Right technic for duelling and how to practice

[jer]

I havent found any reference what is right tecnic for CF duell shooting? Where to look, sights or target? How to practice? Is there any book or website about that?

[schauckis]

Well, you may start by obtaining the books I mention under the "Recommended Reading" thread.

To give you some pointers:
- look at the sights, of course. The target is your best friend, you need not worry about it, it will see to it itself. It's of standard shape, size, color; on standard hight and distance always; if there so is raining Norwegian whores with the skirts around their ears the target is still there. Forget about it.
- when in ready position the gun needs to be in an angle of more than 45 degrees from horizontal. Keep it fairly close to this angle as then the arm movement (distance) needed to get the gun up is the least required. Relax your arm when the gun is down, otherwise your arm will tire and start shaking, plus it will loosen your grip and make trigger control difficult.
- when in ready position, the eyes should be kept about halfway between the sights and target, sort of "resting" downwards. When you start to lift the gun and it comes in your field of vision (and even if you're not looking at the targets you'll see the movement in your peripheral vision and hear the "crash" of the turning mechanism), catch the sights and align the sights; the gun moves all the time. Your head does not move, only your arm and eyes move.
- the gun arrives at the sighting area; the mind recognises the correct image; stop and squeeze away. When in ready position already squeeze off the front creep. You'll be "leaning" against the threshold of the trigger just before it fires. This is also the reason why the front creep must not be too heavy: otherwise you cannot comfortably lean on the trigger due to the risk of firing the gun too soon.
- after the shot, mark the shot, i.e. keep the gun up for a couple of seconds before returning to ready position even though the targets have already turned away. The risk of dropping the arm to soon is great and you may already start lowering your gun before you've fired.
- when lowering the gun, the eyes follow the sights. When the eyes come to the resting area about halfway between again, your eyes stop and the gun continues down to ready position. When there, squeeze off the front creep again.
- practice: dry practice is key. Against a white wall, practice the lift. This will make your arm movement constant, you'll learn the speed and make the movement as straight as possible. Practice catching the sights. Learn the trigger and how it feels. Practice squeezing off - only if the lift has been good. Otherwise you'll learn the wrong way and squeeze off after a poor lift. You can time the sequence if you have a clock whose ticking of the seconds you can hear. If not, tape the sequence using a buzzer or bell and listen to it while lifting. Before this, just use the white wall without worrying about the time. This will get your basic technique right before moving to timing.
- speed of the lift need not be immense. Three seconds is plenty of time! Many people lift too fast making it difficult to catch the sights and to stop the gun at the aiming area. Or even both, and once up if you've "lost" the sights, have the gun pointing up and your hand covering the target there is no time to remedy this. But if your lift is straight and you've got the sight picture when the gun arrives at the aiming area, you'll have plenty of time to sight and squeeze off. When the gun (sights) arrives at the lower edge of the target, hit on the brakes slowing the movement of the arm reducing the inertia which makes it easier to stop the gun even after a fairly speedy lift.
- if you check back issues of Urheiluampuja I'm sure you'll find articles about this is Finnish, too.
- watch some better shooters' technique on the range.
- it's OK to practice on the range alone initially and even at later stages but remember to practice with shooting friends, too. If you practice alone you'll be disturbed by the other shooters' shots - this cost me the gold medal in my first Finnish championship competition and later a fairly certain medal in the Finnish championship in standard pistol in 1993. A tough lesson as I had to learn it twice. I suggest at least two other shooters as then for sure at least one will shoot slightly "off pace" disturbing you just enough. A group of four is even better.
- one last point: "CF" = center fire, i.e. .32? If so, you may want to practice with a .22 as well to get the basic technique right before moving to handle the harder recoil of the .32.

- Larry

[2650 Plus]

Only one difference to the above post. Start the trigger finger moving as your sights and pistol come into your periffial vision below the ten ring. focus on sight as the pistol stops in the ten ring. Allow your trigger finger to continue increasing pressure while you are perfecting sight allignment. Perfect sight allignment is not necessary to shoot a ten but the closer you can come to achieving perfection before the pistol fires , the more certain you can expect centered hits. Waiting to achieve perfect sight allignment before starting the trigger finger moving results in destroying perfection with the trigger finger and results in those almost tens.

