Slumps

[Big Shooter]

This happens to me frequently, I'm curious how the rest of you deal with it.

Most of my training is dry fire in the basement with Steve Anderson's book. So, on Thursday I had an excellent training session. Over two solid hours, things felt good. Fast, smooth and I felt like I had noticeable improvement, especially in the re-load and transition drills.

Yesterday, everything is AFU. Missed the draw, bad grip, crappy re-loads, not relaxed. Slowed way down, tried to re-focus. Just wasn't getting in the groove. Ended the session frustrated. Same thing today, just a few minutes ago. Didn't even try the slow-down part, just quit (frustrated again) and got everything ready for tomorrows match.

Does this happen to you and what do you do to deal with it? Get frustrated & throw the pistol across the room?? (I'm kidding about the throwing part)

Slow down & re-focus??

Quit and come back in a few hours or tomorrow??

Thanks for any suggestions.

[Jake Di Vita]

It happens to absolutely everyone.

Normally the best course of action is to put the guns away for a few days and just step back for a bit.

Slumps are just that....slumps. They are not a permanent thing.

[Sharyn]

I'm with ya Big Shooter, and interested in any advice you receive.

Right now, I've put down the gun and picked up the books. A lot of introspection in progress...

[sfinney]

Put the gun down for a few days/weeks/months until you feel like you really NEED and WANT to shoot, practice. Sometimes we all get burnt out.

Or do shorter dry fire sessions so it still feels fresh when you pick up the gun next time, instead of like work.

[JFD]

The only negative to dry firing, IMHO, is you have the opportunity to THINK way too much.

If you can get "mentally calibrated" to your live fire mode, then things tend to be better.

I'm not sure of what is really happening, but I think that you could be overrunning your abilities in dry fire. Something like running at 120% of the speed your actually capable of drawing and hitting a target, or pulling off a smooth reload, or whatever. With no real feedback, such as hitting the target, you end up running faster and faster and faster until the wheels fall off (slump).

Sort of like when folks who know what they're talking about discuss practicing live fire at 100% and being a little rough, then shooting a match at 90% totally smooth.

Maybe you are practicing dry fire at 120+%, would practice live fire at 100%, and end up at 90% at a match.

I could be full of it for sure, but maybe not.

[Loves2Shoot]

There is no slow or fast.

If you want to get out of a slump, try relaxing and striving to "see." Learn from each shot and your slump won't be important to you. My slumps come from "desire" getting in my way of doing things correctly.

Good luck and keep your chin up

[ong45]

Put the gun down for a few days/weeks/months until you feel like you really NEED and WANT to shoot

I have never been a fan of taking time off (unless there's snow on the hill )

I believe in the brute force approach, get back on the horse !! Find something new to focus on. Could be a particular part of the reload , hitting the button: getting your hand on the mag:really seeing the magwell etc.

Don't get frustated, get back to work

James

[BSeevers]

Fire and time makes the metal hard and the shooter.

[hopalong]

This works for me.....

Take a short break, while practicing that day (live or dry it doesn't matter).

When you come back....DON'T start where you left off !!!!!

Start on something completely different..... AND that you are quite comfortable with. Get back at it and get that confidence back.

Then maybe take a nibble off of that brick that hit you.

Slumps in our sport are usually caused by IMHO...2 things.

1 trying new stuff and thinking you should have it down too soon.

2 thinking you should be progressing faster than you are....This is a hard one.

Tiger Woods got so far on Talent, then he had to practice and work at it like everyone else.

Rob Leatham got so far on Talent, then he had to practice and work at it like everyone else.

Jerry Miculek got so far on Talent, then he had to practice and work at it like everyone else.

ANOTHER big thing in our sport that attributes to this.....

Competitve Nature !!!!!!

That is the Nature of the beast with us, How many USPSA/IPSC shooters that stay at it do you know that accept mediocrity????

If you are good at what you do, but keep telling yourself you are not good enough, sooner or later you will talk yourself into not being good enough and then that really opens up a pandora's Box.

Some of us are just more hard headed than others, I myself am a good example.....

I'm not in the best shape in the world, Have 1 hip that is mostly gone, have 2 heniated disks in my back, but still I push myself to attempt to be one of the best and not only with a revolver .....got close at the Nationals but that was my fault too.

Like mentioned before.....Slumps are just that....Slumps....Nothing permanent, be patient and persistant you will get through it and be that much better because of it.

Sam Keen / Hopalong

[carinab]

How about this approach...Realize that the only thing effecting your dryfire is your mood. Don't try to force your mood to change, just recognize it...then continue. See how well you can do DESPITE your frustration. Experiment with what mentally gets you through it. If you can't change it, go with it. Or maybe try setting a time limit on how long you'll allow yourself to feel frustrated.

