How do you keep it fun ?

[thessler]

Hi
I am pretty new to the sport, shooting bullseye for a year and a half and air pistol for about six months.
In the past I just pick up the gun and shoot for a couple of hours and have a ball. Of course my scores really never improved much . Now I want to get better and am receiving some instructions basically doing the things I know I should have been doing but wasn't. IE dry fire, blank target, holding drill, hand exercise, you guys know the drill. Very little actual shooting. Now it has become work, I realize without work my scores will not improve. To be honest there have been very few smiles on my face when I start a session and I fear I will loose interest in the sport. I hate to sound like I'm whining, just looking for a way to get through the work and still enjoy the sport.
Thanks, Tom

[trev]

Hang in ther keep doing the training drills and when your scores start to improve the smiles will return but you have to put the hard yards in to reap the rewards.

[deadeyedick]

It might be worth not throwing yourself so deeply into training at this point. Do some dry firing on a blank target but why not use pellets after 5- 10 dry fires to gauge if you are practicing the correct technique.
This will combine work and pleasure easing the monotony of practice only.

[Ramon OP]

Take breaks (weeks), add variation, find what motivates you, stay positive :)

[rmca]

Mix dry and live fire.

If you are trainning air pistol, do one or two real shots after five or ten dry fires.
Try to do one or two targets with ten real shots this way.
The same works for all disciplines. (replace shot with series of five shots)

I've never been able to only dry fire for more than 5 or 10 minutes.
But if I get one or two shots every five or ten dry fires, then it gets real intense. Almost like in a final, were you have to make the shots really count.
It's a way that works for me, but I still prefer real shots ;)

Hope this helps

[crankythunder]

Dear Thessler:

This is my personal opinion and my opinion only but what do I know, I have only been shooting competitively for fifty some odd years...…..

Shooting is fun. If it wasn't fun I wouldn't be doing it. Chew on that and keep it in mind.

I used to be highly competitive, High School, College, and I used to put forth a training schedule and I stuck too it. Train so many days a week, so many shots per training session, you get the idea. Did I improve? yes. Did I have fun and enjoy it? Most of the time, but I realized that if I had to force myself to go to the range just for the sake of practicing, or shoot so many rounds to get my round count to where my goal was, well, that wasn't so fun.

Wasn't long before I realized that those forced training sessions where I was not fully enjoying it were not improving my ability. And those forced training sessions were not that fun either. So why was I forcing myself to train so aggressively when I was not getting the results I was striving for and it was diminishing my enjoyment of a sport that I found so fun and entertaining?

Didn't make any sense to me so now I practice when I am able to and also when I want to. Sometimes I practice four or more times a week. Other times I skip a few weeks. Sometimes I go shoot just for the heck of it at steel plates or the old pressure tank 150 yards away just to hear the clank of the 22 bullet as it hits. And guess what? I am just as good a shooter as I was before. My enjoyment has skyrocketed too!

I took a class for fun put on by a fellow named Brian Zins. Great guy! I asked him specifically about training when you are not feeling like training and he responded "If you are not having fun at the range you are just wasting ammo, go home!"

I agree with Mr. Zins on this one. If you are not having fun at the range, stop wasting ammo and go home.

Regards,
Cranky

[Azmodan]

everybody is different
me, for one, i love to dryfire and to do holding exercises. i only stop when my muscles are too tired to hold the pistol.
i usually do 30 to 1 hour dryfires in my room (at 2 meters) and 3-4 15 mins holding exercises per day. but every 2-3 days i take a day off because of back pains.

[Jmk]

Variation keeps shooting fun for me. I do some dry fire drills irregularly, and one session rarely lasts longer than 10-15 minutes. There are between 1-3 open matches per month in my area (somewhere in Northern-Norway) which I participate in, and weekly training sessions in my shooting club. During the training sessions we may shoot ISSF-diciplines, national diciplines, or freely on paper or metal. I mostly use a .22 match pistol, but also larger calibers for our national diicplines.

I do have ambitions to improve my scores in ISSF-style shooting, but not at the expense of my appreciation of the sport. I have already had a six-year break from shooting because of monotonous training sessions. My view on the topic. (I have only competed/trained for two years since my break).

[thessler]

Thanks for the replys.
I have been training seven days a week and not really having fun and not improving my scores.
Time for a brake and a deep breath.
Thanks, Tom

[RyanA]

You could try some other challenges besides shooting for score. For example, turn the target around and shoot at the blank target for group size. See how small you can get the group. You might be surprised to see that it is possible to shoot a smaller group than you would normally. You could also make it a game to see how many consecutive shots you can land within a particular ring. If you miss one, make a few dry fire shots to get back to basics and then try again. Keep track of your progress and set some goals.

[spektr]

I shoot at an indoor range where run and gun guys have shot so many of their target holder paperclips, that they are everywhere on the floor.
I use them for unknown distance practice with my airguns. Range management doesn't mind at all, they even laugh at it..... Weekdays at opening when I'm usually the only guy there, out come the whiffle golf balls, and I smack them around the building a while. Management laughs and I REALLY enjoy it. They cant believe how much fun it is to shoot them and watch them fly around when you really drill one.
You can make a lot of fun if you want to .....

[ProdigalSon]

I remember that as a kid I got really into archery. I got pretty good at it, won a few state championships, but I stopped after a few years (to my parents’ eternal disappointment) because I put in so much work being the best that I forgot to enjoy it. Learned my lesson and I’m trying to avoid doing that now with shooting. As such, while I train at the range and such, I avoid doing things that bore me. I could probably be better if I dry fired more, but it’s boring, so I don’t, and I’m much better for the live fire practice I enjoy than the no practice if I burn out on it. If you’re bored when practicing, you’ll probably be thinking about it, which not only will distract you from good practice, but also subconsciously associate your pistol with boredom, which is definitely a risk of a vicious cycle.

