Few questions

[roostonu]

1. Full or Empty stomach when shooting AP?

2. Most people I see bring there pistol up above the target and then slowly drop down to center. This seems to hurt me more than help. As I drop down I can't see the target because its blocked by the gun. I end up way off to one side or the other. If I come up on it, I can stay centered. At this point I can't see the benefit. Can anyone explain it a bit?

3. I'm looking for a blinder that will attach to my prescription glasses, which have very small lenses. Can anyone recommend a source?

[Isabel1130]

Dont shoot on a empty stomach. Too much danger of your blood sugar levels dropping and causing the shakes Eat at least one hour before you shoot and no more than three hours before you shoot. Try to stay off the sugar close to the time you shoot. Eat high protien foods and complex carbs that will not take your insulin levels up and down. (This has nothing to do with people who are diabetic) People's blood sugar levels fluctuate a lot and can drop dramatically an hour or so after a sugar high. i also believe that is is best to avoid artificial sweeteners. They trigger an snsulin reaction in your body the same as sugar does. This can leave you feeling starving and shaky. If you need to eat right before or during the match try things like cheese and jerky.
Blinders usually come as accessories to specialized shooting glasses. Most of us who don't opt to go that route just put a piece of tape over the glass on our non shooting eye. I like medical tape because it peels off and resticks easier.

As far as coming up on the target. How is it working for you? Are you scores the way you like them? The reason that most people come down on the target is that it creates less stress on the muscles than you put on them by raising your arm to the target. You are moving with gravity when you lower your arm onto the target and not against it. Usually if you gun is not close to the bull as you come down you have a positioning problem with your feet and not your arm. Most air pistol shooters use a sub six hold so they are aliging their sights as their sight picture drops into the bull and then past it before they put final pressure on the trigger and actually fire the shot. Isabel.

[Mike M.]

Champion's Choice sells a clip-on blinder that you can trim to suit your glasses. That being said, you will never regret a dedicated set of shoot glasses.

[Forrest C.]

For a blinder I cut up an old pair of clip on sunglasses and sanded down the remaining bit of lens. Seems to let more light into my eye than putting tape on my glasses.

[S Schwegmann]

try using safty glasses I put electical tape over one side, and it work well for me. You can buy them at your local hardware store and they only cost 5 to 10 dollars. not much of an investment if they do not work for you

[roostonu]

Thanks for the help everyone.

I was wondering why some days I was shaky and some days not. I shoot almost everyday at work during my lunch, but my eating habits are bad and often times I haven't eaten anything before shooting, including breakfast. I am going to test the theory right now and eat my lunch an hour and a half before shooting. I also cut my caffiene intake in half and only drink it 1st thing in the morning.

As for coming up on the target, I think it works pretty well for me but I had not thought about standing in a position that naturally pointed my arm in line with the target.

I get good sight alignment coming up on it and pretty steady hold, but my sights tend to move left when pulling the trigger. I have to work really hard to keep it from happening. Thats where most of my inconsistency comes from. I need to dry fire more but my K58 doesn't have dry fire capabilities, so it's not the best simulation.

Thanks for the help on the blinders. I have been using tape on my glasses which works fine, but it would be nice to be able to flip it up when not shooting.

[Isabel1130]

Roostonu, I have found that as long as I don't have an excess of caffine early in the morning then it does not affect my shooting. Drinking your coffee with food will have less effect on you than if coffee is all you have. I have seen some shooters carefully calculate the amount of caffine in their systems especially if they were feeling tired and inattentive in the morning because they had less sleep than usual. One shooter I know will drink half a cup of coffee occasionally and no more depending on how he is feeling.

One of the best things you can do for your shooting outside of practice is to learn to do the same thing at the same times every time you shoot in competition. That means that if the match starts at 8, You get up at six, eat breakfast slightly before seven and then do your warm up routine before stepping on to the line at 8. If you do something different (and you will need to experiment quite a bit at home) if it has a positive effect on you shooting keep doing it, if it has a negative effect, stop doing it. Change one thing at a time. However, I can't stress enough how important it is to shoot actual matches. Matches are so different from the lazy habits we get into at home or at the range that there is no comparison between the two. Let me give you an example. I have 33 feet clear in my house and have no problem practicing my air pistol in the house all of the time. What I don't have is an automatic target retiever and I don't usually shoot with a table in front of me. When I got down to my first international air pistol match, everyone within sight of me was a right handed shooter. I am a left handed shooter. They put their guns and equipment to the right of the target carrier and operated the carrier with their left hand. You were lined up with your target if you were shooting right handed. I was not lined up with my target unless I stood to the right of the carrier which put the carrier directly under my left hand that was holding the gun. To top it off, since the shooters on either side of me were right handed there was no place to put the gun when I set it down but to the right of the carrier without crowding the person on my left. I struggled all day on the first day with the logistics but got a break on the second day when there was no one to the left of me on the line. My shooting improved. Any distraction or ANYTHING different between practice and a match must be adapted to and will cause a distraction and usually problems with you focusing on your shooting. So, bottom line, in order to learn to shoot matches well, you must shoot lots of matches, preferrably in lots of different venues, not just practice.

