TargetTalk

Hello everyone,
Question for prone specialists, National Team members, or coaches. Question - are there drills or training programs to slow and tighten a prone position hold? My hold on the 50 m target is currently 9.2-9.3 decimal value score and I am trying to slow and work that to a 10 ring hold. Can anyone offer guidance or steps to get to an advanced high score?
Background - from SCATT training in the past week I have probable issues over holding at least. Any ideas?

Thanks, Tony

A properly built prone position will automatically give you a hold that is decent. Without seeing your position, I cannot comment on it. A common thing among newer shooters is having a sling that is too loose and/or and handstop that is too close. If you have a very tight position, this will help keep your hold well within the 10 ring.

Another thing is NPA. If your NPA isn't centered, you will be using muscles to bring the rifle into the center and that will add tremors to your position. The key to NPA is to be totally relaxed. The shoulders and the left arm are sometimes areas that will tense up without the shooter realizing it. The only thing that should have any tension in it is your trigger hand.
Matt

Thanks Matt. I think you hit on something re tremors. My non shooting shoulder tenses up slightly. That is consistent with my SCATt trace. I shoot a high arm angle position with my arm at about 45 degrees and the rest of my body straight on pointing to the target. One other thing I forgot was I feel like I am almost forcing my head down on to the cheek piece. Would you recommend tightening the sling, and lowering the cheekpiece? How do I relax the shoulder? Thanks Tony.

Further to Matt's reply, you might like to investigate Progressive Muscular Relaxation - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressiv ... relaxation
and Autogenics - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autogenic_training

Some yoga techniques are good too.

K.

ABoyd57946 wrote:One other thing I forgot was I feel like I am almost forcing my head down on to the cheek piece.

If you feel like you're forcing anything then you need to fix it.

If you don't have access to a coach, get a friend to take a bunch of photos of you in position and post them here. It's easier for people to see rather than trying to have to visualise it from a description.

I'd second the progressive muscle relaxation mentioned by KennyB above. It's useful for finding tension where you mightn't know you have it. Make sure you stretch properly before shooting too in order to minimise the difference in your position between first and last shot.

A nine ring hold tells me your position is not tight enough. My suggestion is forget the SCATT and get a scope to gauge your hold. Make the sling tighter, relax EVERY muscle and work on getting your hold smaller. You should be able to hold less than a bullet hole at 100 yds.

Another issue is pulse beat. You didn't say if your 9 ring hold includes pulse. You must train yourself to shoot between pulse beats.

Hello all,
Thank all of you for your helpful responses. Here is a reply for suggestions thus far.

Re coach/team I don't have one available sadly where I live. Wish I did. Talking to high level shooters, this site, and Ways of the Rifle are my primary resources.

Re forcing anything, will redo position to minimize cheek piece/shoulder tension and post pics once I think I have a solid position. I have already started and have noticed a small difference.

Re relaxation training will step up working on this more frequently.

Re shooting between heartbeats will also focus on this. Any good resources on how to do learn?

Thanks in advance, Tony

Generally speaking most people can almost get rid of pulse or make it such that it isn't noticeable. I feel no pulse myself when shooting, and when I've coached other rifle shooters I can't recall ever seeing pulse in their scatt traces. So I'd suggest you worry about getting the position solid before thinking about heartbeats and shooting between them. Of course if you experience bad pulse then you'll need to alter the sling position to try and reduce it, and/or look for other sources of pulse.

Rob.

Hi Tony,

the pulse technique might be something to try once you've got your hold smaller.

Anyway - have a look at this :

http://www.scatt.com/articles/17/pulse-technique/



BTW, what sort of numbers are you getting for the 10.0 and 10.5 percentages?

Ken.

Thank you Ken.

Re numbers here is my last SCATT session before posting this thread. SCATT session dated 17 November.

10 27-28%
10.5 6%
10a0 66-70%
10a5 24%

Can you kindly share what these numbers mean? I don't have definitions for them.

Re settings F-coeff was 27, control interval was 1. Other numbers are zero.

Kind regards, Tony

Saw the SCATT article Ken, thanks! I will practice this once I get my position fixed and sorted out.

