deconstructing Slowing Down

[bayoupirate]

Thanks for the anologies Hank,

Smooth is Fast means, that if you trying to go so fast that your movements, transitions and most especially your gun is not moving smoothly. Your time will be slow or not really matter because you'll have to pick up shots, and take deductions for mikes and No Shoots.

I shot a steel match today. Believe me. I'm an average shooter at best.

When the buzzers sounds and I'm in "The Zone", for lack of a better description, I have few if any mikes and time seems to be moving slower. The times I record are always actually faster. I know that this is a common phenomenon in other sports and high adrenaline events. When the sences are peaked and the mind is focused we perceive time differently.

Yes, I am a tension/adrenaline junkie. I hate the thought of slowing down.

I want all of my other skills to be as fast as my ability to move (I'm still pretty quick on my feet) and pull the trigger, but runnin wide open hasn't improved my skills.

Running at 90 - 95% and further devoloping my skills allows the bar for time higher. I agree if you never push beyond your abilities how can you ever know what they are. In practice, I always push beyond the pace beyone my capability, but as I continue to develop as a shooter, that bar gets higher and higher.

My practice partner/coach usually let's me run whatever drill we're doing the first time Wide Open, just to get it out of my system. Then I actually try to shoot is for quality and learn from that.

Ray J. Pierce

TY-49182

[EricW]

True, a faster swing speed will help you hit the ball farther, but swinging harder is not the way to achieve it.

Is anyone making the connection?????

You betcha. I learned that one the hard way in Little League. I could not hit a ball for anything because I thought the way to hit a ball was to swing with all my might (or all the might a 7 year old can muster). I couldn't hit squat. My coach, bless his heart, would not let me quit. I was going to stand in the batter's box 'til sunup if that's what it took to learn to hit. After dozens upon dozens of misses, someone finally yelled: "Stop trying to kill the ball!!"

Wham! I was the team homerun machine after that.

Lesson learned. I never golf much, but have generally managed to be fairly decent because of the "don't kill the ball" principle.

[wide45]

Telling myself to "slow down" never helps. Telling myself "don't rush" works much better.

[zhunter]

Telling myself to "slow down" never helps. Telling myself "don't rush" works much better.

NEVER us a negative word, ( i.e. "don't ), they are very poor in a competitive atmosphere! Better to say, "Keep it smooth" or something alone those lines!

Never use negative self talk!!!!!!!

[BSeevers]

"Never use negative Self Talk"

You said Never.

Joking around. I agree and see many prophets predict their failures long before they load and make ready.

[wide45]

"keep it smooth" means nothing. Smooth describes the product, not the process.

[Jake Di Vita]

Interesting way of putting it.

What do you think describes the process to attain smoothness?

[wide45]

What do you think describes the process to attain smoothness?

I can't put it in a nutshell.

What means the same as "don't rush"?

I've used "take the time it takes", but it is too close to "take your time".

[wide45]

What do you think describes the process to attain smoothness?

The smoothness we are discussing is intangible. It cannot be attained like altitude, or senoriety. It is more like beauty, we know when it is there, but it can be difficult to get a hold of.

[spook]

In these realms, I think we tend to find how limited words are

How about: see in your head what you want to do, and then just do it

[zhunter]

In these realms, I think we tend to find how limited words are

How about: see in your head what you want to do, and then just do it

Spook, well Said!

Just make a point not to tell yourself what NOT to do! When walking into the box, tell yourself what you WANT to do!

[Jake Di Vita]

cmon zhunter, after all of your posts about negative vs. positive I'm surprised this one slipped.

Want implies trying, tell yourself what you will do.

[spook]

In these realms, I think we tend to find how limited words are

How about: see in your head what you want to do, and then just do it

Spook, well Said!

Just make a point not to tell yourself what NOT to do! When walking into the box, tell yourself what you WANT to do!

Always zhunter. Always

[Hank Ellis]

The original post asked us to deconstruct the term 'slow down'. Many interesting facets of the gem. Different ways to view the same object.

We're drifting into another aspect of the mental game. Visualization. Again using the skydiving analogy, it's very useful. When you take a first jump student up, they have no idea of what the experience would be like. They also have no way to practice a jump until they make a jump. A bit like trying to describe sex to a virgin. You can teach the mechanics, but not the experience. To help 'program' the brain to do the required tasks, visualization is the tool. What it does is load into memory what the flow of the task will be. Properly done, the load on the mind is lessened as the mind no longer has to process what the next subtask will be. It becomes automatic. Top skydiving teams are often called freefall robots as the flow of the dive is automatic to them. The mind is very aware and has the ability to make the constant adjustments necessary.

