Interesting training session today

[PaulW]

Went over to a good friends house today who is an accomplished master class shooter and really into the steel challenge shoots. He had pendulum setup. So we started with some one shot draws and then worked up to just shooting the first two pieces of steel. During a break to reload mags we were discussing how during practice we can do runs in a certain time but at matches the times are slower. We talked about how the day before at the steel match we both took way to many extra shots. That we need to have the discipline to hit the targets on the first shot because that will always be faster that having to shot at it a second time. So we said ok let's do the whole stage and let's just focus on not missing and shooting it clean. Riiiiiiiggghhhhhht. As soon as we did this we were both terrible. The goal was three clean runs in a row, heck we were having trouble doing one clean run. Time did not matter and we were struggling to shoot a clean run, wtf! So as we were loading mags again we were talking about why this was such a struggle for us. We thought it may be that we were trying NOT to miss, and that was where our fault was. The next set we just shot, letting the sights tell the story. Both of us started to shoot better and better and our times were solid, between 2.9x to 3.2x. So once we got out of our own way and freed our mind to just do what the sights told us to do it was a huge difference. Made perfect sense afterwards as at big matches every run is important and we TRY not to miss. Best practice session I have had in a long time.

[benos]

Thanks for reporting the excellent lesson Paul. I can still remember, more than 30 years ago, realizing what you described.

Regardless of the targets size or distance - just shoot the middle of every target.

be

[PaulW]

It was light a light switch wenr on. And we realized that no one shot should get more emphasis than another. Havevto respect and give your full attention to all of them.