Analyze this:

[Houngan]

After shooting the regional AP match on Saturday morning (543, my typical "basement range" score) I watched the UK game, had a few beers, and took a nap. When I woke up, still bleary eyed, I wandered downstairs and fired a 189/200 like it was no big deal. The next day I shot a 186/200, still about 2% above my usual. For some reason everything suddenly feels right after the big match. In particular, I'm able to pull the trigger with no hesitation or movement.

Mental block broken? Some strange virus I picked up from the match?

H.

[Mark Briggs]

Houngan - IT'S THE BEER! ;-)

[Richard H]

After shooting the regional AP match on Saturday morning (543, my typical "basement range" score) I watched the UK game, had a few beers, and took a nap. When I woke up, still bleary eyed, I wandered downstairs and fired a 189/200 like it was no big deal. The next day I shot a 186/200, still about 2% above my usual. For some reason everything suddenly feels right after the big match. In particular, I'm able to pull the trigger with no hesitation or movement.

Mental block broken? Some strange virus I picked up from the match?

H.

I wouldn't get excited till you do it again in a match. You're also comparing the score of a 60 shot match to firing 20 shots, unfortunately you can't assume because you shot 189/200 that you'd shoot 567/600.

[2650 Plus]

Please disregard the nay sayers. Of corse you can do it . Just keep on shooting tens, enjoy it while its happening , remember all the good shots , analize how you shop them and keep repeationg what works. Good luck in the future, Good Shooting Bill horton

[alb]

Please disregard the nay sayers. Of corse you can do it .

Obviously you can do it, since you did it. The question is how frequently you are able to do it. Human performance, like most things in nature, follows a normal distribution curve, i.e., some performances are very good, some performances are very poor, and most are average. It's that bell-shaped curve that students are frequently graded on in high school and college.

From your description, shooting a 189/200 sounds like a fairly rare event for you. Stringing 3 of these events together in a row to give you a 60-shot match is significantly more rare. For example, if you can shoot a 189/200 one time in twenty, then you have a 1-in-8,000 chance of shooting a 567/600.

Conversely, if you can shoot a 567/600 five percent of the time, then you can expect to shoot a 189/200 roughly 37 percent of the time.

You need to remember your good performances and build on them, and forget your bad performances. Shooting is more fun this way, as well as the fact that mentally rehearsing bad performances does you no good at all.

But you need to temper your expectations with a dose of reality. Regression-to-the-mean will happen, and you need to understand this in order to avoid becoming frustrated and discouraged.

Regards,

Al B.

[Ed Hall]

But you need to temper your expectations with a dose of reality. Regression-to-the-mean will happen, and you need to understand this in order to avoid becoming frustrated and discouraged.

Or, perhaps inspired...

A short, but true, story:

In 1979 John Bianchi started the Bianchi Cup. In 1984 the NRA made it The National Action Pistol Championship. For eleven years no one fired a perfect score. But a young shooter by the name of Doug Koenig hadn't been brain-washed into believing a perfect score was "unreal." So, in 1990 he went ahead and fired one. You know what? Ever since that event, the Tournament winner has had a perfect score.

Don't ever sell yourself short just because "it's reality."

...I wandered downstairs and fired a 189/200 like it was no big deal.

It wasn't a big deal because you just went ahead and fired without all the worry about it not being OK. Tens are always easier to fire. It's all those other shots we fret over until we drive them out. The match made you critique everything too much. Build on what you learned "downstairs." Then, take confidence with you to the next match. You may want to even use your basement range as a "happy place" to mentally take with you to the matches. If interested in what the heck I mean, you can read my Happy Place description here

Take Care,
Ed Hall
US Air Force Shooting Teams
Bullseye (and International) Competition Things

[JamesH]

I also find I shoot my best after a heavy night on the beer :)

I'm finding I can shoot fine, but I get over-tense and I convince myself I can't - plus I try much too hard.
Up to recently I over-practised, over-dry-fired, spent far too long tinkering with my grips etc.
Last week I spent the whole week making sure I stayed relaxed, stopped worrying about shooting.
At the weekend I shot 98/100 in Centrefire precision practise and 563/600 in the match - not great but my second best score ever.

Shooting is actually not difficult - aiming is easy, smooth trigger let-off is easy - we convince ourselves its hard to put it all together.
I'm not sure why, after all we do it for fun right?

[alb]

A short, but true, story:

In 1979 John Bianchi started the Bianchi Cup. In 1984 the NRA made it The National Action Pistol Championship. For eleven years no one fired a perfect score. But a young shooter by the name of Doug Koenig hadn't been brain-washed into believing a perfect score was "unreal." So, in 1990 he went ahead and fired one. You know what? Ever since that event, the Tournament winner has had a perfect score.

Don't ever sell yourself short just because "it's reality."

