How often do you abort a shot ?

[Fred Mannis]

Yur'yev has considerable discussion on aborting shots in the chapter on Free Pistol. (in 'Competitve Shooting') Well worth reading. On the question of frequency, he says:

"Judging by the experience of a large circle of leading shooters, it can be concluded that most shooters fire about 50% of their shots on the first attempt, 30-40% of their shots on the second attempt, and 10-20% of their shots on the third attempt."

He provides a table of data to support this conclusion. He discusses this not only from the perspective of avoiding a poor shot, but also that each try consumes energy and that a shooter without a proper match plan, who aborts a lot, may get poor shots at the end as his muscles fatigue and he runs out of time.

[F. Paul in Denver]

I agree (as usual) with Rob - every next shot (whether it follows an aborted shot or a deep ten) is another fresh shot - period. Spending any time thinking about why you decided to abort the previous attempt or the negative aspects of a previous shot is likely to be very distracting and tension inducing. Doing so will likely yield precisely the same result you were trying to avoid by aborting the shot in the first place.

[Guest]

Fred:

You're speaking of Table 12 (pg 283) in the Free Pistol chapter (13)? Maybe it's me, but I found the table and explanation didn't seem to match exactly so perhaps we are misinterpreting the finer points. The conclusion that most shooters release the shot on the first attempt, fewer on the second, etc. is somewhat obvious, but that's not what the table shows necessarily . . .

What struck me as being a "Wow! Who'd A Thunk It!?" result from the table was the fact that the advanced shooters aborted an awfully HIGH number of shots!

If you are putting the gun down loaded only once in a ten shot string you are aborting nowhere near as often as you should.

If a world-class shooter aborts 4-9 (!) times in every ten shot string, based on what they are seeing, how often should the rest of us scrubs be aborting?

A lot more often than that!

Then again, this might be more "Soviet Era Dizinformatya!"

Steve Swartz

[dflast]

The results of this have been dismal. I find myself trying over and over to get off the originally-aborted shot, or, in the above example, pressing too hard on the trigger so it releases early.

This parallels my own experience. I'm relatively new to the game, air (540 on a good night) for about a year, free (510 ditto) about nine months, and working at overcoming the insidious chicken finger. I abort one or more times maybe a quarter of my shot attempts.

I haven't succeeded yet in reliably making the retry of an aborted shot into a "new" shot: lowering the pistol and re-running the routine of visualization, stilling myself, breathing and raising the pistol as though it were an entirely new shot, more often than not brings me back to the very same hold and paralyzed trigger finger I just aborted. Once I actually manage to let the shot go, then the next one is entirely different story....

-David

[ColinC]

Steve notes that the top shooters tend to abort a lot more than us hacks.

Several times I have had the pleasure of watching one of Australia's Olympic shooters in air pistol. She probably only gets her shot away on first attempt about a third of the time. Other times she has 2 or 3 attempts.

She never seems to be pressed for time because she bails out early, sometimes after having her arm up for only a second or two. Obviously if all is not right to progress with the shot, she recognises it early and aborts. None of this energy-sapping, holding our arm up for 20 seconds and then pulling out, only to have to repeat the effort. After an aborted attempt she goes into reflection mode, looking anywhere but the target and resumes after about 20 seconds.

I probably don't pull out of a shot often enough, however, the difference is that she can recognise when to pull out while I keep my arm up, hoping that the sights will align perfectly so I can get my shot away. And what happens? The first time my sights wobble back to the perfect spot, I consciously pull the trigger rather than having the "zen moment" of the pistol going off "automatically."

I have promised myself this year, that I am going to abort more often and abort early in an effort to improve my scores.

[RobStubbs]

Steve notes that the top shooters tend to abort a lot more than us hacks.

Several times I have had the pleasure of watching one of Australia's Olympic shooters in air pistol. She probably only gets her shot away on first attempt about a third of the time. Other times she has 2 or 3 attempts.

She never seems to be pressed for time because she bails out early, sometimes after having her arm up for only a second or two. Obviously if all is not right to progress with the shot, she recognises it early and aborts. None of this energy-sapping, holding our arm up for 20 seconds and then pulling out, only to have to repeat the effort. After an aborted attempt she goes into reflection mode, looking anywhere but the target and resumes after about 20 seconds.
<snip>
I have promised myself this year, that I am going to abort more often and abort early in an effort to improve my scores.

Colin,
Bearing in mind that we train for our competitions and reproduce the exact sequence of events in shooting a shot and a match - <don't we ?> There should be no extra effort involved in aborting a lot in a match no matter how long we hold for before aborting or how often we do it. One of the coaching / training philosophies is to train hard and compete easy. i.e. train for 100 shots / 3 hours (or whatever) for a 60 shot / 1 3/4 hr comp.

Also we should not be aiming to abort more, rather we should be aiming to shoot good shots or recognise when there are errrors or problems. So for example think about how many times you let the shot go when you knew you shouldn't have. The aim is to get that value to zero (or as close as possible) rather than suggest we should about 1/2 or 1/3 of the time. ABorting a lot suggests something is wrong. Now it may well be technical but I would guess maybe half the time it's something in the mental approoach - it's the latter we should be aiming at reducing. If for example you abort on 50% of your shots you are running through the shot process for 90 repetitions (without sighters) in a 60 shot comp. In an AP60 comp that means you need to raise pretty much every minute. If you get the mental game right that figure reduces and you have more time per shot, or to take a rest mid competition.

Rob.

[metallyrob]

Hi there all.
The art of shooting is when not to shoot!!

In my experience as a (rifle) shooter and pistol and rifle trainer i have observed that when the level of the shooter goes up (experience wise and scores) more abortions occur and they tend to happen earlier in the shooting procedure. Purely becourse the shooter is more aware of the little errors he/she makes leading up releasing the shot.

Greetings

Robert