Our sport is "do it on demand." This is a challenge to your mental game beyond dryfire. There may be a day when you're frustrated at the range because of no fault of your own (your spouse's car dies 20 minutes from the range, you arrive late, and your ammo won't feed - not that this happened to me recently ). The RO won't put you at the bottom of the squad stack just because you're frustrated. If you learn to perform well despite your mood, then you've added another tool to your shooting bag. I don't think taking a break is always a good idea because sometimes learning comes from mistakes. Be careful though to make sure your aren't training yourself to do badly.

Edited to add: I was thinking on this while cooking dinner and it hit me: frustration could be about control. Can't force things to happen, you have to let them happen.... Perhaps reading the actualizing trust thread might help.

[shred]

Also make sure that it's really a slump, and not you suddenly noticing things you were doing but merely didn't notice you were doing before. That happened to me a lot as I progressed in shooting skills and it's not fun until you figure it out.

[Matthew_Mink]

I would hesitate to call this a slump. So you had 2 bad sessions over 2 bad days. I would start calling it a slump when you've done poorly at 2 major matches in a row due to bad performance. Been there. Be careful, calling this a slump this early could be a self fulfilling prophecy.

If it is the beginnings of a slump, throw the guns in the safe and take some time off. When they start calling you, ignore them. When you really get the itch, ignore it. One day you will go back to the safe and open it without realizing it, thats when its time to start again. When you do, grab something you don't normally shoot and have fun with it. Just plink or shoot groups or something. When you realize its fun again, its time to start competing. Thats what works for me after my last slump.

[raz-0]

I'm currently in the middle of a slump, so I feel your pain. Mine looks like it's winding down, but it's not there yet.

There's the bull headed brute force thing. My version of it is going back to zero. When you start screwing up, go back to the bare essentials and work your way back up. Worked for me a lot better with martial arts than with shooting though.

There's the time off method. I try not to rely on this much, but when you are gettiing really burnt out mentally, sometimes it's the only thing for it. But I'm becoming more of the mind that it is really the last option.

There's slowing down, but the backing off 5% thing doesn't work for me. Slowing down for me is basically slow-mo practice with an emphasis on introspection and analysis. Basically something to keep me busy while I'm having a day where I'm being a spaz.

What I have been doing lately, and seems to be working better, is redirection and re-approach. If the mental game isn't clicking, or faster just turns into clumsy, or the new skill just isn't developing, I back off, I let it go, and I go back to something I've got down pat, I experiment with things I do well enough not to question, or I do something that is simple enough to not screw up. Worst case scneario, it's calesthenics or weights, since being in better shape can't hurt your game.

Also, I guess the lat approach is the result of something else I have been doing, which is if any of the above isn't working, sit down and come up with a new idea, then try it.

If it is a mental slump, one thing I have found to be helpful for me is to back off the video thing and focus more on a journal.

[Big Shooter]

Thank you all for the advice.

I took several days off, then shot 4 classifiers at last Sundays local match. Perhaps not a slump at all, since I got moved up to "B" in Limited.

I am absolutely ecstatic about getting moved up, it's something I've been working hard for for a long time. (I am also getting sick of my friends calling me a sandbagger!!)

How I'm going to deal with this in the future is going to be a mix of ya'lls advice.

#1. My mood definetly has an impact on training. I now realize this and can deal with it.

#2. Take a short break, but still train that day. Yesterday I did 3 of Mr. Anderson's drills that I had never done before. Being unfamiliar with a specific drill forced me to do it kind of slowly, so fewer mistakes, hence less frustration.

#3. I am in the process of reading Brian's book. The overwhelming theme that I see so far is that you must SEE EVERYTHING!!! I am constantly reminding myself of this while training.

More later. Now I must head down to the basement.

[wsimpso1]

Hey Big Shooter,

I just bored through the thread, and there is a lot of good advice. Here's mine (I got it from Lanny Basham in 1983) when you are shooting well, do it a lot. When you are shooting poorly STOP! The last thing that you want to do is reinforce doing something wrong.

