air pistol match. Shot a 528. At these matches, we shoot side-by-side targets, 5 shots per target. I put my score targets over the sighters, so as to have a cumulative group.

What I'm seeing:
1. No improvement
2. Distinct bimodal shot distribution. Right and left sides of the 9-ring. Plus fliers.
3. Scores from the second 30 shots lower than first 30 shots. Mostly due to more fliers.

Any advice?

A couple of suggestions:
1) Train for endurance. You need to be shooting 80 - 100 shots at least once a week, twice would be better. This will help the 2nd 30 shots to be as strong as the 1st 30 shots.
2) Train trigger. This includes working on pulling straight back so that all motion and pressure is in line with the barrel. Also, ensure that your grip does not change while you move the trigger. This is one of the keys to shooting smaller groups.