helitack32f1 said:
...My thought on all this is that the environment of actually shooting the gun is so different from the dry firing experience that it is possible that dry firing is of little help when it comes to the real thing. There is so much that is different. Not only is there the anticipation of recoil and anticipation of loud noise and how your body reacts and prepares for that, there is slide movement, recovery from the vertical movement of the front of the gun, recovery from the rearward impulse of the recoil, there is the pressure and possible discomfort of trigger finger on the trigger from the recoil....
Part of learning to shoot well is putting all of that out of your mind. None of that is that bad.
Shooting well involves both physical and mental control. Dry practice, properly done, can help develop and make habitual the physical skills. It can also help lay a foundation for the mental side.
Focus on the front sight. Concentrate on the front sight and pressing the trigger straight back smoothly with only the trigger finger moving while maintaining a hard focus on the front sight. Press the trigger by gradually increasing the pressure on the trigger. Ultimately the gun will fire, but you won't know exactly when. That's what Jeff Cooper called the surprise break. By keeping focus on the front sight and increasing pressure on the trigger until the gun essentially shoots itself, you don’t anticipate the shot breaking.
Many people are uncomfortable with the idea of the gun firing "by surprise." They feel that when using the gun for practical applications, e. g., hunting or self defense, they need to be able to make the gun fire right now. But if you try to make the gun fire right now, you will almost certainly jerk the trigger thus jerking the gun off target and missing your shot; or you will anticipate the shot breaking and flinch. That's where the "compressed surprise break" comes in.
As you practice (perfectly) and develop the facility to reflexively (without conscious thought) apply a smooth, continuously increasing pressure to the trigger the time interval between beginning to press and the shot breaking gets progressively shorter until it become indistinguishable from being instantaneous. In other words, that period of uncertainty during which the shot might break, but you don't know exactly when, becomes vanishingly short. And that is the compressed surprise break.
Here's an interesting video in which Jeff Cooper explains the compressed surprise break. While he is demonstrating with a handgun, the same principles apply with a rifle.
It may help to understand the way humans learn a physical skill. In learning a physical skill, we all go through a four step process:
- unconscious incompetence, we can't do something and we don't even know how to do it;
- conscious incompetence, we can't physically do something even though we know in our mind how to do it;
- conscious competence, we know how to do something but can only do it right if we concentrate on doing it properly; and
- unconscious competence, at this final stage we know how to do something and can do it reflexively (as second nature) on demand without having to think about it.
To get to the third stage, you need to think through the physical task consciously in order to do it perfectly. You need to start slow; one must walk before he can run. The key here is going slow so that you can perform each repetition properly and smoothly. Don't try to be fast. Try to be smooth. Slow is smooth and smooth is fast. You are trying to program your body to perform each of the components of the task properly and efficiently. As the programing takes, you get smoother; and as you get smoother you get more efficient and more sure, and therefore, faster.
I have in fact seen this over and over, both in the classes I've been in and with students that I've helped train. Start slow, consciously doing the physical act smoothly. You start to get smooth, and as you get smooth your pace will start to pick up. And about now, you will have reached the stage of conscious competence. You can do something properly and well as long as you think about it.
To go from conscious competence to the final stage, unconscious competence, is usually thought to take around 5,000 good repetitions. The good news is that dry practice will count. The bad news is that poor repetitions don't count and can set you back. You need to work at this to get good.
Someone should do this experiment.
