Pistol Technical Skills

[Steve Swartz]

Just for those non-BE shooters in the international forum who might not be familiar with the discipline Bill is referring to:

20 shots slow fire @ 50 yards
30 shots national match course (10 slow @ 50 yards, 10 timed @ 25 yards, 10 rapid @ 25 yards)
20 shots timed fire @ 25 yards
20 shots rapid fire @ 25 yards

Now

The times are different. The sizes of the rings are different. The "ready" positions for timed and rapid are different. The trigger weights are different. The guns are different. And oh, the 90 shot corse of fire listed above is, well, shot once with a .22 LR, then with a "center fire" caliber, then with a .45 ACP. The scoring (bunch of your buddies vs. Sius Ascor) is different. The conditions are different.

Other than those minor differences they are *exactly* the same.

Sight alignment and trigger control.

Well, dot position and trigger (500 grams vs. 2.5 pounds no with 2 lbs for .22 and oh no wait the hell with it)

[Guest]

Never mentioned dot.

I do, however, know the difference between sight alignment and sight picture because Brian Zins and Andy Moody told me.

And I also know that Soylent Green is people.

...Signing off...

[bryan]

do you have a clearer picture of the pyramid?

gets hard to read when you blow it up

[Steve Swartz]

Bryan:

I am running into the "max file size" issue with the complete pyramid (even in gray scale it won't fit). Shoot me an email leslieswartz@verizon.net and I will send you the ppt file.

[2650 Plus]

Bryan [Not Zins]your comment about shooting at the winning level being 90% mental struck home. Would you agree that not only must the thinking process be positive in nature but that it should be simplified to the minimum necessary to deliver a comtroled shot on target ? Adding the thought that the emotions play a large part in staying "IN THE ZONE' Please comment If you desire.

[2650 Plus]

Bryan [Not Zins]your comment about shooting at the winning level being 90% mental struck home. Would you agree that not only must the thinking process be positive in nature but that it should be simplified to the minimum necessary to deliver a comtroled shot on target ? Adding the thought that the emotions play a large part in staying "IN THE ZONE' Please comment If you desire.

[Guest]

2650- You sir I absolutely right . The best plans are the simple ones. Plans that you can keep in your head. No flow charts, graphs or negatives. Talk to a rifle shooter about their shot plan, you may see some things there.

[Steve Swartz]

Agree 100%! I'm sorry you misunderstood if thought any of my "how to organize your training to improve your performance" were intended to serve as a shot plan.

You could use it to develop and improve a shot plan of course.

But it would be very funny thing to try to use all that stuff on the line shooting!

[gordonfriesen]

Of course, Perfect trigger is a PREREQUISITE for everything else.

This much *everybody* agrees on

The recent umm "discussions" have centered around the "religious" question of "do you let the trigger drive the sights into alignment, or do you let the alignment signal the trigger?"

Steve,

I think this goes beyond faith. Because it is so hard to measure things, you perhaps simply don't realize that your good shots are finger led shots? (just kidding)

At any rate, looking back at the beginning of the thread, I think we have made some progress.

The AMU guide seems like a good place to start . . .

Settling in Aiming Area

Sight Alignment

Trigger Control

We now agree that these three elements are ass-backwards. As you stipulated earlier, you put on the first stage and a little more before or as you align, and then move into the zone, so the initial settle-sight-trigger should definitely be replaced with Trigger-Sight-Settle, even though we must take note that you personally still reserve just a little tad of trigger for the very end.

Actually, though, what I really want to talk about here is settle.

We are told to ignore the movement of the sights and not try for a perfect stillness because this is not humanly possible. Well, the ten ring on the ISSF precision target is two inches wide. This means that someone like Bill can reliably hold to within one inch to either side. Except that that deviation is down range at fifty yards. If the arm and pistol are taken roughly as one metre, then the deviation at the muzzle is one fiftieth of that, which is to say dead centre plus or minus one fiftieth of an inch.

