Killing Demons

For a while now, my prone shooting has gone to hell, and over the past few days, I've figured it out. Turns out you can't lose 35 lb and still shoot the same position. I'd previously had a fairly high left knee to allow room to breathe and to help control the rifle under recoil. However, analysis over the past few days illustrated that that was forcing me over onto the right hip. Consequently, and because I have a low right shoulder due to the long reach I use, that shoulder was going over and pulling the elbow with it, resulting in the drag to the right I was observing.

The answer, as I found it, was to drop the left knee right down. The left heel is relatively close to the right ankle now, so there's relatively little body behind the rifle. It's a little unconventional, but my hold is very solid now and the zero isn't moving around the place as I'm watching. I've also moved to the older Anschutz style rounded hook buttplate and found its simplicity excellent and its coverage more than satisfactory. In fact, in a couple of ways, it indexes better than the System Gemini I had been using, so I've already arranged a trade for an Anschutz one and some cash. It's a far better fit for me in kneeling than anything I have as well, so I might pick up a second one if I spot it for that.

I'm also playing around with sight raising blocks at 8mm. This is a rather nostalgic look at the feeling I had shooting a wooden stock. I kinda miss that. I wouldn't mind going back to one in the future either I must say. I like the raised, comfortable head position and the width of the stock in the hand is far more comfortable than what I'm using now. Ah well, all thoughts for the future. Right now, I've got a solid position, if a little eccentric, I'm comfortable, relaxed and confident. The releases are assured and very clean and consistent. There's work to be done but it'll largely look after itself as time goes on and I'll deal with problems as they arise.

I only fired twenty shots today, had all the information and reinforcement I needed. Fired about four or five shots on one diagram to confirm zero and sight settings, all tens, moved over one and fired five more, resulting in this group. The squeaky one at five o'clock was me, shading. Turns out the wind was doing feck all as that's exactly where I pointed it.

http://i78.photobucket.com/albums/j111/David_Franklin/Image0083.jpg?t=1309703820

The prone is going nicely now. I'm going to spend another while just reinforcing the good prone stuff, then move onto kneeling for a while, doing the odd day of prone, then more standing with a little bit of prone and kneeling and proceed like that. I'm going to be changing my club at the end of the summer as well in order to make shooting more 3P a realistically feasible proposition, and once I'm back to college I'm going to shoot more 10m stuff as well. Looking forward to further progress.

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.

Hard at Work - Progress Report

I've been working away since I finished my exams on the 12th of May. I've been working on solidity of position and some finesses in my trigger control, my follow through, my reading of conditions and being consciously relaxed throughout the shot. It's been productive. It's a process that's far from done, but I know what I've got work done on and I know what's important but is yet to do.

I'm being somewhat guarded, I know, because I don't want to try evaluate the proportion of individual chunks of work which are completed and what's left to do, lest I underestimate the latter. It feels good though. I'm much more consistent, relaxed and proficient. However, part of the result of that is that I have a much better understanding of the deficiencies of my technique and my process, which is a negative aspect. It's now important to focus on the good work done and to be proactive about fixing what's left to do.

Now, to that end, it's important to take the good first. My prone position is very solid, very comfortable, well balanced and efficient. My aiming process is excellent. I've adopted a good relaxation technique and blended it into my shot routine so that my point of aim is very natural and relaxed, meaning smaller groups. I read conditions better than ever. My triggering and follow-through are improving all the time. The former in particular is getting very good, while the latter needs good work.

The small fly in the ointment however is inconsistent reconstruction of my position from shot to shot and throughout strings. Part of this is an equipment issue. My jacket is too big and drags around at the shoulders, the sling slides down the arm as a consequence. This results in a position that sags and disturbs the balance of tensions. However, this can be mitigated against by repositioning the sling on the arm regularly. This can be done without totally breaking the position, by dropping the rifle out of the shoulder and twitching the sling up the arm with the trigger hand, before replacing the buttplate in the shoulder. The second aspect is twofold; a buttplate to shoulder fit that isn't immediately obviously perfect and a lack of a methodology to reposition the elbow and grip the pistol grip in order to establish a consistently natural and relaxed point of aim from shot to shot. Currently, the NPA can deviate relatively substantially from shot to shot, requiring constant rebuilding and re-zeroing. I may try a different buttplate to provide more uniform contact with the shoulder which will be more easily identifiable. The methodology will have to be developed in training.

So I'm not going to think about how much is yet to be done for sunday. It won't be perfect, I know that, but it'll be better than it would have been a month ago, certainly. My next programme of work on the technical side consists of the following:

Shot routine:

-Methodology of elbow placement and generation of tensions

-Assessment of position from shot to shot to determine the necessity of small alterations in sling position.

Technique:

-Better follow-through

-Consistent triggering and relaxation and NPA

Match tactics and routine:

-Greater self-awareness and ongoing self-evaluation to determine the need for alterations to sling position and tension as indicated in my plans for my shot routine

-Ongoing reinforcement of good shots and good technique.