Ahh, yes. Another "Roger Bannister" story. Roger set a goal to run a sub-4-minute mile. It wasn't an unrealistic goal -- top runners had been coming close for some time. But it wasn't just confidence and a positive mental attitude that won the day for him. It was also his intensive training, combined with the presence of another runner in the race who was just as good as Roger (John Landy), plus the right weather and a fast track. Roger didn't know he was running a sub-4-minute mile when he did it. All he knew was that he needed to stay a couple of strides ahead of Landy (Landy also ran a sub-4-minute mile that day -- but who remembers that).

Over the course of the next several months, the 4-minute mark was broken somewhere around 37 times. Roger just happened to be the first one to do it. The second one to do it accomplished this feat just 0.8 seconds after Roger did it -- it wasn't like Landy suddenly had a mental barrier removed.

As a sport evolves over time, it usually takes better and better performances to win. Training methods evolve, tactics evolve, equipment evolves.

Your example of the Bianchi Cup shows an immature shooting discipline that evolved over the course of only 11 years to the point where the winner was shooting a perfect score.

In our sport, we keep score as we go. When we are having a bad day, we know it early on. Personally, I find that having a bad day kills some of the enjoyment (actually most of it), and it certainly doesn't do anything positive for one's self-confidence. You basically said as much yourself in your post.

If you have an unrealistically high belief in your abilities, then almost every day will be a bad day.

Having a realistic understanding of where you are today in terms of performance, combined with setting realistic goals, allows you develop a strategy for achieving those goals. When you see yourself gradually inching toward those goals (and improvement in average human performance generally is gradual), it inspires you to keep putting in the effort to meet them -- just like Roger did.

Surely, as a very accomplished coach, you can deliver a compelling sermon on the perils of over-confidence. Over-confidence is what happens when you don't "temper your expectations with a dose of reality."

Regards,

Al B.

[Houngan]

Heh, I didn't mean to generate this much serious consideration, I was just passing along an anecdote.

However, the ability has now left me, and I'm back to where I was (90% or a bit higher, regardless of number of shots fired.) If I had to look back on those two sessions vs. my current ones, I'd say that two things were different:

1. Having just woken up, I was very mentally relaxed, which led to easy trigger pulls and no overanalyzing.

2. Having just shot the sectional, my muscles were very stressed. After the nap, everything was tight, and my hold seemed to be much steadier than normal.

So, I'm now experimenting with varying muscle tension along the arm and shoulder, seeing if I can replicate that stability.

H.

[Guest]

In 1979 John Bianchi started the Bianchi Cup. In 1984 the NRA made it The National Action Pistol Championship. For eleven years no one fired a perfect score. But a young shooter by the name of Doug Koenig hadn't been brain-washed into believing a perfect score was "unreal." So, in 1990 he went ahead and fired one. You know what? Ever since that event, the Tournament winner has had a perfect score.

Don't ever sell yourself short just because "it's reality."


Take Care,
Ed Hall
US Air Force Shooting Teams
Bullseye (and International) Competition Things

I am new to pistol shooting, and am still just shooting AP, so I wonder what is a perfect score? Like only tens? Now I understand that it was not AP they were competing in, but what was it?

[David Levene]

But it wasn't just confidence and a positive mental attitude that won the day for him. It was also his intensive training, combined with the presence of another runner in the race who was just as good as Roger (John Landy), plus the right weather and a fast track. Roger didn't know he was running a sub-4-minute mile when he did it. All he knew was that he needed to stay a couple of strides ahead of Landy (Landy also ran a sub-4-minute mile that day -- but who remembers that).

I'm not sure where you got this from but I'm afraid you are wrong. John Landy wasn't in the race and "only" ran his first sub-4 minute mile in the following month.

Off topic I know, sorry.

[alb]

I'm not sure where you got this from but I'm afraid you are wrong. John Landy wasn't in the race and "only" ran his first sub-4 minute mile in the following month.

Actually, you're right. I mis-read the article. The race I was referring to took place 3 months after Bannister broke the 4-minute mark. Though I don't know that it really makes any difference to the point that I was trying to make.

Regards,

Al B.

[Houngan]

I am new to pistol shooting, and am still just shooting AP, so I wonder what is a perfect score? Like only tens? Now I understand that it was not AP they were competing in, but what was it?

A perfect score would be 60 tens, or 600.

H.

[Houngan]

Hmm. Just shot a 557 with no warm-up. Methinks I'm on to something here . . .


In other news, I always said I'd keep the IZH until I shot 93%, which I just did. Anybody have one of those fancy guns just laying around? I'm entering the market.

H.

[Markus N]

Hmm. Just shot a 557 with no warm-up. Methinks I'm on to something here . . .


In other news, I always said I'd keep the IZH until I shot 93%, which I just did. Anybody have one of those fancy guns just laying around? I'm entering the market.

H.

