TargetTalk

I suffer from the all too often occuring dilemma of shooting a very good string or two or three. Then I think about why? or how did I do that? In the next string, well that wasn't it. The thing is I don't know why some performances are really good. Is thinking my problem, or does technique differ so much unknowingly?

Help me figure out how to keep repeating a good performance without "thinking" it back to poor.

This is probably, just as you say, because you're thinking too much. Concentrate just on the shot in the gun - once it's gone forget it. You can't change where on the card it went so don't think about it. The only exception being if it was a good (to you) shot then psychologically pat yourself on the back. Don't add up strings as you and if you have shot an obviously good string and start shooting poor then stop, sit down and refocus. Come back to the line with an empty mind apart from the desire to execute a good shot sequence and shoot as any other shot, following your shot plan.

Rememeber your game is to shoot sixty one shot matches and taken like that a 10 is just one good shot, one of many others in the match and each therefore on their own have no great consequence.

Rob.

P.S. Now time for me to try and put that into practice <g>

These are many good instructional articles posted here on the website of our host, the Nygord Precision Products site, and many others. My personal experience dictates the following important components:

Keep a diary
Importance of dryfire training
Stance
The sight picture
The release
The follow-thru

1) Keep a diary of what works and refer to it offen. Make changes ONE AT A TIME until the scores improve.
2) Dryfire exercise is about like watching grass grow, but is extremely important. Not only does it provide a check-up, but it reinforces all your good habits. I equate a "10" to hitting a golf ball or baseball, based on fundamental principles plus the hand-eye "memory". Dryfire forces you to concentrate on the sight picture, the release, and the follow-thru. Try it. If you're like me, you will hate it, until your score begins to climb because of it. Mind wanders? Try ear protection. It helps center your focus within yourself.
3) The best advice I have found regarding pistol stance is to be comfortable, IN A POSITION THAT CAN BE EASILY DUPLICATED hundreds and thousands of times. This includes head, arm, feet, legs, and bifocals.
4) When you focus on your sights, the 10s will come. When you start to press, your focus will shift to the target, even to just sneak a peak, and your patterns will open up considerably. Olympic caliber shooters will almost all sight to the bottom of the six ring. Old Boy Scouts like me have always been taught to sight to the center of the black. But, once I realized the damage the sneak peaks caused and got used to the lower aiming point, my 60 shot match scores jumped 15 points.
5) The release - dryfire train, dryfire train, dryfire train . . . . . .
6) The follow thru - When everything else is perfect, a rotten follow-thru will spoil it all. Hold your sight picture for 1 to 2 seconds after release, and call your shots to a spotter for confirmation. Don't be in a hurry. The reason we shoot pellets is that they leave a hole in the paper for future reference . . . . .

Hope this helps. The hobby is addictive and it's nice to see improvement (in your diary of course!).

tmac
Alpharetta, GA

Nothing makes shooting well more difficult than success. You step up to the line ready to shoot your best. You have reviewed your shot plan, visualized the shot and then you start shooting. After a few easy 10's your instincts take over and you discover the dark secret in all of us. We are all closet trigger jerkers. We can try to control it with things like shot plans and dry firing but let us shoot a few tens and the instincts come bubbling to the surface and oops, an eight.
We started looking at the target and grabbing at things when we were babies, before we could walk. We can never be cured, at best only controlled. It is a life long habit pattern and controlling it takes every bit of mental toughness we can muster.
Controlling the inner demon trigger jerk is what precision pistol shooting is all about. Barrel time makes air pistols much more sensitive to even the most practiced twitch of the trigger finger. When you throw in a focus that drifts down range during the shot process it's a wonder any of us hit the target at all.
You will never be cured but success is working harder at controlling the inner demon than the other shooters.

Doug in Virginia

VAshooter wrote:Nothing makes shooting well more difficult than success.

At the same time, nothing makes shooting easier than success. If every time you raise the gun you expect (not wish) to hit the middle then it is amazing what happens.

VAshooter wrote:Nothing makes shooting well more difficult than success. You step up to the line ready to shoot your best. You have reviewed your shot plan, visualized the shot and then you start shooting. After a few easy 10's your instincts take over and you discover the dark secret in all of us. We are all closet trigger jerkers. We can try to control it with things like shot plans and dry firing but let us shoot a few tens and the instincts come bubbling to the surface and oops, an eight.
We started looking at the target and grabbing at things when we were babies, before we could walk. We can never be cured, at best only controlled. It is a life long habit pattern and controlling it takes every bit of mental toughness we can muster.
Controlling the inner demon trigger jerk is what precision pistol shooting is all about. Barrel time makes air pistols much more sensitive to even the most practiced twitch of the trigger finger. When you throw in a focus that drifts down range during the shot process it's a wonder any of us hit the target at all.
You will never be cured but success is working harder at controlling the inner demon than the other shooters.

