A couple exchanges with Zins

In the 2003-6 or so, Brian Zins and I swapped a few emails on fundamentals.  I dont have all of the emails so context might not be clear.  But anyway....

Here are two separate items:


Sgt Zins
Many of the posts lately are still very detailed in dot placement and triggering operations. From your
posts though, I believe I am finally putting together my long desired removal of thinking the shot through. Assuming rather high skills of holding, triggering, and vision, doesn't the shot exercise simply become putting the dot in the middle and the gun goes off. Note - not >then< the gun goes off as a second step, but just goes off. Flow is a good word for it.


Your North pole idea to me means that in the mind there is a connection between pressuring the trigger
and moving to center. In the mind, the action of trigger pressure also drives the dot to center. When
the dot is in the middle, the shot goes off.


Is this a fair interpretation? I think a lot of people are reading it as the trigger physically drives the dot. I have never been able to make that as a physical connection.


Jack H


*********************************************************


Jack,
> YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRCET
>
> BRIAN














And at another time:
Jack,


Steering the dot through sight alignment is a thought process or concept. It is simply away to get people to better understand the relationship between the two in order to keep them from getting behind in trigger pressure as related to sight picture. I do not want to drive the dot to the center of the target unless I am squeezing the trigger. If I have perfect sight picture and I have no pressure on the trigger I am in fact training my mind to not pull the trigger. That is why when someone does holding drills per say: They hold the gun on target for 3 minutes just in order to build strength or endurance or improve their hold, then after the 3 minutes they squeeze the trigger. You are telling your mind that it is okay to see perfect sight picture and NOT squeeze the trigger. Thus holding drills need to be done on a blank surface, NEVER, EVER a target.


I say use the trigger to control the sights simply to get people to where they are going to initiate pressure on the trigger before they acquire the desired sight picture. Not moving my trigger finger around to get the sights where I want them. NOTE: Keep that between us, okay. Until everyone understands the intent of the statement not the letter of the statement, as it seems you do. I think more harm than good will be done. There are others who get it, like you. In mass they need to understand it as a physical act in order to try accomplish it. We have way of saying this, pardon my French, "Trick [censored] your mind." I have gotten myself to believe that I am steering the sights with my trigger, in actually I am simply applying pressure before sight picture has been acquired.


Don't throw this out to the list this is something that needs to be done on a 1 by 1 basis. You two [too] may now share the it with those who seem to get it.


BZ

Thank you for posting.

"Until everyone understands the intent of the statement not the letter of the statement, as it seems you do. I think more harm than good will be done. "


It would be better if there was a simple way to say things, such that it implies both the intent of the statement, and also the letter of the statement.  I can still remember back to when I took the wording literally, as I didn't know enough to really understand the intended meaning.

Keep the trigger ahead of the sights.

Complete the shot as the dot is approaching the minimum wobble area.

Etc. etc.

Read this again:

"simply to get people to where they are going to initiate pressure on the trigger before they acquire the desired sight picture"

Same thing, you can't hold and then try to complete the shot; without seeing the process you can't consistently complete the shot.  

You've heard it in many forms, find one that works for whatever you can wrap your brain around. 

"I thought" is the biggest detriment I see on the list every day (and generally the precursor statement to whatever major disaster my employees used to have to report me   ).  

I'd recommend "thinking" about how all these different statements may have something in common about what you need to DO and SEE to get the results you want.  Find something that works for you to visualize and do what you want to do.

CR10X wrote:.......Complete the shot as the dot is approaching the minimum wobble area.

"simply to get people to where they are going to initiate pressure on the trigger before they acquire the desired sight picture"

Thanks for posting that highlighted line.  If THAT is the goal, everything makes more sense to me.  What I got stuck on before, was on a gun like a Model 41 or Model 52 where it almost feels like breathing on the trigger will fire the gun, how can you gradually apply pressure to that trigger, without firing unintentionally?

The way you've described it makes me think I can actually start following the advice.

(I often feel like you're teaching a class in calculus and analytic geometry, and I'm in a basic math class, but wander into your classroom.  I think it takes me longer than most to be able to relate to what you're saying, in a way that I can actually start using it.  I think you've just made that possible.  What you've literally posted up above is something I think I can train myself to do, without thinking about it.) 

The way I see it, I'm going to be concentrating on one simple thing, only, and that is getting the larger, not too bright, dot, to head towards the middle of the black, and hopefully my subconscious will do what you suggested, firing the gun at the right time.


(How long did it take you to learn how to do this reliably?)

Movement is caused by force (pressure).  Simply keep applying increasing pressure (crisp or roll trigger) until the shot breaks.  Some people do better with sensing the movement first and completing the shot (roll trigger) others do better sensing the pressure and completing the shot (crisp trigger).  Either one can be jerked or take too long or get messed up with an inconsistent grip. 

By the way, how do it know its too early?  We see and react after the instance of visual processing and mental recognition and correlation with previously collected mental images. In other words, a too fast "9" beats a slow, after the best time, kinda of a jerk trigger "7" or worse.

In no way do I disagree with anything you wrote - based on what I have learned, I even understand it, but regarding what I said about me walking out of an elementary school math class and into your calculus and analytic geometry class, understanding the above needs some basic understanding first.

Before I got active in this forum, I knew of two kinds of triggers, single action, which I thought were better, and double action where there is possibly this long, maybe rough squeeze.  Then there was a thread here on "roll triggers", which is the first I had ever heard of them.  Now I understand, and I even have two guns that came with them.  I tried (and failed) to explain to others what a "roll trigger" was.  They were as baffled as I had been.

Then, starting to understand what Brian (and now you) are writing, I tried to apply it to my Model 41 and my Model 52.  At that time, there was no way to do so - it felt like the guns each had a hair trigger, and I didn't see how I could do anything like what you're suggesting.  I'm rather stubborn, and I kept trying it anyway, in dry fire.  I was astonished to find that after a week or two of trying, I could actually do it.  Now I can feel the trigger in both guns "moving" as I apply the slightest bit more pressure.  

That was my two biggest hurdles.  When I get home, and get back to shooting, I need to change my red dot sights as was suggested, look at the target, not the dot, and probably spend a huge amount if time learning to do everything you've written.

My own understanding (now) of what you've written, is I need to start doing it, even if my timing is not perfect.  Once I can do it, I think I'll be able to adjust the timing.  I'm hoping it happens automatically, just from endless practice.


Why I'm writing this - mostly to let you know that some people who read suggestions in this forum don't yet know enough to appreciate what you're saying, just as they tell me what Dave Salyer wrote about area aiming doesn't make any sense.  I no longer really care if it "makes sense" to me, as people like you, Brian, Dave, and others are light years ahead of me, and I've learned to accept these things as being "better", even if I don't (yet) understand them.  I like the way Brian hinted at it - to me, thinking of what you all have been writing/saying: there's the way you guys do things, and there's the wrong way.   .....and there are very few people that I feel that way about.  For everyone else, their ideas are something to consider, not blindly follow.