Tendency…

When I was growing up my parents would insist for my brother and I to spend time with our Grandmother on my mother’s side of the family. She was an amazing woman, but we did not see her as much because she lived 4 hours away from us. For as long as I can remember growing up we would spend 1-2 weeks with her during summer vacation. My brother and I saw it for what it was, my parents really needed a break from us kids during the summer!

My cousin lived with my grandparents most of his life as a child, at least, he was more in their life than my brother and I. So, when ‘Huey’, ‘Dewey’, and ‘ Louie’, as my uncle called us, got together you knew there was mischief right around the corner! My grandmother had a way of keeping us in check, somehow the sturdy wooden spoon would make an appearance and all the ‘good’ ideas we had turned ‘bad’. My grandmother had a tendency, whenever something broke or bad happened, she would always blame our cousin. It was awesome, my brother and I could do whatever we wanted and he would take the heat for it. Somehow we would smooth it over, but there was a life lesson in all of this somewhere.

As I purposefully omit any confessions, this topic came up recently in a training session. One of the people I was training with would shoot approximately 6 shots on every string of fire on a 5 target array, they were missing one of the shots and having to ‘make one up’. As I watched him shoot, it was uncanny, he would miss every single shot within a 1” variation just high of the target at 12 O’Clock on the plate. As you are training and you are not getting the times you feel you deserve, you have to first identify what your ‘Shooting Tendency’ is. You cannot fix something until you understand what it is that needs to be fixed or re-calibrated. As with my grandmother and her tendency to blame our cousin, the student was doing the same thing by shooting high.

The root cause is not as important as understanding we all have tendency when we shoot. Some are good, some are bad, but we all have them. The next time you go to range, think about what you are doing. What is your tendency? Do you shoot high? Do you shoot left? Do you take too long on the first target? Do you not have the same routine from string to string? Are you missing the same plate on every stage? Or when you miss, is it a certain plate?

For those who know me, I have to fight my ‘Shooting Tendency’ every time I get to the firing line. When I shoot fast, my fundamentals break down and I swing the gun away from my body with my arms instead of locking my upper torso as ‘one’. This is one of the main things I work every range session on to be a better pistol shooter. Once my upper body gets out of alignment, the gun is not where I expect it to be when I pull the trigger on fast targets.

See you out on the range soon!

Steve