Once you stop, you have choices and you should do all of them sometime. Here are a few:

Change something. It almost does not matter what you change. Occupy that thinking part of your brain with something new or at least different, and then do some basic drills. This allows you to experiment a little with some fundementals which distracts the concious mind from getting in your way. Reload with the gun a little higher or lower, take your hand to the holstered gun a little differently, practice something that you have not done in a while. Maybe the change is grit your teeth and approach the session with some aggressiveness or some anger. It could happen in a match, and you might want to find out how you will respond. Anything but frustration. If the last thing you want to do is practice doing it wrong, the next to last thing you want to do is resign yourself to performing poorly. Change Something;

Put the equipment away for the day or even a few days. Recharge your batteries on some other activity. Reading Brian's book is always a good one. So is cleaning the car or detail clean your gun or reloading gear, having a leisurely dinner with the other half or friends or both, calling somebody that you have not talked to in a while. Then, when you miss the practice or the shooting, get back into it. A day, a week, a month, whatever it takes. Do some other activity that you have not done in a while. I am almost to the point of doing some sailboat racing again. Maybe a bike ride suits you better today. Maybe that buddy with an airplane would want to go for a hamburger. This weekend, I am tearing apart the airplane that I own half of for the annual inspection. Do Something Else;

Do a drill that you have not done in awhile. Prone, weak handed, chair draws, extreme cover. Maybe you have been playing in your mind with three gun - go get the rifle or shotgun out and do dry fire and reload drills with it. Practice Something Different.

Good Luck.

Billski

[Clay1]

I haven't been on the boards lately and haven't shot since the end of July. I came on tonight / this morning to make a post. The post was going to be about burnout. I found this thread and thought that I would post here since this seems along the same lines.

I went out tonight and fired about 200 rounds. I have lost some in the last 7 weeks or so, but hopefully I am ready to start playing with handguns again.

It's hard to talk about failure. That's what I feel. When you shoot 3 or 4 times a week and you don't feel like you are making any progress and you just blow at matches, it makes you wonder what the hell you are doing in the first place.

I don't have to tell you that this game is expensive so why am I throwing good money after lousy results? Just venting here and standing up and saying that I believe that burnout is something that happens to many people. We don't seem to talk about it much.

Some of it probably has to do with unrealistic expectations of achieving certain goals. This internal pressure to get results can be a nasty edge. I think that I just need to shoot and leave the expectations out of the equation, but that is alot easier said than done. I understand it mentally but there is part of me that is very competitive and just wants results.

Will follow the rest of the thread and see what other kinds of advice is given out. The Nike "Just Do It" isn't really all that simple is it?

Rick

[uscbigdawg]

I can only suggest what works for me, and what worked when I used to play tennis in college. I love to train and train hard. I would pound my head against the wall, if I thought it would work and my coach told me to do so.

That being said, what has always seem to work, is just put down the gear, and do something completely different. For instance, when I get burned out a little on IPSC/3-Gun, I take a break and work on my golf game and/or shoot A LOT of trap & skeet. Too, I'll spend more time in the gym.

If it's a lull in performance though, I'm with James (ong45) and take the brute force approach. I will do drills until I'm knee deep in brass, do tons of dry firing, work on my draws, reloads (basically a lot of the basics) and try to make sure that I'm doing the basics clean and fast. One big thing that working with shooters like Matt Burkett and Mike Voigt has taught me is to break things down and keep it VERY, VERY and....VERY simple.

Sounds like though that you've worked out some of your kinks. Welcome to B class Limited (a.k.a. Home of the Grand Baggers ). Great job and keep up the great work!!!!

SPC Richard A. White, Senior Medic

249th MP Detachment (EACF)

Camp Humphreys, ROK

[bountyhunter]

This happens to me frequently, I'm curious how the rest of you deal with it.

The technique I use is to obsess about it which makes me even more fixated on what I am doing wrong... thus making it more likely to happen again.

Mind you I am not saying this is a good technique, just the one I unfortunately seem destined to repeat.

[lynn jones]

i rent one of the grinder things! gone in minutes!

oh shjt! i thought you said stumps.

just go shoot. have fun! tis what's about.

lynn

[R.Elliott]

Is it possible that you are not really slumping, but rather, not giving your subconscious a chance to fully boot up a new conscious program? I find that happens to me if I start working too hard of burning in a new skill, but if I just put my stuff away for a couple of hours/days, go watch a movie or read a book.....anything NOT to do with shooting, I almost always come back at it stronger and with cleaner technique. The subconscious is after all, always running in the background, processing, cataloguing, organizing information into a format you can use on demand, solving problems.....no matter what you are actually doing. I wouldn't fret too much about it.

[PaulW]

A top level GM gave some great advice once, if only I'd listen; He sais " Stop shooting for about a week, then quit all together was the best thing for me to do". LOL

Ok seriously though. You have what I have been through as well as almost every other shooter that wants to be competitive and thats "expectations". You know you can do it, you have proved that in your dry fire practice.

Be as good as you can be right here right now. You can't be any more or any less when your on the line. Then continue to practice and improve your weaknesses.