Do master competitors point-shoot?

[Whoops!]

So, you can make an accurate shot at the same point as the first one when the gun is still flipping? To me, the only time the sight matters is when it's on target.

You're right seevers. A whole bunch of inputs. And, when they're posting a split time of .15 seconds or faster, one of the inputs used prior to the shot breaking is not vision.

Edited December 19, 2013 by Whoops!

[TrukSnave]

The brain predicts the sight. I think you are missing that part Whoops. By the time the visual image is processed it is out of date information...The lag you are talking about. What you haven't mentioned is that the brain counteracts the lag with prediction. The brain makes up for the processing lag by predicting the future. If there is a fastball moving 100mph they brain predicts where is will be...not where it is.

You can train your brain to see faster, you can train you eyes to move faster, you can teach your body to move faster. It just takes practice. When I started shooting USPSA 5 months ago...I could see shit! Anything faster than .28 spilts were nothing but a blur. I can now shoot .15 splits and see the dot as the shot breaks. Train you brain man.

You seem to be running an Intel Pentium...we are operating on Intel Core i7. I think its time you update your processor!

Edited December 19, 2013 by TrukSnave

[BSeevers]

Actually, he doesn't see it until after he breaks the shot, on the second shot in the split, that is. I don't understand why this is such a hard concept to grasp.

Because it's simply wrong. Period. You are trying to tell a bunch shooters, who happen to be at the upper end of the spectrum, that have skills you don't have, how they are wrong. This is funny. You are what? Are you even a competitor? Maybe an enthusiast? You are talking to some shooters that have, quite literally, written on the subject.

And on another note: a woman named Tanya Streeter just shattered the free dive records of both men and women. New record is 525ft. I mention this because physiologically, we weren't even capable of 100 feet just a few short years ago. Wow!

@Whoops couldn't have put this any more simply. If you accept the claim that people can't perceive and react to a stimulus faster than about .15 seconds then faster splits are, by deduction, being shot before the second sight picture is perceived.

This has led to plenty of interesting and useful points of discussion: E.g., what stimulus or perception are top practitioners referencing to decide to break the second shot if not the sight picture? There have been plenty of good answers. My takeaway is that they can perceive something wrong with the first shot, make the decision to shoot again, and depend on muscle memory to do so accurately. They do perceive the second sight picture, so they can call their second shot, but only after they have sent the command to break the second shot. So we're not disputing what you achieve -- accurate splits below the reaction threshold, and calling each shot -- nor are we disputing that you perceived a second sight picture. We're merely clarifying that it's physiologically impossible for the perception of the latter to have preceded the former, which fact has illuminated this deeper discussion.

Now, if you reject that physiological constraint, and if you could find a way to demonstrate that it can be meaningfully exceeded, then there are many academics who would love to hear from you. That would be a guaranteed publication.

(As for this free dive analogy: was there at some point a scientific consensus that humans were physiologically incapable of exceeding a certain depth? If so what was the basis and constraint specifically cited? The reaction stimulus is based on nerve impulse speed, which is based on well understood chemistry and physics. A claim that some humans have faster nerve chemistry would be as groundbreaking as a discovery that some humans can see infrared radiation or smell carbon monoxide. It would require fundamentally different physiology than exists in any known human being.)

I never try to be an expert in some things but but in fast shooting, I am

Mama's wrong again.

The answer has been given by many of the "real' fast shooters early in the thread but I'll try again.

Your application of Reaction Time is incorrect. It assumes a fixed event. We See the Entire Time, at a higher level that must be trained in. Since you all like science I hope I don't have to explain how fast light travels. If you bring up the time it takes light to convert on the back of the eye and travel to the brain cells then give a response etc.........See Above

We See the Entire Time

I didn't shoot those 100,000's and 100,000's of rounds to keep Federal in bizness

If you don't accept that it takes time for the brain to process what we're seeing the entire time, you need to go back to school.

I'll try one more time.

That process time is there gee no kidding. You assume, incorrectly, that people that shoot fast respond to one input to shoot fast. Your famous .15.

It is a constant process and a whole bunch of inputs.

Do you know that people drive 200 mph, hit 101 mph fastballs, dodge a fist coming at their face, fly in combat, etc. Do you really think they go through a input, respond in .15 sec, get result?

