2006 New Year's Training Exercise

The following was presented to the Bullseye List as a possible training experiment for the New Year. Although there hasn't been a great deal of feedback, what I did receive was very positive. I especially liked the reply from a 2650 shooter, which indicated that this was the way he shot normally.

Original post:

I'm looking for some volunteers to provide feedback for an experiment in training. Anybody up to it?

Here's the routine:

1. Totally empty gun; check it several times. Pointed in a safe direction down range, without looking through the sights, dry fire. Repeat a dozen times. Focus on a detemined, smooth, relatively fast trigger. Memorize the feeling.

2. Same exercise as 1, but use the sights against a blank target. Again, focus on the trigger.

3. Something a bit different - add in a bull, but proceed as follows:

Bring the aligned sights to the top of the backer and pause. Now let them settle down to the bull, and just as the sights touch the black on their way in, apply the trigger as practiced in steps 1 and 2. As you bring the sights into the bull, stop around the middle as normal, but don't let anything about the sight picture interfere with your trigger operation. No matter what the sights do with the bull, operate the trigger the way you did for steps 1 and 2. If you fail to complete the trigger operation by a very short time after you stop, abort the shot and start over. Your subconscious may try to coincide the stop in the center with the hammer fall. Don't consciously try to do anything with it; just let the subconscious work it. As long as the trigger is the same as your practice in steps 1 and 2, consider it good, no matter what it looked like.

4. The test of the recipe: Perform the same routine as step 3 with live fire. Use twenty shots with sustained fire targets at proper distance and score after twenty. Record the score and keep track for ten sessions. The sessions can be at any interval, equal time or not, but try to use a different day for each session.

At the end of ten sessions, let me know your impression and scores as well as what caliber; on line would be fine, but not necessary. Also, if able, compare your results with your Timed Fire Match score average. If you can, give the average before you tried this ten session routine and after.

Extra notes:

try to be as smooth as possible in everything

don't fix any sight picture error if any occur

accept all instances where the sights come into the black

don't race to the center; just naturally settle into it

make sure your trigger operation is a determined, smooth, relatively quick action

Thanks to those who may be able to try this out for me.

Followup post to answer questions:

This shouldn't be considered a first shot drill where you are trying to be sure to fire within a time limit. The results of this drill should be a procedure that will allow you to fire first shot drills, but the exercise is designed to be a dynamic activity instead of a response to a static state. This drill should be approached as an exercise to allow you to operate the trigger without looking for a perfect picture. Once we can remove the conscious telling us to wait for something better, we should be able to purify the trigger. We still need a start signal, so I've chosen the touching of the black, which incidentally is close to what many do for sustained fire.

This exercise will probably fall in line with the first shot drill. You can use the target movement, or you can still use the black appearance behind the sights, but don't approach the drill as a race with time. Approach the drill as a means to have the same trigger through all the steps, whatever that feel/timing turns out to be.

I hope this made the exercise clearer. Thanks to all who have responded.

Take Care,
Ed Hall