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Shoot or no shoot...


GMyers

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Act 1)  First match of the month comes around, I am feeling really good, I go, shoot well and my world is great.

Act 2)  Next weekend and the next match is here.  Part of my brain says shoot but another part tells me that I am just not up to par.  I go anyway and sure enough "another part" was right.

Should I have gone, knowing/feeling that I was not in the "A Zone"?  Is any shooting better that no shooting?

Is this an opportunity to examine my mental game from a different angle?  If so, what would that angle be?

Any tips for when your biorythms are neatly aligned at the south pole? :(  (URL's to pertinent threads elsewhere on this forum are great for answers too!)

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Do you have any goals in shooting?  Having specific goals will help you stay focus.  Winning is not a goal.  If you focus only on winning, well, you are going to lose.

Try analyzing what you did wrong at each match.  Everyone screws something up at every match,  no one has ever shot the perfect match.  Set that as a goal at the next match.  Try to accomplish that goal and not worry about anything else.

When all else fails, just concentrate on sight picture and trigger control.

There are times when you do need a mental break to prevent burnout.  But sometimes you just have to go and shoot even if you don't feel like it.  Try focusing on the task at hand and not worry about other things especially the results.

The only person you are competing with is yourself.

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while the above post has very good and very on target info in it, you need to pick someone to beat, or atleast i do, my problem is the higher on the ladder i climb the harder those goals are to achieve.

as for shooting when you feel bad, how many major matches do you think they reschedule because ONE guy feels off? you have to shoot through your "off" days, analyze why you felt bad, what you did wrong, and correct it. i even quit going to one club because i came to the conclusion it just had "bad karma" and feel a lot better sence. if its a consistant problem you can eliminate it, but you must isolate problems to correct them.

all i have to add is Trigger time is Happy time!

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Scooter,

My only goal right now is to make SS in CDP.  If not for some probable mental errors I should have made it my first attempt last month.

Winning is really secondary at best because I don't think I will ever be able to beat myself... no matter how well I might do, I will immediately raise the bar before I can declare victory.

As for this past weekend I think I can best attribute my "lack of mental game" to the fact that I was competing for the first time, at a very well established club that does things a little differently than the new club that I have previously shot (or at least that is what I was told).  I over psyc'd myself as usual, but that too is improving.

SMoney,

I get your point.  Being able to shoot well when your not on top of your game surely is a sign of advanced shooting skill.  I will keep that in my mind.

Right now I kinda have a silent competition with one of the guys at the office.  I have beat him 2 out of 3 matches but we don't openly go head to head as he shoots SSP and I CDP.  It is kind of fun though, as he has probably shot somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 rounds of big bore pistol in his life and I have shot less than 2500.

As for analysing what went wrong I really blew the Standards Stage.  I think I was trying to go to fast.  Although I was not particularly fast on the other stages I did not have too many points down which is my primary focus right now.

Thanks to both for your input!

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GMyers, there is a bit of a trick to beating the standards, its called timing, i was the same way, if you have access or can afford to get a timer set par times on it like the standards, you will learn how long it takes you to do things like draw shoot 3 targets twice each. distance adds time. the KEY is not to hurry!

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I think Smoney is talking about using a timer to get to know your shooting.  Not to set a rhythm.

Rhythm is bad...very bad.  Might as well close your eyes.

Use the timer as a training tool, but only shoot as fast as you can see.

This is a major point that is covered in Brian's book.

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Flex is right.

my opinion, every shot at 25 yards requires a seperate sight picture and fine trigger pull, this is LESS time if your shooting a red dot, or been doing this for 20 years. which i have done neither.

a split implies your shooting 2 shots quickly 2 seperate shots don't have splits, at a 20 yard 8" circle pretty good aplit times, maybe .5 seconds , just a guess because i don't time my self that often at 25 yards. i have only shot 2 matches in my life with targets beyond 25 yards, one was a GSSF match, all the others were within 20 yards i know i have limited experience but not much shooting is done long range around here in pistol matches.

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Thanks Flex, I will go back and review that chapter in detail (I am guessing Shooting Groups).  I will immediately dump the rhythm thing also!

SMoney .5 sec at 25 yards sound pretty quick to me!  I think I had better practice a LOT more.

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There is a lot to learn by shooting even when you're not at your best. Remember, when you go to that big important match they won't ask you if you feel like shooting, you just have to do it when they call your name whether you're feeling right or not. On demand is what IDPA and USPSA is all about. It doesn't matter what your capable of when everythings perfect, what matters is what you can do when it's your turn.  Shoot all you can, keep your attitude right, and you'll learn a lot about yourself.

JJ

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  • 3 weeks later...

I had a drum teacher once who said you were only as good as you were on your WORST day-that's what you could count on, what was 'in your pocket.'

Most people try to raise the 'top', or peak, of their shooting. It is also beneficial to compare how you do at your worst, to see if this minimum level of performance raises along with the top.

In a real gunfight (or at a state championship) you may be having a bad day. That's when it's good to know what you absolutely, positively know you can do.

Just my HO, of course.

Larry

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I went through something similar a while back. I was shooting every week. I shot when I didn't feel good and I shot when I felt great. I agree with DT you have  to be able to do it when you feel off. My scores eventually evened out and I could not make any progress. About two months before the state IDPA match I quit shooting, i didn't even pick up the gun. The week before the match I started running a few drills and I was actually faster and more accurate. The main thing was that I wanted to shoot.

Now I shoot two matches a month and practice twice a week. i am concentrating on a master in SSP and A card in prod in the other sport. If you don't raise the goals you will never advance.

Mike4045

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  • 1 month later...

Rhythm is not necessarily a bad thing when shooting at distance. You watch the shooters who have to fire two shots each on multiple targets at long distance, and you'll see two different schools: School #1 double taps even at distance. It sounds like b-bang, b-bang, b-bang. School #2 slows down their split times so they're almost identical to their transition times, and they wind up with a very smooth sounding cadence, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. And when you go downrange, what you find is that the double tap guys have missed the target most of the time, and the cadence guys have most of their shots in the A-zone and absolutely kick ass on the stage. I'm a School #2 guy, and I LOVE it when stages like that come around.

I remember watching tape of the USPSA Nationals that had a stage like that. Everyone just smoked through it, brass flying like a snowstorm. And, after you factored in all the misses, some of the best shooters in the world were turning in about a 5 hit factor. Then Todd Jarrett came up to do it. Even cadence, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. And he LOOKED so much slower than everyone else, you figured, "This guy just got smoked." 10 hit factor. Figure it out.

(Edited by Duane Thomas at 5:55 pm on April 5, 2002)

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