Pause for Thought

When I first started writing this, and its previous incarnation, I envisioned it as more than simply an overview of my training and progress. Now, obviously, over the time period I've been writing it, enormous change and progress is visible, and of course, equally visible are the elements which are constantly deficient, probably due to not having a coach to iron out the silly stuff early on. We're getting there though.

This brings me onto this: Part of all good training is spending time reflecting on training as a process in order to plan future training, and part of training is finding your motivation to progress. On that thought, I've been away from the range for a week now, as I've been in Munich at a world cup, helping out with the Irish team. The trip has been all the kick I could ask for in terms of motivation to get back to training and to really direct myself. There's nothing like spending quality time with athletes above your own level to learn about the game on a level you can't experience yourself. I couldn't have spent the time so productively if I'd lived on the range here in a sleeping bag. The trip reaffirmed that I want to shoot internationally. I want to be part of that team. It also taught me a few valuable, practical lessons about shooting.

Probably the single biggest problem anyone who's largely self-taught has is that they can find themselves just shooting to improve, instead of concentrating on the elements which are deficient with a few to improving them. Certainly, this is an issue that plagued me for a long time. There is the other side of it, however, where you get obsesssed with details and while trying to improve individual elements, you can lose sight of the basic mechanics of shooting good shots, or worse, focus only on elements and forget that each shot is unique and distinct from what comes before and what comes after. In short, you just shoot strings of shots on autopilot while watching whatever your focus is for the day. I've been doing that so long, focusing on so many things, that my conception of shooting has switched from a series of processes to a single change of state: From not shooting to shooting, in short, rather than shooting each shot individually, distinctly and perfectly.

This results in psychological fatigue to an extent which prevents good shooting over the period of time necessary to complete any ISSF rifle course of fire. Rather than relaxing, then increasing concentration to fire a shot, then relaxing mentally before firing the next shot, you go from not-shooting to shooting, increasing your concentration level without any rest in sight and subsequently fail to notice as it trails off gradually and the standard of the shooting process goes down. This is why we have a shot routine which comprises phases of low and high concentration, or so we think, at least. If I'm being honest, my application of my shot routine might be excellent for a few shots, but I certainly slip into the habit of throwing shot after shot down the barrel without proper attention to the process as I fatigue physically and mentally. This is the single most important thing I have to change. Initially, this shot routine will have to be comparatively simple until the habit is ironed in. It is quite apparent to me, however, that finding a way to consider shots individually is the single most important thing to allow me to develop coping mechanisms for stress and to achieve consistent results.

My focuses for the next while have to be some of the following:

-Relaxing and feeling for the inner position. Time must be devoted to this at every session, just feeling for balance, feeling the heart rate slow and soften. This must be consistent, shot to shot, and will help to conceive shots individually as well.

-Long follow through to help separate shots mentally.

-Mentally thinking through shot routine before physical performance of each shot. If necessary, talking through the shot routine as I go through it (I want to develop "triggers" as detailed in Mental Training for Shooting in order to define the sections of the shot routine for evaluation and consistent performance.

I'll be meeting with my coach next week in order to compose a training plan leading up towards my one year aim, which is to attend the world cups in Milan and Munich next year if exams allow. Certainly, Munich should be perfectly achievable as it's later, starting on the 20th of May. My goal is to qualify for that and to perform well at it. This means I have to greatly improve my consistency from shot to shot and concurrently develop coping strategies for stress and dealing with unexpected results. I'm optimistic, as ever, but perhaps there's more substance to this plan.

General Update at 13th June 2011

Lots going on lately. I was having conspicuous zero position errors in terms of drifting across the target. I couldn't get balanced, obviously, as the sight picture would slowly move across the target from left to right. I spent quite a bit of time trying to mitigate against this (I say mitigate because I suspect the combination of an ill fitting jacket and a sling that doesn't locate usefully on the arm and the consequent drag and twist down and around the arm to be the source). Ultimately, I've lowered the sling keeper on my arm, which seems to result in less drag and a firmer pull direct to the handstop. I've bought a MEC handstop which is more comfortable on the hand and can be offset to bring the rifle further onto my hand. More contact with the hand spreads the weight and pressure around more of the support area and makes it considerably more comfortable. I was still struggling however, and felt that I was subconsciously holding on target rather than staying deliberately relaxed.

One of the sensations I perceived was a turning effect from the buttplate in the shoulder however, resulting in the rifle not sitting comfortably and steadily in the forward hand and turning in it instead. To this end, I rotated the top of the buttplate towards me and turned the hook in towards my side. This has let the rifle sit right down into my hand, while the sling pulls strongly and directly from my arm and shoulder pressure is maintained strongly by properly positioning my elbow on the mat and carefully placing my hand high on the pistol grip. Triggering is improved, position feels solid and supportive, it drags slightly less overall and it feels positive. If there's a downside it's that there's now a rather strong cant, though it's consistent due to the reduced twisting through the stock. The comfortable head position and consistency should mitigate against any issues that arise, however, and recoil should be solid. I should get to live fire tomorrow and will know more then.

Another issue is that while I have typically raised and lowered the buttplate to compensate for angle changes from range to range, due to the rotation of the buttplate, any changes will have to be tiny, and augmented with handstop alterations. I don't mind this though as long as it sits still for me now. It feels much more balanced in any case and will hopefully yield big results. There's been a lot of fiddling done to get to this point however, so there now needs to be a huge amount of dry-firing and live shooting to reinforce the goodness.

Today I conducted an interesting experiment. We all know that there's no such thing as "the prone position." If you look at ten world class prone shooters, they'll have ten completely individual positions and methodologies. I decided to try replicate the positions of two world class prone shooters at opposite ends of the spectrum of positions to get a feel for what makes each work. I looked at Matt Emmons (High, flat, relatively straight on, lot of tension) and Warren Potent (Low, canted, less tension). As I suspected, the Emmons alteration suited me a lot more, as I've always preferred high positions for the stability benefits, though my left shoulder is considerably higher and my right somewhat lower than his corresponding shoulders. I couldn't get any proper stability from the very low position at all, but obviously they do work for Potent and others like him. This only served to reinforce that the way I shoot suits me better than the other end of the spectrum and that anything I choose to do will work, provided I train at it properly and take care to be consistent. Above all, it reminds us that a well practised mistake is better than the best position and methodology in the world enacted poorly and inconsistently.

I'm not updating regularly these days as daily updates will get information heavy and won't be particularly useful. It's easiest to just review progress intermittently and compare with previous updates. My daily notes in my training diary provide the substance for subsequent training sessions in any case. For now, just lots and lots of shooting to reinforce progress and get the method down pat. That's a fun short term training plan.