Edited December 19, 2013 by BSeevers

[TrukSnave]

also if you don't suck...the gun wont be flipping at .15 Captains of Crush...buy them and use them!

[Whoops!]

The brain predicts the sight. I think you are missing that part Whoops. By the time the visual image is processed it is out of date information...The lag you are talking about. What you haven't mentioned is that the brain counteracts the lag with prediction. The brain makes up for the processing lag by predicting the future. If there is a fastball moving 100mph they brain predicts where is will be...not where it is.

You can train your brain to see faster, you can train you eyes to move faster, you can teach your body to move faster. It just takes practice. When I started shooting USPSA 5 months ago...I could see shit! Anything faster than .28 spilts were nothing but a blur. I can now shoot .15 splits and see the dot as the shot breaks. Train you brain man.

You seem to be running an Intel Pentium...we are operating on Intel Core i7. I think its time you update your processor!

This, again, explains the concept. Your brain is predicting where the sight will be based on timing.

Not from where the sight actually is.

Also like I said, the gun won't be in the process of flipping if the next shot is on target.

This is an excellent example of, things are not always what they seem.

Edited December 19, 2013 by Whoops!

[TrukSnave]

[comment remove] Please follow the forum guidelines when posting. - Admin

Edited December 19, 2013 by Flexmoney

[Whoops!]

[comment remove] Please follow the forum guidelines when posting. - Admin

Edited December 19, 2013 by Flexmoney

[BSeevers]

So, you can make an accurate shot at the same point as the first one when the gun is still flipping? To me, the only time the sight matters is when it's on target.

You're right seevers. A whole bunch of inputs. And, when they're posting a split time of .15 seconds or faster, one of the inputs used prior to the shot breaking is not vision.

I think if you practiced shooting as fast as you reply you might become a fast shooter

Did you read what you wrote? You are making my point. Its not a static "one time" action. The gun movement .002 before sight returns, torque, recoil, My vision inputs, etc all combine BEFORE the .15 to allow me to shoot fast. And back to the orig argument Call the Shot

[TrukSnave]

Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment by processing information that is contained in visible light. The resulting perception is also known aseyesight, sight, or vision (adjectival form: visual, optical, or ocular). The various physiological components involved in vision are referred to collectively as the visual system, and are the focus of much research in psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and molecular biology.

Visual perception IS SIGHT! What we see is perception. Your brain must not do this....that is why you are slower than the rest. I really think you need to study this subject. You clearly don't understand how the system works. You think the brain and eyes work in real time??? They never have, that is just your imagination

Edited December 19, 2013 by TrukSnave

[Flexmoney]

To me, the only time the sight matters is when it's on target.

There you go. That is just what I said. That is where we have a disconnect.

It's not that you are wrong in your thinking. It's the application. You are stopping and starting your clock.

[TrukSnave]

[comment remove] Please follow the forum guidelines when posting. - Admin

Edited December 19, 2013 by Flexmoney

[Whoops!]

[comment remove] Please follow the forum guidelines when posting. - Admin

Edited December 19, 2013 by Flexmoney

[TrukSnave]

[comment remove] Please follow the forum guidelines when posting. - Admin

[Flexmoney]

OK...looks like a few comments got personal. That is not what we are about here. I am going to close the thread for now.

The multiple sides of this are good discussion.

If we can get back to that, I'll reopen the thread.

- Admin.

[Chills1994]

Since that other thread got nuked, I'm just throwing this out there.

The point of this thread is NOT to scoff at people's super fast split times and say "There's no way you are seeing the sights rise and fall back down that quickly."

So, let's not even go there, 'kay?

You can read up on gestaltism here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestaltism

This is it in a nutshell:

The principle maintains that the human eye sees objects in their entirety before perceiving their individual parts, suggesting....

My theory is that through practice or repetition the brain/mind becomes accustomed to seeing things a certain way. The brain/mind fills in the gaps automatically.

I'm sure we have all experienced the "double take". We see something, it takes a few seconds for our minds to conciously register "hey, what was that? Something's different!". And then you take a second more focused look at it.

