I get stressed out when I shoot and it affects my marksmanship

[Jim Watson]

Quit the solitary vice, shoot in company, preferably in competition.

Do what is difficult, not what is easy. If you are happy with your draw and fire, there might not be a lot to gain from the run n gun sports IDPA and USPSA. It might be hard to find a bullseye club these days, but that is what you need.

[Clobbersaurus]

I’m a Steve Anderson fan and have fully bought into his idea that the conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time.

The OP wrote: [Quote:]I take my time and make sure of my grip and my stance and focus on my sight alignment and try to make shot on center I (for lack of a better word)[/Quote]

I notice you are trying to focus on everything at once when you shoot. Give yourself one thing to focus on, like sight alignment only, and forget about everything else.

This may seem like an oversimplification of the problem, but it may not be. Focus on one thing and forget the rest, if you have been training properly, your muscle memory will fill in the gaps.

[pangloss]

I’m a Steve Anderson fan and have fully bought into his idea that the conscious mind can only focus on one thing at a time.

The OP wrote: "I take my time and make sure of my grip and my stance and focus on my sight alignment and try to make shot on center I (for lack of a better word)."

I notice you are trying to focus on everything at once when you shoot. Give yourself one thing to focus on, like sight alignment only, and forget about everything else.

This may seem like an oversimplification of the problem, but it may not be. Focus on one thing and forget the rest, if you have been training properly, your muscle memory will fill in the gaps.

I haven't read Anderson's book, but a few months ago I was listening to one of the episodes of Ballistic Radio Podcast when they hosted Scott Jedlinski. Jedlinski said something to the effect that all your gun handling needs to be firmly established as habit so that you can focus all your attention on the sights. Breaking shooting down into the component parts in order to establish those various habits is something I struggle with, at least during live fire.

[Clobbersaurus]

I haven't read Anderson's book, but a few months ago I was listening to one of the episodes of Ballistic Radio Podcast when they hosted Scott Jedlinski. Jedlinski said something to the effect that all your gun handling needs to be firmly established as habit so that you can focus all your attention on the sights. Breaking shooting down into the component parts in order to establish those various habits is something I struggle with, at least during live fire.

Grip pressure, stance, trigger press, sight picture, draws - almost all of it - except maybe recoil control drills, can, and should be practiced in dry fire. It’s way easier to isolate these things in dry practice so you don’t have to try to think of all of it consciously in live fire. The same can be said for movement, transitions, etc, etc, etc.

Dry practice is the key to live fire skill. Well......at least for the 99% of us that don’t have an unlimited ammo budget.

[Drang]

Damn it, man, I was going to post that!

OP: I forget who it was attributed to, but either @Tom Givens or @LangdonTactical -- I trained with each of them in about a six month period, and when you add MAG40 with @Mas at the start, it was an epic year, but kind of a blur -- but someone (@Mr_White ?) uses the term "Sight Movie" instead of "Sight Picture", and if you're better at dealing with a "social interaction"-realistic sight movie than a "square range"-relevant "Take a deep breath release half an squeeze" sight picture, I, for one, would call it good, and try to figure out how to incorporate that into quals, etc.

IMHO, which is worth what you pay for it, assuming you're using a work computer (i.e., free) to read this...



EDIT: OK, why does "mentioning" Gabe not work?

[Duelist]

Damn it, man, I was going to post that!

OP: I forget who it was attributed to, but either @Tom Givens or @LangdonTactical -- I trained with each of them in about a six month period, and when you add MAG40 with @Mas at the start, it was an epic year, but kind of a blur -- but someone (@Mr_White ?) uses the term "Sight Movie" instead of "Sight Picture", and if you're better at dealing with a "social interaction"-realistic sight movie than a "square range"-relevant "Take a deep breath release half an squeeze" sight picture, I, for one, would call it good, and try to figure out how to incorporate that into quals, etc.

IMHO, which is worth what you pay for it, assuming you're using a work computer (i.e., free) to read this...



EDIT: OK, why does "mentioning" Gabe not work?

Gabe did say that exact thing - sight movie - today. It struck me as significant. I even wrote it down.

I also demonstrated falling apart under pressure on each test run today.

[Cypher]

My data rolls over tonight so I'm using up my last gig and a half for this month watching all these videos.

The first one by Ernest Langdon. Talking about efficient presentation when he showed what he called the escalator ride you could see the gun wobble as he was pulling the trigger I was watching that and thinking oh my God that's me. I've always been an advocate of practicing right instead of practicing fast and maybe I need to do what he's doing in that video