Tiraej

Hello, TFP folks. Here's my first post as this nick; I've been gone for several years and cannot recall my previous name. Here's my dilemma:

Several months ago, I went shooting with a Smith & Wesson .40 caliber pistol. I hadn't fired the weapon in years, but over the course of putting 100 rounds downrange, did very respectably for myself. At the end of the day, every single group had a respectable score.

I went again tonight with a friend, firing the exact same weapon with the same ammunition. As far as I am aware(I'm borrowing the weapon from my father), the pistol has been kept in its case for the past few months. It has not been roughly treated in any way, so I'll assume the fault is mine: I could not hit anything tonight. Of the 50 rounds I fired(I gave up early because I was doing so poorly), only about 10 hit the intended area of the target.

While this may be an odd request, does anyone have any suggestions for me? While I made it a point to practice breath control on the last shots of the night, and they improved(very slightly), this still didn't bring my results in line with anything vaguely acceptable. My biggest question is here: Can stress really mess with a person's ability to accurately fire? There were a few other folks in the bay, and I got used to the sounds of their weapons. I can't realistically blame it on that. Has anyone had any experience with the consequences of stress, though? I'd appreciate input.


Thanks!

Plan9

Good days, bad days on the 10-ring: We all have 'em.

The combined act of shooting is extremely human body resource intensive.

I'd say that stress alone is the single biggest factor in shooting.

Confidence and experience are a part of stress, the other part is the physical aspect which is directly manipulated by the mental aspect.

...

Practice, practice, practice! You don't get good and stay good by shooting twice a year.

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desal75

Were the shots still grouping, just off target? Or were they widely spaced and all over the paper?

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Seaver

Desal asked good questions.

I'm assuming a mistake 90% of shooters make, is they pull the trigger Hollywood style, with the middle 1/3rd of their trigger finger. If you're not pulling directly back with the point of the index finger you're wrong. Without a gun make your hand as if you're holding one, and "pull" the trigger. You'll see your finger pulls right as it's pulled back. This will throw off the shooting to the right, if your father's gun has a heavier trigger pull it will affect it much more than yours which would explain the difference.

Another factor is definately stress. Adrenaline helps people in the short run, but after a full day, or a few weeks of stress the Adrenaline wears the body down. Muscles become worn, which leads to fatigue and more natural sway. Hand-eye coordination become worse, and heartrate remains high. All of these will lead to poorer quality shooting unless you are really good, or trained, at how to prevent it from affecting your shooting.

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Slims

It's normal, but not good.

You probably did so well the other day because you were not anticipating the shot and were just 'shooting' in a relaxed way.

Then when you went back you put a little more pressure on yourself and your budding bad habit took off. To make things even worse I am willing to bet that you started to compensate for the flinch (even if you don't realize you have one) and began to throw rounds all over the place rather than just low.


The solution is easy, but it is important that you do these three things:

1: Dryfire at home or at the range, you should dryfire more than you shoot. make sure that you focus on follow-through (hold the trigger for a second or two after each shot, then release) and ensure that your sight picture stays good during the entire firing process and follow through. Pull the trigger much slower than you have been. It is not always appropriate to use a real slow trigger squeeze, but for learning and getting over a flinch it is important.

2: Shoot SLOOOOOOWLY when you do go to the range. Try to focus on pulling the trigger so slowly that you are surprised when the weapon fires. Again, you won't have to do this all the time, but it will help you get your mojo back quickly. Also, it is good to shoot a few shots this way at the beginning and end of each shooting session to reinforce good habits and ward off bad ones.

3: Have your buddy load (or not) your pistol for you one round at a time and then hand it to you to shoot. The idea is that you won't know whether the pistol is going to fire or just go click. This will make any bad habits painfully obvious (since recoil won't mask a flinch if the weapon is unloaded) and reinforce good ones by giving you positive feedback when your buddy slips a live round in the chamber. You should start out with your buddy leaving the weapon unloaded (but working the action, etc. so you won't know) most of the time.

