Shooting without emotion

[farscott]

I struggle with this as I do my best shooting when I do not "care" about the outcome. When I start to be concerned with the results or I "need" a certain score, my performance suffers. This is for Bullseye, which is, for me, a very frustrating and fulfilling challenge.

I shoot at my best on demand when I can ignore everything but the process itself. The outside world seems to melt away, I am focused on the sights, my breathing seems to not be a concern, and my sight wobble is regular and smooth. Fatigue is not an issue and the shot breaks cleanly and without strain. The closest thing I have seen in media to that state is when Kevin Costner's pitcher "Clears the mechanism" in For Love of the Game. Been doing it for more than thirty years and on some days I still cannot get there. On those days, my performance is sub-par, and I have to struggle to be consistent.

[rangerover]

As an athlete, one of the hardest things I ever had to learn was that the basket was the same size and height in an NCAA tournament game as it is at the local YMCA. I think those that learn it best perform the best under pressure. Another example, the cup is the same size in the US Open as it is at the local muni course. Point I’m making is that our minds perception of the event can have a large impact on the outcome. That is how I interpret GJM’s comments.

[okie john]

For many years, I have been primarily focused on developing my technical shooting skills. Lately, I have been giving substantial thought to how to extract the highest percentage of my technical shooting ability, consistently and on demand.

This has been a circuitous process, but what seemed abundantly clear, is that trying harder almost always results in worse performance. I have struggled with what “not trying hard” means, and for now have settled on “shooting without emotion,” meaning shooting with no attachment to any outcome or external influence. Of course this is easier said than done. Steel Challenge seems like a great venue to practice this because it is so intense.

What are other folks doing on the mental side to on demand, extract the highest percentage of whatever your technical shooting level is?

Brian Enos writes about emptying the mind in Practical Shooting: Beyond Fundamentals (https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Sho.../dp/0962692506)

A few years ago, I decided to focus on The Test. I shot it several hundred reps over a few months, and got to the point where I was regularly getting 100 with several Xs. One day I shot it five or six times in a row with very short intervals between runs, holding my breath on each run like I usually do. At some point on the next run my body said, "Breathe, dumbass." I actually stopped thinking about the shooting and made myself inhale and exhale while I was shooting. I shot that run clean.

I'm not sure how I got there other than shooting so many reps of The Test that I just stopped caring about something, but that run was flipping like a switch in my head. That's the mental state I try to reach when I shoot now. I also find that relaxing physically helps me relax mentally, so I'll stretch my arms and back between strings, step away from the line after shooting several strings, etc.

I think that I was reading the Enos book for the first time when this happened.


Okie John

[BN]

I have a buddy I shoot with. He and I are pretty matched as far as shooting skill. When he finishes a stage he can recite every move he made while shooting the stage. I don't remember what I did. I guess I let my sub conscience mind do the shooting. I regularly beat him.

I had to make a video of myself reloading my revolver to see what I was doing. I just thought reload and it was happening. Sub conscience mind.

[Alpha Sierra]

I have a buddy I shoot with. He and I are pretty matched as far as shooting skill. When he finishes a stage he can recite every move he made while shooting the stage. I don't remember what I did. I guess I let my sub conscience mind do the shooting. I regularly beat him.

I had to make a video of myself reloading my revolver to see what I was doing. I just thought reload and it was happening. Sub conscience mind.

Same thing happens to me in sporting clays. I'll come off a station either running it or doing really well and I'll get asked how much lead I used. I can't answer that question. If I was aware of how much lead I put on the targets I would have missed most of them. The guys who keep asking about how much lead to use or how much I used are the ones scoring in the 70s at the end.

[Dismas316]

GJM is describing Match Mode - as Steve Anderson coined it.

For me, being in control mentally means controlling the process and exciting with a detached confidence in my current ability.

To add the Steve Anderson’s match mode, (which has been a huge improvement in my matches), he had a recent podcast that talks about “Emotionless Excellence” during match mode. Starts around the 17 min mark.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/...=1000428804652

[GJM]

If your conscious mind is focusing on the fundamentals of shooting, you probably need to work more on those. This is just like landing a taildragger or hovering a helicopter, where you need to be able to control the aircraft at a subconscious level, to leave your conscious mind free to deal with external factors.

So the questions is, if you are performing the shooting at a subconscious level, what are you doing with your conscious mind. It is easy to say what the conscious mind should not be doing — things like worrying about a previous bad stage, comparing your hit factor to a buddy that just shot the stage, or wondering what this classifier will do to your average. Not sure I know what I was thinking about.

I just got home from a match, where I actively told myself over and over, to only focus on the present. My wife asked me what I thought, and I told her I really couldn’t say. The reason was I had no real recollection of what my stages were, how I did compared to others, and what I felt. She was a little miffed, because she thought “I must have some feeling,” but I actually didn’t.

[Alpha Sierra]

if you are performing the shooting at a subconscious level, what are you doing with your conscious mind.

OK, what are you doing with your conscious mind?

I'm not a very good handgun shooter. But I'm pretty damned good with a shotgun.

When I step into the cage I rehearse in my mind what my hold points, visual pickup points, and kill points are going to be. I visualize crushing the pair. I close the gun; I tell myself to focus on the target, then assume the ready position with my eyes in relaxed focus at the visual pickup point and my gun at the hold point for target 1.

I call pull, and as soon as the eyes detect the target I place 100% of my conscious mind to bring a laser-sharp focus on the targets. From there on everything happens in autopilot and I watch the targets get smoked without any deliberate effort.

That's when I know I went to the zone.

[JHC]

I don't know much about the science or art of this. But . . . A few years back I had two occasions to hit the range seething mad. Just under a full boil. Holy shit I wish I could bottle it. I'm seldom angry so the difference was stark. It definitely fit the template for shooting unconsciously. It was good.

[okie john]

I don't know much about the science or art of this. But . . . A few years back I had two occasions to hit the range seething mad. Just under a full boil. Holy shit I wish I could bottle it. I'm seldom angry so the difference was stark. It definitely fit the template for shooting unconsciously. It was good.

I shot like a machine rest the day my son left for college.


Okie John