So just for those folks who think they are seeing everything, I posit that you're only seeing every third frame. Your mind fills in frames 2 and 3, 5 and 6, 8 and 9 and so on.

Only when something trips up your "expectancy loop" do you take a closer look.

[Flexmoney]

Yeah, we were getting there in the other thread, before it got all uptight.

As we don't carry over conversation into new thread...from threads that are closed...I'm going to close this.

I'll add it back into the other thread when we reopen it.

Until then...lets leave the topic to cool off, so we don't have more clean up work to do.

- Admin.

[Flexmoney]

Re-opened. Topics merged. - Admin.

[Sarge]

Glad you opened it back up Flex. Very interesting reading for the most part, except for the bickering.

[CB45]

I've resisted posting in this thread. I'm not an expert on the human body, but I know that humans are capable of some pretty amazing things.

9 months ago I thought I'd never be able to shoot and see splits faster than 0.25s. Now that pace is kinda slow.

Point shoot, instinctively shoot, subconsciously shooting, index shooting.... whatever it is, I want to be better at it.

Train for speed and you'll learn what your body is capable of.

Edited December 20, 2013 by CB45

[Nimitz]

You all know the earth is flat, right? I've been a licensed Coast Guard captain for going on 17 yrs now and have fished tournaments all over the world. No matter what ocean I fish in or how far offshore I venture I see the same thing - a flat horizon, therefore I know the earth is flat. Now there was a time a few years back when I was also a NASA Space Shuttle astronaut instructor. All my astronaut buddies tell me I'm wrong and the earth is really round ... Of course they can't prove it to me because i currently can't do what they do and ride in the Shuttle but they assure me it's round and even have some pictures ... Well, that don't mean much to me because I don't see no round horizon when I'm trekking the vast oceans of the world so how could they be right? Just saying .............

[toothguy]

Your perceptions change as your technique improves. With a firm neutral grip, improved trigger pull and not blinking, you see things that were always there but hidden somehow. Better shooters see more because their technique allows them to.

[Chills1994]

Here is the video I mentioned earlier, that's out of Canada:

The system is called "Quiet Eye", so in the future if you want to find it on YouTube again.

Here is the actual study/experiment profuced in a scholarly journal type format:

http://www.forcescience.org/phone/performingunderpressure.html

EDIT: in the video, really pay attention to what Joan Vickers ( the lady in red ) has to say. If you google " Joan Vickers quiet eye" you will also get some intetesting results.

Joan mentioned a "sacade" type movement of the eyes. When your eyes just move about looking around the room, they kind of go like this:

.......|.....|......|......|.......|......|

That move, stop, move again, stop, move some more, stop motion is called "saccadic eye movements".

However, let's say you are at the doctor's office getting a physical and the doc holds out his index finger and says "Stay focused on the tip of my finger.". Then he moves left to right, up/down, or in circles, the movement of your eyes smooths out, is continuous with no more stops, or no more "sacades".

Just an FYI...

Edited December 21, 2013 by Chills1994

[Chills1994]

Your perceptions change as your technique improves. With a firm neutral grip, improved trigger pull and not blinking, you see things that were always there but hidden somehow. Better shooters see more because their technique allows them to.

Maybe it was mentioned here already in this thread, sorry, but along those same lines homerun hitters or guys with a high batting average in major league baseball report seeing the baseball as larger.

[Nik Habicht]

... you were posting .12 to .11 second splits. I'm going to say it's physically impossible for you to really see and use your sights effectively for the second shot at that speed.

By not studying science, you are limiting your own development. Good luck.

I might suggest checking your premise. It seems you hold a belief, lets call that a hypothesis, that contradicts observed empirical evidence from others. For your hypothesis to be true, the actual observations of others needs to be faulty. They would have to be wrong in their reporting of actual observed experience. Possible. But, is it likely?

Lets examine your hypothesis. One basis, it seems, would be your earlier posting about reaction time:

Here's one glaring human factor that many ignore in this sport. The best human reaction time is around .15 seconds. The top competitors are not above this human factor.

I agree, but you are applying the [probable] facts incorrectly, IMO. And, it is a common way of looking at things. I think we tend to look at things...especially if we are analytical in nature...as a linear progression. We probably do this even more when we are trying to learn/understand something. In other words, we want to organize the information...in chunks that we understand and relate to. We want....A...then B....then C...etc.