I enjoy the zen aspect, particularly with air pistol since it’s sort of calmer than other disciplines, but also sometimes I just get out my old MK III and dick around at the range for a bit. You can build bad habits doing that all the time, sure, but every now and then it’s fun to just shoot at big targets really fast. If it’s in the budget, I strongly recommend getting a .22 pistol, with a red dot, for precisely this purpose. You can go to the range, blast away and get the boredom out of your system for not too much $$$, and then come back to practicing in earnest refreshed.

[GoodEnuf]

Over 50 years ago, I took a distributive class, Psychology 100. Not much in it worth remembering except the story of how to teach a chimpanzee to do something. Offer a reward for action desired, usually a banana. Create a challenge, and give the chimp a banana if he proceeds positively. But be careful...if the challenges are too difficult, the bananas are too far apart, and chimp says to hell with it. If the challenges are too easy, the chimp gets more bananas than he could want, and from the perspective of the chimp, the bananas lose value, and the chimp says to hell with it.

This analysis works in almost every human endeavor. Too hard, you don't get the reward, whatever it is, and you eventually give up; to easy, and it becomes boring, and you give it up. Example - You want to become a concert violinist. You buy a violin. Without talent, you eventually give it up. Example - It's 1974, and you play pong with an Atari, great fun. Not too long later, tears of boredom come to your eyes and you sell the equipment at a weekend garage sale.

So, maybe you can make shooting an ever evolving series of challenges, as previous posters have indicated. Design the challenges to be rewarding, either externally (better scores, better performance) or internally (gratification that comes with success). Make them difficult but not so difficult as to be impossible to achieve. Basically, do not set the goal to high - all tens, or too low - all shots on paper. Then move on to different challenges.

For example - The business with shooting at the back of a target seems to be silly, until you spend time thinking about 'why'. I think the goal is to recognize the existence of a natural point of aim. You don't lock in one parameter, e.g. stance, then force other parameters, e.g. wrist position, or body twist, to allow a sight picture, because there is no bull to force to. The final step is never done because it is unreasonable...slip a bull at exactly the center of the group you shot, and shoot another group, without moving. You are now shooting at your natural point of aim. The whole process is a challenge, the challenge to understand and react to that newfound understanding. In this case, that would be adjusting the natural point of aim to a realistic target height and position. Other training exercises can be evaluated in the same way, looking for cause and effect, and applying the learning to the ultimate goals. The learning process keeps it fresh and fun.

The trick is choosing the challenges to suit you, and that is why the ideas provided by the posters to this thread and many others, are so valuable.

Or so it seems to me...

JE

[Rover]

I wouldn't take my comment too seriously, but I have noticed that MANY guys on this forum seem to feel they need a new gun, or new ammo, or new pellets to raise their flagging desire. It's hard sometimes. I've said many times that you can't buy points, but I get many a "Yes you can!!!", response.

[Gwhite]

Sometimes a new pistol is a good way to blast yourself out of a rut. There's also the "new pistol" phenomenon, where your scores will jump up when you get a new toy. This is usually because it's unfamiliar and forces you to go back to the basics. The trick is to learn from that and not just re-develop the same bad habits that were holding you back with the old pistol.

I enjoy shooting in part because I like working with (and on) intricate mechanical things. I don't mind a bit of debugging & fixing occasionally, but some pistols (due to age, poor factory support, or just the occasional lemon) get to be more of an annoyance than a source of fun...

[atomicgale]

Buying an expensive new pen,
will not make one a great novelist.

- unknown

[40xguy]

this FWIW (for what it's worth). many people equate "practice to improve" with going to the range and doing the same thing again and again. that can really get tedious and boring. it's been said that "practice makes perfect," but in my opinion (imo) that's only to a point. attitude is very critical, especially in competition. I've read that the one trait that separates a high master from a regular shooter is confidence. assuming this is true, which I believe it is, then to go to the range day after day and do the same thing day after day, can be and is, boring (see first sentence above). so what to do? do something different. might I suggest only shooting, say 25 shots.... you'd be surprised what that will do for your attitude !! it will put an entirely new outlook on that specific practice time at the range; it'll put pressure on you to do your best (hopefully), assuming you do well, it'll give you confidence for the next time you go to the range, and it'll give you a new way to train. as the tv commercial from many years ago said: "Try it, you'll like it."

[Gwhite]

Practicing shooting poorly only reinforces the bad habits. Rather than just putting lead downrange, you should go with a plan to to deal with specific areas that need work, ideally with some sort of exercise or drill to help address those areas.

[GeraldS1]

Crankythunder - that wouldnt be a Bianchi Barricade pistol in your profile pic would it. I had very limited access to Bianchi but absolutely loved it.

As for training - (can only speak for IPSC) I found benefits would not be immediate. Dont dry fire today and expect a great shoot literally tomorrow. Dry fire today and that will help you in weeks to come

[deadeyedick]

Reduce your level of expectation as to what may result from training/practice and your enjoyment will not diminish and improvement will join the party at some point.

It is a strange phenomenon but the harder you try the less easy and rewarding it becomes.

It is also very hard to be in a relaxed state while putting yourself under such pressure and to shoot well there is an almost zen like state of mind that is required.

I have been shooting ISSF since 1975 and my best moments were when I was able remove the conscious mind and just let muscle memory and my subconscious take charge. I felt like a spectator.

Removing expectation/pressure also allows it to be a lot more enjoyable.