PURPOSEFUL PRACTICE
This journal entry details how to get the most out of your practice time and prepare for it the best way you can.
Competition shooting is great in that the match director can show you your weaknesses under pressure. You also get lots of repetitions and gun handling. A lot of people rise to the challenge of the artificial stress and having to perform on demand in front of their peers – which brings out the best in them. Others fall down and crumble under pressure, because they have not had enough exposure to the artificial stress of competition. Generally, people who fall down a bit under competition pressure don’t have a self-image that aligns with their current level of skill. They don’t have enough repetitions to be confident in their ability to get things done quickly and naturally without too much thinking. They’re not quite at unconscious competence. The point of the exposure to these situations is that you have your weaknesses identified so that you can start to stress inoculate. You then come to realize what you didn’t know and how you can now respond during training.
Most people enjoy training what they are good at and disregard or don’t acknowledge their weaknesses. A good way to break down what your shooting sport requires is to try and put a percentage on what is typical. Let’s take a PRS Precision Rifle Series 90 second stage for example. 50% barricade with a shooting bag or front and rear support, 10% prone supported, 30% movement and indexing, 10% prop or superfluous manipulation. Really, time spent not shooting is time wasted but only hits count. You can easily spend a full second taking a well-aimed shot and if it’s a 10 shot stage, the other 80 seconds should all be supporting those 10 lots of one second. So eighty seconds to build and spot those 1 second shots.
Therefore, natural point of aim and indexing is probably the most important skill and should be practiced the most whilst actually on the gun. The more efficient you are at building a steady shooting position that naturally points at the target, the more visual patience you can have whilst releasing the shot. And the better your recoil control is with natural point of aim, the better your feedback on the hit or miss. Calling the shot good, means you can pay attention to the splash or first catch feedback. This is a great way to refine your wind calls and realize how likely you are to hit the target.
Another way to help acclimatize / build the reps whilst out field hunting, is to dry fire on game you don’t intend to harvest. I know you are not supposed to point a firearm at anything you do not wish to destroy but if you only see one deer over 5 hunting trips (you are in the wrong area), best make use of the exposure you do get. Removing the magazine, emptying the chamber then dry firing on that deer 20 times helps build familiarity and will give you your own sense of how you will respond to this situation. You won’t hold minute of deer, you will choose a spot (like a shirt button on a chest). Buck fever can be experienced with very little consequence. You might even change your mind and actually-take the live shot. Same can be said with a bow. You could take the broadhead off and put it into a small hard box with some painters tape, then practice your stalk and coming to full draw with an arrow nock on your cheek. This will prevent blowing up your bow if things went wrong or you got the mega shake or let down when too fatigued. An arrow without a broadhead or field point will leave the bow but very likely never meet the target, but still don’t shoot it, the arrow will break when it hits the ground not flying straight.
A quick review of Marksmanship Fundamentals:
-The position and hold must be firm enough to support the firearm
-The body and firearm must naturally point at the target without any undue physical effort (indexing)
-Sight alignment and aiming must be correct
-The shot must be released and followed through without disturbing the firer’s position
Owning a miss and understanding why you missed is 100% on you. Everything is your fault. If you had a scope failure – you failed to check it out or you hadn’t trained with a broken scope drill to recover and make the best of a bad situation. Or one of your fundamentals was off, or you recorded DOPE wrong, or you pulled up the wrong ballistic profile or you failed to see what you needed to see, or your point of timing was wrong etc. Everything is your fault, own it and learn from it. Winners and successful field hunters are the ones who make the least mistakes and recover the quickest.
With a plan, the range time will be way less likely to be just plinking or doing what you are already good at.
First – define success. What means progression? Lets’ say you design a drill to help polish a known weakness. One of my own weaknesses is sitting unsupported and sitting supported. It is not comfortable and the compression of my belly into my lungs and trunk leaves me holding my out-of-breath – which is detrimental. I also notice an increased heart beat in the scope picture despite varying the grip tension or the pulling into the shoulder pressure.
So success may be defined as simply understanding what individual components need to be worked on, then having a few different experiments to see what helps mitigate or minimize these issues. You work out through testing some beneficial factors and form improvements that help. But is it fixing the problem or just creating a solution? In the unsupported sitting situation, I could lose more weight, improve my fitness, improve my inner self talk, shoot it weak handed to help me think things through deliberately and unnaturally for a leftfield view. I could practice my visual patience and just squeeze through the trigger and give my conscious mind something to focus on whilst my subconscious (which is always faster) keeps bringing the crosshair into the target. I could get a coach or take footage to show a friend, mimic others, do Pilates, yoga, breathwork. Dryfire and hold the positions until fatigue to help build muscle, shoot at no target deliberately so I have no feedback or expectance of outcome or many other solutions. The point is there will be a solution that might not come from being on the gun or bow and it may be indirect or very abstract.
If you just do what everyone else does to develop proficiency, you will not separate yourself from everyone else. Find your own way. Test don’t guess.
