Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2011 2:05 pm
Russ; I must say, this obsession of yours with secret identities is rather odd. It's interesting too, as though there may actually be some secret plan afoot to subvert your efforts or just to troll you. I don't know whether you're referring to me, Gerard Ivan Samija, with this nonsense, but it did seem with a couple of your posts in another TT thread that you suspected I was someone other than myself. Why? No idea, it's really quite a strange feeling having my identity, the only name I have had for almost 50 years on this planet, questioned by a complete stranger. With considerable determination and belligerence no less. Very odd.
For my part (and I know, you didn't ask Russ, so I'm not really talking to you with this paragraph and beyond it) I am a beginning AP shooter, having started in December of 2010, and just obtained a Baikal 46m on April 13th so I am at last shooting with a 'real' 10m pistol, and it's FUN! I only yesterday shot my first 540 score, with my average of all scores since getting the Baikal now sitting at 89%. I mention this for frame of reference regarding the following comments.
My perspective on training is not set in stone by any means. Of course it isn't; I'm still a new shooter with a long road ahead before I can confidently say I've reached any sort of a goal. I have achieved steps on the ladder. Or perhaps better to say I've found myself standing on a few foothills of a mountain, ever higher foothills, feeling satisfied that another plateau has been reached while looking down at the path so far hiked, while also looking upwards and seeing the peak partially hidden in the clouds, waiting for the more serious efforts yet to come before reaching it. The goal is always clear enough in my head - 600 points out of 60 shots. The route to achieve this remains partially, though ever less hidden.
The un-veiling of my eyes is coming with study and practice and related training. Weights of various sorts, lifted using various methods, are helping to build both control and resistance to fatigue, while maintaining sufficient restraint that I do not risk injury nor over-work to the point where shooting practice a few hours later suffers excessively. I am taken back to my years of hatha yoga practice during my 20's, where breathing was central to the calming and control of the body and mind, while 'letting go' was equally important. I have been inconsistent in my running in recent years, sometimes pushing hard for a few months then letting it falter for a few more, then having to recover all over again. Shooting has given this a reason, a focus, and so my running is making slow, steady progress. This helps to build efficiency of oxygen uptake, apparently crucial in buying extra seconds of muscular endurance during the hold.
Dry fire is of course new to me, as with my previous springer pistol it was not possible (at least not without ruining the piston and spring), but I am persisting in using this daily, starting with just a few shots last week, now up to about 10 minutes of dry fire before each live fire practice. I will likely settle at around 15 minutes of dry fire per day prior to any pellets going in.
My mental image of the goal is, as I said, a perfect score. Not as a one time thing, but as the ongoing, endless goal. A 10.5 feels satisfying, and 3 or 4 at that score slightly more so... but tinged with the possibility of something still left to reach. The sights are becoming my friend in an odd way. I am appreciating the beauty of symmetry, of alignment between fore and rear sight, my eye, the angle of my head and neck, my body's symmetry and assymetry in the stance, the regulation and timing of my breathing, all come together in a flow which is somewhat like a dance. I've watched Tai Chi but not practiced it, but can see how the slowness of shooting might relate to this sort of martial art. Appreciation of the perfections and imperfections of the body and its motions is part of the glory of training, of shooting.
I read, a lot. Many coaches and shooters and theorists have shared articles on aspects of the mental and physical game of shooting air pistol, and all are useful, even those whose opinions and ideas are not actually useful for a given shooter in a direct sense. Understanding the depth and breadth of approaches to this sport seems critical in the process of building one's own overview, enabling not just a cherry-picking of the 'best' ideas which can lead to a narrow view, but implementing the whole of it as a cohesive vision of what it means to make a shot on a target.
Development of patience with myself is central. The temptations towards anger, disappointment, elation, hope, nervousness, all these and more are potentially at play during a given session. And I've not yet shot in competition, so no doubt will face further distractions of such kinds when that day comes. But I have competed before, as a cross country and track runner, BMX and mountainbike cyclist, high jumper and other stuff. I'm well familiar with the butterflies in the stomach, the escalation of heart rate in the face of that moment when a competition begins, the rush of hormones which radically shift one's awareness in an ancient hard-wired biological habit to prepare for combat. In all sports there is the need to bring to this some measure of control. Perhaps the need is greatest with air pistol shooting, as every stress in the body is reflected in potentially less than perfect shooting.
