TargetTalk

I am sure most people have experienced the situation where you have driven somewhere, but can't remember a thing about the trip. Perhaps you were thinking about work, singing to the radio, whatever. Driving a car, especially a manual (stick shift to you guys in the states) is a complex thing. You have unpredictable things, other cars, traffic lights etc., yet when was the last time you consciously said, foot release the brake, move to the accelerator, other foot release the clutch...you get the idea. So I think your subconscious can do it all - without intervention.

I week or so ago, before I read this thread (or did it take a week to read ;-) I had a training session like that. I warmed up, spoke to someone at the range and then shot. Can't recall a darn thing. Score 585/600 AP. I regularly shoot 560-570, so this was a LOT better.

My shot plan, as advised by a coach is "lean on the trigger". I used to take up first stage above the bull, descend through the black, light the fuse (consciously tell my finger to start moving), keep descending and have faith it would be good when it went off. I've since decided there was no value taking first stage like that, and just start the trigger earlier. Trigger finger movement time is over 1 second. My reasoning is that inertia of the moving pistol keeps it under control as I descend. Brief pause, shot breaks, I enjoy the view (follow through) and stop.
Sometimes the shot breaks early, in which case it is a 12 o'clock 10 or 9. If I didn't "commit" to the shot something will break in the process, usually trigger or I loose faith and start trying to "fix" the sights. I beleive this is why the blank card training works so well, since I can't loose faith if I can't tell that my aim is off.

I've only been shooting for 8 months, but after 2 months I was shooting 525-535. I adopted the "lean on the trigger" approach and have NEVER shot less than 548 since (in big comps) training/club comps are 565+.

All the "zen" stuff has confused me now, especially this 20ms trigger release while "wobbling" for 2-3 secs in the aiming area. My front sight sits in the gap solid (I can't see it move at all unless I hold too long), only my arm "sways".

I just have to work out how to think about something while my subconscious shoots. I always shoot well with a cute girl on the line ;-)

CR

Just to let you know the previous poster (CR) is not me.

Cecil Rhodes
(CR10X or CR10XGuest)

Ed,

if I remember correctly the coach of Harald Volmer and Uwe Potteck, two of the best FP shooters in the late 70's and early 80's, once wrote that for some time Volmer had the "problem" that his shot broke as soon as he reached his aiming area, of course with perfectly aligned sights.
The reason according to his coach was an automatism achieved through a lot of training. As soon as his subconscious realised the perfect sight picture (the first ten) "it" pulled the trigger. The worked hard for 3 months to "break" this behavior because according to the coach it resulted in a lot of tens and also a lot of bad shots which were obviously unpredictable and uncontrollable. Volmer and Potteck were capable of shooting 580 in FP at that time.

Best regards,
Ro[/quote]

Thank you for some more great material. I really do appreciate it, even if I seem to dissent. Please forgive my sarcasm - I just kind of feel that way today...

I'm certainly no world champion's coach, nor do I have my name on any big trophies, but I do have a questioning mind...

Not surprisingly (I have no original ideas), it would appear that my thoughts have already been tried with similar initial results, by some of the best. If I read Steve Swartz's post correctly

A surprising number of tens.

I keep a can of spackle handy.

his brief experiment has echoed that of the coach mentioned by Ro.

it resulted in a lot of tens and also a lot of bad shots

(As an aside, a very limited BE Slow Fire experiment by myself gave exactly the same results - a lot of the shots were in a single hole, but there were several shots wider than normal.)

In the case of the coach and his shooter, they then worked hard to "break" that behavior because it was "obviously unpredictable and uncontrollable."

I have no further information on how the coach and shooter approached the above, other than what's been posted. I have some thoughts and opinions, of course, but no real knowledge of where the training went from there. The following might just be more ignorant BS from me:

It is human nature to try to hold onto something that is already in hand. It is therefore very natural for us shooters to try to hold onto points we've acquired. The "knee jerk" reaction to a situation that results in a lower score is to immediately "fix" whatever we changed. Unfortuately, this can work against us. We have to guard against giving up on some things too early. Whenever we change something, we have to give it a fair chance, to really test its value.

