Rock n Roll

[schatzperson]

Here's the rub:
During dry-fire practice on a white card, I can handle front sight optical and mental concentration well, including acceptable sight alignment during squeeze and follow through.

The minute I introduce anything like a target, I shake rattle and roll.
After some dry-fire practice at home, I occasionally put in a black dot on the white card, to simulate a target; Thereafter its plain to see where my 8's are comming from.

Now, I am not an impressionable fellow, not easily swayed by stimulii around me so this turn of events is unexpected.

Thoughts?

[Freepistol]

When you introduce a bull, do you {incorrectly} switch your focus to the target?

[Brian M]

Holding on a blank wall helps with focus on sight alignment, but does little for "hold wobble". Even introducing a dot on the wall to simulate a target (if that wall is close), will give false results as you're so close to the 'target' as to mask normal wobble. If it's your sight alignment (front blade aligned between the rear saddle) that's changing, then something else is changing (as mentioned above, your focus is no longer on the front sight, your grip needs attention, perhaps it's a stance thing, etc...)

BUT, if the sights are aligned and it's the whole pistol that's wandering around, well.... welcome to training part #2 ~ hold training. I wish there were a shortcut here, but it's 100% fine motor control development and that only comes with lots and lots of time. I spend 20~30 minutes a day just Holding on target, no dry-firing, no shooting, just pushing myself to keep the pistol on target as long as possible. I've found that putting the target 5" higher seems to help a little for "settling" my hold on target and will often do this for a few minutes before shooting.

Identifying the issue (do the sights go out of alignment, or do they stay aligned and just wobble) will pinpoint what you need to work on.

Cheers,

Brian

[schatzperson]

No Freepistol, actually I dont.
My mental and optical focus is still on the front sight.

Obviously something is wrong of course; Its not all that easy to hold even perfect sight alignment, and wait for the best target picture

[schatzperson]

Brian,
you might have the situation in "training part 2".
Its probably due to fine motor control.
Wondering if this is allied to strength at all.

Does your 30 minute daily holding improve one or both ?

[luftskytter-]

In archery they call it "target panic":
I know all about it, and a substantial part of my 30 year shooting career has been related to this. It's psychomotoric, and it's conditioned reflexes....

Patience, stubbornness and discipline is the only real long term remedy, but you'll never get completely rid of this once it's started. The only "trick" that helps is trying to reduce stress and keep things simple and easy to help training in order to reduce the trouble.

Possible training aids may include supporting your arm while shooting to "get used to" doing it right, but you need to learn how to master "the complete system" with all challenges included.

This is hard work if you are not among the lucky ones who don't understand what this is all about!

[Brian M]

Yes, training on hold improves both my stamina (my first match after a long hiatus was in October of 2010 ~ I was Struggling to just get through those 60 shots and was sore for 2 days after ~ now I can shoot 100+ shots before feeling slightly fatigued), and hold/wobble. Stamina (strength) has improved substantially more than hold, but I'm a 9.1~9.2 shooter already. Thinking back to when I had Good hold, it was after a couple of years worth of shooting/training (less training, more shooting ~ I'm doing WAY more training and less shooting now with much better results).

What luftskytter- mentioned is something I'd classify as "mental". That's the biggest area of improvement for most shooters. There's a TON of material out there on mental training (it's something that crosses between sports, a tennis book is often referenced as being one of the better mental training references), but it's also the least well known. But it comes down to the simple process that if you Believe you shoot 10's, you will. You already know how to stand, sight and let the shot break cleanly, so getting out of your head and just letting it happen is a likely goal.

There's a reason people shot for a lifetime... it often takes that long (or longer) to really get good at it. :D

[Gort]

I think Freepistol was headed in the right direction. Visual acuity must stay on the front rear sight alignment and just be aware of the bull. If the alignment changes from front/rear and shifts to front/bull, all bets are off.
The more precise you try to hold the front to the bull, the more tail chasing wobble you will have.
Gort

[luftskytter-]

Brian M is onto a couple of things as well:
Yes it's definetely mental and that's what makes it interesting.
Have you met these instant success shooters that say:
"What's the problem? This is easy".
Then they train for a month or two, outshoot you, get bored and quit.
Irritating......

One of my most useful training sessions was many years ago with an extremely good American archery pro. His message was "accept the movement, you can't stop it". But he also said that although your sight is making circles, figure of eights or cloverleaf patterns, your scores will get better than what this makes you think.
Magic? Maybe something like that, and his shooting was impressive.

If you centre the movement in the middle of the target and squeeze the trigger nice and soft, that's all you can do here and now.

I keep forgetting this far to often......

[lastman]

I think you're looking at it from the wrong perspective Schatz.

Your first sentence said it all... you CAN do it right.

The introduction of a target has no bearing on what you are doing at your end.