So I seek that control, seek to find it with every shot, using everything I have so far learned in the effort. Yesterday I found it in about 25% of my shots of that 540/600 session. At least 10% of the shots were let go while 'unconscious' of most of the act of loading, breathing, and letting the shot go... with mixed results, sometimes perfect 10's, sometimes quite far off, including a single '1' score which was almost a '0' as I fired without so intending just at the beginning of a momentary tremor in my arm at about 5 seconds of hold. That shot taught me several things. I learned that I have progressed in mental discipline to the point where I was able to almost completely avoid a surge of disappointment, you know, that rush of chemicals in the brain which can drown one in a sense of futility, of failure. I let it go. Observed it, even cherished it for a moment, but then told myself to let everything about it just go as I prepared for the next 10. The next 4 shots piled on top of each other inside the 10 ring. None of them was connected in any obvious way with the others. Each one I treated as an entity, an individual act sufficient unto itself, each paced like a story all its own.
I'm sounding perhaps excessively mystical about my process, but it seems to me that with shooting there is a mysticism inherent. It is above all a form of meditation. The self must be sacrificed to the shot. The act, the breathing, the pose, the focus, the release, all part of a process of reduction and simplification which I had never before found quite possible in other approaches to meditation. For me at least, my understanding is that this is connected with ego. When I tried, years ago, to meditate in the yogic tradition, it felt false to my ego. Something was missing. With shooting, there is both the letting go of the self (necessary in finding an emotionally neutral state of mind, allowing the body to find stability), and the ultimately satisfying delivery of the shot, the accomplishment of a tangible, recognizable goal, something which any other shooter can look at and understand and even respect. No room for equivocation. A perfect shot is a perfect shot, demonstrating the relative success of the effort behind it. To be able to repeat this process 60 times in a row, and then several times over during a competition, this provides another element of the goal which is very satisfying to the ego. So the mysticism is grounded by the pragmatic.
I don't know that this sort of talk is useful from a beginning shooter, but do hope some small part of it might be so to anyone here seeking more than secret passwords to success and sarcasm regarding internet marketing and secret identities... After all, this is a forum dedicated to sharing information, is it not? Some would have it be a tool for self-promotion. So disappointing, especially when Russ has shown the odd glimmer of genuine concern for his fellow shooters, here and there over the years, when he's able to get past his own ego issues.
For my part (and I know, you didn't ask Russ, so I'm not really talking to you with this paragraph and beyond it) I am a beginning AP shooter, having started in December of 2010, and just obtained a Baikal 46m on April 13th so I am at last shooting with a 'real' 10m pistol, and it's FUN! I only yesterday shot my first 540 score, with my average of all scores since getting the Baikal now sitting at 89%. I mention this for frame of reference regarding the following comments.
My perspective on training is not set in stone by any means. Of course it isn't; I'm still a new shooter with a long road ahead before I can confidently say I've reached any sort of a goal. I have achieved steps on the ladder. Or perhaps better to say I've found myself standing on a few foothills of a mountain, ever higher foothills, feeling satisfied that another plateau has been reached while looking down at the path so far hiked, while also looking upwards and seeing the peak partially hidden in the clouds, waiting for the more serious efforts yet to come before reaching it. The goal is always clear enough in my head - 600 points out of 60 shots. The route to achieve this remains partially, though ever less hidden.
The un-veiling of my eyes is coming with study and practice and related training. Weights of various sorts, lifted using various methods, are helping to build both control and resistance to fatigue, while maintaining sufficient restraint that I do not risk injury nor over-work to the point where shooting practice a few hours later suffers excessively. I am taken back to my years of hatha yoga practice during my 20's, where breathing was central to the calming and control of the body and mind, while 'letting go' was equally important. I have been inconsistent in my running in recent years, sometimes pushing hard for a few months then letting it falter for a few more, then having to recover all over again. Shooting has given this a reason, a focus, and so my running is making slow, steady progress. This helps to build efficiency of oxygen uptake, apparently crucial in buying extra seconds of muscular endurance during the hold.
Dry fire is of course new to me, as with my previous springer pistol it was not possible (at least not without ruining the piston and spring), but I am persisting in using this daily, starting with just a few shots last week, now up to about 10 minutes of dry fire before each live fire practice. I will likely settle at around 15 minutes of dry fire per day prior to any pellets going in.
