prolonging concentration

[ronpistolero]

I have been shooting the air and free pistol on and off for the past 20 years or so. My main problem has always been squeezing, but I have improved on it already. Quite significantly, as a matter of fact, as I used to jerk my squeeze nearly 50% of the time. Now, my new concern is a shortened time of concentration. I guess it was the improved squeezing that gave me a fairly decent score of 556(AP), but there were quite a few times that a few milliseconds prior to the breaking of shot, my mind got "loose", as in as wild as you could use that word.

I'd really appreciate a comment or some tips with regards to prolonging and /or strengthening concentration.

Best regards,
Ron

[BPBrinson]

Concentration is like a muscle , the more you "work it out" the stronger your concentration. I meditate about 1/2 a hour a day and it has helped me a great deal. To start, there is a lot of books w/ different techniques, also some guided meditation CD's. One way is to get comfortable, close your eyes and feel the air as you breath in, pay particular attention to the top or transition from inhale to exhale. It is impossible to "think" while you do this. If a thought enters your head, let it follow its course, and then release it.
Another exercise is to find a small object, anything, a coffee drop stain on your cup, I like a small flower or a drop of water setting on a surface, or the front sight of your pistol as it sets supported w/ the proper sight alignment. Do the same as the breathing exercise. "Zone out" , clear your mind the best you can. If a thought does come in, keep it positive. If the thought is negative, turn it around to a positive. You can also visualize being inside the drop, flower, front sight. Some people may think I am weird, but sometimes I can smell the flower, feel the water, smell the metallic smell of the front sight, however I have been doing this for some time. I know this is my imagination but all the top athletes say they rely on their imagination to perform at their top level.
Try these techniques a few minutes at a time, not as easy as it sounds at first, but make the time every day and the results are amazing in every aspect of your life. Has it worked for me? It has not hurt, and it has reduced my stress levels a great deal. I do have jumps in my score every so often.

Brooks

[2650 Plus]

Your scores are exceptional , Please accept my congratulations. I deal with concentration in a somewhat different manner. I use two different techniques. First I start the pressure on the trigger sooner in the shot sequence and second begin the total concentration on sights later in the sequence. I believe you can exibit better control by coordinating the control factors to your limitations. Control factors being duration of best hold, the time it takes for you to apply sufficient pressure to the trigger to fire the shot, How long can you consistantly maintain total concentration on sight allignment. and how long you can keep your eyes focussed on the front sight with out burning in an image or loosing precice focus. Some of this problem is also affected by your breathing pattern as it must support sufficient oxygen for every thing else to work. I hope this rather long winded dissertation can help Good Shooting Bill Horton

[BPBrinson]

Bill, re-read my post, It has nothing to do with shooting,or ALL about shooting , depends on ones perspective. The original question was about concentration.

Brooks

[Fred Mannis]

Some interesting stuff here on mental training including concentration exercises similar to what Brooks has described http://www.targetshooting.ca/. Go to the Training Section

[2650 Plus]

I went back and re read to see what I missed. yours was indead a non specific description of techniques and training to extend the ability to concentrate. Mine had to do with something that might help if your ideas fail. The first real coach I ever had used a pencil eraser and had the shooters concentrate on the very smallest part that he could percieve for steadily extending periods of time . That exercise may have helped but all we wanted to do was get to the range and shoot. Bu the way the first coach was also the best. Good Shooting Bill Horton

[BPBrinson]

Most of us cannot live fire as often as some, however we all are capable of seeing the range , bench, pistol, sights and even the target in our mind. We can not only see, but feel the wind, the pistol in our hands and the recoil. We can smell the grass, gun oil and powder smoke. If we can visulize the perfect shot, how it looks, feels,sounds, and smells, I believe in some ways that is better than putting rounds down range, unless you can execute a perfect shot every time. There have been many studies on this. Also Lanny teaches this. I think the Asian shooters are dominating much of our sport due to a philosiphy that they are raised with, which teaches focus and concentration, thru mental disipline that includes silent mind and visualization. i have heard somewhere that Brian Zins visualizes a whole match before the match. What about it Brian? This is also a great artical http://www.bullseyepistol.com/zeninfo.htm

Brooks

[Steve Swartz]

Couple of good posts already.

Check out Terry Orlicks book (and other books on mental training; this forum has a ton of posts on both Sports Psychology and Mental Training).

Some examples of what you'll find:

1) 100 numbers randomly scattered on a 10x10 grid. Have someone pick a number at random and look for every number counting up from the "seed" number. Or counting down. Or every other number counting down/up. If this isn't dicy enough try only prime numbers or some other criteria. The point is this builds "situational awareness and focus" (as well as physical eye conditioning yeah I know that last part sounds strange). Use multiple grids all with different number sequences.

2) Tied to meditation points raised by Brooks- have a very complex, detailed pattern (hindu meditation/prayer tapestry) and start by concentrating on seeing "all" of it and then narrowing mental and physical focus into seeing narrower and narrower level of detail until yoiu are concentrating on one simple shape on the pattern.

3) During training, pick other elements of technique to focus on that "bracket" the "Moment of Truth" (calm, settled, focused on front sight/sight alignment just prior to shot break). In other words, focus on entry into settle and follow through . . . or sight alignment during sag to settle and follow through . . . etc. This will "extend" your period of peak concentration around the critical time period.

Anyhow lots of other ideas and training drills for improving concentration (both intensity/depth and duration) are available.

