Average shooters, average group sizes?

[alb]

Hi Steve,

I certainly don't want to engage in a war of 'semantics'. That said, I believe that you are thinking too 'deterministically'. You described a target where you shot three 9's. On all three of those shots, the bullet went into the 9-ring because that's where the gun was pointing when you broke the shot. If your arc-of-movement includes the 9-ring, then you did OK -- maybe. Or maybe you jerked it into the 9-ring from the 10-ring. Or maybe you jerked it into the 9-ring from the 6-ring. But, so what? It's in the past. Forget about it.

In shooting, radial errors, i.e., the distance of a shot from the intended point of aim, follow a Rayleigh distribution. The standard deviation of this distribution is a measure of the accuracy of the shooter-gun-ammunition combination. Provided you shoot a large number of shots, this dispersion (measured by your scores) changes little over time -- unless you improve your shooting behavior/technique/equipment/ammunition.

You can certainly have a combination of errors that cancel each other out, leaving you with a 10 or an X. But, how consistently can you do this over time?

"Proper behaviors" are those which minimize your dispersion:

- Minimizing your arc-of-movement reduces your dispersion;
- Operating the trigger without affecting where the muzzle is pointing reduces your dispersion;
- Improving your ability to see the sights and the target simultaneously reduces your dispersion (by allowing you to aim more precisely);
- Using better equipment/ammunition reduces your dispersion.

The first two you can improve with practice, practice, practice. The third you can improve with shooting glasses and/or an iris. The last you can improve by spending money and testing. Since we are talking about behaviors here, let's focus on the first two.

You get feedback from a multitude of sources, including visual feedback from the sights (as long as you don't blink when the shot is breaking) and kinesthetic feedback from various parts of your body. The problem is, there is so much feedback that most of it gets excluded from your conciousness. And what you are aware of is subject to interpretation.
So you look at your targets.

Is the size of my 50-shot groups excessively large, but centered correctly? Then I need to work on minimizing my arc-of-movement. So I start paying attention to the various kinesthetic feedback channels one at a time, while simultanously observing my sights, and I start changing things until I see a consistent improvement over time (a good coach really helps with this).

Do my groups tend to open up or drift in a particular direction when I shoot more rapidly? Then I need to work on my grip/stance/trigger control. Of course, some things require a lot of repetition to build stamina as well as to become habitual so that you don't have to think about them in a match.

As Bill Horton says, you need to focus your attention on sight picture/sight alignment when you're shooting for score. Or, to put it another way, by paraphrasing Lanny Bassham, when your concious mind is controlling the shooting process, then the second-string is definitely in charge. Perhaps we are "vehemently agreeing past each other." But what you described in your previous post certainly sounded like the second-string driving the bus.

Regards,

Al B.

[Isabel1130]

My goal is to fire every shot within my ability to hold. My firing sequence is based on the concept of moving into my hold area starting the trigger finger moving and then devoting all mental and physical effort s in perfecting sight allignment before the pistol fires. Note that my most perfect deliveries of the shot occur as I am correcting a very minor error when the pistol fires.It seems to be much more difficult to have a perfect shot after perfection in sight allignment has occured and the attempt is made to continue perfection for any length of time.Ie waiting for the shot to break. To me, a corectly executed shot is always satisfactory as long as it falls with in my ability to hold the pistol as still as posible. Good Shooting Bill Horton

Bill I am in total agreement. I know that I have a nine ring hold with my Air Pistol. The only reason for a shot to be outside of the nine ring (and fewer and fewer are) is that I have held too long (increased my wobble) or I have misaligned the sights when I actually released the shots or subconciously tried to snatch the shot. I am hoping with lots of practice over the next few years that my hold will become a ten ring hold and my mistakes will be into the nine ring. :-) Isabel

[CR10XGuest]

Poor guy! I hope the original poster is still around and trying to shoot some bullseye after all this. Having been running matches for quite a few years and watch shooter come (and go), here's my perspective.

Ths short answer is that after a year or so, most shooters are staying mostly on the repair center. The problem is that some are still missing the target or have some shots way out there in the white. On the other hand some shooters are a lot better after a year or so, some even making Master.