Doug in Virginia

Doug,
With respect if you go into a match thinking that then you're throwing away points before you even fire the gun. It's like pretty much everything in life, in that you get out what you put in. If you train all elements of shooting and shooting a match then you will overcome those emotions, in fact a lot of shooters shoot at their best under competitive conditions.

There is however no shortcut. Shooters need to train their mind to deal with the very real mental stresses of shooting and in so doing learn how to cope with a match and use it to their advantage. One writer on the subject states that shooting is 80% mental so if you can't control that aspect there's very little chance of you shooting well, never mind doing so repeatedly.

Rob.

Let me give you an interesting analogy

Years ago, I was in Germany sitting on the onramp to the Autobahn...and it was "rush hour." A truck driver blinked his lights and waved at me. That was it...I went for the gap. To this day, I have NEVER shifted a stick shift so perfectly...and I may never do it again.

So what happened? My brain just got out of the way, I did not think when to shift and how to work the clutch, I somehow just did it. On some things, you just have to get your brain out of the way and let your training take over.

Gary

RobStubbs,
I wasn't trying to be negative or project a defeatest attitude. I wanted to describe a very real problem that we all have to overcome. When a shooter comes to grips with the fact that he will have to spend his or her entire shooting career vigourously suppressing the instinctive urge to snatch the trigger he is on the road to shooting glory. Sort of like the alcoholic who must first admit that they have a problem before they can step on the road to recovery.
If you recognise that twitching (a milder word than jerk) the trigger is instinctive and natural and must be vigerously suppressed to release a good shot you are on the way to shooting better. It's easy after you shoot a few tens to get cocky and figure that you have this shooting thing figured out. That's when it falls apart because the instincts are always there just waiting for a chance to surface.
Shooters can suppress their instincts. The top shooters do it all the time. We can all be top shooters by focusing on the front sight, maintaining sight alignment and smoothly pressing through on the trigger.

Shoot well

Doug in Virginia

Doug,
I know what you're saying but disagree from two perspectives. Firstly your post suggests a need to understand your failings rather than a need to understand your successes. By that I mean we need to study to be technically proficient but in doing the shot right, rather than studying how to do it wrong (even if you are aiming to learn what not to do). It comes back around to the subconscious mind which is too dumb to spot the difference. So as far as it's concerned it happily learns the bad as well as the good.

Secondly I disagree with the comment that snatching or twitching is a natural reaction. Now I come at this from an air pistol perspective since that's pretty much all we're allowed here so perhaps it's slightly different. However I don't find that junior or novice shooters need to unlearn the twitches. All it needs is to get them to understand and adopt 'follow through'. For us adult shooters with the inclination to train, dry firing is an excellent way to overcome any problems with twitching.

Rob.

Robstubbs,

My backround in pistol shooting was military, to be more exact, US military where as a young man I was handed a 1911A1 45 and told to shoot. My first shot was close to the black and the rest of the magazine was in the dirt between me and the target.
I suspect you are right that with proper initial training a shooter can be taught smooth trigger release from the beginning. I have had that experience teaching junior shooters. The girls will usually listen to what you say but some of the guys have been corrupted by American TV and they are harder to reach.
We all know what it takes to shoot a good shot. The fact that we can't do it all the time indicated that knowing how is not enough. Most bad shots come from an undiciplined trigger finger and there must be a reason why we need to work so hard to commit good trigger control to our muscle memory by dry firing and rehearsing the shot ritual in our minds prior to shooting. If there wasn't a strong tendency to twitch the trigger we could all just raise the pistol and shoot a ten or deep nine each shot.
In the US today many more shooters get their introduction to pistol shooting through IDPA or IPSIC style shooting rather than the precision shooting sports.
Understanding that "get it now" trigger control will not work in precision shooting is not the same as teaching negatives. i.e. Don't look at the target. Don't jerk the trigger. We all need to think positively and concentrate on the fundamentals of shooting each shot but we also need to be aware of the danger of relaxing our attention to detail.
We seem to be coming at this from two directions but I think we are heading toward the same goal.

Shoot well

Doug in Virginia

VAshooter wrote:The girls will usually listen to what you say but some of the guys have been corrupted by American TV and they are harder to reach.