Please. take out a ruler and try to see an interval that small. Mine stops at thirty seconds. What I am saying, is that to to make a shot like that, other than by fluke, the gun has to be very, very, very close to perfectly still.

And how is that stillness to be acheived? One might say through relaxation and that is surely part of it, but it can't be all. There has to be a rigidity in the muscles. Assuming that the skelleton is perfectly placed, the muscles have to keep it that way. The raised arm has to stay raised. The hand has got to offset the trigger pull. Muscular tension is like the tension of guy wires applied to any structure. That is what stops things from going all floppy.

How about this: The settle is not a settle, it is actually an act of pointing. It is an act which becomes more precise, with a stiffer pointer, which is to say more muscular work, as time goes by. And after only a very few seconds, it become untenable. In this description, the settle is not a constant state in which we just keep things the way they are and squeeze the trigger. On the contrary, we are pointing dynamically more and more firmly into the heart of the target. As we lock on to the zone we increase stiffness, and increased stiffness brings an increasing likelihod of controlled penetration of the target.

But the trigger has to go off before we get tired of doing that. So the trigger can not be held back. It must be allowed to come. It must be made to come before it is too late.

And we have to fight to maintain alignment while we are pointing and squeezing.

And if this is done right, I think the muzzle will be virtually motionless when the shot flies.

I say all of this merely to dispell a misconception that I think beginners get of it being ok to wave the gun around and squeeze the trigger. It is not ok. You have to hold the gun still. And I think the same misconception works more subtly at higher levels, to the effect that the shooter can watch the minimum movement getting better and when it is optimal start to squeeze (or finish the squeeze of) the trigger.

The trigger squeeze and the stiffness of the hand and arm are intimately related as hammer and anvil, action and reaction. They must occur simultaneously with no notion of sequence.

But while it is ok for the trigger to come a little too soon, too late is something else entirely. Too early in the hold is still near and on the road to perfect. Too late in the hold is usually signalled by some gross movement which will ruin the shot if it is too late to pull up short.

So let's recap: Trigger and hold are both efforts which should ideally come to a perfect climax together. If the trigger comes too soon, its ok, but if the hold peaks too soon it is at best a sudden halt, and at worst a wild shot.

So, does it not seem most sensible to lead with the trigger?

Best Regards,

Gordon

[jackh]

I believe there are two motions involve that we confuse.
1) the motion of the front sight blade in the rear notch.
2) the perceived motion (arc of movement, wobble) across the aim area.

Neither will ever be perfect.
Most of us I believe spend too much time and effort on #2.

[bryan]

Bryan [Not Zins]your comment about shooting at the winning level being 90% mental struck home. Would you agree that not only must the thinking process be positive in nature but that it should be simplified to the minimum necessary to deliver a comtroled shot on target ? Adding the thought that the emotions play a large part in staying "IN THE ZONE' Please comment If you desire.

Yes, Yes, and controlling emotions/feeling is all about getting in the zone, and staying there.

of the 10%, you need to be at least 100% of it. So it comes back to lots hard work and planning to get to the stage that you are shifting from predominantly technical process, to predominantly mental process.

in the beginning, learning correct technique is the most important aspect.
as you increase your technique, you must improve your mental strength.
as technique gets to (ap570) approx, emphasis would be more on mental strength.
In saying that, it is still important that the basic level of technique is maintained, so a portion of training is purely technique.
If you loose this level of technique, work load needs to shift back to technique until it is at the point you dont need to think about it.

the technical side is very basic compared to the mental side.

I would suggest tagging onto one of the existing threads than going off in another direction with this one.

without upsetting to many, most of this is of little concern until you get to this level, until then work on getting technique right. its good to know whats ahead, waste of time worrying about it till you get there.

[David Levene]

without upsetting to many, most of this is of little concern until you get to this level, until then work on getting technique right. its good to know whats ahead, waste of time worrying about it till you get there.

