Conventional Pistol News > Coach's Corner - Advanced Bullseye Tips (1st Quarter 2007)

 

Bullseye Pistol Shooting Tips for the Advanced Shooter

By Mike Snyder

 

Shot Plan

To improve we must have a shot plan when we walk up to the line to shoot. This should include, but is no way limited to, organizing our equipment, obtaining a stance, and grip. All these things must be CONSISTENT. After these items, our fundamentals of marksmanship for firing the shot should be included.

When you go to a match and step up to the line, what are you thinking about? A shot plan helps you focus on your shot or shot string in sustained fire. Approach the match as each shot and shot string. Break it down. A shot plan helps you to do this. It also calms the match nerves. A shot plan should be written. It is your little routine that you use to fire a shot or shot string. It usually starts out very detailed and becomes simpler over time as you make many of the items habit. You should not be talking and kidding during the prep period, but instead focused on your shot plan. The shot plan might begin with opening your gun box and end with you giving yourself a key word(s) as you are applying trigger pressure, like “focus”, “trigger”, or “see the dot”…you get the idea. Each step in preparing for shooting the next ten is itemized in the written shot plan.

Picking Off Shots

If you are getting some very good shots and some very wild shots, it may be the result of trying to "pick off" shots. Picking off a shot means that you are trying to keep that dot in the exact center of the x ring. Your subconscious takes over and makes the gun go off. As a result you get a wide shot. To shoot very good targets you simply need to keep watching your dot or front sight, put pressure on the trigger and ALLOW the shot to break. This is not a game of perfection. We cannot hold the gun so that the sights are in the middle of the x. Allow the front sight or dot to settle as much as your normal ability to hold and keep pressure on your trigger. If you have been picking off shots, you will have to completely retrain your subconscious and create a new paradigm.

Once you start stringing a lot of tens together, and you will if you train, you must retrain your subconscious to accept that you shoot good scores. Sounds funny, doesn't it? Well you get into a comfort zone shooting certain scores. To break through that comfort zone, you must reset your paradigm so that you are comfortable shooting strings of tens. Lanny Basham says, "That is just like me, to shoot tens."

Sustained Fire

Now for applying your new "less than perfect" techniques of sight picture and trigger control to sustained fire, all I can say is that you must shoot your first shot within about a second of the targets turning. That is really a pretty long time. If you are shooting so soon that you get a skidder for the first shot, you may be rushing it, unless that first shot is a ten. You must start trigger pressure as the dot or front sight is settling on the target. YOU MUST NOT WAIT UNTIL THE DOT IS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE X BEFORE APPLYING TRIGGER PRESSURE. This will result in bad shots. Trigger control is always KING, sight alignment is queen. You will be amazed how bad that dot looks in sustained fire and you are still shooting x's if you are applying proper trigger control. Proper trigger control in sustained fire is not much different from your slow fire. The only difference is that you put more initial pressure on the trigger faster. You still must allow the shot to break. There is a lot of room for error in sustained fire and still shoot tens and x's.

Of course, all this is easier said than done. Now that you have some techniques, you must start over and retrain to improve. You must retrain your subconscious to accept the new techniques. The way to do this is to start shooting those tens, using these new techniques. Once you start shooting tens, you will convince yourself that this new way is the way to go.

I hope these tips help you to improve. I know that I must constantly direct my attention to them to get on and stay on track.