When you're doing things properly on a blank card or wall, think about the finer details of what you're doing well. Think about how the pistol feels in your hand, how tight is your grip tension, how is the natural tension in your body etc.

Then all you need to do is think about those positives when there is a target at the end of the range. Discipline and commitment is the key. Your focus is only on replicating the positive aspects you identified when you were working on the blank card. When you feel you could be doing any aspect better abort the shot and start again. Do this until the shot process is exactly what you want.

It will take a little bit of time, but it will work.

Good luck

[schatzperson]

Thank you all for your ideas, almost all of which have been helpful to some degree.
I think that if I had to be as honest as my perception and current expertise allows, I can say that though I can hold sight alignment during trigger release reasonably well, its when I put this delightful little package of parameters on a target, I notice the movement that gives me my 8's.

It could be of course that either the movement is there anyway but not noticeable during white card exercise, or the target "vision" itself is the primary cause.

Then again one needs to bow to tried and tested wisdom and get to grips with fundumentals training.

[Brian M]

Don't worry about/focus too much on the 8's.... Everyone can shoot those (like me, yesterday).



This is sort of "chicken vs egg" stuff, but so long as you can identify those shots when they happen and give reason, then you can fix them. You'll have to trust me when I say that there is a LOT of perceived wobble when shooting the above. I even shoot a deep sub-6 to minimize that perception, but it's still there. That 8 was 100% a function of my mental game falling apart. It was the 10th of 10 shots where I was taking a 5min break between shots (working on getting into "the zone" consistently), I was tired and ready to be done, could hear the TV in the background, had shot a respectable group to that point, and my mental game just flopped. I let outside things influence my shot instead of ignoring/blocking them.

So call your shots, do you KNOW when your wide shots happen and Where they went? For the above, I knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my 8 was way low (it happens to be a bit right too, which I missed). There's a wide right 9 there too that was also called (I though it should have been a bit worse before looking, but it was called nearly perfectly). If you don't know Exactly where those shots are going, then you're either lacking on one of the fundamentals (watching the sights and follow-through come to mind) or simply shooting within your wobble area. But you should Really be focused on the desirable shot process/outcome ~ when you have good shots, stop and think about what just happened. Where was your head, did your focus remain on the sights better, what was the wobble area like? It's funny how the brain works, but it strives to repeat that which you focus on the most. When you see a target like above, your First thought should be "How did you shoot 9 shots in a row, in that group?", *NOT* "What happened with that 8?" ~ focus on the positive...

[David Levene]

....but so long as you can identify those shots when they happen and give reason, then you can fix them. You'll have to trust me when I say that there is a LOT of perceived wobble when shooting the above.

So call your shots, do you KNOW when your wide shots happen and Where they went? .........If you don't know Exactly where those shots are going, then you're either lacking on one of the fundamentals (watching the sights and follow-through come to mind) or simply shooting within your wobble area. But you should Really be focused on the desirable shot process/outcome ~ when you have good shots, stop and think about what just happened.

I have trimmed Brian's post quite a lot, but the above are fantastic points.

Call your shots.
If you know why you had wide shots then you can train to minimize the fault in future.
If you don't know why you had wide shots then you might not be watching your sights or following through.
When you have a good shot, don't just accept it; think about what happened.

[ronpistolero]

Hi,

A bit of segueing. I am able to do the entire shot process nearly flawlessly when I dry fire. i mean I know I "hit" the 10 quite consistently and am able to call my shots. However, most of the time, I squeeze very differently when there's a pellet/.22 bullet that I am about to fire. I can only surmise that I anticipate the shot. And its wreaking havoc on my potential scores. I average in the low 550's in the air pistol and friends couldn't believe that my poor squeezing gives me this. And neither could I explain it except that I know the shaking appears to start after the bullet leaves the barrel. I kind of think (or make an alibi) that somehow, I must be hitting a nerve in my palm that makes me do the jerk upon firing. In addition, sometimes I forget that the gun is on dry fire mode and yet I react as though the gun made a recoil. Anything you may want to share to eliminate this problem would be truly appreciated.

Ron

[Spencer]

Here's the rub:
During dry-fire practice on a white card, I can handle front sight optical and mental concentration well, including acceptable sight alignment during squeeze and follow through.

The minute I introduce anything like a target, I shake rattle and roll.
After some dry-fire practice at home, I occasionally put in a black dot on the white card, to simulate a target; Thereafter its plain to see where my 8's are comming from.

Now, I am not an impressionable fellow, not easily swayed by stimulii around me so this turn of events is unexpected.
Thoughts?

You have drastically reduced any dry-fire against a blank card, haven't you? Otherwise you will be rehearsing/training/practicing/reinforcing something that causes a problem. If something is causing a problem, step 1 is to stop doing it.

now here comes the heresy:
- dry-firing aginst a blank card is an exercise that CAN be an aid WHEN USED JUDICIOUSLY and SPARINGLY!