I think that if you were to talk to instructors and coaches worldwide the vast majority would agree with you.
Males have become indoctrinated with Westerns and Dirty Harry and see pistol shooting as something they should be able to do naturally without much effort. Unless you correct them early they can quickly become disheartened and can be lost forever.

tmac wrote:These are many good instructional articles posted here on the website of our host, the Nygord Precision Products site, and many others. My personal experience dictates the following important components:

Keep a diary
Importance of dryfire training
Stance
The sight picture
The release
The follow-thru

1) Keep a diary of what works and refer to it offen. Make changes ONE AT A TIME until the scores improve.
2) Dryfire exercise is about like watching grass grow, but is extremely important. Not only does it provide a check-up, but it reinforces all your good habits. I equate a "10" to hitting a golf ball or baseball, based on fundamental principles plus the hand-eye "memory". Dryfire forces you to concentrate on the sight picture, the release, and the follow-thru. Try it. If you're like me, you will hate it, until your score begins to climb because of it. Mind wanders? Try ear protection. It helps center your focus within yourself.
3) The best advice I have found regarding pistol stance is to be comfortable, IN A POSITION THAT CAN BE EASILY DUPLICATED hundreds and thousands of times. This includes head, arm, feet, legs, and bifocals.
4) When you focus on your sights, the 10s will come. When you start to press, your focus will shift to the target, even to just sneak a peak, and your patterns will open up considerably. Olympic caliber shooters will almost all sight to the bottom of the six ring. Old Boy Scouts like me have always been taught to sight to the center of the black. But, once I realized the damage the sneak peaks caused and got used to the lower aiming point, my 60 shot match scores jumped 15 points.
5) The release - dryfire train, dryfire train, dryfire train . . . . . .
6) The follow thru - When everything else is perfect, a rotten follow-thru will spoil it all. Hold your sight picture for 1 to 2 seconds after release, and call your shots to a spotter for confirmation. Don't be in a hurry. The reason we shoot pellets is that they leave a hole in the paper for future reference . . . . .

Hope this helps. The hobby is addictive and it's nice to see improvement (in your diary of course!).

tmac
Alpharetta, GA

How can a rotten follow trou spoil it all? Just as long as your'e not lowering your gun before the bullet has left the barrel, a perfect shot will result in a 10.9 even if you lower your gun 100msek after the shot.

Can someone please explain the importance of following throu. I imidiately get the feeling where the shot went - I don't need to hold my gun a few extra seconds to get that.

Please enlighten me! :-)

/Axel

Axel:

First of all, there are some semantic issues around the use of the term "follow through." For the purposes of training newbies, I use a formulation that separates "physical follow through" from "mental follow through:"

Physical: the act of returning the sights smoothly, subconsciously, and immediately into alignment in the aiming area as soon as possible after recoil; often called "recovery" in sustained fire events.

Mental: the act of "shooting through" the release of the shot. Involves a level of concentration on sight alignment that is so intense it doesn't even realize the shot has been released. A key component of the "subconscious timing" method of shooting.

Now it would be easy to claim that PFT is irrelevant (as you suggest) because the shot is already beyond the muzzle by the time you would attempt recovery. However, the two are related: PFT supports good MFT and vice versa.

Without good MFT, the likelihood that you can achieve good PFT is much lower. Conversely, if you are unable to perform good PFT, then your MFT is incomplete.

If you must ignore one or the other, go ahead and ignore PFT. You will soon find that your MFT will begin to suck very quickly and to a large degree.

If you must ignore MFT . . .

Steve Swartz

Steve Swartz wrote:Axel:

First of all, there are some semantic issues around the use of the term "follow through." For the purposes of training newbies, I use a formulation that separates "physical follow through" from "mental follow through:"

Physical: the act of returning the sights smoothly, subconsciously, and immediately into alignment in the aiming area as soon as possible after recoil; often called "recovery" in sustained fire events.

Mental: the act of "shooting through" the release of the shot. Involves a level of concentration on sight alignment that is so intense it doesn't even realize the shot has been released. A key component of the "subconscious timing" method of shooting.

Now it would be easy to claim that PFT is irrelevant (as you suggest) because the shot is already beyond the muzzle by the time you would attempt recovery. However, the two are related: PFT supports good MFT and vice versa.

Without good MFT, the likelihood that you can achieve good PFT is much lower. Conversely, if you are unable to perform good PFT, then your MFT is incomplete.

If you must ignore one or the other, go ahead and ignore PFT. You will soon find that your MFT will begin to suck very quickly and to a large degree.

If you must ignore MFT . . .

Steve Swartz

Thanks Steve for your answer !

The mental follow through you talk about is important, I agree with that. It's neccesary to perform MFT to get a good feeling of the shot. (good, bad and where it went) What I mean by MFT is that I can somehow, in my mind, record the last milliseconds before the shot, and be able to replay it, in my mind, seconds later - but I don't need to hold my gun in front of me to do that !?

But I really think ÿou answered my question when you talked about sight allignment. Isn't follow through just another way to put even more focus on sights?

Look at ISSF videos of Yifu Wang, Athens Olympic Champion, does he perform textbook follow through... No, absolutely not - he lowers his gun just after the shot.

/Axel