Where are my sights?

[Leffe]

During the spring this year I have noticed that sometimes I totally loose visual contact with my sights when the shot breaks.

The hold feels good and I am pretty shure that I am focussing on the
frontsight during the "workstage" before the delivery of the shot and then suddenly when the shot breaks everything goes blank and I have no idea how the sights looked at that precise moment and i have´nt got a clue where the shot hits in the target. X or 7, I don´t know.... I can´t call it.

I have experimented with a small white dot on the foresight to make shure that I´m really looking at it.

Is there anyone out there that have had the same experience and if so, what to do, what to do?

"frustrated an out of ideas"

[GaryN]

Well I'm glad I'm not the only one that it happens to. (grin)

Usually for me, it happens in 2 situations
#1 when I let my concentration on the front sight lapse
#2 like a flinch, when I anticipate the shot I sometimes blank out the release, and I have no idea where the front sight was when the trigger released

The solution for me is to CONCENTRATE on the front sight and the hold, and to NOT think about the trigger. The trigger pull should be a steady pull as you hold on target. That way the release is more a surprise, and not something that I anticipate.

BTW I don't know about others, but it took me over 6 months of work to finally get my trigger release to be a "surprise." Of course because I did not have a coach to help, it took me a LOT longer than if I had a coach.

gud luk
Gary

[Manuel Ferrán]

"In the beginning stages of training when the shooter tries to achieve the steadiest possible hold with the gun and still correctly release the trigger, the numerous signals traveling to the cerebral cortex, cause intensified stimulation of many motor centers. In this period of training, the processes of stimulation dominate the processes of inhibition. They are propagated in the cerebral cortex and cover large areas of it. The process of stimulation caused by stimuli reaching one place of the motor sector of the cerebral cortex spreads through a large area of the cerebral cortex. As a result, muscle groups are called into action which do not have to participate directly in the performance of a specific movement associated with firing the shot. This phenomenon, characterized by such widespread stimulation in the cerebral cortex, has been called irradiation. This is a condition which causes many beginning shooters, when firing standing the rifle or pistol, to use whole groups of skeletal muscles to pull the trigger rather than using only the muscles of the index finger. This disrupts the aim at the most critical moment in firing a shot.
... The should strive to attain a level of training where strong conditioned reflex connections develop in the central nervous system in such a way to permit the coordinated activity of simultaneously aiming and releasing the trigger. ... Actually, when a shooter is in good form and shooting well, he does not consciously think of whether he should press the trigger or not. As soon as the firearm's oscillations cease and most favorable moment arrives for firing, the index finger seemingly presses automatically. This is the trained condition of the nervous system the shooter should strive to attain."

Excerpt from the book "Competitive Shooting" by Dr. A.A. Yur'yev

[guest]

Hei, blå-gule skyttebroder.

Årsaken til dine problemer kan være en ubevisst angst for skuddet, eller egentlig for rekylen og smellet. Det har utviklet seg reflekser som ligger i sentralnervesystemet.

Dette kan nok helt eller delvis trenes bort med mye tørrtrening, skyting med luft og .22. Man bør ikke gå opp i kaliber før man er helt kvitt plagene med de svarkere våpnene.

I engelsktalende land kalles dette "flinching". Det kan ta lang tid å trene bort, så ha "tålamod".

Årsaken til slike plager er ofte skyting med for kraftige våpen uten gradvis tilvenning med svakere skyts.

Svært mange skyttere har tendenser til denne lidelsen. Men du ser ut til å være hårdt drabbad. Jeg har selv hatt tendenser til dette i tidligere år, men er kvitt dette nå. Men så skyter jeg ikke lengere .454 Casull heller.

(I apologize for the scandinavian language in this post)

[Helen]

It could be something as simple as blinking at that very milli-second.
It was something I would "pick up" every once in a while. Thank God I had some great shooting buddies who would often watch me, & would pick that up.
Get someone to watch you shoot, & see if you're blinking.

[Ryan Tanoue]

my suggestion would be to try and change how you apprach the shot. i would try and think of the shot not only as holding and firing but add on follow through also. by thinking about following through, you will lengthen how long you are focusing on the shot. what might be happening is you are focusing so hard on taking a shot when your hold is good that at the last second you are so anxious to see what the shot value is that you may loose your concentration for that split second, thus resulting in the 7s and other unwanted shots as well as "loosing your sights" as you put it. dont know if this will help you, but for me especially on electronic targets it is very helpful for me to think about following through instead of flying off the rifle to look at the screen.

ryan

[TimDaKiller]

You could try locking the gun in a wood jawed vice, then you could hold the gun steady and watch where the pellets hit.

[Jack]

my suggestion would be to try and change how you apprach the shot. i would try and think of the shot not only as holding and firing but add on follow through also. by thinking about following through, you will lengthen how long you are focusing on the shot. what might be happening is you are focusing so hard on taking a shot when your hold is good that at the last second you are so anxious to see what the shot value is that you may loose your concentration for that split second, thus resulting in the 7s and other unwanted shots as well as "loosing your sights" as you put it. dont know if this will help you, but for me especially on electronic targets it is very helpful for me to think about following through instead of flying off the rifle to look at the screen.

ryan