Draw and the Shakes...

[WayneBullock]

(I looked for info on this, but didn't find threads that dealt with this directly; please redirect if I missed any.)

I have practiced drawing long enough to get a good time to first shot (for me), but I'm starting to have some problems.  I have noticed that when I draw in matches, the front site is wobbling everywhere, and I have to wait for the site to settle down before I can see the first shot off.  I don't notice this in practice, so I think it's nerves, but what to do?

Should I practice fast draws more in dry-fire and live-fire practice, or do fewer reps?

Or perhaps keep up the fast pace in practice and try to just be smooth in matches and let it happen?

Any suggestions?

Thanks,

WayneB

[Flexmoney]

Wayne,

Is this wobble after you complete the draw, or is it as you complete the draw?

[benos]

Wayne,

Your problem is very typical, especially if you don't have a year or two's match experience. Don't try (think) you can correct the match "problem" in practice. Instead, like you said, just be smooth in matches. It's just more difficult to let the gun slide nicely into position (in matches) because there's a little extra juice flowing. So, consciously back off your draw/presentation speed about 10 to 20% and see how that works.

be

[Steve Anderson]

Embrace the adrenaline!

I used to get the shakes at every match, now hardly at all...except steel matches, where I still get the shakes at most stages.

Bruce Piatt has a great thread in here somewhere where he tells us he knows he's gonna shake at steel matches and just goes for it.

I think it happens in steel because the draw is so much more important than in IPSC. A bad draw in IPSC can be salvaged, in steel that run is more or less toast. This translates to anxiety, which causes tension, which is a self fulfilling prophecy.

SA

(Edited by Steve Anderson at 2:22 pm on Nov. 27, 2002)

[BSeevers]

I still get the rapid pulse and jitters at times. Its how you handle it is what counts. Treat it like being hungry, tired, sleepy, thirsty, uninterested, distracted, or whatever.

Relax and just get to the shooting.

As Steve said you can actually use it to your advantage. Heck, truth is, I could use a little more adrenaline often. Sometimes I am so relaxed that I shoot too lazy.

[lynn jones]

wayne,

you mean you get nervous when you have to stand infront of a lot of people watching shoot a pistol?  try to give a speech now and then, same type situation right?  

my advise:

get comfortable with your subject matter, this case your shooting, by practicing dry firing and live firing in the nude on your front porch.  do this technique about 5 days before your next match. you'll be sooo relaxed and shoot so well (if you put your clothes back on).  your neighbors and the police may forgive you, but shooters never forget or forgive!!

believe me on this matter.  i still get nervous.  just relax and have fun and in about 12 years of shooting you'd wish you could get nervous.

dvc ya,

lynn jones

L-843

(Edited by lynn jones at 6:22 pm on Nov. 27, 2002)

[ErikW]

If it's not the jitters, it's probably because you are slamming the gun up at the targets. It's like when you slam on the brakes and your vehicle pitches nose-forward, then back, then is finally settled by the suspension damping. You can't get a good draw that way because you are waiting for the sights to settle.

You have to spend all your speed and effort getting out of the holster and halfway to the target. From there, you relax and just let it float up to the target.

Learn this technique by consciously slowing down the presentation after half-way. Slow it down so much that it feels excruciating in a match environment. When you look at the timer, you'll see you've picked up a couple tenths because you weren't waiting for the sight to settle.

And you still have to do this relaxed. The sights will take longer to settle (if ever) if you're tense.

[mcoliver]

---

Quote: from BSeevers on 2:09 pm on Nov. 27, 2002

... Sometimes I am so relaxed that I shoot too lazy.

---

Ahhh, the trap of shooting from habit (or was it habit shooting?)

----

Not sure if this is worse, it used to be sight wobble, but now I'm starting to see a good portion of the front area of the top slide at the end of the draw.  Risking a shot at this point causes them to go higher than I would like them to.  Somehow I get a feeling it's the 2sec draw-shoot-mag change-shoot exercise that caused this, either that or my neck is getting longer.  I can see no other choice of curing these problems except to be "excruciatingly" slow in the final presentation.

[j1b]

I think it you could also minimize the mental effects of this by carefully choosing which target you start with if given choices on a stage.

Everyone gets nervous - but if you KNOW you're going to notice this wabble - start on the easiest target. That way the impact of the wobble is less damaging.

Don't want to put words in your or anyone else's mouth - but for most of us I think once the stage gets started all the nerves just slide away. It's right before the draw that we get to think about all the crap that has to happen.

Minimize the risk - minimize the impact the wabble has on you - and you'll start cruising through stages.

Just my $.02

JB

[j1b]

One more comment.

Don't slow down. Or at least don't DECIDE to slow down. Instead decide what you need to see to get the job done. My contention is that often times the difference in time can be minimal - you just decide to see different things.

JB

[benos]

lynn,

"you mean you get nervous when you have to stand infront of a lot of people watching shoot a pistol?  try to give a speech now and then, same type situation right?"

I was twice as nervous when I had to give a speech at the first Bianchi Cup I won as I was when I was shooting the course of fire. I could barely speak. But the weird thing was - people came up to me after the banquet and said things like - Great speech! And I said - My mouth was so dry and I was so nervous I could barely function - I felt like I couldn't even see anything. And every person said that they couldn't tell it - I looked totally normal. Just goes to show ya, what you feel like is happening and what is actually happening are often two totally different things.