Now the shooter walks up to a stage, say El-Prez. He can't practice it just before he shoots for score. All he has is the walkthrough sheet. Much as the skydiving team who draws a dive in competition. Here's the dive/stage. Go do it. You go through the engineering. What would be the most economics of motion way to complete the dive/stage? I've seen many times where this is all the preparation that is done for a stage. Turn, T3, T2, T1, reload, T1, T2, T3. All that has been done is engineer the stage, not fully prepare for it. Once engineering is complete, visualize exactly what you are going to do. On the El-Prez, visualize the turn in exact detail, the exact moment when the gun clears the holster, when the safety comes off, target, sights, trigger, sight lift, return to target, the next target, etc. Do it several times. Do it exactly the way you are going to do it when the buzzer goes off. The minute or three while you're on deck, although short by skydiving standards, is enough to get a solid foundation for the mind to work with.

FWIW: I've begun passing BEnos' book around the DZ. It's finally put into words the concepts we've been teaching for the last 15 years.

[Wap wap]

The many bike riding analogies are good, (you can visulize riding a bike all you want, but you haven't done it till you did it). In the old days (before optical sights and I know your gonna love this return to yor) slowing down simply meant shooting slower so that all your hits were on an 8" paper plate. Then enos came along with this Zen stuff. Being a practioner of Iado the entire procedure of preparation is geared toward the Seita-gata. Strike without mind. Game shooting is the same. Many mind things, few actual physical (although probably more than bowling). But the point I wanted to make is- physical conditioning involves the movement of memory patterns to the lower and mid spinal column were the action takes place from the neuromuscular junctions to the appendages through the dorsal horn cells and not up to the brain for analysis and then back down to the dorsal column for reprocessing and execution through the appendages. The visual center is used only as input to this center, like wise the control on the left and right brain hemispheres must be seperated. If you don't you will always want to close your left eye or use your right hand for aiming (or both) as an example. A seperation could occur as an example by using your left thumb as a gross aiming device and your right hand as fire control. However your choose to make the new mental concepts, they must be forgotten, A begginer shoots because he doesn't know, an intermediate knows and shoots anyway, a master has forgotten. Slow down to allow those subconsious processes to come up through the spinal cord and dominate the shooting event or process. If something didn't go right, remember,practice, forget. Some of the really slow shooting sports are even worse at keeping a clear or blank mind-NRA bullseye, Trap, skeet, they are so slow one could shoot a complete IPSC stage and be back in time for their turn-give them a try with this concept in mind and your race shooting will improve.

[benos]

Telling myself to "slow down" never helps.  Telling myself "don't rush" works much better.

NEVER us a negative word, ( i.e. "don't ), they are very poor in a competitive atmosphere! Better to say, "Keep it smooth" or something alone those lines!

Never use negative self talk!!!!!!!

I've never spoken to a "sports psychologist" (or read anything written by one) that contradicts this common debate. The argument is that your subconscious mind doesn't hear or process the negative part (don't) of the direction. So always program something positive, "they" say.

I'm not sure if I believe any of that, however, because "don't rush" has always produced excellent results for me. Now I'm not saying if it's true (that your subconscious doesn't hear the negative reinforcement) or not. But thinking about if for a minute... What if it isn't true? "Don't rush!" (especiallly if it's the last words my brain hears before the buzzer goes off) definitely has a positive meaning to me and a direct, noticeable affect on my behavior.

As said, something like "be smooth" has no affect whatsoever because it doesn't provide any sort of direction. It's a description of the result, not a guide on how to get there.

The positive counter to "don't rush" is "take your time." Which my brain interprets literally as "Take the time to see what you need to see and do what you need to do in order to confidently do what you know must be done." Which is what I trained my self to "hear" when I said "don't rush!"

It may takes some time and experimentation to see if any of this is true for you.

To shoot a given string of fire, if you listed everything you must do properly in order to get the job done, the list might be quite extensive. For example - See a stopped sight picture on the first shot... Be sure to see the sights lift off the last target (before leaving the box)... Confirm sight alignment before shooting the first shot in the next box... Reload - see the magwell!... Wait till the swinger bottoms out before shooting at it... You can probably see where I'm going with this. Your mind just can't keep track of all that crap during a high speed string of fire, especially under pressure. So, I summarize the essential feeling behind all of that by saying "don't rush!"