We look to understand things as a series of events. We tend to want to "see" things as a snapshot in time. Then, we'd do something based off that information. And, that is wrong.

The reason that is wrong is because it is too slow. We would be resetting our decision making after each "snapshot" that we deemed significant. (see OODA loop)

You actually speak to your current mindset on that when you say:

Very few top competitors are posting .15 second splits and calling their second shot in time for it to be worth going back and picking up. By the time their brain has processed the shot well enough to know where it hit, they are .15 to .3 seconds past the shot. This means they are well into their next target.

You see, that assumes very linear thinking. That assumes things happening in series.

To transition back to the other target would take another fraction of a second. Then they must rethink the process they had planned for the rest of the stage.

...and again.

And then this speaks to a very set and rigid structure:

A process they had ingrained into their head...

However, the reality is that things are multi-dimensional...lots of things are going on at once. The skill set needed is to be able to observe constantly, not just in series and resets. The honing of that skill set it to make responses to those constant observations into automatic actions. (for the OODA loop thinkers, you would take out the middle O and D...leaving just Observe and Action...with the action being automatic.)

How does this factor in?

I covered some of this in another thread a few years back. I had noticed, on a few occasions, that I had fired (needed and observed) makeup shots on steel with 0.17 splits. That short amount of time negates any after-the-shot reaction..because my reaction time just isn't fast enough to do that. And, I had not pre-planned to fire 2 shots on the steel for any reason. So, how do I account for being able to fire a needed makeup shot at a pace much faster than my reaction time?

I was able to do so because I was constantly observing and was able to pick up cues as the shot was being formulated/made. I was observing constantly, and did not have to wait until after the shot to know it was off. (maybe I saw my sights dip because of poor trigger pressure, maybe I saw the gun was moving long or short of the steel and/or not stopping on target)

Perhaps some of you are misunderstanding what I'm saying. In .15 second or faster splits, you are not seeing the sights before you break the follow-up shot. In reading what was said here, by Cha and Flex, I believe that is clearly evident. Thus, you are not seeing the sights for every shot, you are seeing the sight after you have already broken the shot. You can call the shot after it has broken, but you did not see the sight prior to it being broken. This is human factors. It's a linear school of thought because it has already been studied and verified by scientific method. This is a critical aspect of understanding for laying down very fast, but effective splits. It's also the reason so many make up shots at that speed end up with a third shot, instead of a corrected second shot.

It is extremely safe and scientifically verified to say that if you corrected for your second shot before making it, you were already on the pathway to a .16 or greater second split. That make-up time probably ended up in a .25 second or greater split for that shot.

So let me see if I can state it more plainly, when you are breaking the second shot at that speed, it is physically impossible for you to have already seen your sights. As a result, you are making that second shot based upon input from your first shot. You are making that shot based only upon input from that first shot. When your brain finally catches up and realizes what it just did, you may indeed make a third shot based only upon input from that second shot. Luckily, thanks to ingrained muscle memory and skill already acquired, that third shot will likely hit the mark. You'll know it after it happens. After you've broken the shot and when your brain has finally had the time to call the shot

I'm going to call BS on that argument. I once had a very bad Nationals (in terms of performance) and a very good one at the same time -- because I learned how to call the shot for the first time.

I'd blown 2-3 stages every day of the match, and on the last day I decided I needed to fix that. My plan was to shoot 100% alphas on the first stage, and let the time be what it was. Third target of the first array on that stage I fired three rounds at. The first one was a center of the A-zone hit, the second round came 0.17 seconds later and I realized as I was pulling the trigger, that the front sight was far to the left of the notch, so I fired a make-up round with the sights centered. That split also turned out to be a 0.17. If I hadn't seen the sights both in the moment before primer ignition and sight lift, I'd have never hit the target again with the same split.....

That was my first experience with calling the shot, and the RO was kind enough to run the timer back for me, to give me the splits....

[toothguy]

CHA-LEE has a lot of good videos on youtube that show the speed of his shooting is totally regulated by his vision. If you watch his gun it looks like he is shooting a .22 due to his technique.