[roostonu]

It worked. I ate lunch 1.5 hours before I shot and I felt much better. The best I've shot yet. I shot 20 shots and averaged 9.35. I was just a little jittery but I also didn't get enough sleep last night.

I have shot one match and I plan on shooting the California State Championship in a couple weeks. I shoot in practice like I'm shooting a match except I don't have a target carrier. I do have a bench in front of me though.

I tried changing my stance so that my arm lined up naturally with the target, but to do that my feet were past 90 deg to the shooting line and I had to twist my head too far to line up. My groups opened way up this way. I'm typically about 80 deg and I find if I stand just slightly pigeon toed, I am more stable.

[GOVTMODEL]

2. Most people I see bring there pistol up above the target and then slowly drop down to center. This seems to hurt me more than help. As I drop down I can't see the target because its blocked by the gun. I end up way off to one side or the other. If I come up on it, I can stay centered. At this point I can't see the benefit. Can anyone explain it a bit?

I tried changing my stance so that my arm lined up naturally with the target, but to do that my feet were past 90 deg to the shooting line and I had to twist my head too far to line up.

Sounds like you need to work on Natural Point of Aim. Your arm SHOULD line up with the target naturally, which is why it's called "Natural Point of Aim."

[Isabel1130]

"I tried changing my stance so that my arm lined up naturally with the target, but to do that my feet were past 90 deg to the shooting line and I had to twist my head too far to line up. My groups opened way up this way. I'm typically about 80 deg and I find if I stand just slightly pigeon toed, I am more stable."

Your head should have never changed position. do it in this order. Start with a natural stance with your head at the angle that you usually keep it. Line the gun up with your eye. If the gun is to either the left of the right of the bull significantly then you should rotate both your feet, not your head at all until you acheive a natural point of aim that is at least on the target. Read this article on stance that Warren Potter wrote and make sure you understand what he is saying. All of his stuff is good. My suggestion. read the entire hitchhikers guide.

http://www.pilkguns.com/c12.shtml

http://www.pilkguns.com/hhg.shtml

[Rover]

Don Nygord told me, "There is no natural point of aim."

I believe that.

[Hemmers]

1. You don't want to be on a sugar rush, but the shakes will be equally destructive to your scores. Eat, but a little while before shooting.
In a long match, maybe even eat during the match. When shooting a 3x40 .22 rifle match (3 hours) I will usually take on a Mars Bar after the standing stage, and top up on water or Lucozade as neccesary.

During a pistol match, I likely wouldn't eat (no obvious break point in a 60-shot match, unlike the breaks between positions in a 3x40), but would probably take on glucose in an energy drink part way through if I felt it was neccessary. I'd take breaks to rest the arm and eye anyway. And there would be a Mars Bar in the kit bag just in case.
Always take on water regularly. First thing to go with Dehydration is eyesight. And you don't start to feel thirsty until you are already somewhat dehydrated. Pre-empt it!

2. I'm not a very good pistol shooter, but FWIW I come down onto the target. Two reasons. The first, it feels more natural. As some have said, a controlled drop under gravity instead of coming up under muscle power.
The second reason is precisely because I cannot see the target with my right eye from behind my raised arm (the left eye being behind a blinder). If the pistol comes down and is not naturally lining up on target something in my position is wrong, I abort and re-evaluate my position.
I find if I come up onto the target, I subconsciously correct the alignment as I do so and try to line up horizontally on my way up to the target. This usually results in the shot going halfway between the aiming mark and where the pistol naturally wants to point!
Broadly, you should not be using muscular effort to line up horizontally. Your stance should see to that, leaving you to only deal with taking the shot when the elevation is correct.
Of course, your position can never be perfect due to human nature and physiology. It becomes a matter of training, and developing a fine judgement on when to loose the shot. The pistol will never be totally static on target. However, one should not be making major horizontal corrections once on the target (or on the way to it), at most just minor ones.
When I have poor shots (3-ring!), it is because of some error with my trigger squeeze, causing the wrist and pistol to rotate or pull during the shot release, not because the pistol is naturally lining up on the 3-ring as a result of poor stance.

