Tracing Drill

[StephenL]

A while ago I read somewhere about a drill. You are supposed to put a +,X,O on the back of an air pistol target at 10 meters and trace them.

Now, I am just starting out so this may seem like a stupid question...

Are the +,X,O the size of the paper or the black area?

I was going to be passing this drill down to some of the juniors in our club, but I wanted to make sure I knew the "correct" size.

The purpose is to help decrease wobble and increase control/hold.

Thanks.

Stephen

[Isabel1130]

I am trying to figure out what the purpose of a drill like this might be. If you can keep the sights aligned while you are doing it, it might theoretically teach you not to be worried about your sights moving around on the target. On the other hand, if you do the drill by moving your wrist to trace the patterns, it could teach some very poor habits, indeed.

[deadeyedick]

Probably better trying to trace drill the 10 ring.

[Gwhite]

Back in my youth, I shot air rifle any time I got bored, which was fairly frequent during high school. We had one of the first Feinwerkbau 150's imported by Daisy, but nobody local sold real air rifle targets. We only had NRA 50 foot smallbore targets with the large 10 ring, so shooting tens got pretty tedious, not to mention having to schlep back& forth changing targets all the time. I switched to shooting tens, and then cutting the blacks out of the targets. That was much more challenging, and I didn't have to walk near so much. Saved a lot on targets too.

[Muffo]

I would say some of the reasons are to learn to except slow controlled movement and as a warm up. It helps to warm up the same muscles that help to hold it still

[antispar]

Here are two variants of a same target, on which you can have 5 different dry fire practices. It is designed for shortened distance (2.9 meter). The line thickness equals diameter of the 10 ring, and the size of the black circle reflects that of target’s black circle. Variant of the target with flattened bottom of the black circle helps your eye-brain coordination to customise with the distance of your sub-six as it is easier to notice deviation in distance if lines are parallel.

The first exercise is simple dry fire on blank target (if you have coloured paper walls).

The second is aiming on the vertical line, keeping the line steady as possible in the middle of the front sight, keeping the sights aligned.

The third is aiming below the horizontal line, keeping the distance between front sight and the line same as much as possible, of course keeping the sights aligned. The distance is the same one you use for your sub-six aiming.

The fourth is aiming at the crossing of the vertical and horizontal line, below the horizontal line for same size of with as for your usual sub-six aim.

And final one, the fifth exercise is to aim at the black circle and dry fire.

All these exercises can be combined with prolonged hold (up from 15 to 45-60 seconds) and reduced stability stance (with both feet kept together).

Practice targets with rings of different sizes are for holding practices. You aim with aligned sights into the biggest ring and keep them as steady as possible, them move to smaller ring, always with prolonged hold.

[daotoys1]

During the hold phase of shooting the associated muscles of the hand and arm ( actually the whole body ) go into a controlled co-contraction. The main muscles involved have to work together to establish the "hold", while other muscles go into stabilizing roles, and unneeded muscles should go into a relative state of relaxation.

Any unneeded muscle tension/ contraction is unwanted and will upset the controlled aim/ hold of the pistol on target.

Since our bodies are not machines , we are unable to set a hold pattern and lock it there. There is always a dynamic interaction between our position, the functioning of our muscles and the brain attempting to maintain the wanted posture ( or hold of the gun), as well as the brain and body/muscles ( neuro-muscular coordination) learning how to not use unwanted and/or unneeded muscular contraction ( learned relaxation and noninterference of muscles not contributing to the event).

Since there is a never ending feedback loop between our body and brain, and because of the way our muscles have to interact to control our bodies, there is always a lingering trace of correction occurring that causes minute movements of the object ( the pistol in this case), even though we are trying to maintain a fixed and unmoving site picture ( and corresponding unmoving pistol position), it is impossible to do so absolutely.

In actuality the hold of the pistol is done in a extremely small never ending figure 8 pattern. Improved hold is actually a learned skill where the figure 8 is continually made smaller and smaller as it approaches a single point ( in theory this could continue to a singularity but in actuality this is impossible to attain).

Any type of pattern making with the hold ( of the gun and/or sight picture), is simply a exercise to teach the brain/body to decrease the figure 8 of the hold pattern , thus improving the skills needed to improve accuracy and control of that function.

Using almost any type of pattern(s) will give you this skill. Geometric patterns work well, as do the use of things like the letters of the alphabet, and/or almost any type of voluntary controlled movements.

Shooting well is a learned skill. Its not a natural event. So our brains and body know nothing about how to do this inherently/ instinctively , so we have to teach this learned skill to our selves.

Holding something still for any length of time, especially when using extremely small body segments ( like the fingers, hand and thumb), is something our bodies were never made to do. And so we do this skill poorly.

Shooting, especially precise target ( pin point focal shooting like at a bull's eye), shooting is an extremely complex and difficult task to ask of our selves. This type of thing is truly a "learned skill", so any type of exercise that focuses on a splinter skill ( a part or sub skill of a larger skill ), will carry over into the improvement of the larger skill itself.

If you analyze any shooting exercise you will find that it does nothing more that teach our minds and bodies to adapt to a novel event. Shooting a gun is not something we were designed to do. In fact its far from it. This is why we are so poor at it ( although there is always, or almost always room for improvement).

This limited reply does nor even include what is going on with other components of the system that makes for a good shot ( for example, nothing has been said about the functions of the eyes, nor of hand and eye coordination, nor have we addressed the sensory-motor-sensory feed back loops involved, nor the control of ones antigravity muscles to control our bodies within the gravity field......there is a lot going on in the simple act of shooting a single bullet at a intended point ( target).

I apologize for my long windedness

DAO