Tension Building Up

[ParaJoe]

I have been dry firing a lot more in preperation for a match coming up and I have been noticing something in my index. My shoulders seem to tense up a lot when I am transferring between targets. I set up some "targets" in the house to simulate swinging between targets and to practice letting my eyes drive the gun. It seems that since my shoulders are so tight that I am tiring way too fast. When this happens my body tends to want to let the gun drift down while I'm swinging. Any ideas on how not to keep my shoulders so tense? Thanks, JOe

[raz-0]

hardly an expert, but I have fought/am fighting a couple of similar sounding issues. So here are my general suggestions in no particular order, but they all impacted the tensed feeling and associated fatigue.

first, relax. Your shoulders shouldn't be that tense to get the job done. Tense slows you down, wears you out, and by definition means you are spending effort and resources on something you aren't trying to do. I learned that long ago in martial arts, and appliews to pretty much anything physical. This is mostly a mental thing.

Second, don't gorilla the gun. You aren't strong enough to keep the gun form moving during recoil. The only tension useful in shooting is tension that comes from the mechanical limits of the human body and reflex, not conscious thought. For the most part, that kind of tension will be the most relaxed you can be while holding a certain position. Without any thought on your part, your body will attempt to return to that position because it requires the least effort to be in. The tension comes when something tries to move it out of that position (i.e. recoil).

Third, move from the right part of your body. A good grip and solid index shouldn't be altering radically through a range of motion like a simple transition. Don't produce your range of motion by changing the geometry of your upper body. I've noticed recently I have been using too much of my upper body to pivot, and more of the pivot needs to come form varying tension on my legs/stance and let my upper body be at it's relaxed upper body index. My leg muscles are bigger and probably better at stopping the momentum of a quick transition than my lateral obliques. (my current major problem on transitions is my heavy gun overshooting where I want it to stop when I start speeding up my transitions)

Fourth, have the strength to hold your gun. If your gun starts feeling heavy to you quickly, and you don't want to or can't switch to using a lighter gun, get stronger. We aren't talking big muscles here, working the arms and shoulders with 10lb dumbells for endurance (high reps, exercises where you hold the wieght in a position for an extended period, etc.) will do just fine. 10lb dumbells are definitely cheaper than a new gun. But if the gun's wieght and the stance and motion are well withing the sweet spot of your body strength, you will be much more relaxed. Kind of like picking up a bag of groceries is a more relaxed action than lifting a 50lb bag of dogfood. Also increased strength means there's more muscle behind the good kind of tension mentioned previously.

fifth, you might want to think of it less as the eyes driving the gun than as the eyes driving the front sight. except for targets close enough that seeing the gun in front of the target means you get ok hits, you need a sight picture. Move the sight picture and not the whole gun, and you will find that you spend less energy fine tuning grip/index/stance/sight picture after the movement and before the shot. less fine tuning less tense, and more smooth.

sixth, look with your eyes, not with your head if you can. At elast when moving your gun. Moving your head changes the natural tension on your shoulders and the geometry of your upper body index. Your eyes have very littel inertia and don't drag a lot of other muscles out of alignment with them, so they are essentially "free" to move. Conversely, when it's time to stop shooting and get the whole body to a new place, leading with the head is often the right thing to do.

seventh, none of the above might even remotely apply, and you are just training one exercise way too long. It may be the skill in need of the most work, but that doesn't mean beating on it in practice is the best thing. If you are practicing something so hard that you start to suck at it by the end, you are reinforcing the suck and not the improvement. practice makes permanent. Don't practice sucking.

Just some ideas.

[Flexmoney]

How wide are the transitions being practiced?

[ParaJoe]

in response,

First, I am relaxed before the draw and during, but it seems as though I am not when I am shooting. I'll work on that.

Second, I'm not putting the death grip on the pistol, enough for the pistol to not fly out of my hands while shooting but not enough to make me shake. Firm.

Third, My index is what I'm working on not moving. Like you said, I've found that moving the legs can move the upper body.

Fourth, I have been thinking about going to the gym to work on the upper body muscles but time doesn't allow that for me. I have been thinking about using a full ammo can as a weight.

Fifth, I don't really understand what you mean by my eyes driving the front sight and not the gun. I thought it was all in the same. I move my eyes to the target, and the sights into the picture that the eyes are seeing. See what I'm sayin?

Sixth, If I move my head instead of my eyes I catch myself loosing my index so I try to keep it relativly solid on the shoulders.

Seventh, You aren't the first person that tells me that I am practicing too much. I have been practicing after work and that's probably why I'm getting tired easily. I have to find a new time to practice.

Flex, the transitions between the targets is about 90 degrees.

[LPatterson]

With a 90 degree transition you might be better off snaping the head to the new target to establish your aiming point and bring the gun to that new index. I have some strap-on weights that I use for exercise that might work for you practicing transitions.