[2650 Plus]

Only one difference to the above post. Start the trigger finger moving as your sights and pistol come into your periffial vision below the ten ring. focus on sight as the pistol stops in the ten ring. Allow your trigger finger to continue increasing pressure while you are perfecting sight allignment. Perfect sight allignment is not necessary to shoot a ten but the closer you can come to achieving perfection before the pistol fires , the more certain you can expect centered hits. Waiting to achieve perfect sight allignment before starting the trigger finger moving results in destroying perfection with the trigger finger and results in those almost tens.

[2650 Plus]

One More Concept. The head, obviously containing the eyes should not move as this changes what the Germans call the seeing line. That is a direct line from the shooting eye to the center of the target. This is a reference that you use to bring the pistol up to the firing point where you must stop the upward movement and stabilize your hold for the delivery of the shot. Good Shooting Bill Horton

[gordonfriesen]

First line up the gun, then lower to the ready.

There is a seven second warning before the first shot. Use this time to lift the gun once more to make sure the sights come bang on. Then lower.

Ideally, on the first live shot, the gun will just float back up to its preferred position.

The main mental problem is: How fast do I have to fire?

The way to make that stress go away is to measure the time. Musicians do this routinely and very accurately. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just use a tune everybody knows like Jingle Bells.

Mentally just say "Jingle Bells, Jingles Bells". The first time you say Bells, you should be locking on to the sights and the gun stopping in the space before you repeat the phrase. You are squeezing, and the gun just has to go off before you say "Bells" again.

Even better is to divide the seconds into triplets: One and a two, three and a four. (remember the one is where the interval starts, so when you say four only three seconds have passed). Triple rhythm is super relaxed, so there is no stress at all. Once again, you raise in the first second (one and a two...), start your lock on "two", and the gun just has to fire before the "four".

Three seconds is a very long time. And counting out the seconds as beats with subdivisions tells you exactly where you are in that time. No stress. No guess work.

Best Regards,

Gordon

[David Levene]

The main mental problem is: How fast do I have to fire?

The way to make that stress go away is to measure the time. Musicians do this routinely and very accurately. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just use a tune everybody knows like Jingle Bells.

I cannot disagree more.

The way to make the stress go away is to train more. The more you train the more ingrained the timings will become. There is absolutely no need to use timing gimicks if you are serious about shooting the event well, and doing the necessary amount of work.

[Spencer]

Given that Jer has not given any information as to the level he(?) is at, there is room for advice for both the 'beginner' and 'expert' - but the two will differ in some aspects.
David's advice that nothing beats training/practice stands for both.

For a beginner to the RF Stage, timing cues will undoubtedly help; but the sooner you can get into the 'rhythm' the better. Once gained, timing cues are totally unnecessary.

For the more expert RF Stage shooter, there is more than one way to achieve the desired outcome. Both settling into the desired area and releasing the shot, and firing the shot as the sights pass through the centre of the target can produce 290+.
To keep Steve happy, grip, sights and trigger technique apply to both.

Then there are the areas of the target to aim into...

In short, coaching!

Spencer

[gunnery]

Audio training help:
first go to: http://www.targetshooting.ca/
than chose: Documents Library
On the bothom of that page : Audio Files
and download : ISSF Sport/Centrefire Pistol Rapid Fire Training MP3 File
and put it on a mp3 player

[gordonfriesen]

The main mental problem is: How fast do I have to fire?

The way to make that stress go away is to measure the time. Musicians do this routinely and very accurately. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just use a tune everybody knows like Jingle Bells.

I cannot disagree more.

The way to make the stress go away is to train more. The more you train the more ingrained the timings will become. There is absolutely no need to use timing gimicks if you are serious about shooting the event well, and doing the necessary amount of work.

The main mental problem is: How fast do I have to fire?

The way to make that stress go away is to measure the time. Musicians do this routinely and very accurately. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. Just use a tune everybody knows like Jingle Bells.

I cannot disagree more.

The way to make the stress go away is to train more. The more you train the more ingrained the timings will become. There is absolutely no need to use timing gimicks if you are serious about shooting the event well, and doing the necessary amount of work.

David,

At the risk of biting off way more than I can chew, I would like to make a few comments here.

If you sit down to design an object, like a machine part, you will first make a sketch to get a general idea of what you want, but before you actually try to produce the part, you will make a diagam based on precise measurements.

In the same way, when I started raising the gun from 45 degrees and firing, I didn't worry about time at all. I just wanted to be smooth and accurate. But when I wanted to fit that movement into a three second time space, knowing that I could score zero if I waited too long, or that I could throw away my shot by firing too soon, I decided that I should precisely measure my whole movement, breaking it down into parts likewise measured with regards to each other, and then scale the whole thing into the three seconds allowed.