Terry Orlicks book is focused specifically on this very question. Lanny Basshams stuff touches on it but is focused on other aspects.

[FP570]

Good Question: I used to try and concentrate the whole match- what a mistake. A sports psychologist at the OTC kind of tuned the light bulb on for me. She suggested I try to sharpen my focus for short amounts of time as opposed to trying to hold it for a long time. She said a human can hold tight concentration for usually thirty seconds- tracked on a scanner of some sort. She also made the analogy of concentration as kind of like traveling into a funnel- we start wide and narrow our focus down to a narrow stream. When asked about shooting she thought it was the best example of this funnel analogy since we lift the gun and tend to build focus as we get closer to shot release. I our sport though we need to focus through shot release(follow through). For this she had us train re-aligning the sights after the shot release- this helped develop the subconscious into thinking that we were not done concentrating untill after we got the sight picture back. I found it worked for me.

[BPBrinson]

Thanks, FP, I had never thought of it that way, the funnel is a great analogy. You are right, I have not noticed my focus exercises increasing the lenght of my concentration, but has increased the "quality" of my concentration. I still have to let the shot break in about the same time. Now what about visualization?

Thanks, Brooks

[ronpistolero]

Hi All,

Many thanks for the inputs and I do hope that such varying thoughts may be of great deal of help not only for myslef but for others with the same concerns.

Fred, thanks for the link but I have yet to read through it.

Without hoping to open a sort of Pandora's Box here, Bill, your approach seems to be one leaning more on the practical side, with which I outrightly tend to agree in that I have to recognize the current state of mind and body I have and learn to maximizing such. The results being as immediate as after the shot is fired. And thanks for the complement though I know I could do better.

Steve, Brooks, your thoughts are exactly what asian and european shooters are emphasizing on. Wasn't there a book about Zen and shooting? I can agree with the importance of mental training and that it seems to be most difficult to do due to its intangibility.

FP, may I ask you to elaborate more with re to the follow through? I mean that's pretty much basic but I know I have taken much of it for granted. I do the follow through but I seem to have lost the essence of having to do it and not have learned from it in terms of concentration.

Best regards,

Ron

[Steve Swartz]

There was a thread awhile back about "physical" vs. "mental" follow through.

Basically a lot of people think of follow through as being a "physical" act (ie get back on the sights) but it could be useful to look at it as more of a mental skill.

Your brain needs to be *staying* on the sights (alignment), not "getting back on" the sights.

More discussion than that of course but that was the nub of it IIRC.

[ronpistolero]

Hello Steve,

That's where I fancy your thoughts. Defining what is difficult to describe. That's basically it,..when I follow through, it is "merely" a physical effort to retrain my eyes on the front sight mostlly because that's what all the others say. I do get better results when I do the follow through but to be aware of the mental side of it never really hit me. I see our consistently top shooter execute a follow through after each shot, albeit quite short in my opinion (maybe 1.5 seconds, tops) but the small muzzle rise with his morini noticeably returns to its aiming area very consistently as I observe.

Thanks for your inputs. They are indeed valuable for my shot analysis.

Ron

[Steve Swartz]

That's one of the benefits of the rubber band/tennis ball drill ("discussed" in a separate thread)- it is difficult to keep focusing on sight alignment even though forces outside your control (recoil, tugging ont he muzzle, etc.) is trying to bring your sights out of alignment.

Sometimes it is a good thing to understand the actual purpose of a drill. That helps you to get the benefit from it.

[FP570]

Well I agree there is mental/physical follow through, but I don't think you can have one without the other. You need both. If the mind shifts during the shot process then there is no follow through and vice versa. By coming back on point as you stated, I believe you are training the subconscious for follow through via a physical que. If you concentrate through the execution of the shot I believe you subconscious starts to recognize that as " normal" and thus starts to do it automatically with the subconscious mind. I may not be conveying it as well as others but if you can make a physical act as natural as possible, like a reaction it will be performed better. Does that make sense?

[BPBrinson]

I have noticed a phenomenom. I shoot a Morini FP and when the shot breaks, and my concentration follows thru the shot, I see the front sight rise to the upper left corner of the target frame, as it should. This is the strange thing that happens sometimes: I allow the muzzle to follow thru and fall in recovery of the recoil. The front sight falls right back to the same sweet spot of the sight allignmnt of the shot and goes "click"! Every time it happens it is a 10 or deep 9. I have theorized that is the subconscious is firing the second shot because it sees proper alignment again. I replay the shot in my head and remember that I was focused on the front sight all the way thru to the other side of the shot. Longer than usual. I have been working on that happening more often. Just thought I would share that observation. That was hard to put into words!

Brooks

[FP570]

Brooks-you got! That is what we all want.

[Steve Swartz]

Brooks, FP570

Yep to all- I think we're talking about the same thing with slightly different perspectives.

If my brain focuses on keeping the sights aligned *through* the shot all of hte physical stuff falls into line . . . if the physical stuff is "burned in" through training the mental side follows as well.

It's not really "one or the other."

But I have spoken to a lot of shooters who only look at or think about the "physical" side (recovery) and they miss the whole point.

[deadeyedick]

ditto

[ronpistolero]

That's one of the benefits of the rubber band/tennis ball drill ("discussed" in a separate thread)- it is difficult to keep focusing on sight alignment even though forces outside your control (recoil, tugging ont he muzzle, etc.) is trying to bring your sights out of alignment.

Hi Steve,

Would you mind going into specifics as to how I could do this exercise?


Regards,

Ron