The dangers of Muscle Memory

[DocMedic]

Every Wednesday evening we setup a practice steel match, in it we will run 2 official SC stages and a plate rack with the last stage being random plates. Well today one of the stages we were going to run was Smoke & Hope, Only someone goofed up the dimension and all the plates were spread apart more then normal. Not usually a problem even thought it wasn't a official stage we still ended up running it as its just a practice match. I shoot S&H 1,2,3,4 stop, that way if I over swing 3 I could make it back after shooting 4 on the way to the stop plate.

Well I'm up, hit the first plate but as I'm transitioning from 1 to 2 to 3, I kept missing plate number 2 requiring me to make the shot up after I hit plate 4. After finishing I was puzzled why I just couldn't get on plate 2 to save my life then I started to think how I normally would shoot S&H. Even with a Open gun I never actually see my red dot (or the red glare in the glass) till the transition from plate 2 to 3, and by the time I've hit the 4th plate I pretty much figure where the dot is in relation to the glass and can line up for the stop plate. But with plates 1 & 2 I've always just point shot them, and I guess from the past 4 years I've been shooting SC, I've develop muscle memory of how plate 1 to plate 2 should feel like as i'm transition to the other side. But since the plates were spread apart more then normal, I kept breaking the shot too early which resulted in a miss.

Until I thought of it today, I always believed I was calling every shot in SC, but after todays little episode I wonder if I've just train my muscles in my body to auto index to certain points on most stages and just thinking I'm calling good hits.

[benos]

Until I thought of it today, I always believed I was calling every shot in SC, but after todays little episode I wonder if I've just train my muscles in my body to auto index to certain points on most stages and just thinking I'm calling good hits.

It sounds like that's what has happened. If you were really "point shooting" targets 1 and 2, you should remember seeing (definition of point shooting) the target, and then the gun/slide pointed at the target. If you don't remember seeing that, well then you were just blasting away.

be

[mike cyrwus]

Youve experienced the muscle of dangerous memories.

[Sam]

The eye never stops seeing. The mind ignores what it believes is not possible to see. If there is time to press the trigger, there is more than enough time to see the dot/sight and call the shot.

[Tuflehundon]

I had to untrain myself a little when I first started. In the marines, when in a stack entering a building, they want you to have your weapon aimed down so that you aren't aimed at the guy ahead of you. Big no no in competition. Luckily I caught myself doing it and stopped myself. RO said he was watching me and was about to DQ me. But he saw that I stopped, corrected myself, and then took a second to regroup. After the stage we had a nice long talk about what I needed to watch out for. RO was a great guy and took the extra time to address some of the differences in what they expect you to do, as opposed to the military training.

Ended up doing a ton of dry walk through's between then and my next time going.