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I just had a phone conversation
with a student who took a month off and came back to it.
He was very frustrated with his first trip to the range.
So you took a month or two (or 6 or
12) off of shooting altogether and your first trip to
the range (or a match) was an absolute frustrating
disaster. What’s wrong and how do you fix it?
Expectations
The first thing that’s wrong is you
have expectations about how you are going to
shoot. Expectations that were put into place when you
shot last, a month or 2 or 6 or 12 ago. Since you
haven’t been shooting regularly, these expectations are
obviously going to be wrong. When you take time off,
your skills deteriorate. Your subconscious doesn’t
remember what to do. You won’t shoot accurately and your
transitions will not be smooth.
Get rid of those expectations! I
know, it’s easier said than done. But the fact is, you
just aren’t going to be shooting as well as you were
when you stopped. You have no idea how well you’ll be
doing, so you shouldn’t have any expectations regarding
it.
Your skill is never the same as
your expectation of performance. Your expectation is
either too high (in that you aren’t performing to it) or
too low (in that you are performing past it). When your
expectation is too low, you will moderate your
performance to meet it. When your expectation is too
high, you’ll just get frustrated and sloppy.
When you wake up in the morning,
you are as fast and as good as you will be for the day.
You can’t change it. It’s much easier to just not have
any expectations and go out and shoot.
Getting Back Into It
So how do you get back to it after
taking time off? The best thing to do is to go to the
range and shoot groups on paper. Revisit all of the
fundamentals or grip, stance, sight picture, trigger
squeeze, etc. Until you refamiliarize yourself with the
skills needed to shoot accurately, you’ll have trouble
adding in all the other aspects of actions shooting.
Once you’ve shot some groups and
put your attention back to the sights, it’s time for dry
fire practice. GET ALL LIVE AMMO OUT OF THE AREA!
Work on that first shot from
leather. Do it slowly so that you can relearn the
motions. Pay attention to your sight picture and make
sure you are “shooting” at a target. As it gets
comfortable, slowly speed it up, staying focused on
smooth.
Move on to the pistol to pistol
transition and then the other transitions and loading
your shotgun (again, use dummy rounds). Start all of
them slowly and gradually increase speed. Focus on
smooth. Also, make sure you have a clean, tight sight
picture for each shot.
It’ll come back pretty quickly if
you put a little time in. But don’t expect
anything. It will take the time that it does.
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