Mental game:

-I really need to develop this, to be better at positively reinforcing good things that are done in training, feel them out better and make more of their identification.

-Mental programme to coincide with my shot routine. I worked one out, but now I need to improve my focus to make it consistent and apply myself to it.

-I need to practise my routine mentally more often and to set aside time to sit and feel my way through a competition programme.

I feel things are good now, but I'd like to get some more hands-on coaching, to get some time with an electronic trainer and to refine my process. The first step is to develop my shot routine, with the focus on the methodology of elbow placement after I load the rifle. I need to pay more attention to my mental routine also and to focus on developing that when the physical shot routine is more clearly delineated.

I intend to acquire a new sling and handstop. Might shop for those in Munich. I'd love to get a new shooting suit which would be a tidier fit around the chest and shoulders for prone and around the midsection for standing, but I need more physical work and, funnily enough, more money. That might be more viable at the end of the summer. I might also look into a new glove to better support my wrist and pad my hand, but it's not a priority. I can look into all those options while I'm in Munich anyway. For now, let's just say the outlook is positive, and I'm thinking of the current deficiencies more in terms of their representing a clear workload for me, which is distinctly conquerable. Will hopefully have something of use to say after sunday. I feel good about my shooting, so will be a question of my application of my hard work.

Two Matches and Significant Gains

I never got around to posting an update after the nationals, which I should have done, but nevertheless, I'll deal with the subject matter from that now as well as a match from today. Between the two of them they represent a significant advance in my competitive performance.

The nationals last week, I felt reasonably good, the position was solid and my hold and release was good. The primary problem I found in my main match, which I only diagnosed in the sighters for the final, was a tendency to roll my head ever so slightly onto the point of the cheekbone, which compromised my sight picture a lot. Scores weren't all predictable as a result. However, I eventually settled and got stuck into the match, and despite the problems with my sight picture, I managed a 580, enough to make the final in joint third place on the day (though some notable absences would have left me rather further down the list had they been around. The result will be better next time).

In the sighters for the final I realised the issue which would cause my sight picture to blur and distort and which would give the impression, likely from the edge of the lower eyelid, of a straight line through the centre, and made distinct sight pictures difficult to achieve and consequently, I shot a lot of perfectly executed nines, which is about as much use as the proverbial underwater hair dryer. Calls in the final were much more reliable, and though I wasn't perfectly sighted in early in it, with a group around the bottom of the ten ring, I eventually managed a 102.3 and took the bronze. I was happy enough, but there's a lot more to be done.

And now onto the match today, which shows further interesting developments.

I had specifically intended not to go to this match, as I'm in the middle of exams, but I made the decision on friday, and having shot a brutally difficult match in awful switching light conditions and winds that would pick up and back off gradually so that changes were difficult to spot, but large in magnitude. Essentially, it's hard to imagine more difficult conditions to get the hang of. However, I sat down and observed the wind and light patterns for some time before the match and developed my plan.

Starting the first card, I was reasonably comfortable, but the conditions were quite tough to spot accurately as the wind blowing hard from right to left would back off slowly until the first you saw of it was a bullet dropping in the nine to the right of the ten. It was genuinely hard to spot on the flags as they were blowing flat out and let offs were near invisible. There was also an angle change that threw shots quite a chunk along the axis from 1 o'clock to 7 o'clock. I mean to bad nines. This was something I never managed to spot as the match went on. the first card turned out a 190. Inner tens were rare, as conditions were so mobile that I tended to catch the ten loosely as they moved.

The second card, I was about as comfortable physically, but stronger from the point of view of my condition understanding, and I began to shade slightly to better grab the shifting conditions. The light got harder here as well, but I played with the iris and remained comfortable and consistent, not losing any points to it. Eventually, it finished with a 193. The shots that went out were my fault, either holding badly or in one case, overholding and letting off a shot I really should have abandoned.

The third card, I was not comfortable. I wasted a lot of time adjusting things to settle in the sighters, eventually taking my sling in an extra notch (The downhill angle seems to mean that the position slackens and stretches out the longer I shoot) and was pressed for time to finish the card. It finished a 189, all but one of the diagrams having a tight group, though I was starting to find it hard to keep up with constantly flickering conditions, with groups either slightly low or to one side and losing points as a result. The other diagram presented an eight at 7 o'clock which I called a good shot and seems to have represented a violent condition I didn't see on the flags (I had a seven in my sighters in the exact same direction which I also thought was a good shot)

So 572, in truly difficult conditions. I came second in the match, only two points behind the leader, and I know I should have won it as there was so much left in me in terms of my technical shooting. I was focused on the conditions and just wasn't as clean and strong and tidy as I might have been. I'll have to work on the subconscious skill level so that I can devote that much mental energy to condition reading without coming off the boil technically. However, I've always considered my ability to read conditions, interpret them and adjust accordingly to be a personal strength, and to beat Conor, who I consider a technically much better shooter (for now), by four points and to have held it together better leaves me pretty happy with my own performance. The focus on the academic stuff meant my shooting wasn't that great. Had I had my head in the technique to my customary level, I could have shot 580+ today, which would have been a good achievement.