3. Any hardware shop will sell you a roll of masking tape! A small strip on your glasses makes a great translucent blinder and it's low level of adhesion means you do not get dirty great sticky glue marks on your lens as you might with duct tape or similar!
Alternatively, you could fashion yourself a blinder from a plastic milk carton. When chopped into rectangles, the translucent plastic looks pretty much identical to the translucent plastic blinders that come with expensive sets of shooting frames!
Fold over the top to hook onto your glasses, or attach with tape as appropriate.

[LeLongCarabine]

i aim way above the target in fact i aim at the roof as i come down onto the target i have three stopping points on the way down these are always in the same places every shot the final being the point of aim
i get my front sight level with the top of my rear one as i come down a little further and stop again ,fine tune my sights again front and rear then drop to the bottom of the black line up the bull and fire, if chicken finger come to play then i start all over again .
long live chicken finger
i tried to come up onto the target but it uses too many muscles for me .

[roostonu]

I'm working hard now to come down on the target instead of up and I'm starting to see the benefits. It really gives me a chance to get my sights aligned well and concentrate on front sight focus. With practice and small adjustments I'm coming down in line with the target now.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to help.

I guess the moral is, I need to give things a chance before I count them out or take the easy way out.

I also made a bllinder out of a piece of a milk jug. I made it just little longer than my lense is tall and then used a little heat to bend over the ends. Now it slides right over my lense, stays in place and lets light in.

[RobStubbs]

As far as coming up on the target. How is it working for you? Are you scores the way you like them? The reason that most people come down on the target is that it creates less stress on the muscles than you put on them by raising your arm to the target. You are moving with gravity when you lower your arm onto the target and not against it. Usually if you gun is not close to the bull as you come down you have a positioning problem with your feet and not your arm. Most air pistol shooters use a sub six hold so they are aliging their sights as their sight picture drops into the bull and then past it before they put final pressure on the trigger and actually fire the shot. Isabel.

That's not quite true. The reason for 'coming down' over 'coming up' is because you use different muscles to do both. Coming down works with finer muscles and we can therefore control the movements to a finer degree. The problem with that is that a lot of shooters over lower and then raise again, negating the benefits they've just acheived.

If you are coming down in different places then you are either not aligning yourself correctly or you are not being consistent with your approach. Both are fairly easy to solve with the appropriate training.

Rob.

[steyrlp10]

Don Nygord told me, "There is no natural point of aim."

I believe that.

... and Bob Chow told me that sometimes, you just have to shoot your wobble.

[lastman]

1.) I like to have a protein shake about an hour before I shoot. They have little sugar and keep your stomach contented i.e. not empty or full.

2.) The idea behind raising above the target it so that you stretch out the Lats, deltoids, trapezus and upper back muscles. When you are holding those muscles are pulling your arm down. To stretch them as you raise will stop that from affecting you too much. Working on your stance and your grip will help you move into your correct aiming area with the sights aligned. Try doing it with your eyes closed about 20 times and record on a piece of paper and as you keep doing it you will get it into the correct area.

3.) No idea

[roostonu]

Thanks for all the great advise. I'm dropping down on the target now with good results and I've done it enough now that I'm pretty well lined up with the bull as it comes into view. I shot my second match and was much less nervous this time. It amazes me that my best shots are when I'm concentrating the hardest on sight focus/alignment and trigger pull and very little on the target. The subconscious is an amazing thing.

Eric

[Hemmers]

It amazes me that my best shots are when I'm concentrating the hardest on sight focus/alignment and trigger pull and very little on the target. The subconscious is an amazing thing.

Eric

Well, not really. The target isn't going anywhere. It can wait till the end of time. It's all about what's going on at your end. It's easy to point a pistol at a target. Less easy to not snatch it to the side whilst squeezing the trigger, get your position lined up so you're not having to make major aim corrections, etc, etc.

As you've found, concentrate on what you're doing and the rest will follow.

[Freepistol]

Here's an old post discussing raising vs lowering of the arm:

http://www.targettalk.org/viewtopic.php ... light=grip