Let's examine the "problem" of the shot breaking as soon as you enter the aiming area. Let's further assume you have a lot of tens, but also a greater number of wild shots. Now let's examine two courses of action:

1) Stop breaking the shot when you enter the aiming area. There must be something wrong with it, because it is uncontrollable. Go back to the other way.

2) Train with this new behavior to see if the wild shots can be minimized. Perhaps a change in settle might create a better environment for success with this new process.

Now, I can't say whether option 2 was or not tried, but I would think human nature would have suggested not losing those points to wild shots, especially when you know option 1 will get you pretty good scores.

But the questions remain, would option 2 possibly have netted better results if it was studied further? Would option 2 have been the next step up the ladder?

Thank you again to all the participants in this interesting discussion. Look, we've hit four pages with over 60 replies... and I'm actually having to go back and forth to reread portions. Please forgive my tardiness in some of my posts.

Take Care,
Ed Hall
http://www.airforceshooting.org/
http://www.starreloaders.com/edhall/

My experiments with allowing the subconscious to break the shot also result in a mix of really good shots and really bad flyers. My theory is that most of the flyers are caused by an inadvertant but serious conflict in the goal that I have set for the subconscious to achieve. The goal is to hold the sights still to shoot a ten, of course. Sounds simple enough, and the subconscious is perfectly able to achieve it given the opportunity. It can do it in dry fire quite easily for me, for instance. The problem is recoil. The subconscious very quickly learns that in fact the sights don't stay still when the shot breaks. They jump up, especially the front sight.

To the subconsious, this is a very serious problem. You ask it to keep the sights still, but as soon as the shot breaks they move, screwing up its goal. In an effort to keep the sights still, it tries to come up with a physical solution, since that's the way it behaves. It tries to time a pulling down motion exactly with the recoil so that it can keep those sights still. This is reflected in it quickly forcing the break of the shot at the same time as it pulls down in an effort to exactly overcome the recoil. The result is a flyer, because it's impossible for it to do this perfectly.

Note that this does not have to have anything to do with a fear of the gun going off (although you will often feel an emotional stress just before it happens). Rather it is a result of anticipating recoil as a physical problem that is almost impossible to solve.

I shoot .22, .32 and .45 and the difficulty of getting a good subconscious break (and the amount of flinch/wildness of flyers) varies in direct proportion with the recoil involved.

So far, I haven't found any way to consistently get my subconscious to understand that I don't want it to fight the recoil, that the recoil doesn't matter. I can get it to do the job most of the time, but not ten shots in a row without flyers. Inevitably it jumps on a few of the shots. If I figure out a way to get the stupid thing to understand, I'll let you know!

Ed:

This goes wzay back in the thread- but perhaps it will appear in a slightly different light at this time.

I think that what I previously called the "sweep and break" method- releasing the shot as the aligned sights move into the sweet spot- is the same (or at least very similar) to the process we are discussing now.

Under sweep and break, you train yourself to shoot the first ten you see- increasing pressure simultaneously with a controlled, linear movement "toward the release point." [Notre we do not talk about "aiming area" or "settling" with this method; as the concept of "settle in aiming area" is moot.]

If you reject that sweep and break is similar to ISP, so be it. If you accept the similarities, then I would ask a question/suggest a reference.

I distinclty remember reading in a book(s) on shooting that the sweep and break method had received extensive trials by at least a couple of world-class shooters. I can't remember which book it was in- Pistol Shooter's Treasury? Hickey and Severs? Antal?

Anyhow, the bottom line of the discussion was that even after a multi-year trial, the method was abandoned by all adopters as not being reliable. On the order of 75% tens and a "buttload" (or maybe "metric buttload" for the European shooters) of eights and sevens. Best case.

Do you remember this at all in your readings? I will have to go back and do some digging to find something a little more specific, sorry.

YMMV

Steve

EdStevens wrote:I shoot .22, .32 and .45 and the difficulty of getting a good subconscious break (and the amount of flinch/wildness of flyers) varies in direct proportion with the recoil involved.

So far, I haven't found any way to consistently get my subconscious to understand that I don't want it to fight the recoil, that the recoil doesn't matter. I can get it to do the job most of the time, but not ten shots in a row without flyers. Inevitably it jumps on a few of the shots. If I figure out a way to get the stupid thing to understand, I'll let you know!

