Awakening My Awareness

[aggie dad]

Although I am a relatively new shooter, I have shot several matches to date, and have been quite disappointed with my results (slow and poor accuracy), to the point of becoming demoralized. Admittedly, I have not done a lot of dry or live fire practice in between matches, but have always thought of myself as a decent athlete and assumed I would figure it out shortly. Unfortunately, it wasn't happening and I've continued to struggle mightedly doing the same thing over and over again, hoping for improvement.

Today, I decided to go out and practice on some steel. Well, I started off with my usual slowness and quite a few misses to boot as I transitioned from one plate to the next. Then I finally realized that I have not been taking up the slack in the trigger and have simply been jerking almost every shot as I try to go fast (shooting a G34). Once I took the slack out before squeezing the trigger, I discovered my speed and accuracy sky-rocketed. I never fully appreciated that this fundamental could have such a dramatic impact . Also, I always wondered when others on the board have stressed the importance of, "see only what you need to see", which for me was a non existant concept as I've been shooting so slow.

Now I am realizing what it means to see only what you need to see and to call your shots when transitioning from one target to another and I must say this has given my confidence a huge boost. Hopefully, I can get the trigger prep imprinted and will start to achieve much better results going forward. It is quite motivating when a new level of awareness kicks in .

Doug

[wide45]

A match is a terrible place to learn to shoot.

Matches are for finding out what you don't know.

Practice is for adding to the things you do know.

[benos]

It is quite motivating when a new level of awareness kicks in

Yes - that is fun stuff.

And I'd bet the fun factor would go up even more if you started dry and live firing regularly. Because learning is fun.

Especially both accurately and at speed, there's nothing natural about shooting a pistol.

It's a lot like golf. Having never golfed, if someone handed you a club and said here, go hit some balls - that would be pretty rough stuff.

be

[Cole]

Aggie Dad, it's great that you had the trigger prep epiphany! Bruce Gray and his team drilled this into my head at a recent training session. Believe me my slappy-happy motorskills wanted to reject it, but with hours and hours of dryfire at home, it's beginning to be second nature.

The accuracy I understand, but for some reason it feels so much slower to do proper trigger prep . . . but the timers don't lie . . . it really cuts your splits too.

I'm looking forward to reading Brian's book too!