Thought patterns ...

[mareh]

Perhaps.

I think it was a matter of the unconscious mind sorting out what was needed and interacting directly with my body. There was no processing needed and I think none done.

The conscious mind is barely a thimbleful of processing in a small corner. It makes a lot of noise and is given a lot more credit that it deserves.

At the skeet range two shots, I think the final two, had you walk up to a station that was halfway between the low house and the high house. The low house was my bugaboo. I could run the rest of the range clean, that one station had my number!

An old range bum showed me how to shoot that shot. He could walk up until he was maybe eight or ten feet, maybe less, from the port the clay disk was flying out of. He still made the shot every time.

He would fold his knees and drop under the flight path. Seemed like he was adding a lot of motion but he never missed a bird. I tried, clays exploded. I never missed either of those center stages again.

I didn't add thought or try any of the things I believed might help. I quit fighting and let things happen and they happened.

After that I found getting out of my own way was often the solution to issues. Nothing is so complicated that we can't make it worse!

Hu

Acting in a milisecond is always unconsciously

 

[ShootingArts]

Acting in a milisecond is always unconsciously

I don't know where the line is but you are right, at a certain point we are not weighing things, we work off of endstink which may be the unconscious or perhaps muscle memory. I'm not too sure. People hang names on things but I don't know what is right as far as the things they believe.

There was a steel plate match before Katrina. Five eight inch plates at twenty-five feet. Max Michelle and a few more shot this match every week. They got the time down to 1.71 seconds before the hurricane ended things. That is to start in the surrender position, draw, and shoot the five steel plates. That doesn't leave much time for thinking. The buzzer sounds, action starts. I was a bit slower than some but fast enough to receive respect.

Thing is, there was little or no thought before the buzzer, none afterwards. I do the same thing on a pool table when practicing alone and my stroke is a bit gimpy. Step in and fire, one stroking over and over. Before long with no thought things start clicking.

Speed thrills!

Hu

 

[Mensabum]

I don't know where the line is but you are right, at a certain point we are not weighing things, we work off of endstink which may be the unconscious or perhaps muscle memory. I'm not too sure. People hang names on things but I don't know what is right as far as the things they believe.

There was a steel plate match before Katrina. Five eight inch plates at twenty-five feet. Max Michelle and a few more shot this match every week. They got the time down to 1.71 seconds before the hurricane ended things. That is to start in the surrender position, draw, and shoot the five steel plates. That doesn't leave much time for thinking. The buzzer sounds, action starts. I was a bit slower than some but fast enough to receive respect.

Thing is, there was little or no thought before the buzzer, none afterwards. I do the same thing on a pool table when practicing alone and my stroke is a bit gimpy. Step in and fire, one stroking over and over. Before long with no thought things start clicking.

Speed thrills!

Hu

1.71???
Holy shit.

 

[ShootingArts]

1.71???
Holy shit.

Story time. Those not interested have been warned.

With my bad ears I am slow on the start. I can't go on the first click without risking a DQ. I have to be sure what I am hearing. Once I start I roll pretty good.

I have a bad habit of starting to do something for fun then finding I can compete at it and I spend my time tuning for competition or competing. Partially for entertainment and partially for practice I had added a "mad minute" at the end of my practice sessions.

One quiet day it was just me and a federal agent on the firing line. I put my usual target at ten yards to finish the day. A standard police B-27 silhouette. I was shooting a high capacity .45, 1911 of course. I loaded fifteen rounds in two magazines.

Fiifteen shots center, reload, fifteen shots head. This was done at speed, about three to four shots a second. All told it took ten or twelve seconds. When I got through there was a hole about the size of your wrist in the X ring and another the same size in the head, no fliers.

I hadn't done it to impress anyone but when I turned to pick up brass I couldn't help noticing the fed was literally white as a sheet! No blood in his face! Not likely at all but he realized if he ever ran into a bad guy that shot like that he was dead.

He started coming once or twice a week to practice and got quite respectable himself. Better than any LEO in the area including the instructors. Better than anyone other than a game warden that is. The game warden is Jerry Miculek's brother and was the class of the field shooting competition back then.

Talking about speed, some of the fastest competitors could run faster than some submachine guns! Max shot for the military and then Sig last I knew. When he was twelve or thirteen he was a little pudgy, the kind that gets bullied at school which struck me as funny. He was one of the best in the world with a pistol even then!

All of the different forms of competition don't directly translate but I have learned that competition itself is a skill set and some of that skill set always transfers. Speed doesn't translate to pool but accuracy does. So does the mental game.

Hu