In any case, the next match is the DURC 50m Open in MNSCI on the 29th of May, and it's a qualifier for my big goal for the year, the European Championships in Belgrade, Serbia. I'm finished my exams on thursday so will have had two weeks and sixty-odd hours of solid training time between now and then. I think I can pull myself up to a comfort level significantly above that I felt today, particularly on the better and more comfortable range. I'm happy with my condition reading and my shading and tactics. The technique is great when I can focus on it, but that's not always easy in conditions like today, so provides a useful focus over the next while to increase it to subconscious perfection and consistency. I'm optimistic about coming at least very close to the qualifying score on the 29th, and I expect to achieve it in time to qualify if not then. I'm going to earn it. For now, two weekends, a bronze and a silver. It's getting better and better.

Nice Confidence Session Before the Nationals

Always good to finish feeling in control before a competition. I've been listening to the Bassham stuff on mental management a good bit and the result is that I'm feeling my shot routine better in terms of a process and accompanying series of images. I've also been experimenting with a sling position on my forward arm, coming around the wrist rather than the back of the hand, and the results are very positive. The changes now are that I feel my head sitting better on top of the rifle, much more vertical sense of support, and my comfort levels are much better, from shot to shot and after finishing. Recovery time for comfort levels is greatly improved. My condition wasn't the best for shooting this evening. A long day hunched over a desk, staring at paper and screens wasn't doing much good for either muscles or eyes (I couldn't hold a sight picture for more than about three seconds) but the process was good, and it was consistent. Trigger control is greatly improved, though consistency still needs to be better. A couple of shots broke unexpectedly today for loose tens, but most were well controlled. It's an element of the process that's still developing. When my eyesight was proving troublesome, I trusted to the inner position and the hold, and shot well. I sighted in and shot two groups of ten, for a 197, and all the bad shots were well known. This is the final group. The 9.9 wasn't something I saw, but with my dodgy eyes, who knows... I'm happy that it felt controlled anyway. There were some looser tens where I might have overheld or was a little rough on the trigger, but it's all coming together.

Mental Training and Approach to Training for Next Three Months

I've finally gotten hold of the Lanny Bassham materials on mental training for shooters from a Friend after quite a long time of meaning to get them and never getting around to it. I listened to all of Mental Management for Shooting Sports yesterday, and far from feeling bored and lectured at, it was fascinating. I intend listening to this often to reaffirm my approach, but most importantly, I've taken his points on progressive training and have set myself a timeframe within which to work, over the next three months, on significantly improving the process of my shooting.

He advocates training in three stages: Dry-firing, group-shooting and live shooting, on both an individual session basis and on a larger scale, over a season. What this means is that the process becomes much, much more important than the result, as, ignoring groups, which merely provide a reference for the observer, perhaps only ten to twenty shots will be individually observed and remarked on out of perhaps a hundred processes. I am going to make this a feature of all of my training sessions from now on, and am going to condense a season's worth of progressive training into the next three months, focusing heavily on dry-fire for the next month or so (and moving the rifle home at the weekend to dry-fire against the wall, since it will help me avoid temptation to train in college before the exams), then shifting the emphasis towards group-shooting, and then live fire for the last month or so. I hope to see a significant improvement in my performance by then, and hopefully in time to qualify for the European Championships, the qualifications for which I expect will begin in May or June.

The other element I took from the lecture was the correlation of a mental programme with the physical shot routine. I've since sketched out my shot routine again and noted the stages in the mental programme of visualisation and positive reinforcement against their corresponding points on the shot routine. This is proving extremely interesting for my mental visualisation (What Bassham calls rehearsal) as I can see everything so clearly in my head now, while focusing on the process. As I'm loading the rifle I'm visualising the sight picture, the little hope of the foresight and the settling down on point of aim again, feeling the little thud of recoil. As I'm settling I'm noting the wind flags and the mirage and picturing them exactly as they will be when I break the shot. As I'm checking my natural point of aim and inner position I'm imagining dead calm, silence and the flat, even feeling of the trigger against the second stage. As I'm on aim, I'm visualising the ten as my finger sits on the trigger (An issue I've had is I've found myself taking a neutral approach to the shot. "Let's see what happens if I pull now" sort of thinking, rather than being dead certain and expecting the ten. This is what I want to change here.), imagining I'm teasing the aiming mark back through the foresight as I release the shot.

I also liked his ideas on rehearsing the whole shot process mentally before beginning. I'm going to make a point of starting every training session kneeling on the mat, feeling my way through the whole process mentally at least ten times before I get down to shoot at all. I'm going to be positive, relaxed and focused. I'm more than capable of the 587 for Belgrade. I'm capable of 600. I shoot good, deliberate shots. Shooting good shots is what I do. It's my routine. Shooting good shot after good shot is just exactly what I do. I'll update later.