Hitting Big Problems

It wasn't me!

Okay, well, the last couple of trips I've made to the range have been pretty much a disaster. Just haven't been scoring the way I was beforehand. I've been making out plans just to help myself develop more routine, but my scores are going backwards. I think I'm going to take a week or so off until the DURC Open, see if my head clears and if that does me any good, but has anyone got any troubleshooting solutions for stuff like this? Realistically, making my routine more consistent should have brought up scores, but they dropped like a stone.

Sparks

Return to the basics. Look at your position from first principles and build it up from there. There's a tendency to let the position drift because you're watching things like where your hands are on the stock and so forth, instead of fundamental things like where your hips are and how your spine is aligned.
Get someone else to watch you shoot and check your consistency between shots.
Shoot, break position and walk away for a moment (or just get up if you're shooting prone), then rebuild position and shoot again; and repeat that several times.

IRLConor

There are two things that I would say to that:

• Perhaps you're trying too much all at once? Try building up your routine bit by bit.
• Sometimes your training scores will plummet and you won't find the cause. It sucks, but there are limits to the analysis you can do on your own training regime.

It wasn't me!

The thing is, it's largely been consistency of position I've been working on since this has degraded so significantly. I've been approaching it from a very fundamental point of view, overall outer position, stability, head and eye alignment and trigger control have been the things I've been working on lately, and since I've started this, rather than just "trying to shoot better", the scores have plummeted. I'm also finding myself less comfortable overall.

Sparks

If you're getting a consistent position and it's uncomfortable and you shoot badly in it, then you need to get a different consistent position
This is prone smallbore, right?
Are you trying to reload in the shoulder?

It wasn't me!

I don't take the rifle down to reload, because I can comfortably do it without doing so, but I do reposition it in my shoulder for consistency each time.

Sparks

I really wouldn't do that. It only feels like it's consistent. In actual fact, it's all over the place. One of the WTSC smallbore shooters was doing that before going to kuortane last november. They strapped him into a noptel and took video footage of him shooting, and the upshot of it was that he couldn't tell when he was being inconsistent, but it was clearly visible on the video. He swore off the practise right there and then. Take the buttplate out of the shoulder and reload.

It wasn't me!

Sparks wrote: »

I really wouldn't do that. It only feels like it's consistent. In actual fact, it's all over the place. One of the WTSC smallbore shooters was doing that before going to kuortane last november. They strapped him into a noptel and took video footage of him shooting, and the upshot of it was that he couldn't tell when he was being inconsistent, but it was clearly visible on the video. He swore off the practise right there and then. Take the buttplate out of the shoulder and reload.

Hmm, okay, I shall definitely try it so.

I do think a week or so not shooting before the DURC Open might help me get my head clear and I can shoot on the day then without over-analysing everything and just focus on trying to put bullets in bulls. Any thoughts on whether such a break might be productive?

Sparks

Breaks are definitively a good idea. The russians have pretty much already proven it, back during the US vs USSR period. The question isn't whether you should have recovery periods, but how long and how frequent they should be, and that's something you'll have to do some work to find out for yourself. Personally, a break from technical work of a week wouldn't do me any good, it's too short (whereas a week off from physical work would be too long).

If you're planning on stopping now, however, do not change anything. Moving over to reloading out of the shoulder is a pretty big change in your routine - and changing right before a match is very counter-productive.

It wasn't me!

I was thinking of still doing a bit of dry-firing every day, and perhaps even just getting kitted out and lying in position, testing for inner position as much as outer, but I don't think I'll head to Rathdrum between now and then.

As I said, I do reposition the rifle every time, much the same as I would if I took it out of my shoulder altogether, but I will try and see what difference it makes.

rrpc

It wasn't me! wrote: »

The thing is, it's largely been consistency of position I've been working on since this has degraded so significantly. I've been approaching it from a very fundamental point of view, overall outer position, stability, head and eye alignment and trigger control have been the things I've been working on lately, and since I've started this, rather than just "trying to shoot better", the scores have plummeted. I'm also finding myself less comfortable overall.

You didn't mention breathing in that list, it's fundamental to consistent shooting.