The IZH is good for +580 so you don't have to rush it.
I said to myself to buy a Morini when I shoot over 570 with my IZH in a competition.

[Ed Hall]

Hmm. Just shot a 557 with no warm-up. Methinks I'm on to something here . . .

Gee, how'd that happen? It can't be real, can it?

Sure it can. Study and focus on what works...

A favorite quote of mine is from Richard Bach. It's found as an entry in the Messiah's Handbook in Illusions:

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they're yours.

In case there was confusion from my earlier post, I didn't say that Houngan was going to instantly fire 600, nor did I try to imply that. That's not what he fired before. I was suggesting that he could choose to remain at a higher level. I also know that averages are made up of scores that are higher and lower, but you don't have to "pay the price" slowly to get better. There are some who progress by leaps. Unfortunately, the "realists" usually proclaim that they must not be human. I prefer to believe that humans have the ability to progress faster by studying what works rather than what doesn't.

Keep up the good work, Houngan. And don't worry about those, "He's not human." comments...(smile)

Take Care,
Ed Hall
US Air Force Shooting Teams
Bullseye (and International) Competition Things

[alb]

... I was suggesting that he could choose to remain at a higher level.

Ed, I don't know what that means. It seems to suggest that having a single 2-sigma event for 20 shots means that he has reached that higher level in the first place. It also seems to imply that shooting master class scores is a simple matter of making a conscious choice to do so. I somehow doubt that this is what you intended to say.

I would suggest that shooting master-class scores involves making a concious decision to put in the effort necessary to do so, including experimenting with different techniques and equipment to find things that produce an incremental improvement. If you don't believe that you can achieve it, then you won't make that decision.

But you also have to realistically assess where you are currently. If you think, based on a single 20-shot string that you're already there (and that's certainly not what Houngan, at least, is saying), then you still won't make that decision. And you'll also be in for a lot of dissapointment.

I also know that averages are made up of scores that are higher and lower, but you don't have to "pay the price" slowly to get better. There are some who progress by leaps. Unfortunately, the "realists" usually proclaim that they must not be human. I prefer to believe that humans have the ability to progress faster by studying what works rather than what doesn't.

I've re-read this entire thread and I can't find a reference anywhere to "he's not human." I hope you weren't attributing this to me, since that isn't what I was saying at all.

You are absolutely correct that human performance progresses by 'leaps', punctuated by plateaus and periods of far more gradual improvement. I know this from my own experience as well as the experience of others. But, at least in my case, I can always point to a specific change that I made, either in technique, equipment or thought process, that led directly to the incremental improvement. I look for those kinds of improvements constantly. Somehow, I doubt that getting wasted on beer the night before a match is one of them. Being relaxed and focused on your shooting without worrying about score (perhaps because you're hung-over and not expecting to shoot well anyway), on the other hand, just might be -- but so far we're talking about a single 20-shot string, shot in practice.

In the mean time, until I can find that next incremental improvement, I practice my wrist-strengthening exercises, my hold exercises, my dry-firing and my shooting, in the hope that I can do what I'm currently doing just a little bit better.

Peace,

Al B.

[Houngan]

I think my next big shift is going to be to start expecting tens, rather than shooting for them and accepting nines. I let far too many junk shots go just because I know they should be a nine.

That, and starting a semi-serious weight program to work on my stamina and grip strength. If I keep improving, we can blame both the mental and physical aspect. ;-)

H.

edit: that reminds me, how often (or never) do the top shooters manage a 600 in practice? Obviously not in a match yet, but does it occasionally happen?

[2650 Plus]

I agree with ED,If you believe you can't do it I will guarentee that you will fail. If you commit to doing it you at least have a chance for success, And the more positively you approach the issue the greater your chances are for achieving your goal. I contend that one must become a student of competitive shooting much like Tiger Woods has dedicated himself to golf in order to maximize you chances of becoming world champion. Just going out and popping caps is unlikely to produce meaningful results. Concentrate on what works and learn to repeat over and over those things that really work. Every time you discover a better way to shoot a ten ,incorporate what you learned into your shooting technique. Good Shooting, Bill Horton

[Houngan]

I agree with ED,If you believe you can't do it I will guarentee that you will fail. If you commit to doing it you at least have a chance for success, And the more positively you approach the issue the greater your chances are for achieving your goal. I contend that one must become a student of competitive shooting much like Tiger Woods has dedicated himself to golf in order to maximize you chances of becoming world champion. Just going out and popping caps is unlikely to produce meaningful results. Concentrate on what works and learn to repeat over and over those things that really work. Every time you discover a better way to shoot a ten ,incorporate what you learned into your shooting technique. Good Shooting, Bill Horton

I recall an interview with Tiger Woods, on his practice schedule:

"I don't hit balls that much, just two or three hours a day . . . "

Chuckle from reporters.

"What, is that a lot to you?"

H.