Building technique through change

Why change?

Too improve of course. However, it is important to figure out not only what to change but also how to change. Some shooters change their technique every time they shoot hoping for that magical discovery. Other shooters decide never to change and consequently are happy to make the same mistakes over and over again. Naturally, if you have discovered how to shoot tens then don’t change a thing. The old adage of “if it is not broken don’t fix it” still holds true today. However, if your technique is not working then you need to consider a change.

Before you consider changing your technique you need to investigate how long did you apply the present technique? Just because something is not working immediately is not a good enough reason to quit it immediately. Always give whatever technique you are adjusting some time to succeed. It takes time for any newly adopted technique to translate into an increase in performance success. How much time do you ask? Depending on what you are trying anything up to 18 months. After that from my coaching experience if it has still not made a marked difference to what you are already doing then it probably never will make a difference. So ditch it!

So how do we change our technique? Firstly be systematic in your approach. Decide carefully on why you need to change a certain element and then decide on how to change it. Always try and improve the fundamental errors which are hindering your performance. A qualified coach can assist you in identifying this! I have said it before in previous articles but shooters tend to be the most self coached sportspeople I have ever met. Most believe that they are able to coach themselves. If they looked at all other sports they would find this to be the exception as opposed to the rule. I have had the fortunate experience of coaching professionally full time for over thirty years in several sports from beginner to elite levels and please hear me loud and clear: self coaching does not work! If you don’t believe me ask Ian Thorpe, ask Cathy Freeman, ask Lleyton Hewitt. Ask yourself why do talented athletes such as Andre Aggasi still have coaches? Need I say any more? What you do need however, is to finds a coach who you can trust and believe in.

Secondly record your changes and documented all results. Be careful. Make your changes early enough to allow for adaptation. Especially prior to important matches i.e., club shoots, major championships or selection trials. More subtle changes like trigger weight, trigger position, shooting glass lenses, rhythm of firing, etc. can be made without too much concern about adaptive time. However, they still should be planned, adhered to for a predetermined period and documented. Only this way can you make an objective evaluation of the value of the change and decide whether to keep the new conditions or go back to the beginning and start again. Of course, sometimes the change is either so good or so bad that it become obvious to either drop or adopt the new technique. Either way, you’ve learned something you didn’t know before and you should regard this as progress. Didn’t Thomas Edison say something like “I have learnt a thousand ways of how not to make a light bulb” when he was credited with its invention. Either way, I think you get my point.

Stance

In building your technique, you might as well start at the ground and work up. Just like building a house: You need a good, strong, well designed foundation to support the rest of the structure! The placement of the feet is a compromise between stress on the ankles and legs and the desire to have the widest possible platform for stability. Ideally, your feet should be shoulder width apart. Then orienting your feet to 45 degrees to the firing line is a reasonable starting place. The feet are set as if along the sides of a triangle – toes out, heels in with the firing line being the base of the triangle and a line through the feet converging behind the shooter as the apex. If you choose to stand with the feet parallel to the firing line be aware of the strain on the neck as you have to twist the head around to sight down the barrel line (this bye the way constricts the carotid artery which is supplying oxygen to the eyes and brain). The head should be erect so that the balancing organs feel correctly oriented.

A good practice routine is to choose a place at home to do your dry firing where you can place and leave foot markers on the floor in relationship to an aiming mark against a wall. This way you can step into place exactly the same way each time you begin your dry training. Very quickly your body will “learn” this position/stance and it will become “natural”. Don’t be afraid to mark your foot position at the range and even during the match (no rules against it). In a long matches you may decide to take a break and it is nice to be able to just step back into the exact place that you had left prior to the break.

Grip Pressure

While every individual is different as to grip strength, amount of body mass (to absorb recoil), etc., there are some guide lines. The “grip” that you take on a pistol must be:

Constant
Adequate to hold the pistol securely during firing
Allow free and independent movement of the trigger finger

It is this last factor that often causes the most problems. If you are “squeezing the sap” out of the grip you will have a very difficult time moving the trigger finger with any finesse. For this reason Free Pistol grips are constructed to require a bent wrist. The more you must depress the hand and thereby take the wrist away from a straight position, the less force can be applied to the grip. This in turn forces you to grip more lightly and thus free the trigger finger for more subtle application of pressure to the 20-50 gram trigger weight of the Free Pistol. As you move up to higher trigger weights, the grip angle becomes less obtuse. In our Free Pistol scenario start out gripping the Free Pistol with about the same pressure you would exert during a relaxed handshake. The grip should help support the gun and give a “secure” feeling without you having to exert a lot of force on it. The key to target shooting is to hold the grip consistently the same way every time. In addition, for example in events like Rapid Fire and Free Pistol, it is critical when the arm is brought up and the gun allowed to settle with the eyes closed that the sights are seen to be aligned.

Conclusion

If there are 100 competitors in a match, rest assured that there are 100 shooters suffering from match pressure. If you are exerting all your mental energy toward executing the correct fundamentals, develop a consistent stance and grips, rather than the arithmetic evaluation of your scorer, your results will reflect what you feel when people congratulate you on a fine performance.

I wish you well and good shooting

Dieter Wilhelmi