Having just got a new rifle, and with all the adjuty bits on it, the temptation is to keep making slight adjustments to improve your scores, resulting in the opposite effect.

A comfortable position is very important, the more uincomfortable you are, the more of your muscles are working to keep you in the position and the more unstable you'll get. You'll also find that on shot release, the artificial position goes and the shot will go exactly where your body is aiming rather than where you were aiming. Follow through each shot, don't look at the monitor for at least a couple of seconds after the shot is fired, but continue to focus on your sight picture and trigger pull. If you do this, you should be able to call your shot without looking at the monitor; the after shot sight picture never lies.

Take time over each shot when training. The temptation is there when you get a bad score, to immediately try and get a good one without checking your position, aim, breathing and trigger control.

Keep your rifle as simple as possible. This means that within reason try and set it up to as close to an unadjustable rifle as possible. Don't incorporate any cant in the buttplate, ensure that the center of it is as close to the bore-line as possible, there's also a rule of thumb that the distance from the butt plate to the trigger is roughly the same as from the trigger to the handstop.

Sometimes it's just the basic stuff that's letting you down. You may not have your sling properly adjusted, or you're not properly aligned with the target and you're using your right hand to correct.

That's why some of the lads say it's great when your hand goes dead, because you can't use it even if you wanted to.

When you're setting up, close your eyes, relax completely (paying particular attention to both hands), open your eyes and see where you're aiming. You may be surprised.

Loading from the shoulder works for some pople and is a complete disaster for others. (Miroslav Varga can shoot a complete 60 shot match without removing the rifle from his shoulder). Your best bet is to not do this at first because you need to be able to develop a consistent way of ensuring you are on the target for each shot. The temptation whan loading from the shoulder is to rush things and you'll never develop a steady routine.

Sparks

Keep your rifle as simple as possible.

Amen to that, especially when starting off. If you've not broken 560 or so in prone yet, odds are that you don't actually need two-thirds of the adjustments on a modern ISSF rifle. Straight buttplate, cheekpiece not rotated in either of the planes of the barrel, no cant. Very few people would be exceptions to that, and to be honest the only ones I've ever seen who were, were also working around some pretty serious problems like scoliosis. Everyone else could cope until they got to the stage where they could feel what wasn't working and could change it.

It wasn't me!

Yeah, I don't really play around with it at all. I have the buttplate set straight and to a fairly tight tolerance. I'll do some dry-firing this week, try to spend a good bit of time lying comfortably in position, and see what happens.

rrpc

It wasn't me! wrote: »

Yeah, I don't really play around with it at all. I have the buttplate set straight and to a fairly tight tolerance. I'll do some dry-firing this week, try to spend a good bit of time lying comfortably in position, and see what happens.

Give yourself a scaled down target to aim at. Eveything changes when you add an aiming point.

It wasn't me!

Been doing some standing training for air rifle, so I have a thumbtack in a door at about four metres. I'll pin an air rifle target to the door at a low level and lie about ten metres away. That do?

rrpc

It wasn't me! wrote: »

Been doing some standing training for air rifle, so I have a thumbtack in a door at about four metres. I'll pin an air rifle target to the door at a low level and lie about ten metres away. That do?

That might be a bit big for 4 metres. What you can do, is print a full stop using WordArt or something like that and drag it to the right size, print it out and away you go.

Kareir

Have you started drinking Coffee in the mornings?

I hear that can affect your accuracy.

_Kar.

Oldtree

I used to slacken my jaw and then take two breaths through the mouth, this seemed to relax my whole body making it a bit more comfortable. then aim while taking more shallow breaths until happy and final exhale and fire when ready but before my heart started pounding and the hand started jumping. Would not fire if unhappy and would then repeat the process. This seemed to lead to my heart slowing down slightly before firing, after much practice.

Has anything changed in your life or your body recently? I lost a bit of weight at one time and found that 2 mats made the position more comfortable until I got the bit of padding back.

It wasn't me!

Will do rrpc, thanks.

I do drink coffee, but always have, and I find since I tend to go to the range in the afternoon or evening, there wouldn't be anything left in my system, so wouldn't think so.

I have been losing weight, but slowed now. I'll try that muscle relaxation routine. Thanks.