The main difference is if they want to improve AND do some planning AND training to improve or they keep practicing the same things over and over hoping repetition is the answer.

Doesn't really matter how you get there, main thing is keep training to reproduce your best results (and those best results will come more and more often....).

Just a though.

Cecil

[2650 Plus]

Cecil, The last line of your post is the truest statement of the shooters proper goal if he/she is working to improve their performance. Good thinking ,and Good Shooting Bill Horton

[Steve Swartz as Guest]

1. Bill I believe we have cleared this up before; correct me if I am wrong but to my memory when you say "perfecting alignment" you are referring to "perfecting sight picture" ie alignment and aim at the same time?

2. Isabel it isn't necessary to (ref previous threads with Bill on definition of "holding the gun still") have a ten ring hold to shoot 400/400. As a matter of fact, many of the top shooters have eight ring holds.* The only time you have to be "holding the ten ring" is when the pellet exits the muzzle.

Not for nothin- this ain't quibbling- but it makes a huge difference in what you train on, how you train, how you develop your shot plan, and pretty much will determine how fast/how far you progress.

I have argued before (more eloquently I'm sure) that one of the key determinants in who advances beyond the 92% level is due precisely to this.

Your understanding of what it takes to shoot a ten at a very basic level should (and will) drive all your efforts and performance.

Steve

*check out Rika/Scatt/Noptel traces of top shooters . . . they may only spent 20% or less of the total settled time pointed inside the ten ring . . . spread out in short (400-600 ms) periods over the hold.

[Isabel1130]

"2. Isabel it isn't necessary to (ref previous threads with Bill on definition of "holding the gun still") have a ten ring hold to shoot 400/400. As a matter of fact, many of the top shooters have eight ring holds.* The only time you have to be "holding the ten ring" is when the pellet exits the muzzle. "

Steve I am going to need a lost of all those shooters with an 8 ring hold that have shot 400/400 especially in slow fire. :-) If you were to look at the set of Master/ high master class shooters with this"8 ring hold" on a training device, I bet you would find that the true master class + shooter spends a very small percentage of his hold time in the 8 ring, meaning that it is a very rare shot that will actually get pulled into the 8 ring. (Also in free pistol I would be suprised if most of the top shooters have even a seven ring hold due to the small size of the rings.) Amazingly enough the scores reflect that. :-) Your hold is also a function of how long you have been holding the gun up. I am talking about the 3-8 seconds roughly when studies say that most people's hold is the steadiest. No two shots have exactly the same pattern but I would be willing to bet that the shooters with good trigger control who have the steadiest hold and mental match toughness/ familiarilty with the match course are the ones winning the matches. You get mental match toughness by shooting lots and lots of matches against people who are better than you. This makes you so familiar with the course of fire and the pressure that you learn to reduce your shot preparation to a few simple actions such as "pick the gun up, pull the trigger, put the gun down. repeat" Everything else should be almost on auto pilot with the way that you breathe, hold the gun, pressure on the grip, stance and what you eat before the match, so standard that you don't have to conciously think about it or make a decision. In other words "No stinkin thinkin" IMHO two out of three of the fore mentioned characteristics will make you a competitive shooter at most matches until you get up against the guys who have it all. To give credit where it is due, many of these thoughts have been liberally borrowed from conversations with top shooters such as Andy Moody, Brian Zins and Douglas Gumm. Isabel.

[Steve Swartz as Guest]

Keep an open mind . . . I think you'll be surprised after giving this some more thought.

Typical stats from a top Russian shooter ("Top Dog" from a few years back); wired to a Scatt, shot a 587.

10% in the 7 ring
25% in the 8 ring
50% in the 9 ring
15% in the 10 ring

averaged out over 60 shots. (note 65% nine ring or better for hold; 100% of shots nine ring or better. 15% inside ten ring for hold; 98% of shots inside ten ring.)

This is not atypical (as a matter of fact, he was widely recognized as having an "awesomely tight hold").

So, obviously something else is going on here.