I may "reset" that feeling, however, with an exhalation as I enter each new shooting position.

The tendency to always hurry was my greatest obstacle and one I never truly overcame.

be

[AikiDale]

The tendency to always hurry was my greatest obstacle and one I never truly overcame.

Me too!

So, I summarize the essential feeling behind all of that by saying "don't rush!"

I may "reset" that feeling, however, with an exhalation as I enter each new shooting position. 

The idea of anchoring the mental command 'don't' rush' to an exhalation is brilliant. I am going to work on that one. Breathing is fundamental! It makes a whole lot of sense to summarize a string of self commands in one or two words then anchor that command to the breath.

[RKooi]

Thanks to all who contributed to this thread so far, but especially Brian. The two longer posts above have profoundly affected me and my shooting. I employed them over the weekend and had one of the better matches I have shot in over a year. Who would have thought that something as simple as 'don't rush' could do such a thing. I even had to adopt a new sig.

[JerryDGeek]

Let's deconstruct this misnomer... What do you really mean when you say "slow down?" What changes do you make to your shooting technique when you are "slowing down?" When do you do this?

There are a few completely 'hoser' stages when you can justify the "just see brown cardboard in the sight, double-tap it, and move on" technique. That's when you want to save time at the expense of getting good solid hits. The trick is to know when this is the shooting problem you need to solve, and it's surprisingly less common than *_I_* seem to think. That's probablly why I seem to be stuck in B-class for all eternity.

"Shoot for the fat of the brown-stuff, let the RO sort 'em out" just doesn't work for me. I know this now, in the middle of the night; but in the middle of the average Saturday, I want to smack 'em and whack 'em and keep on trackin'. Because it just feels so darned GOOD to hose the targets ... until the RO comes around with his little scoresheet and congradulates me for getting a D-hit that was ALMOST a clean miss.

Thank you very much, but it could just as easily have been a solid A-hit if I had just managed to SLOW DOWN a few hundredths of a second, and had bothered to acquire a decent sight-picture.

"Slow Down", to me, means that usually it doesn't cost enough time to get a decent hit to justify rushing the shot.

The other parts of the equation are that I all-to-often get the sight picture, then start indexing toward the NEXT target as I shoot the gun. Yup, I said it. "Shoot the gun" instead of something reasonable such as "let the shot break".

As a consequence, I end up with a C/D combination because I am waving the gun across the target as I frantically double-tap it, rather than getting a good A-hit sight target and waiting to index AFTER I have successfully completed engaging the current target.

SLOW DOWN, DAMMIT!

I can save tenths and halves of a second by saving time during movement, and as much as I am able to do, that's what I do. But still, all too often I find myself looking at a big, fat full target and sweeping across it while I shoot ... and I'm lucky to get a single hit. I don't do that on the difficult targets. My Lizard Brain (or something) recognizes that I have to get the hit, and I SLOW DOWN to make sure of the hit. Then I embarass myself by missing the easy shots.

There are no 'hard shots', and there are no 'easy shots'. There are only a series of A-hits to harvest, and when I forget that I reap the penalties for not emphasizing "Shoot Fast A's!"

I can shoot fast, and I can shoot accurately. When I convince myself that I can shoot/miss so quickly that the miss doesn't matter, I've wasted the time to no profit

If I'm lucky, I can call the shot with sufficient confidence that I can make it up without losing TOO much time. Usually, this only costs me a little time ... and "a little time" is too much.

On my last Points match, I got throught 5-1/2 stages cleah, but halfway through the last stage (a 'hoser' stage) I caught a big fat No-Shoot target .. had to stop and back up to make up the shot. Cursed myself, because I forgot to SLOW DOWN and get the hit.

I don't win stages, but if I can manage to shoot consistently I sometimes can win (my division, in club) matches.

We all know what I'm doing wrong, don't we?

I don't SLOW DOWN when the situation calls for it. And the situation calls for it when I sacrifice accuracy for speed.

That's what I'm talking about.

[Sac Law Man]

Brian is right, psychologically, there is nothing wrong with telling yourself "dont rush"..afterall you are enforcing something positive...Rush meaing faster than your natural body speed. A negative thing would be to say, "dont shoot "c's", as opposed to "hey I am going to shoot all "A's"..