Ed,
You may benefit from trying to shoot AP which as it has essentially no recoil will give you a better feedback. That said with the pistols you shoot the gun should still return to aim after the recoil has gone.

Rob.

Let me start with some thoughts for EdStevens:

The reaction to stimulus is a very natural human nature, and yes, the subconscious will tend to react as you have mentioned. This is why the so called surprise break is promoted. Is it truly a surprise? Well, yes and no. Down to the intricate workings, the actual moment is know to be pending, but only closely know as to when. The best circumstance is to train your reaction to wait until needed. IOW, through training, you convince your subconscious that it is OK to allow the recoil to happen and then recover.

One of the best methods is through dry fire because you don't have the recoil. That way, when you live fire, the recoil becomes the surprise and the recovery happens after the shot is gone. Some of my best live fire has been when I was mentally convinced that I was perrforming a dry fire shot and the recoil was a true surprise. You've probably heard the quote, "Dry fire like it's live, and live fire like it's dry."


Steve Swartz

Sorry I took so long to get back. I don't really recognize (first hand at least) the study to which you refer. I guess I'm getting wrapped up in the idea of sweep being a side to side motion across the target. I suppose it could also refer to a downward motion, but I'm still envisioning the same settle that would be used in the normal process. The only difference is in the actual hovering over the aiming area. In some of my recent experiments, instead of settling and then initiating the trigger while holding there, I have been initiating the trigger before I reach the area and completing as I get to where I would otherwise hover. I've had interesting results.

First, for others, this has all been conventional shooting at appropriate Slow Fire targets at distances of 50 feet and 50 yards, with .22 and .45 caliber pistols. My experiments have seemed similar to what others have noted in that I have a high number of very centered hits with some extreme flyers. In analysing the intricacies I could grasp, the flyers happened when I inserted the slightest amount of delay to wait for a better looking settle. The neat thing, which we are always "saying" we believe, yet trying to convince ourselves of, was that invariably, if the shot happened at the end of a perfectly executed trigger, it didn't matter what the picture looked like - the shot was centered. OTOH, those that had the hesitation, no matter how slight, were wide whether they looked "perfect" or not.

My difficulty of late, is that I can rack up some centered shots but suddenly, I seem to come into a conflict with continuing. I'm not sure if my conscious is starting to insist on some involvement or if it's something else, but the confidence wanes and shots widen as a result. More to follow...


mentalshooter:

Brain cells are constantly being destroyed and replaced as with all other cells in the human body, but not any more so by holding your beath. Holding your breath is as natural as eating and drinking - both essential to preserve life itself. In fact, if you try eating or drinking without holding your breath, you will quickly see how unnatural the action is. Brain cells aren't adversely affected until the oxygen content in the blood has been decreased to a substantial amount - an event that doesn't occur instantaneously upon holding one's breath.


Guesst:

I welcome all comments, whether from Chet or yourself... I reserve the right to believe those I choose and reject others. I have also found that I will sometimes reverse my beliefs when more knowledge is gained.

Take Care,
Ed Hall
http://www.airforceshooting.org/
http://www.starreloaders.com/edhall/

Ed Hall wrote:Let me start with some thoughts for EdStevens:

Brain cells are constantly being destroyed and replaced as with all other cells in the human body,

I welcome all comments, whether from Chet or yourself... I reserve the right to believe those I choose and reject others. I have also found that I will sometimes reverse my beliefs when more knowledge is gained.

Take Care,
Ed Hall
http://www.airforceshooting.org/
http://www.starreloaders.com/edhall/

Unfortch for the Human Race , the nerve cells that die are not replaced !

There is no "Regenerative Cycle" as with other types of body cells like Blood Cells for instance .

You start off life with a given number and that's it !

However, it is a mercy that some redundant brain cells may 'take over' the function , or some of the function, of the ones that are gone .

For example , some 'stroke' patients eventually learn to walk or talk by re-educating other brain cells into the desired lost function.

The brain can sustain up to six minutes of No Oxygen before permanent damage sets in .