Top shooters do not just randomly deliver shots while holding the ten ring.

Good Luck!

Steve

(And we *still* have the problem that a whole lot of shooters will see the exact same things differently; and even if they see the same exact things the exact same way, they will describe them differently. There's a reason why "eyewitness reports are notoriously unreliable" for anything from crime scenes to accident investigations . . . primary case in point, the whole "perceived stillness" thing. The computer doesn't lie . . . )

[2650 Plus]

Never have I indicated in any way that I split my effort between total concentration on sight allignment and any other issue when firing the shot. Steve constructs a straw man then argus against his own construct to make his point. I concentrate on how I shoot the shot. Steve reminds me of wanna be coaches that try to talk their way to shooting glory with out shooting the scores. There was a time when his ideas might have been a substantial help but some would have been a clear detriment also. Steves advice centers on drills to overcome weaknesses, while I worked to reinforce success. Reference the mythical Russian and the results of his scatt tests. I start addressing the target at about the six ring at twelve o'clock, settle toward the center of the aiming bull , start the trigger finger moving about the top of the black, finish the settle in the middle of the target. My eyes stay focussed on the front sight throughout the settle, never moving to the target.the trigger finger fires the shot, idealy while the pistol is at its best stilness and while I am perfecting sight allignment. I suspect my dwell time would be very simular to that of the yet unnamed Russian but dwell time has nothing to do with when I intend to fire the shot. I also believe that Steve just enjoys starting fights. Good Shooting [You Too Steve] Bill Horton

[Isabel1130]

"Typical stats from a top Russian shooter ("Top Dog" from a few years back); wired to a Scatt, shot a 587.

10% in the 7 ring
25% in the 8 ring
50% in the 9 ring
15% in the 10 ring "

But this really doesn't give you a complete picture of how good this shooter’s hold is. First even though he only holds the ten ring 15 percent of the time, the ten ring makes up 4.3% of the black on the target. He holds the 9 ring 50% of the time but the 9 ring makes up only 19.1% of the black on the target. The shooter holds the 8 ring 25 % of the time but the 8 ring makes up a huge 32.9% of the target and the 7 ring which he is in only 10% of the time makes up a massive 43.8%. of the black for a total of 100 percent. It is not fair in a calculation to not give the shooter more credit for holding a spot that makes up only roughly 4 % of the target, 15 percent of the time so we need to weigh those numbers. I have done that by weighting the hold in relationship to the size of the area and then converting it into a percentage. If we take the hold in the ten ring (4 % of the target held for 15% of the time) we come up with .15/.04 for a hold factor of 3.75. The 9 ring hold factor is .50/.19 for 2.63 The 8 ring hold factor is .25/.329 for .76. The 7 ring is .10/.438 for a hold factor of .228. If we add these together and then convert them back into percentages of the total we can come up with the relevant weight of how much a factor his hold is in his overall score. The total of all these factors is 7.368. We now convert each factor back into a percentage of the total by dividing each factor by the total of all the factors. So the 10 factor is now 3.75/7.368 for 51%. The 9 factor is 2.63/7.368 for 36%. The 8 factor is .76/7.368 for 10% and the 7 factor is .228/7.368 for 3% If we assume a 60 shot match as you stipulated, we can take each of these percentages and apply them to the total score. 51% of his shots should be 10’s out of 60 shots so he probably has 30.6 shots that are 10’s. 21.6 shots are 9’S., 6 shots are 8’s and 1.8 shots are 7’s. A total predicted score based on his average hold alone would give you 561. Our shooter shot somewhat above that (by 26 points) so we can safely assume that he probably did not pull off any or very few shots into either the 7 ring or the 8 ring.and that his brief entries into the 7 ring or 8 ring were times that he was not applying pressure to the trigger, possibly at the beginning of his shot process when he was steadying the gun. He still spent 65% of his total time on target either in the 9 or the 10 ring and his weighted average based on total area of the black is an awesome 87%. His predicted score based on hold alone of 561 is 96% of his actual total score. So Steve, I guess what I am trying to say is that you can directly apply time on target to determine whether someone has an 8, a 9 or a 10 ring hold but that does not recognize fairly where the shooter is actually holding the sights during the time he is applying pressure to the trigger. I would suggest that those shooters shooting above their absolute hold are not pulling the trigger very often based on hold alone but recognize when hold is at it's most stable in the shot process. Those shooting below their hold are either not timing their shot to be when their hold is the most stable or they are jerking the trigger etc. There are probably a hundred ways to shot a bad shot, but many fewer options to pulling off a good one. :-) Isabel.

