TargetTalk

When do you get better results on matches, when the automatic pilot is "on" and shooting for you or when you have full concentration/awareness of the moment and movements you're making? Am I clear enough? (Lets make simple statistics!)

I do best with a lot of concentration in slow fire thinking totally thru the shot. In the sustained target stages if I try to think too much I'll get a nine. I use about 4 minutes for slow fire, 13 seconds for timed fire, and 9 seconds for rapid.

When the autopilot is "on" and you are in a flow, you shoot some tight groups and high scores.
The problem is that "where is the switch to turn it on", the flow occurs sometimes and not others.
Never been able to flow for a whole match, usually 8-12 shots in a row, followed by a slight crash.
The trick is to know when it starts and when to stop and take a break, then start again.

pgmlml wrote:When do you get better results on matches, when the automatic pilot is "on" and shooting for you or when you have full concentration/awareness of the moment and movements you're making?

Something in between.. A little more towards the autopilot, but if I let it flow without conscious control, it soon crashes and burns!

For me something between.
Too much trying to make things and i tend to overdo everything. I still get many 10's but i also have many errors.
Too much autopilot and i tend to relax too much and i get 7 and 8's without the 10's.

I'm a novice, but it seems to me that there are two distinct parts to the shot. One is the hold, which encompasses the entire body and particularly the shoulder, and the other is the trigger pull. The hold just happens, and can be trained to become tighter. The pull seems to be a more mentally active action, or perhaps the opposite where the action is to remove the brain from the process and just let it happen worth no extraneous input.

By far the most destructive component is the trigger pull, mistakes in that realm produce far wilder shots. My hold still twitches from time to time, but If I execute a quiet pull it's a nine. Conversely if I have a solid hold but throw a bad trigger pull, the shot can be anywhere.

So to the idea of autopilot, I try to put the hold on autopilot and concentrate on a clean pull. When the sight just slowly moves in recoil that's when I have my best shot.