[Flexmoney]

...and break the triangle...bring the gun in a bit. Move loose.

[ParaJoe]

With a 90 degree transition you might be better off snaping the head to the new target  to establish your aiming point and bring the gun to that new index.  I have some strap-on weights that I use for exercise that might work for you practicing transitions.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I thought moving the head was a no-no. I have been moving my eyes instead of the whole head. My wife has some of those weights that strap-on to ankles or wrists. I'll have to try that. Flex, how far from the face should the pistol be? I put arms out straight and then break them so that the arms are taking the recoil of the pistol and not my shoulders/body. A few of my friends have commented about how I have my arms bent went shooting but then I point out how it helps me and then they try it. Thanks for the help, JOe

[XRe]

If you can't easily snap your eyes to the target, you *have* to move your head to pick it up. Your eyes move first, but everything else follows. If the transition is too wide for just eyes, let your head move there too - the body will follow.

"Break the triangle" refers to allowing your arms to leave the "mount", re-orient, and mount again. In some cases, you may find it quicker to bring the gun back almost to the body, as if you were drawing in reverse, and then re-extend onto the new target. You do this at the same time you're swiveling your head to the new target. It's also akin to breaking the mount when you get ready to move...

[raz-0]

My comment about the eyes driving the front sight was jsut a possible thing to check that you might be doing bad. It's a bad habit i noticed I picked up when trying to get my shooting speed up. Resulted in some "wobbling" at the end of larger transitions, and stabilizing that was more work than it should have been. Which can lead to fatigue.

I'll have to try the breaking the triangle thing on bigger transitions, might help with some of the transition issues I've been working on.

[Flexmoney]

raz-0,

When you say your "eyes are driving the sight", I think you mean that your vision is staying on the front sight as you swing between targtets?

If so, that is a bit different from what most mean when they say they have the eyes driving the gun...I think.

[raz-0]

raz-0,

When you say your "eyes are driving the sight", I think you mean that your vision is staying on the front sight as you swing between targtets? 

If so, that is a bit different from what most mean when they say they have the eyes driving the gun...I think.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

that's not what I mean, although I'm assuming I'm reusing the phrase as it's intended from my reading... I think

I guess to describe what I was doing badly more correctly in benos-ese, I was driving the sights with my eyes, but using bad focus. I forget off the top of my head which focus types were which, but essentially when transitioning after the eyes had found the target, I was essentially getting an initial sight picture that would be appropriate for point shooting a close target (i.e. see gun in front of target) then refining the sight picture/focus. When refining the sight picture, the gun often wasn't exactly where I wanted it, thus requiring minor correction on position. Basically I was using the whole gun as the sight, so in the little world in my head I started referring to it as driving the gun with my eyes when what I needed to be doing was driving the sights with my eyes.

I'm not sure if I have really figured out what is a more appropriate way to accomplish what I wanted to, but what I was doing definitely resulted in tension and fatigue in practice ESPECIALLY if I was trying to speed up transitions. It also had a kind of snowball effect on the tension and fatigue, because my natural response was to feel that my upper body index was sloppy, and thus try to tighten it up resulting in more artificial tension. Which then lead to frustration which made more tension and set off my personality to practice more because I needed to beat said particular issue, which then resulted in me ingraining a bad habit I'm now trying to lose. (given my mentality, probably the most useful saying about training for me is practice doesn'tmake perfect, paractice makes permanent)

It's kind of the sister issue to the bit where I mentioned moving from the right part of the body, but focusing more on the mental aspect and not trying to get speed out of the wrong thing or at the cost of something more critical.

That any clearer? The half of the skill that's going on in the old noggin is kind of hard to express clearly and succinctly.

[ParaJoe]

If you can't easily snap your eyes to the target, you *have* to move your head to pick it up. Your eyes move first, but everything else follows. If the transition is too wide for just eyes, let your head move there too - the body will follow.

"Break the triangle" refers to allowing your arms to leave the "mount", re-orient, and mount again. In some cases, you may find it quicker to bring the gun back almost to the body, as if you were drawing in reverse, and then re-extend onto the new target. You do this at the same time you're swiveling your head to the new target. It's also akin to breaking the mount when you get ready to move...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

I figured out what it was that you were talking about XRe and I gave it a try. I have found that bringing it back in towards the chest, not much, but enough to break the triangle, I don't get as tired. As the gun is coming back up to the NPA I aquire the front sight and line up my shot. Thanks for the help/clarification on this issue everyone. JOe

[kevin c]

...and break the triangle...bring the gun in a bit.  Move loose.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

"Break the triangle" refers to allowing your arms to leave the "mount", re-orient, and mount again.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Doesn't the triangle break on every shot anyway, because of recoil?

Kevin C.