[FredB]

I start addressing the target at about the six ring at twelve o'clock, settle toward the center of the aiming bull , start the trigger finger moving about the top of the black, finish the settle in the middle of the target. My eyes stay focussed on the front sight throughout the settle, never moving to the target.the trigger finger fires the shot, idealy while the pistol is at its best stilness and while I am perfecting sight allignment. Bill Horton

And Bill previously wrote:
My firing sequence is based on the concept of moving into my hold area starting the trigger finger moving and then devoting all mental and physical effort s in perfecting sight allignment before the pistol fires. Note that my most perfect deliveries of the shot occur as I am correcting a very minor error when the pistol fires.It seems to be much more difficult to have a perfect shot after perfection in sight allignment has occured and the attempt is made to continue perfection for any length of time.


Hi Bill,

I shoot center hold also, so I want to clearly understand how you do it. I've been trying to perfect my sight alignment before I descend into the black, and keep the sights perfectly aligned as I move towards the center. Are you saying that it's better to leave the sights less perfectly aligned until close to the very moment of trigger release?

Thanks,
FredB

[Steve Swartz]

Bill: A simple "no" (wiothoutt he ad hominem) would have been sufficient. However, a simple "Yes" (based on your answer) would have been more accurate.

Isabel: My point precisely is that the shot process is *not* a random trigger release during settle. Your trigger release *must* begin while the sights are *not* "perfectly aligned/aimed."*

You are actively trying to align the sights perfectly. Your settle begins, and you watch the sight picture. Part of your brain will continually try to "steer" the aligned sights into the sweet spot (center of aiming area).

At this point, the boreline is painting a "trace" across the face of the target- and we see the exact phenomenon you are describing. Muzzle over target is not "uniformly distributed" by any means. And that's important. AlB and I have discussed in the past what random number distribution the pattern looks like; suffice to say it is "mound shaped" with a preference for the center of the ten ring. So the feedback/control loop during yoru settle will definitely force the percent of time in the inner rings to be higher than their percentage of area on the face of the target would suggest.

However, there is still more going on.

When your brain recognizes that the aligned sights are moving toward the "sweet spot," it will send the signal to the trigger as long as you stay out of the way. The percentage of shots falling in the ten ring will be *even higher* than then percentage opf time spent loitering over the ten ring. Precisely because we are NOT initiating trigger release when we see a perfect sight picture . . . but we ARE initiating trigger rlelease some "lead time ahead" of when the sight picture will be perfect.

??????

Steve

*I differentiate between "alignment" and "aim." Sight picture is the sum of both alignment (your visual perception of the front-rear sight relationship) and aim (where the boreline of the gun is pointed). For example, I would say the alignment should be "top of mind" and you should be constantly trying to get it "perfect" . . . while the aiming consists of the perception of wobble that you are not really trying to control consciously; just accept it when it appears.

[2650 Plus]

As I read it your last post is "right on' Steve I found no reason for dissagrement with anything you described. Remember that I have explained how I use a visual picture of properly alligned sights superimposed against my hold area in my gun box to help my subconcioue recognise what want to see when the pistol is in firing position. I have repeated over and over that the target never moves. The movement is all with me on the firing line. This dictatates my prioritys for my actions to control the shot delivery.Unlike the recent recomendations to avoid thinking , I use a rather ridgid mental process , Paralleing the physical acts used to fire the shot'. The last thought just before I expect the pistol to fire is always devoted totally to sight allignment. Where the pistol points until I'm near the moment of firing doesn't reveal much about the stillness of hold at the moment of firing . Worse, the Scatt system has the [to me] fault of emphasising the negative aspects and does a poor job of reinforcing proper technique. Good Shooting Bill Horton