Now that might sound hard to do, but luckily I already had the method burned into me from years of practising musical phrases to a metronome. Students of music have the ability to measure things in time. So do dancers. I see my daughter learning to raise her arm in Ballet class. She follows the piano. There are eight beats for the movement, and each beat is divided into three notes. Thus there are 24 distinct points in time and space that she is learning to make coincide as she lifts her arm. And when the movement is learned in detail, the speed is increased (or decreased) and the whole thing remains proportional.

Dancers program their moves to music. That is they scale their moves to a beat that is furnished. Musicians go one better. They learn to measure time and reliably produce beats at given speeds. They have words for it. They say Andante, or Allegro, or Largo, and the person they are speaking to takes a little moment for concentration and then produces a stream of beats which fit that definition.

I don't mean to brag, any more than a plumber would be bragging to say he can make a water proof joint. I have never used a timer for practice. I count the beats in my head for the three seconds of the shot and the seven seconds between shots. I have shot this routine in competition maybe 25 times. I am indeed a beginner. But I am relaxed. I use most of my time. And I have only once held a shot too long.

Frankly, I wouldn't consider doing this routine without counting any more than I would try to run through a physical space with my eyes closed. More importantly, I don't have that option. I couldn't turn off this part of my brain function even if I wanted to.

Time is a tricky thing. Perception of speed varies with one's state of excitement. Training methods, perfected by generations of musicians, exist to overome these difficulties. These methods are not gimmicks.

Of course, none of the above will substitute for the hard work you quite rightly insist on.

Best Regards,

Gordon

[David Levene]

In the same way, when I started raising the gun from 45 degrees and firing, I didn't worry about time at all. I just wanted to be smooth and accurate. But when I wanted to fit that movement into a three second time space, knowing that I could score zero if I waited too long, or that I could throw away my shot by firing too soon, I decided that I should precisely measure my whole movement, breaking it down into parts likewise measured with regards to each other, and then scale the whole thing into the three seconds allowed.

That's what training is all about Gordon. It doesn't matter if you fire an early shot or a late shot, a zero score doesn't cost you anything. If you do enough of it then you just don't need the gimmicks, you know exactly (well , close enough anyway) when the targets are going to edge or face. It becomes second nature and is repeatable no matter what your state of excitement.

It doesn't just work with the Rapid stage of the C/F match, the Rapid Fire match and the 10 second series of Standard Pistol are just as easy to learn. I always found the 20 second series a bit more difficult to judge, probably due to the fact that I never took more than about 15-16 seconds to shoot it.

[Reinhamre]

Time is a tricky thing. Perception of speed varies with one's state of excitement. Training methods, perfected by generations of musicians, exist to overome these difficulties. These methods are not gimmicks.

Of course, none of the above will substitute for the hard work you quite rightly insist on.

Best Regards,

Gordon

Use the phrase "tree seconds is a long time", it will take 3 second to say and it makes you to calm down if you feel stressed.
Be careful though that it is not used for letting the shot go off on t in time!
The phrase is only to use for one purpose, to make you aware of how LONG the 3 second span is. It may be of a greater use to adopt some breathing pattern for the 7 second span.
10 sec. in standard pistol is "easy", just like the 8 sec. in rapid fire but 2 sec. more and on the same target :-).
20 sec, slow down a bit, remain focus and a steady flow.
If it takes 14 sec or 19 is not important but usually 14 sec. result in better result, it is all about the flow...

Kent

[gordonfriesen]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

All of what you are saying is very helpful to me.

I'm starting to think that my reliance on the interior count is slowing down my developement. In particular, practicing without a timer seems both lazy and stupid.

What are the programmable timers out there? Can somebody reccomend one that can handle the whole rapid fire string with a delay (to put the thing down and pick up my gun) and then five seven second readies alternating with five three second shooting intervals?

Best Regards,

Gordon

[David Levene]

What are the programmable timers out there? Can somebody reccomend one that can handle the whole rapid fire string with a delay (to put the thing down and pick up my gun) and then five seven second readies alternating with five three second shooting intervals?

It's easier than that Gordon. Look in the documents library on the TargetShooting Canada web site, scroll down to the audio files and copy the appropriate one to an MP3 player.

I would have preferred it if the 1 minute loading period had been included, but they are still excellent training tools if you haven't got turning or electronic targets.

[gordonfriesen]

Thanks David,

**Note to self: steal kids' mp3 player...**

Best Regards,

Gordon