Shooting with Aphantasia

[Smitty79]

I think I'm mind blind.   I've been shooting for 9 years and I've always tried to "visualize" stages a bunch of times before shooting them.    I really didn't see anything.    What I was doing was more like talking to myself about each target and where I wanted my aim point.   In general, I am better at simple stand and shoots than complex field courses.   This is despite having had a career were a good memory was a strong plus.

 

I recently retired and I'm now putting more time and money into shooting.   I've been working with Steve Anderson, mainly on improving my practicing and mental game.  Listening to his podcasts, I've heard him talk about visualizing being like watching a movie.   On a recent call, I asked him for more of an explanation of what he was seeing.     He sees vastly more than I do.   I, reading up on this and taking an online test, almost everyone sees more than I do.

 

I've had this for a long time.    For the first half of my career, I was a submarine officer.    When making periscope observations, the accepted way to call the range to the target, was to look quickly, get the scope back down and then process what you saw to estimate contact range.    Everyone else was trying to look at the picture they saw.    I was just thinking about it.

 

I'm amazed I never realized what others were seeing.

 

Does anyone else have this problem?    What strategies are you using to try to make your "navigation" more subconscious?    All I've been able to come up with is more actual walkthroughs and more visualization by thinking about the targets.

 

https://memoryos.com/article/what-is-aphantasia-causes-symptoms-and-treatment

 

[waktasz]

When you imagine doing any subconscious task, how do you do it, currently? Like what are the steps you think about if I were to say make me a bag of popcorn?
I assume you can verbalize it?

Maybe you need to come up with stage plans the same way. A stage plan might be something like " Two on the right, three steps, left left, right. Reload. Run to port, right to left" 
I use things like that on tough memory stages during the walk through utnil I'm able to memorize the stage fully. Not sure if that would work for you or not. 

[Fishbreath]

I'm in a similar boat: not zero visualization skills, but relatively poor ones by the standard of people who can imagine a complete scene. So, my stage visualization is much more kinetic than it is visual: I'll close my eyes and pantomime what's going to happen based on the memorized stage, taking little steps for movement. (You may recall that Anderson doesn't visualize moving at all, according to him.)

 

There's also Ben Berry's 'event-driven shooting', which he covers in an episode of Short Course. He describes it in a visual context, but I think it would yield to a less visual approach too. The gist is that you just memorize the sequence of events, similar to waktasz's suggestion. You start with low detail: (start -> shoot array 1 left to right -> run to array 2 with reload, etc.) and refine, as you have time/need (start -> do that thing with my hand that helps on surrender draws -> see sight over center of available target on target 1, etc.).

 

I find that the latter approach gets a bit muddled in my head, and that miming the stage is the best way for me to fix it in my mind to the point that I can shoot it subconsciously. I also find that shooting has been improving my visualization skills: by dint of so much dry fire, I can call to mind a reasonably clear picture of bits and pieces of a USPSA stage now, or of my sights on a target.

[Smitty79]

Thanks all.    I listened to Ben Berry.   It was very helpful.     I definitely use the less detail method and pantomime methods to get through things.    The place where I get in trouble is on memory stages, where, the plan is more individual targets than arrays.

 

I've been "dry firing" walk-throughs.    It seems to help me get more effective.