Holding your breath to release a shot is too short a time to kill brain cells ... depending on your training... the duration of a 'breath hold' and its effect on performance will naturally differ from person to person . Within the ten seconds or less it takes to release a shot , the brain remains healthy .


Elmas

.

I put this in the wrong place. Now here...

After several years of trying to shoot tens each time, and meanwhile reading the many ways to do that on fine forums like this, it seems apparent to me that too many judgements are made about the sights, and their relation to the target. If we create (physically) and key off those sight conditions, are we not still thinking in the conscious?

Perhaps all the sub-conscious discussions are missing an important point. We can't create the sub-conscious for the shot. The sub-conscious is already there, underneath the conscious. Trying to hand off the flow of the slowfire shot process "to" the sub-conscious would work better if we did that as a cessation of thinking, and letting the sub-conscious simply rise to the occasion. How well we take away the thinking is maybe the key to the shot and where the final judgements should be made.

" . . . about the sights . . . "

Correct.

" . . . and their relation to the target . . . "

Incorrect.

That part is precisely what's turned over to the subconscious. The "permission to release" is the job of the subconscious; and as long as the trigger execution is perfect and perfectly consistent (some have argued "unconscious [sic]) the subconscious can be trained to recognize the perfect release conditions/timing to shoot that "automatic ten."

Steve

this bit is copied and pasted from Warren Potter's Hitchikers Guide on Pilkguns.

"Quote: There really is nothing difficult about shooting a ten. Our own fear of failure is our greatest enemy. It makes us freeze on the trigger and overhold. If we can overcome our own human frailty and have faith in what we know to be true, there is no limit to what we can achieve. unquote."


.

[quote="Steve Swartz"]" . . . about the sights . . . "

Correct.

" . . . and their relation to the target . . . "

Incorrect.

That part is precisely what's turned over to the subconscious. The "permission to release" is the job of the subconscious; and as long as the trigger execution is perfect and perfectly consistent (some have argued "unconscious [sic]) the subconscious can be trained to recognize the perfect release conditions/timing to shoot that "automatic ten."

Steve[/quote]

"" . . . about the sights . . . "

Correct.

" . . . and their relation to the target . . . "

Incorrect.

That part is precisely what's turned over to the subconscious. ""

That is exactly my meaning. Too Many Judgements remain in the conscious. The handoff to the subconscious, as I am suggesting, is perhaps actually a cessation of the conscious. The subconscious is already there I am suggesting, and it only needs to be uncovered.

I'm only speculating on how do we "get to" the subconscious level. Do we create the sub-conscious, or do we remove the conscious, and there it is? And I am suggesting that the closing of the conscious is a most important skill in itself and must be learned right along with trigger control, etc.....

My personal experience - FWIW - supports what Jack is saying/asking: how do we get the conscious mind to stop yammering at us so that we can do what we already know how to do? This question is the basis of Tim Gallwey's books on the "inner game." What I hear Jack suggesting - please correct me if I'm getting this wrong, Jack - is that carefully parceling out bits and pieces of an integrated process, this part belongs to the conscious, this part to the subconscious, may not be the best way to go. It may, in fact, serve to dis-integrate what we're trying to do. Gallwey maintains that the WHOLE process should be "turned over" to the subconscious, or as he puts it, the conscious mind must get out of the way so that the rest of our being can do its thing. What he recommends amounts to a distraction mechanism for the conscious mind. However, I must admit that 99% of the time this is just a theory for me ;-(

FredB

What Fred says does support my thinking. I am not claiming any authority* about all this. Some people may think that, but in all these last few years of posts, I have been developing my thoughts on the shot process with the aid of this and other forums. Evolving is the word. I have been unable lately to commit time enough to practice and improving my physical skills. (*Bullseye pistol since 1969. lately AP for training, smallbore prone 1970-76, CF benchrest 1959-76. 1976 married, kids, etc... )


Fred's: "this part belongs to the conscious, this part to the subconscious, may not be the best way to go"...

comes pretty close, but not quite, to my idea that the subconscious once uncovered, will take over. The question remains about the parts. What instructions (parts) do you leave for the sub-c to work with, once you cease conscious directing. Obviously to me simplicity will apply.

