[Obscuring the Present]

“Happiness radiates like the fragrance from a flower, and draws all good things toward you. Allow your love to nourish yourself as well as others. Do not strain after the needs of life. It is sufficient to be quietly alert and aware of them. In this way life proceeds more naturally and effortlessly. Life is here to Enjoy!”

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

[Reaction Time Test]

Average time .18, out of three times using a laptop! Fun game! I need to try it with a real mouse.

[The Set]

I was trying to write what I'd previously wrote on this to send in a PM, and couldn't find it anywhere (even on my computer). So here it is again here (newly written version)...

With an empty gun, without drawing, assume your index position. Take a moment and move your attention slowly up from your waist, through your chest, then up into your head, out through your arms and into your grip. Notice and remember the calm feeling you have in your mind and face, and your perfect grip and arm tension. Remember your mind, face, arm, and grip tension as one calm feeling. Call the totality of the feeling "The Set."

(Assigning a name to a group of remembered feelings makes it easier to summon the The Set on demand.)

Now without a start beep, summon the feeling of The Set, and draw to your index position, keeping all of your attention on the feeling on the feeling of The Set throughout the draw.

Repeat drawing to The Set over and over, until are completely certain of its total feeling, and complete confident in your ability to draw to The Set. Make that a part of your daily practice.

Then take The Set to the practice range. Allow yourself not to work on any other skills until you know you are always shooting within The Set.

At "Shooter Ready," exhale slightly, at "Stand By," summon the feeling of The Set ... and this is the key ... along with the command to preserve the feeling of The Set right through the buzzer and the draw - until the first shot fires.

The further hone your ability to summon The Set by repeating the above at the beginning of each stage in every match.

If a stage has movement, train to summon The Set as you move into each new position.

Once my skill set was complete, The Set was all I cared about.

be

This has been TREMENDOUSLY helpful Brian, Thank You

[surefire shot timer sensitivity]

I've never had it successfully pick up dry fire clicks. However, you can make use of the app in dry fire by setting a par time and using that to "sort of" time your draw/shots.

I downloaded to Surefire app a while ago but never used it until a couple weeks ago when the battery in the other timer went dead. The only issue was the somewhat anemic buzzer. I need to get and arm band or belt click for the iphone to make the timer app more usable.

Thanks, Good idea I will try it out! Matt

[surefire shot timer sensitivity]

I don't think it'll work with dry firing. It was designed to be used as a normal shot timer, so it'll only pick up gun shots.

That's what I thought , but I just thought I would ask around to see if it was a case of operator error Thanks!

[surefire shot timer sensitivity]

I just downloaded the surefire app for my iphone and it doesn't seem to pick up the click in dry fire, any ideas ? I am not familiar with these high tech type things. Thanks in advance!

[Grip Strength and Training]

As a sports medical physician I want to weigh in and point out some things.

For those that shoot limited and or use the classic, thumbs forward technique in open, there is no doubt that strength training of the hand (and fore arm) muscles help with shooting performance. And I think all of the devices and methods mentioned in this thread work to a helpful degree.

HOWEVER, the use of the methods described, strengthen “grip” or opposable muscles of the hand. In the classic method of shooting, this natural opposable grip is NOT used and the thumb is not used. So yes, they do strengthen the hand but NOT in the manner most folks grip the gun. There is some spill over to other forearm muscles that are used in classic method which, is what helps manage recoil and are trained when using opposable grip trainers.

In Brian’s language of awareness of the “set” of feelings with grip, the “set” is considerably different with the trainers than with actual “set” management of recoil. So there is some muscle memory retraining , or different memories from grip training to shooting.

For those that shoot Open, the “set” of feeling with grip trainers is almost identical to those used in the *thumb rest [generic]* ® method. So grip trainers have more muscle memory specificity as applied to the *thumb rest [generic]* ® method.

But here is the real advantage of the *thumb rest [generic]* ® method. NO increase of normal everyday strength is required to get superior recoil management using the *thumb rest [generic]* ® method. Mechanical advantage is so much higher than even small folks with weak hands can effectively manage recoil and flip.

Hello, I am not familiar with the *thumb rest [generic]* method . Could you elaborate? Thanks for all the great info here in this thread, M

[Hello from Iowa]

Welcome, this is a great forum to learn and to share information.

I'm from North central Iowa but shoot all winter at the Rio Salado

in Mesa, so i'm lucky to get to do that.

Larry

I have been reading lots of great stuff off and on all day I'm glad I joined Nice to meet you Larry! Where do you shoot in Iowa in the summer? Matt

[Hello from Iowa]

Been shooting for a while and just found this site! Impressive , How's everybody doing?