TargetTalk

Ok, so a few weeks ago I switched to using a sub-six hold.

How long should it take for me to adjust? I like the fact that it's much more simplified than a 6 o'clock hold, and when everything falls into place, I shoot really well. But doing this consistently is the hard part.

Do I need to be more aware of breathing and foot placement? I've found that my shots are stringing somewhat more vertically than I'm used to.

Thanks!

Oh geeze. Just saw the thread dealing with this topic a few posts down.

Mods, feel free to lock this one.

. . . No sweat Justin some of us would have been delighted to go over all this again from the beginning* . . . !

=8^)

Steve Swartz

* trust me- we will have to anyway in 6 months or so!

Steve Swartz wrote:. . . No sweat Justin some of us would have been delighted to go over all this again from the beginning* . . . !

=8^)

Steve Swartz

* trust me- we will have to anyway in 6 months or so!

Six months - I'll bet you it comes up again much, much sooner than that ;-)

Rob.

And bless them for continuing to ask.

Justin - You have to train long enough to make a new “muscle memory”script for your subconscious to play. I think Steve said something about thousands of repetitions.

I have done some searching around about developing muscle memory with mixed results. At one end, a golf training company says it takes a million repetitions to master an action. Of course they sell a system that speeds the whole process up so that it only takes a small fraction of that.

At the other end, some musician sites feel that as little as 40 perfect repetitions is enough to burn a sequence into memory. The emphasis is on perfect repletions. Sloppy execution messes everything up.

In my quick search, I found no one that cited experimental data to support their assertions. Most of the authors talked about one to several thousand repetitions, much like our Steve. A snowboarding group puts it at 30 minutes a day for 21 days. Again, this assumes that you do perfect repletions and that you are learning a new sequence. If you are correcting a current tape, you need up to 7 times as many repetitions.

A couple of months of nightly hold exercises against a target should convert your hold to sub-6. But be sloppy, half-hearted, or indecisive about what your aiming method is going to be, and it could take forever.

Larry

Andrés Segovia (whom my uncle knew very well) once said something like this ....one must practice every day to be perfect....miss one practice equals a day of no practice, miss two practices equals 6 days of no practice, miss three practices equals a lifetime of no practice..........

He was a perfectionist - a true master of the art of quitar. He only did it by practicing on a daily/hourly basis.

In other words, you make of it what you want of it.

There is an excellent article in August's issue of USA Shooting magazine about 'Developing A Training Plan' authored by the infamous Mr. Bill Pullum. Also look up J.P. O'Conner's articles on the USA Shooting website. J.P. has written many excellent articles that I am sure will help you. Also read the Army Marksmanship article on Pistol Shooting http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Side ... apter1.htm.

I believe I detect (from your inquiry) that you have not mastered the basics and you are taking shortcuts to attain good scores. This won't happen unless you understand and have mastered the basics first.

And to the others who have poked fun at Justin's question. This site is for anyone who wants to ask for help. You will shy away those who need help. If you are replying to a post offering help, then you are not the shooter - you are now the coach! Understand this when fellow shooters ask for help.

Good luck to you Justin!

Matt

Matt wrote:And to the others who have poked fun at Justin's question.

Sorry Matt but so far as I can see nobody has done that.

Sure there are a couple of light-hearted posts but they are in response to Justin's apology for starting a new thread, not his original question.

Go to your local public library/university.

Access peer reviewed academic journal abstracting/database services like ProQuest, ABI/Inform, EBSCO, etc.

Keyword search "Conditioned Response," "Trained Response," even "Sports Training" etc. (note "Muscle Memory" is a slang term that is not really used much outside the military and shooting clubs actually. Not to be "snooty" about it or anything.)

You will find quite a bit of scientific support for a couple of principles:

- For a response to become conditioned ("semi-autonomic") the *same* (with no deviations at all) action must be performed under the *same* circumstances many many times

- This conditioning process is very "fragile" early on; e.g. train on blank targets for a whole week and one session with an aiming target blows all your work right out the window)

- Conditioning occurs whether you want it to or not- do it wrong for a while and you have conditioned a "bad habit" that will be exceedingly hard to break

- Conditioning "uptake" is directly related to amount of mental intensity and physical specificity applied (cross training tears down conditioning and slows the response time considerably)

Lots of other common principles out there but these four seemed very important for shooting in my opinion so they are the ones I remembered. Sorry I don't have the cites handy at the moment- I looked this stuff up a few years back and haven't had to "challenge" it since.

Steve Swartz