I remember another time I had to do a demo for S&W at my home town range in Ohio. That was probably the most nervous I've ever been. Besides my mom and dad, I probably hadn't seen most of the folks that came out to see this "small town now famous shooter boy" in over 20 years. But the amazing thing was that I shot some really great stuff - actually, it was my best demo to date. If I said once I said it a thousand times - Just goes to show ya...

be

[benos]

Wayne and JB,

JB’s comment - "Don't slow down. Or at least don't DECIDE to slow down. Instead decide what you need to see to get the job done." - made me realize my original post in this thread was misleading. Sorry, I should have explained myself better.

It's a tricky topic - how to deal with match induced adrenaline - and, depending on Temperament, doesn't have ONE answer.

When I said - "So, consciously back off your draw/presentation speed about 10 to 20% and see how that works." - what I really meant was - the effort you feel and remember in practice to draw and shoot at a given speed will (probably) not feel the same in a match, (because of the added "juice" present.) To be an effective competitor, many must learn to reconcile those two very different environments. Therefore we each must figure out - on our own, by experimentation - how to shoot like we do in practice, in competition. That's all we really want to do, right?  

I realized (in 1981 on the Mover at my first Bianchi Cup – explained in detail somewhere else in this forum), that my task in competition became one of "creating favorable conditions" that would ALLOW me to see what I saw (and felt) in practice. In order to do this I learned to consciously monitor and thereby adjust my "output" – at the beginning of EVERY string of fire. Once I established and maintained, up to the instant of the first shot, what I called "the set," I found my established body-feel/output-level would continue on its own for the rest of the string unless something unexpected happened that caused me to think.

So for me, relying ONLY on what I saw in competition was not enough because, "no matter how long I took," typically, I couldn't see under stress what I could while relaxed.

So when I said to back off your draw/presentation speed 10 to 20%… I meant - back off your output level. I totally agree, JB, that thinking of it terms of slowing down or speeding up is not beneficial. For me, I realized, that even if speed and therefore rushing are not a factor, like at the Cup, I would typically always be trying harder or exerting more energy (output level) in competition than was necessary for optimum performance. Therefore my entire focus became one of finding a way to allow my skills and abilities to manifest – without trying to control them.

Nevertheless, having said all this, if your Temperament allows you to get good results by simply seeing what you know you need to see in practice, in competition, then by all means do so.

To allow we have to trust; to trust we have to know.

be

[j1b]

To be honest I wasn't trying to contradict you. If that's how I came across I didn't mean to.

Before Brian and I had ever shot together I shot a match up in Durango CO and I was doing ok. It was one of my first big matches. TGO was there, Ron Avery, Doug Boykin - it was a big deal to me. I was a B-class shooter - and very intimidated.

I was there with Tim Copperstone and we had an El Pres to shoot. I remember so clearly telling Tim "I think I'll try and shoot this between 5.5 and 6 secs to stay safe" At the time in practice I knew I could do 5 secs pretty safe - but I made the decision to shoot slower. I think the correct approach would have been I'm going to insure I see what I need to see - the time will end up what it is.

The ironic thing is that it is so easy for me to sit here in front of this computer and say I know what the correct approach is. This season though - I am certain at some point in time I will decide to shoot some portion of some stage on the conservative side to be safe - instead of saying "I'm just going to focus and make certain I see what I need to"

Like you said Brian - there is an art to balancing this stuff out. What would be nice is to have a "caddy" that isn't shooting - that can sit back and say "ok Jack - I know your plan of action - but really all you have to do it this" If there is one thing you taught me it is that this game is so terribly simple and so terribly complicated all at the same time.

JB

[2alpha]

It seems to me that is important to use only the amount of effort needed to get the task done. On the draw if your too forceful you are slower and you end up chasing the sight before you can let a shot off. Same way target to target.  So we teach ourselves this during practice and dry fire.  At the match adrenalin kicks in and the amount of effort we think we are using is magnified by the adrenalin affect and we end up chasing the sight around or other bad stuff.  So we have to learn how to deal with the adrenalin or learn how to suppress it. The good thing is that if your paying attention you learn everytime you shoot matches especialy those that are important to you. If you learn to leave your ego out of shooting the adrenalin affect will diminish. As BE says your temperament has a lot to do with which approach you use.

To me it all boils down to just another thing that will take you out of your game if you let it.

[benos]

JB,

"To be honest I wasn't trying to contradict you. If that's how I came across I didn't mean to."

Holy crap dude - I would never think anything of the sort, because (I just realized as I was just about to type a period there, instead of the comma) even if you did/were I could care less.

"The ironic thing is that it is so easy for me to sit here in front of this computer and say I know what the correct approach is."

That's a good one - because of that I've thought about the caddy thing as well. I really enjoyed being Doug K's caddy the last (real) year of the Masters when you had to shoot rifle, shotgun, and pistol courses. After a smallbore precision rifle stage - which he won, beating the great G David Tubb - he told me afterwards that when it was looking ugly (the crosshairs were shaking all over the place) - he heard my voice in his head saying - "It doesn't matter how bad it looks, just pull it through without disturbing what you have." It'd be nice if we could have someone remind us of what we need to do instead of what we want to do.

be

[j1b]

Sometimes you gotta hate this typing thing. I wasn't trying to be defensive either - 'just didn't want to sound like I was stepping on what you were saying. It would have come out much better if I were speaking it vs. typing it. There are many times when I don't think I come off the way that I mean to on this forum.

Anyhow - we're cool

JB

[benos]

Yea, it would be nice if we could all just hang out together for a day or two!

be

[j1b]

I'll bring the beer. I believe its my time to buy (last time it was Corona right????)

JB

[benos]

JB,

When are coming over?

Concerning alcohol, anything from Mexico is good. Pacifico and Tecate, and of course Herradura and Patron, are current favorites.

[j1b]

May be headed out sooner than I thought.

Possibly March or April - I give you a jingle.

JB