Only one thing stops me from agreeing with you 100% Bryan, and that's the issue of physical fitness.

I am not talking about being able to run 5 miles, more having the muscle development and tone to let you hold the gun steady with an acceptable amount of wobble. I would normally expect any one who shoots 2-3 times a week to be at this level.

From personal experience, in the dim and distant past I was at (or above) the score level you mentioned, albeit in different ISSF events. I still have pretty good technique but, probably because I only pick the gun up on average once every 4-6 weeks, I no longer have the ability to hold the gun still enough to shoot more than 540-550. If you don't put in the work........

[Steve Swartz]

Gordon:

Fundamental flaw in your logic.

It has to do with the notion of "stillness."

How does someone with "An 8 Ring Hold" shoot 570s?

Because they do all the time . . .

You don't need a ten ring hold to shoot a ten.

You don't even need a "ten ring the majority of the time" hold to shoot a ten.

Crikies, the Rika/Scatt/Noptel show us that you don't even need to cover the ten rign at all- except for that moment just as the shot is breaking.

It's about accepting that you have reached your settle, based on your trigger being absolutely perfect/consistent, and the accepting that it isn't going to get any better than that.

Keep the sights alinged and let the shot break.

Do that a couple of thousand times and before you know it your brain will have figured out when to send the signal to the trigger finger all on its own.

[2650 Plus]

Waving the gun aroung somewhere in the vacinity of the bull and trying to develope a method of trigger control that causes the pistol to fire as it waves toward the center of the bull will drive the shooter nuts, Even holding within the eight ring means that you are at least occasionally pointing in the area of the ten. But, [ Big But] that is not how it is done. When you first begin to settle the trigger pressure should start, settling continues and focus must shift to the issue of perfecting sight allignment. No matter how many times the falshood is repeated, the pistol must be relative still in the vacinity of the ten ring to consistantly shoot tens, and score above the 570 standard. I've never met a top shooter that claimed his arc of movement was greater than the nine ring and certainly none that claimed he / she could consistantly shoot tens while accepting so much movement. Camp Perry is excluded from this concept because of really vicious weather conditions prevelant on the ranges there. Miss enterpitation of scatt traces may be the reason this keeps being repeated. Good Shooting

[Steve Swartz]

I'll send the Rika traces to anyhone who needs proof.

Better yet, IIRC David Levene I believe posted the link to a bunch of Gontcharov's Noptel traces a while back.

Seems like the computer recorded his shooting many 97+ strings with a "weak 9" hold.

Why anyone would make this stuff up when it has already been widely studied and demo0nstrated is beyond me.

Science has been applied to our sport guys.

A good starting place is YurYev's book "Competitive Shooting" which is somewhat outdatred but a lot of the key principles were well understood in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

[David Levene]

Better yet, IIRC David Levene I believe posted the link to a bunch of Gontcharov's Noptel traces a while back.

I don't think so Steve. It might have been a link to the Scatt ematch pages.

Unfortunately their web site seems slightly messed up at the moment but you should be able to download files from here.

[RobStubbs]

without upsetting to many, most of this is of little concern until you get to this level, until then work on getting technique right. its good to know whats ahead, waste of time worrying about it till you get there.

Getting the mental side right is all about maximising your potential at whatever level you are at now, plus it helps you approach the whole thing more positively and in so doing increases enjoyment, satisfaction and increases motivation.

I don't disagree that you need to get the technical bits right more than the mental as you start, but the mental side needs to be included to some degree fairly early on. It's no good spending 5 years perfecting the technical aspects and then expecting to be able to perfect the mental parts in a couple of months, it won't happen.

This is slightly off topic so I'll halt it there.

Rob.

[Steve Swartz]

Ed Hall has agreed to let me post my content (diagrams, explanations, etc.) in some form on his web site. There are some issues but hopefully we can sort them out.

I suppose this thread can now sink into obscurity under the weight of its own controversy and variety!