Look Ma, No Hands!

Shooting, I’m beginning to suspect, is like riding a bicycle. Intellectually you know what you have to do but as long as you have to think about it, you’re gonna crash.

I shot only my 22 at first but, a few months ago, decided to start working on the 45. I wanted to do the whole nine yards and shoot a full 2700 with the right guns and all the rules. Shooting just the 22, I felt like I was only putting my toes in the water. So I bought a 45 and jumped into the deep end.

I then focused solely on the 45 and shot nothing else. And my shooting was, to put it mildly, horrific. I kept moving the target closer and closer until, finally at 15 feet, I could put all ten rounds into the paper. Then, over time and a lot of rounds, I slowly started to get things under control. The target stayed at 15 feet for several weeks. This was a slow process for me. That, in itself, was an important “fact of life” for this beginner to learn.

Grip was the first “Eureka” I discovered. Before making what for me felt like a big breakthrough (which I’ll describe in a moment), all my shots were landing 3" (or more) left of center at 15 feet. But when I “got it”, the shots moved into the center – the difference was profound and, by changing my grip in what I thought was a very small way, I could move the shots back and forth at will. That day at the range, I shot several targets and alternated my grip between them and, sure enough, I could move those holes left and right just by changing my grip. Wow!

It took me a couple of days to figure out that, up until that point, no matter how hard I tried to grip the gun, I just wasn’t strong enough to maintain that grip through the shot. My grip was that of the proverbial 98 pound weakling and I simply couldn’t muster enough force, even just short of the quivering and shaking point that is recommended, to hold the gun well enough, and to hold it that way through the shot.

But when my grip had strengthened to some magic level, then I could.

But even so, there still seems to be a “balance” to be found between grip intensity and enough “play” so my trigger finger can move without moving the rest of the hand muscles. When shooting, what I do now is to consciously grip as tight as I can and then relax it a couple of notches. My grip is still very tight but I can also move my trigger finger (more or less) independently.

Balance.

In time, perhaps as my grip strength continues to increase, that balance range won’t be as narrow. Right now, it’s hard to get the right amount of grip versus relaxation so that everything “goes” as it should.

I feel like my abilities and strength finally reached the platform of a step on the learning curve where, suddenly, several things started working correctly.

With that “Eureka” successfully learned, I then turned my attention to trigger control and I have spent a couple of months (and a lot of brass) attempting to get rid of the jerk in all its front-sight twitching variants. In the past few days, literally, I think I’ve made a small breakthrough via a realization.

“Trigger Control” is a misnomer. You don’t control the trigger. Instead, it’s like riding a bicycle or driving a car with a stick shift and a clutch. Intellectually, you know exactly what you have to do, but there’s no way the mind can do it. The brain can help the body learn, but it just doesn’t work until the body “gets it” and can do it on its own. When my brain attempts to ride a bike, I crash, but when I let my body do it, I sail along just fine. In shooting, when that happens I – excuse me, gentlemen – giggle, “Wow, it’s working.” (And then “crash” my next shot cause I’ve start thinking about shooting again.)

When I shoot, the intellectual litany I repeat to myself now goes like this:

1. Prove the stance (make sure I’m lined up, etc.),
2. Two deep breaths, raise gun, exhale partially and hold,
3. Pre-check sight alignment and picture (put it close to correct),
4. Visualize rolling a cylinder with my trigger finger,
5. Focus on the front sight, front sight, front sight …

And eventually the gun goes off – and it’s definately a surprise (when this works).

What I’m doing in step #4 will (hopefully) start the trigger finger on auto-pilot and then, in #5, I WILL NEVER THINK ABOUT THE TRIGGER AGAIN. That is, step #5 truly is a waiting game – when I do it the way I intend, [OH!] the gun goes off and I’m truly surprised. I know when I’ve done it right – I can feel it in my gut (and hear a giggle in my brain) and I *know* where the shot went on the target. I can call the shot – well, I can call the “o’clock” portion more often than which ring, but that’s real progress!