I would recommend a shooting notebook so you can reflect later as to what did and didn’t work. I quote Linda Miller from Secrets of Mental Marksmanship – ‘Great advice coach, but how?’ Use your own words and rules of thumb to be able to recall these words when needed. You can also keep other notes – DOPE (data of previous engagements), light, wind, load, time between cleaning, what tell you experienced once knowing you became fatigued etc. It is also a great tool for aligning your self-image with your ability. Journalling through your thoughts is a great way to help understand them and come back to reflect. Quality sleep the next few days will cement in the learned experience. Practice makes permanent.
A huge part of practice is once you start to get something right that has been a problem in the past – keep doing it right whilst you are getting it right! Cement that myelin neural connection. You need to learn that ‘it is like me (to get that right)’. Also, if you are struggling and nothing is working – stop and rest. Take a few feel-good shots you know you can make after a short break, then do something else or go home. Never underestimate being fatigued or under-slept. My tell that fatigue has set in whilst shooting my compound bow, is my non-dominant eye twitches, despite my muscles feeling fine and mind feels focussed. What’s your tell that you are fatigued and should rest?
Shoot a group at your zero distance to start your session. It will give an indication of where you’re personally at and if your gear is behaving. The load may be off or barrel is too dirty or tired and not holding accuracy. Multiple zero checks over different conditions will tell you if your rimfire ammo lubricant is truly good for cold bore clean bore long range first shots.
Try for three contingency plans on how you are going to spend your time if your training plan suddenly becomes unworkable. For instance, you are needed somewhere else, the car won’t start, or the venue is off-limits. Alternatives are dry fire, alternate venue or earning another shooting credit from the family by being there with them.
If your shooting sport has a typical par time say of 60 seconds per stage get creative in learning that duration subconsciously. Make a mark on the kettle and self-calibrate guessing early or late as to when it boils from cold. Guess the 60 second point on a few of your favourite songs, or which part of the national anthem occurs just then at your typical internal voice cadence. Get creative.
What is your why? Why shoot at all? So what if you can put a bullet exactly where you want to? What drew you to shooting or made you want to get really good at your chosen pursuit in the first place? Despite having an explosion in front of your face (which is not relaxing in itself), the draw might be just being fully engaged in something and only focussing on the task at hand whilst being intently present. It might just be that you are extremely busy and even at home when you are trying to relax, everyone wants your attention anyway. Being on the gun is your time and it’s fine to be selfish like that. Were you fascinated by the technical aspect or the artistry nature of shooting? Did Hollywood romanticize shooting and war? Do you have good memories of chasing bunnies at dusk with a 22 as a youngster on a friend’s farm. WHY?
Again, why shoot at all? The more skill you develop, the more invested you become and the further you want to push your skill set. You keep looking for more challenge, efficiency and proficiency. What is your why? Perfection is near unattainable. There is always an endless list of chores to be done, remind yourself why you enjoy your shooting so much.
There are many ways to add artificial stress to help build your resiliency and better manage pressure. The most convenient is a shot timer. Shooting weak side or wrong non-dominant eye is another great one. Small targets or overly complex shooting orders / stage briefs is also great for doing mental rehearsal and learning shoot briefs quickly and accurately whilst learning to take short-hand notes. You could video record yourself shooting a stage over and over – even if only dry fire. It’s like someone is watching and you can review the footage to see where you are wasting time and movement. I would discourage promising yourself food treats if you accomplish some little goal.
Remember to have fun. Reactive targets are fun. Swinging metal gongs, clay birds or small rocks, anything that gives feedback and isn’t destroying the range furniture is good to go in my eyes. You could have a fun-loving training partner use an air horn in your ear randomly during dry fire. Or play freeze dance during dry fire drills (when the music stops you have to be statue still). Playing AM talkback radio loudly during dry fire is also a great way to learn focus and block out say the peanut gallery at shooting matches. In live fire I recommend turning off electronic hearing protection because you won’t waste time listening for a gong to reflect the sound back on hits. There needs to be method to the madness, simply goofing off and being larrakins will earn disapproving looks and isn’t a great use of time. You could make up some live fire only dummy rounds (projectile and spent primer loaded into the case) then have your shooting buddy load the magazine. This will help you deal with a fail to fire, see any subconscious flinch you have, and know for sure if you have been short stroking the bolt or not.
Use a checklist of what you want to accomplish during the practice session and write out in words what your definition of success is – then at the end if you accomplished it or not and what you learnt.
Keep a decent range bag, leave targets and staplers and patches and benchrest and all the superfluous stuff you won’t want to leave behind in the car so you don’t waste time trying to deal without it. As soon as reloading needs doing – just do it. Have more reloading consumables than you need so you don’t have to deal with shortages and scramble with a new load with a different component at the last minute. Buy the known good rimfire ammo that suits your rifle by the case (5000x), not the brick (500x).
Develop confidence in your gear, know your zero is 100% and validate trajectory often.
When you arrive at the range, sign in, go socialize and quickly talk to everyone, get your gear out and get to work. Then get your resting bitch face on and ignore anyone who wants your attention – not really but you get my point.
Fill up with fuel the night before so you don’t eat into scheduled practice wasting time with superfluous avoidable things. Don’t do anything else on the way. Put your phone on airplane mode. Schedule the time with the significant other so you are not cock blocked or disturbed. Reciprocate. Make the time count, stick to the plan.
BLACKSHEEPSTRAIGHTSHOOTER