[2650 Plus]

For Fred B. No I like the shot when the sights are in perfect allignment as I move into the hold area, But my concentration on perfecting sight allignment does not start until I begin to settle in my hold area. One of my shooting friends once said that concentrating on sight allignment was just busy work to keep fron thinking about the trigger application of pressure.and the firing of the shot.I like to think that concentation contributes to the perfection of alligned sights, but I dont fully dissagree with James McNally either. Should concentration waver on sight allignment on a slow fire shot I try to make myself abort , come down and start over. I hope the explanation helps. Good Shooting Bill Horton

[FredB]

For Fred B. No I like the shot when the sights are in perfect allignment as I move into the hold area, But my concentration on perfecting sight allignment does not start until I begin to settle in my hold area. One of my shooting friends once said that concentrating on sight allignment was just busy work to keep fron thinking about the trigger application of pressure.and the firing of the shot.I like to think that concentation contributes to the perfection of alligned sights, but I dont fully dissagree with James McNally either. Should concentration waver on sight allignment on a slow fire shot I try to make myself abort , come down and start over. I hope the explanation helps. Good Shooting Bill Horton

Bill,

Thanks for the helpful explanation. Since this topic came up I've been really concentrating in dry fire on keeping perfect alignment both before and after entering the aim area. It seems to me that if the sights are perfectly aligned above the aim area, and I move down into the aim area without changing anything in my grip, wrist or head position, the sights are no longer perfect when actually in the aim area. That's because the viewing angle changes as I lower my arm - not much of course, but enough so the elevation alignment is slightly off.

So there has to be some correction. Maybe that's part of what you meant when you talked about perfecting the alignment as the trigger was moving? So, what I'm wondering now is, how should this correction/perfecting be done? Should I use my grip, my wrist, my head position, other? It seems to me that head movement would cause the least problems - is this correct? Or maybe the necessary changes are so small that nothing should be moved consciously?

It's funny - I've been shooting for years, but the more I think about it, the more I can't figure out how to do it.

Thanks,
FredB

[Philadelphia]

Unlike the recent recomendations to avoid thinking , I use a rather ridgid mental process , Paralleing the physical acts used to fire the shot'. The last thought just before I expect the pistol to fire is always devoted totally to sight allignment.

As a coincidence I'm at the point of experimenting with different shot plans that (I think) hit on the issue you are discussing.

In one plan, as the gun comes up the focus is solely on the front sight with no other conscious distractions of thought allowed. The body must aim and fire the gun in the subconscious as much as possible. The mental objective is to basically watch what's going on and allow the subconscious mind to control the body, much like how the pendulum trick or ouiji board works.

In another plan, the mental effort is much more conscious with the "task list" to include a focus on the target -- looking through the sights until they settle in the aiming area and then shift focus to front sight to take the shot.

Results are basically similar when each is executed properly. There are some notable differences however. Using the second shot plan has helped in situations where I am having trouble settling in or calming down, but does take a good bit of mental effort overall to make good shots.

The noticable difference using the first (subconscious) shot plan is the considerably less conscious mental effort needed for multiple strings of shots, thus far less tiring.

So I guess I'd appreciate your thoughts on the different approaches -- I know usually the best approach is the one that works for the individual, but still wonder if others have gone through trying different methods as part of training a particular skill or to address a problem (maybe in other words, I know the wheel exists so I remain curious about how everyone else went about their individual processes of inventing it ;) )

[2650 Plus]

For phil..... The last time I look at the target is with the pistol still resting on the bench.I verify my target location ,clear my mind , raise the pistol, think relax into the hold area and establish a still hold . that flows into finger move, perfection of sight allignment , pistol fires, maintain concentration until reaction time interupts the concentration. call the shot. Each thought clear, positive in nature, and in rythm with the physical acts of firing the shot. Another response for Fred, I ve watched the front soght above the rear so long that I'm really not aware of it but your last post caused me to visualize the sequence and I completely agree with your discription. Good Shooting Bill Horton