And how do we monitor the process? Is the sub-c doing its job? Therefore we monitor the sub-c. Or do we question what we observe? Is the job getting done? Is that what EdH calls "observing"? Or is it a simple piece of conscious left to overule the sub-c (abort), plus evaluate the result (call)? If we monitor the "job" too much, are we exposing the process to the conscious again?

Nothing but questions. I do believe the shooter must at least hold within the black to even worry about all this stuff.

On a side note, I am completely into the "committment and flow" concept of the process. Final sighting alignment and triggering are concurrent, not steps at a time.

jackh wrote:And how do we monitor the process? Is the sub-c doing its job? Therefore we monitor the sub-c. Or do we question what we observe? Is the job getting done? Is that what EdH calls "observing"? Or is it a simple piece of conscious left to overule the sub-c (abort), plus evaluate the result (call)? If we monitor the "job" too much, are we exposing the process to the conscious again?

That's about how I see it. The subconscious does it's own thing, nothing monitors it, we train it via conscious inputs. The moment the conscious comes in the process is messed up and the shot should be aborted.

Rob.

RobStubbs wrote:Are we back in the land of Chet by any chance ? Looks like other worldly ramblings again from 'wizard' (better described as a blizzard)

Rob.

Pilkguns posted the following in May 2005:-

Pilkguns wrote: Chet has been banned from posting on Target Talk for more than 3 years or so now .

This is due to Mr. Skinners false claims, exaggerations, outright plagiarisms, and his generally offensive manner in which he conducts himself with those who notice all those various "discrepancies".

Some of his "theories" are not invalid to shooting, but they are certainly not his unique intellectual ideas, and for the vast majority of coaches and shooters his methods are not used or endorsed..

I wonder if those reasons for banning him are any less relevant today.

.



. Tolerance is a virtue that is losing ground fast these days.


. I think Coach Skinner should be allowed to post here same as the rest of us.

. Those who do not like or those who disagree with what he says should either engage in an objective 'flame proof' discussion , or if they feel they cannot retain their cool or their objectivity , should simply not read and not respond to what he writes.

. Frankly , I think all this millisecond stuff , the Conscious , Subconsious and the UNCONCIOUS theories.... are of no use to any shooter, experienced or novice... but I will not challenge Coach Skinner on this and just " let it pass" .

Elmas

.

Elmas wrote:Tolerance is a virtue that is losing ground fast these days.
I think Coach Skinner should be allowed to post here same as the rest of us.

It's not about tolerance. Chet ruined a good information resource in the UIT list by spouting all manner of nonsensical dross. There was a long series of emails I was involved in regarding the physiology of the eye and how we perceive images through it. I was posting from a computer vision research lab at the time and knew one or two things about how the retinal cells and the eye in general work, and about the models we now use to describe the neural networks that process that information into something our cortex can use. Chet posted something that was wrong on that topic, I corrected it, and it became a long bitching session over how he was right because he had access to two or three studies dating from the late 1800s and I was wrong despite many references to works from the last three decades which disproved those earlier models. It ticked off a lot of people, ate up a lot of bandwidth and time and in the end I just wrote off the UIT list as a waste of space as a result.

If Chet actually listened on occasion, then you could tolerate him, but he doesn't. Site-wide bans are what's called for here, not wasting our time.

If you spoke from any position of knowledge then I would be happy for all of you and would not say a word

Liar. When confronted with modern medical and research citations in the past - by me, so don't say you don't remember - you dismissed peer-reviewed and published studies as incorrect based on your misreading of studies from the 1800s which had long since been shown to be erroneous.

The eye works perfectly

No, it does not. We have poor night vision, poor acuity compared to other animals, see in only a small fraction of the available spectrum, cannot react as quickly to a drop in light levels as we do to an increase in them, the eye degrades over time requiring corrective lenses in the majority of the population, and there are numerous other performance problems with the Mark 1 eyeball.

This is information from Dr. Perky

You've already been shown that you didn't understand Perky's "results", nor known that they were shown to be caused by experimental error and were not reproducable in other labs.

I as any other coach can do no better

I have had the privilege of knowing good coaches in my short time. Calling you a coach is an insult to their abilities and characters.