What are good 10.0 and 10.5 numbers? Objectively, I presume mine are not. Any thoughts welcome.

Kind regards, Tony

ABoyd57946 wrote:Thank you Ken.

Re numbers here is my last SCATT session before posting this thread. SCATT session dated 17 November.

10 27-28%
10.5 6%
10a0 66-70%
10a5 24%

Can you kindly share what these numbers mean? I don't have definitions for them.

Re settings F-coeff was 27, control interval was 1. Other numbers are zero.

Kind regards, Tony

10 refers to amount of time in the 10-ring, 10a is amount of time in an area the size of the 10-ring. I'm trying to remember but 10a, should be well over 90%, I think we stated +95% for regional squad shooters - so those that average between 580-590 ish.

<just checked and we use 97% 10a, 75% 10.5a>

Also what is your trace length ? That also indicates movement in the final second and for our squad shooters, most were about 50-60mm.

At some point I'll plug myself into my scatt with the rifle and see what it says. I'm not in the same league as the above but my average is probably about 97 indoors - 25y 10-bull target, 96 outdoors on ISSF 50m targets.

Rob.

P.S. Happy to take a look at your scatt trace if you want me to, pm me and I'll send you my email address.

Hello Rob, sent you a pm with my email and additional details on my SCATT session I will send you. Thanks for your help. Kind regards, Tony

My mistake - I meant 10a0 and 10a5. Apologies.

As Rob says, these are an indication of how good your hold is.

I don't pay TOO much attention to the L value - I'd rather have the yellow trace coiled up into a small area than a large spread out area with the same L value.
That said, your !0a0/10a5 and L value do tend to go hand in hand. As the percentages go up the L value comes down.

Relaxation and "Natural Point of Aim" are the areas that sound like they need work.
Drills like:

Relax
Aim.
Close Eyes.
Breathe in
Breathe out
Open Eyes.
Check Aim.
Repeat.

If you're not coming up back on the target then you need to adjust your bodies orientation to the target until you can do this consistently.

An interesting variation once you've got this is to add in "Squeeze the trigger" after "Breathe out" and see how well you can group with your eyes shut.


Ken.

ABoyd57946 wrote:Saw the SCATT article Ken, thanks! I will practice this once I get my position fixed and sorted out.

What are good 10.0 and 10.5 numbers? Objectively, I presume mine are not. Any thoughts welcome.

Kind regards, Tony

Just for your reference - I shot the following session on my new Scatt system earlier today using my Anschutz 2013 in a 2018 Precise stock with a Leupold 3 X 9 X 33mm scope set at 9X with a 1/8 MOA dot. I am a 57 year old NOOBI SBP shooter.

Scatt settings

bullet dispersion - 0
shot moment - 0
F coefficient - 30
Control interval - 1

Target - A27
integer score - 400
fractional score - 421
average steadiness in 10 ring - 99%
average trace length - 59.9mm
diametrical dispersion - 17mm

I don't know what to call the last column in the display after
# - result - time - 10.0 - length - ????
but that number was 3.8 for the match. Is it "aim breech gap" ?

I then went to the range later in the day and shot a 400 32X on an NRA A-23 reduced target at 25 yds indoors on a very noisy pistol range using Eley "Target" ammo and also a Weaver T-36 scope with no shooting coat and just a service rifle sling.

This should give you something to compare to hopefully.

Thanks DavePat, that is a great benchmark to compare. Thank you for sharing and good shooting.

Q - how did you get the NRA conv prone targets on the scatt? I'd love to have those. Kind regards, Tony

Hi Tony

Just been to try and get you some info so you can compare but I can't find the 10a0 and 10a5 info. I have not used this before and it doesn't seem to be showing. Can you point me in the right direction??
Also if you want my scatt files happy to send them over good and bad haha.

Henry

Further to my post above I have found 10a0 and 10a5. They don't come set in the SCATT software so had to tick the boxes in the options section.

ABoyd57946 wrote:Thanks DavePat, that is a great benchmark to compare. Thank you for sharing and good shooting.

Q - how did you get the NRA conv prone targets on the scatt? I'd love to have those. Kind regards, Tony

Tony - the NRA targets are in the latest version of the software that I just downloaded from the Scatt web site.