I have walked several friends who were having problems through a couple hours at the range as I have described above and they always brought thier groups in dramatically by the end of the session...usually only a couple inches at 7 yards.

When you are shooting, for practice, stop whenever you start to notice something going wrong and take a break for a second. You don't want to just drive on because you will just end up reinforcing the mistake. Figure out what you are doing, slow down or make changes as necessary, and then continue.


There is, of course, lots more to shooting well, but I don't think you should worry about them until you get back on the paper and are comfortable with the weapon. Then start refining your technique, getting faster, and even more accurate. Seaver gives excellent advice, that may well improve your shooting, but I don't think it is responbible for the disaster that was your last range trip.

Good luck, and let us know how things go.

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"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

debaser

Don't take your buddy with you. You should be focusing on firing the weapon, not impressing your friend.

__________________

Plan9

It shouldn't matter who is at the range with you.

Unless they're hot and naked and tribbing your leg.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."

Bear Cub

Can stress mess up your shooting? Yea. OH YEA. When I was shooting competitively (international style 3 position and air rifle), many a times I went into a 10 shot final with what should have been no shot of winning, and the people who couldn't handle the stress would absolutely CRUMBLE under the pressure, especially if there was a decent sized audience.

While stress may not necessarily throw off your ability to hold, it can considerably throw off your repeatability and timing. You shoot a bad shot, it lingers, then you don't pay attention to trigger control, head position, sight alignment, etc. As far as timing goes, you will anticipate and force the shot. You begin to think that your hold isn't what it should be, and try to force the shot off "on the move", i.e as your hold is dipping or moving laterally.

Shooting is as much mental as it is physical. For the most part, my best scores and national records all came when my team and I were relaxed and enjoying the opportunity to be doing what we were doing.

Tiraej

Thanks for the advice, folks. I'm heading over again this weekend, and will ask my fellow shooter to load the pistol for a while and see if I can overcome my flinch and other poor habits. I know I tense up before I shoot, I'm guessing only experience will have me prepared for the noise of an actual round.

In response to the question: The shots were all over the place. Neither accurate nor precise, to use statistics terms. Hence I decided the problem lies with me as opposed to the pistol, which fires quite accurately at 7 yards.

Jinn

Six parts to shooting:

Position
Grip
Breath Control
Sight Alignment
Trigger Control
Follow Through

The trick is doing ALL six consistently. You should be perfectly practicing, rather than just practicing.

If you mess up one of them before the shot, back it off again and try the whole process again.

Sight alignment and trigger are the most important, but you shouldn't forget about the other four.

A few tricks:

Position; have someone watch you from behind. Unless you're shooting Weaver or modified Isoceles, they should be able to see a perfect isoceles from shoulder to shoulder and out to hands. I have a terrible habit of cocking my head to one side, and they should be able to see that all your muscles are mostly relaxed. If you feel yourself "flexing" any muscle, STOP. You're going to introduce muscle tremors into your shot. Their inherent unpredictability gives unpredictablity to your shot.

Grip; this one is pretty simple. Make sure it's comfortable and that you're not getting grip marks in your hands from squeezing it so hard.

Breath control; you can do full lung, empty lung, half full lungs. Just breath until it's comfortable to shoot and do so. Don't hold it more than 3 - 4 seconds, or you'll be getting muscle tremors.

Sight alignment; since you can only focus on one thing at a time (damn you depth perception), you should be focusing on the FRONT sight -- not the target. A good drill is back sight, front sight, target, front sight. Once you reach the end, you should be ready to shoot.

Trigger control; like above, have someone behind the line watch your hands/gun only. They'll see which way you're pulling pretty easily. I can't do tip of index-finger shooting, even on a govt 45, becuase of how big my hands are. You need to find the sweet spot in your finger that lets you pull STRAIGHT BACK.

Follow Through; this is the one that screws me up most often. There's time between trigger pull before the bullet exits the barrel. If you move too soon, who knows where you're moving it before it exits?