My mental image of the goal is, as I said, a perfect score. Not as a one time thing, but as the ongoing, endless goal. A 10.5 feels satisfying, and 3 or 4 at that score slightly more so... but tinged with the possibility of something still left to reach. The sights are becoming my friend in an odd way. I am appreciating the beauty of symmetry, of alignment between fore and rear sight, my eye, the angle of my head and neck, my body's symmetry and assymetry in the stance, the regulation and timing of my breathing, all come together in a flow which is somewhat like a dance. I've watched Tai Chi but not practiced it, but can see how the slowness of shooting might relate to this sort of martial art. Appreciation of the perfections and imperfections of the body and its motions is part of the glory of training, of shooting.
I read, a lot. Many coaches and shooters and theorists have shared articles on aspects of the mental and physical game of shooting air pistol, and all are useful, even those whose opinions and ideas are not actually useful for a given shooter in a direct sense. Understanding the depth and breadth of approaches to this sport seems critical in the process of building one's own overview, enabling not just a cherry-picking of the 'best' ideas which can lead to a narrow view, but implementing the whole of it as a cohesive vision of what it means to make a shot on a target.
Development of patience with myself is central. The temptations towards anger, disappointment, elation, hope, nervousness, all these and more are potentially at play during a given session. And I've not yet shot in competition, so no doubt will face further distractions of such kinds when that day comes. But I have competed before, as a cross country and track runner, BMX and mountainbike cyclist, high jumper and other stuff. I'm well familiar with the butterflies in the stomach, the escalation of heart rate in the face of that moment when a competition begins, the rush of hormones which radically shift one's awareness in an ancient hard-wired biological habit to prepare for combat. In all sports there is the need to bring to this some measure of control. Perhaps the need is greatest with air pistol shooting, as every stress in the body is reflected in potentially less than perfect shooting.
So I seek that control, seek to find it with every shot, using everything I have so far learned in the effort. Yesterday I found it in about 25% of my shots of that 540/600 session. At least 10% of the shots were let go while 'unconscious' of most of the act of loading, breathing, and letting the shot go... with mixed results, sometimes perfect 10's, sometimes quite far off, including a single '1' score which was almost a '0' as I fired without so intending just at the beginning of a momentary tremor in my arm at about 5 seconds of hold. That shot taught me several things. I learned that I have progressed in mental discipline to the point where I was able to almost completely avoid a surge of disappointment, you know, that rush of chemicals in the brain which can drown one in a sense of futility, of failure. I let it go. Observed it, even cherished it for a moment, but then told myself to let everything about it just go as I prepared for the next 10. The next 4 shots piled on top of each other inside the 10 ring. None of them was connected in any obvious way with the others. Each one I treated as an entity, an individual act sufficient unto itself, each paced like a story all its own.
I'm sounding perhaps excessively mystical about my process, but it seems to me that with shooting there is a mysticism inherent. It is above all a form of meditation. The self must be sacrificed to the shot. The act, the breathing, the pose, the focus, the release, all part of a process of reduction and simplification which I had never before found quite possible in other approaches to meditation. For me at least, my understanding is that this is connected with ego. When I tried, years ago, to meditate in the yogic tradition, it felt false to my ego. Something was missing. With shooting, there is both the letting go of the self (necessary in finding an emotionally neutral state of mind, allowing the body to find stability), and the ultimately satisfying delivery of the shot, the accomplishment of a tangible, recognizable goal, something which any other shooter can look at and understand and even respect. No room for equivocation. A perfect shot is a perfect shot, demonstrating the relative success of the effort behind it. To be able to repeat this process 60 times in a row, and then several times over during a competition, this provides another element of the goal which is very satisfying to the ego. So the mysticism is grounded by the pragmatic.
I don't know that this sort of talk is useful from a beginning shooter, but do hope some small part of it might be so to anyone here seeking more than secret passwords to success and sarcasm regarding internet marketing and secret identities... After all, this is a forum dedicated to sharing information, is it not? Some would have it be a tool for self-promotion. So disappointing, especially when Russ has shown the odd glimmer of genuine concern for his fellow shooters, here and there over the years, when he's able to get past his own ego issues.