During step #5, if my mind wanders to the trigger or if I hear myself wondering when the gun is going to go off, I (try to) abort the shot and start over. Hearing that thought and then aborting the shot are, of course, a challenge. I need to work at enhancing my multiple personalities so someone can do the monitoring while someone else watches the sights and the body *does* the trigger.

So, I shot nothing but the 45 for several months.

One day, in great frustration with the 45, I decided I needed some “feel good” shooting and I took out the 22 pistol. It took me a couple of targets to settle back into it but what I discovered was that although my shots weren’t particularly better, I found I could call very close to 100% of them. I *knew* where every shot was going. “Trigger Control” was happening. I was riding the bike!

And, for some reason, Timed Fire was suddenly much, MUCH better. Indeed, on the wall behind my desk at this very moment I have taped up a 98-2 TF target I shot June 28th in 22 cal. It was target #8 of the day. The two 9-ring holes are at 10 and 4 o’clocks and probably show some trigger finger position anomolies and just plain not lining up the sights. But the target is on my wall because I now know I will clean a target at some point. I can see that I can do it. On June 28th, I came within two points of doing exactly that. It will happen.

But my slow fire is only a little improved from before, and a lot of other shooters report a similar phenomenon, that their TF is much better than SF (or RF).

Something is going on, and my guess (theory) is that I’m not really holding the alignment when the shot goes. My conscious mind is attempting to hold it, to focus on the front sight, keep it centered in the rear sight with the tops of the sights in a straight line, and in the aiming area of the target, and …

But I can see that, as with the trigger, I’m trying to do the sight alignment with my conscious mind. As it was with the trigger, so too (I’m beginning to think) must the sight alignment become automatic, and unconscious. The conscious brain has to keep the eye on the front sight so the unconsciou gets the right data, but you just can’t ride a bicycle by thinking about it. It’s got to be automatic.

In TF, there’s just enough time for my wobbly “riding” to stay on the sidewalk, if you will, and my shots go to the right place. But in SF I think about how to align the sights rather than simply telling the unconscious to “align the sights”, and by consciously trying to ride the bike, I crash.

Nope, I need to train the unconscious to do what I want, and then let it do it. And in RF, my conscious mind tries to control things to get all five shots away in time and, again, I crash the bicycle by trying to ride it with my brain not my body.

Remember how you learned to ride a bike? It took help, patience and a lot of practice. I’m told that Marine shooters are instructed to go out to the line and “Shoot until you’re knee deep in brass.”

They’re learning how to ride a bicycle.

They are doing it over and over and over and over … until the body knows what to do and the mind go just quietly watch the show.

And I’m convinced that through each gun we learn more and more about shooting any gun, but that each gun forces us to focus on different areas. From the 45 I think I’m figuring out the badly named “Trigger Control” bugaboo. And from the 22 I can “see” my problem with “Sight Alignment” – and that it’s really the same kind of “control” issue.

Since I’m really in “learn” mode much more than “compete effectively” mode, I focus on solely shooting one gun during practice/training sessions and, at the moment (and for a couple of months to come, I’m sure), that will be the 45. It’s a bear to shoot – what an incredible challenge – but I’m learning and slowly getting better, sometimes incrementally from practice to practice, but other times only after staying stuck, growing frustrated, and then suddenly experiencing a jump. “What did I just do,” is the question to answer when that happens in practice/training.

And there is the inevitable back-sliding, too. That can be so very frustrating when you’ve seen something working but then lose it somehow.

Patience.

In competitions (such as the Tuesday night league here in Phoenix), I try to turn my brain off as much as possible and enjoy the shoot because, when the brain turns on (because I shot a pretty good target) the brain always tries to do it better, and when that happens, I crash my bike.

Don Plante said to me once, “Don’t think. Just shoot.”

Coach Pat, the ex-Marine pistol coach that calls our league competitions, sometimes walks behind the line before a string and reminds the shooters, “You know what DFT is, don’t you? ‘Don’t … Think!’”

And Brian Zins, seven times the US National Champion says, “I am not smart enough to shoot bad.”

Shooting is body work, not brain work.

It’s like riding a bicycle.

Well, almost like that but, fortunately for the other shooters on the line, there’s never any temptation to suddenly shout, “Look Ma, no hands!”