Always remember…

For Grip and Trigger, there’s women and 100 lb girls that shoot better than (most of) you.

I keep reminding myself: Don’t grip too tight and be smoother on the squeezer.

It pays off.

Interesting fact!

I see no reason, why bullseye season, should ever be forgot.

Ala Ruby Fox.

In my time Ruby Fox, Roxanne Conrad and now Lisa Emmert. Few and far between but the ones who can, do!
Jon

bruce martindale wrote:For Grip and Trigger, there’s women and 100 lb girls that shoot better than (most of) you.

I keep reminding myself: Don’t grip too tight and be smoother on the squeezer.

It pays off.

Many women shoot Free Pistol very well in the US. ISSF should have made it a mixed sport and told the Olympic committee to climb a tree.

As the years go by, the body doesn't always perform as well as requested by the mind.

Eyes, grip strength, steadiness, are just some of the things that make it more difficult to do things one could do in the past.  

Maybe that can be an additional chapter for your book?

Merick wrote:I see no reason, why bullseye season, should ever be forgot.

Hey, don't forget we need an excuse to break out the air pistols! When I'm shivering too much to slow-fire a 10, I know it's time to break out the air pistol for crosstraining season.

Merick wrote:I see no reason, why bullseye season, should ever be forgot.

Is that Haiku?

Bruce - Some of the magic (in your book) is you didn't forget everything you learned while you were learning it.  Then you managed to get much of it down to share in your book.  The Pistol Shooter Treasury, the OTHER great book, doesn't accomplish the same.  Its sum total advice to "align the sights and pull the trigger without dis-aligning the sights", speaks of the end game for master-level (very experienced) shooter who KNOWS WHAT THOSE WORDS MEAN.  

The same might apply (might, not saying it does or doesn't) to grip, over-grip and under-grip.  Until you've done it all, many times, with many other variables in play, its hard to know what the words mean?  There are parts of over-gripping that ultimately teach us what is happening when we under-grip, so, in turn you can eventually work towards a lighter grip (because you fixed some other things that were broken with the death grip).  Speaking only for myself, I find the "right" grip is one of the hardest things to master.  Certainly too tight is not good, but just a smidge too loose is bad juju too.  Love your book!  Cliff

My first SF target frequently suffers because l haven’t got the feeling back. I didn’t warm up. Mason Talbert ( my roomie at Perry this year) spends time warming up, exercising, and DF. Otherwise, he says, your first shots are the warm up practice.  The other trick of course as Beech reminds me is to get the recovery and the good trigger pull to coincide.

No such thing as warming up at the match! If you approach matches this way your already done. You mentally need to walk up to the line ready to start with a 10 and end with a 10. It's both mental and physical. Match preparation isn't a three minute preparation period. Your sleep, your meal, your drive, your warming up (stretching, dry firing, etc) should be consistently the same for all your matches. Find out what works and do it! Don't be half assed. It will show in your scores one way or the other. 
Show up ready to perform!
Jon

Jon, that would be ideal to begin and end a match with 10's starting from a cold bore.
Why then, do some shooting disciplines have, "sighters" before scoring begins? 
Surely they are not for, "sighting in".

Most sighters are a crutch.  They’re popular in rifle matches because people can’t read wind for squat.  In EIC and Presidents 100 (when I shot such things) you didn’t have sighters.  You put your zero on, made your wind call and went for it.  You had to be critical of your call and had to have your A+ game on.

Sighter series for me calms the mind and gets me in the feeling. In AP, with the old rules of unlimited sighters, I would sometimes go 10 minutes before hitting start. New rules just agitate me. 
I know that if a 2700 started at 25 yards, scores would likely go up. Starting at 50 is a beast.

Indoor pistol leagues in the eastern part of New York allow "warm-up" shots at away matches.
In western NY, nope.

Bruce said, "I know that if a 2700 started at 25 yards, scores would likely go up. Starting at 50 is a beast."

I would vote for that!!!

That would be the equivalent of starting with sitting in HP. Shoot standing last, equivalent to 50 yds with the 45.

jwax wrote:Why then, do some shooting disciplines have, "sighters" before scoring begins? 
Surely they are not for, "sighting in".

If shooting electronic targets, it allows you the chance to make sure your zero to matches the targets calibration without a scoring penalty. The trick with sighters is that you don't want to wear yourself out treating them as practice. Shoot as few as you need to know you are good and save the energy for when the shots count.

bruce martindale wrote:

Merick wrote:I see no reason, why bullseye season, should ever be forgot.

Is that Haiku?

"Always remember" made me think of the Guy Fawkes poem, so it's an arm twist on a line from that.

Jon Eulette wrote:In my time Ruby Fox, Roxanne Conrad and now Lisa Emmert. Few and far between but the ones who can, do!
Jon

IMHO many women are intimidated by the idea of shooting a 45 one-handed, they think bullseye requires great upper body strength and when faced with a 50 yard target lack the confidence to even try.  Horse Hockey!!!

Dr Judy Tant weighs all of what, 110#? She'll outshoot most of the men at Camp Perry.

Grip strength/force is relative.  My thought for bullseye has always been to squeeze the grease out of it.  That feels normal to me. However you do it, the key is to do it the same way all the time.  As far as the strength and mass of the shooter goes, this effects how much the recoil moves the body and how efficient your recovery has to be.  Beyond that, strength also effects how long you can hold before you come out of your prime period of steadiness.  IMO.

targetbarb wrote:IMHO many women are intimidated by the idea of shooting a 45 one-handed, they think bullseye requires great upper body strength and when faced with a 50 yard target lack the confidence to even try.  Horse Hockey!!!

I'm only intimidated by the cost of .45 ammunition.  I love the feel of a 1911 in my hand.   

Unfortunately, I also love the feel of a full stomach so mastering the .45 will have to wait...

SaraiEsq wrote:

targetbarb wrote:IMHO many women are intimidated by the idea of shooting a 45 one-handed, they think bullseye requires great upper body strength and when faced with a 50 yard target lack the confidence to even try.  Horse Hockey!!!

I'm only intimidated by the cost of .45 ammunition.  I love the feel of a 1911 in my hand.   

Unfortunately, I also love the feel of a full stomach so mastering the .45 will have to wait...

There's something primal about holding a 1911. It just feels like an extension of my hand. I know genetic memory isn't real, but it sure feels like it's real when I hold a 1911.

I shot next to Ruby when she shot the women's record (2660) at the Kitsap Range in Bremerton, WA. I was humbled as she is half my size and had long painted finger nails.
Next summer at Camp Perry she was my coach at SAFS and she figured out, in my first slowfire string, that I gave up on my last shot. I asked her how she kept focused and she said she thinks "Kill, Kill, Kill." I didn't forget that advise and that winter I tied the National civilian indoor slowfire record. A few years later Mr. Ported bested it. I was able to thank her at an Arizona regional that summer. 
I know that I don't over think the basics once learned and "just do it" like my job as a TIG welder. Too much over thinking and you fog your brain. Foot pedal, add filler, back off, and move forward.
My .02