A neat drill I do to work on follow through (and compensation) is called ball and dummy. With a semiauto, have someone load one or no rounds into the mag, and throw it in. After they hand you the pistol, ready and fire. If there's no round in it and you're expecting there to be, your partner will immediately see your compensation. "click", and you slam down the barrel a few inches expecting a round to go off. It's amazing how fast you can build up a compensation if its been a while since you shot. I have to remember it everytime I go out.

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longbough

I used to do a variation off this drill when alone.

I got several magazines and randomly loaded up either a dummy or a single live round into each one. I then dumped the magazines into a pouch and grabbed one at random, loaded and racked the gun. I then pointed downrange and fired. I then would grab another magazine and click/bang - until I ran out of mags.

It's a great drill.

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"I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence." - Mahatma Ghandi

KirStang

Helped me shoot some pretty tight groups. Basically a consistent trigger pull, no 'compensating drop,' and good gun alignment to the hand.

MSD

I disagree on this point. The breathing I've seen most consistently improve peoples' shooting is to acquire the target, breathe in, aim, breathe out halfway without closing your lungs, fine tune your aim and fire.

Tiraej

I went back to the range earlier in the weekend and, using the advice in the thread, shot quite a bit better. I think I may have been trying to show off early in the week, but Friday's shoot was much better, even though I still had an audience. Once again, your combined feedback is appreciated!

Hanxter

first thing that came to mind is...

were they the same loads?

you can go from one mfr to another or from one to the same of the same load and grain and it WILL make a difference...

i load my own for consistency sake... and having tried maybe 15 different loads on my .270, .308 and 7 MM mag each as well as my hand guns, i've come down to rather precise config's... i stick with the same shells, powder batches, heads and primers...

just my thought

longbough

What I've learned was never to hold your breath.
Keep breathing and start to press the trigger when you exhale. It doesn't matter where in the breath you actually shoot - in fact it's supposed to be a "surprise break" in that you shouldn't anticipate when the gun goes off (and certainly not which part of the breath).

When I was a beginner I used to hold my breath. If it was a long shot or if I was getting weak I'd end up holding my breath longer and my hands would shake more. It was comical.
I am strongly against holding one's breath when shooting.

__________________
"I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence." - Mahatma Ghandi

Slims

Breath control makes a big difference with rifles, and it matters, a little, with pistols. But it is not the first thing he needs to worry about since he wasn't even hitting the paper.

Tiraej: Good job improving. Do try to dryfire, it really helps you develop good habits and prevents anticipation.

__________________
"Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery." - Winston Churchill

"All men dream: but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that it was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act out their dream with open eyes, to make it possible." Seven Pillars of Wisdom, T.E. Lawrence

Jinn

RE: The breathing comments...

That's why I said it didn't matter if you were half lung, full lung, empty lungs. Realistically, you can do it at any of the positions. Consistency is the key. If you can't comfortably hold your breath, then it's going to ruin your shot. If you can't comfortably hold your lungs full of air, then it's going to ruin your shot. If you can't control breathing out while shooting, it's going to ruin your shot.

That's why I advocating finding what's comfortable and sticking with it. All it means is adjusting your up/down, typically, as deflating and inflating your lungs is a vertical movement from your the standpoint of your shoulders.

__________________
"I'm typing on a computer of science, which is being sent by science wires to a little science server where you can access it. I'm not typing on a computer of philosophy or religion or whatever other thing you think can be used to understand the universe because they're a poor substitute in the role of understanding the universe which exists independent from ourselves." - Willravel

kel

As a USPSA shooter (and a lousy bullseye shooter) I don't even think about breathing. Doesn't seem to stop the 5 inch plates at fourty yards from going down when the course of fire demands. Breath control is for bench rest and bullseye.

My 2 cents.

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Plan9

Shooting more than once a month also helps.

__________________
Whatever you can carry.

"You should not drink... and bake."