Dave Salyer

Long story short;

Dave Salyer sent these to me and I lost them and then found them and had to convert from Microsoft Word to PDF.
Just got off the phone with him, great talk, been a while, etc...

How to shoot better bullseye scores. (Immediately)
1** Accept your present wobble area rather than trying to reduce it.
2** Standardize your thought process during raising the arm and shooting.
3** Apply steady pressure straight back on the trigger while not altering your firm grip on the
pistol.
4** Keep this pressure mounting until you feel the trigger go up against its over travel stop.
Then release.
5** Immediately start mounting pressure straight back on the trigger again even though the
gun is at peak recoil.
6** Continue applying trigger pressure steadily while recovering from recoil at a rate that will
cause the shot to leave the barrel sometime while sights or dot are in your aiming, wobble,
area.
7** Repeat the process when the trigger stops in its over travel and the gun recoils.
Dave Salyer 2/26/2012

Back-up Comments on each step.
1**
Your hold ability or wobble area will be a certain size on a given minute, hour or match day. Accept it.
You can improve on it in a training session of dry firing or holding/gripping exercise on another day.
No need to try and hold tighter than what’s comfortable on match day. Struggling will cause trigger
errors. Shots that go outside your comfortable wobble area are the result of trigger errors!
Again, accept your comfortable hold and smoothly apply ever increasing trigger pressure straight to the
rear. The shots will land within your hold area and cluster to the middle.
2**
Talk to yourself! Preach the same sermon before each shot in slow fire and before each string in
sustained. This will trigger your conscious and subconscious mind to concentrate on the exact same
things for each shot. Some top shooters go through the commands from, “Is the line ready?” to “Ready
on the firing line.”, before each shot or string.
3** and 4**
Notice that this instruction does not mention shoot or shot. This is an important point! You do not want
to know or decide exactly when to shoot. Your job is to pressure the trigger straight back until the
trigger stops. The shot will happen somewhere between starting the trigger pressure and when the gun
recoils. Your job is just to actuate the trigger somewhere within the window of time that the sights have
entered anywhere into the wobble area. Follow through will be achieved.
5**
As soon as the gun recoils restart the above process of applying pressure to the trigger and moving the
sights or dot into the aiming area. This is recovery, not follow through
In slow fire, stop the recovery process there.
In sustained fire keep applying pressure to the trigger until it is stopped against the frame. Some call this
keeping the trigger moving. If this is done without hesitation there will be plenty of time to squeeze off
five shots in rapid fire without being rushed.
6**
We often worry about time especially in rapid fire. We often take too much time trying to refine our aim
in slow as well as timed. The hesitation associated with this causes trigger errors and bad shots. Each
time the trigger pressure is stopped and restarted, the gun’s angle changes away from the center of the
target. Emphasize smooth unhesitating trigger pull rather than consciously emphasizing aiming. Your
subconscious will help you do the pointing.
Hand to eye coordinatuion
We hear a lot about this being good for athletes. It doesn’t work too well with shooters because
we must do it backwards. We must take what we see and do hand and finger coordination to
cause a shot to leave the barrel at the right time and direction. This is not so precise because
what we think we are seeing is not real time but is actually recent history. Plus, it takes a finite
amount of time for what’s happening to reach the eye, move to the brain for processing and
send a message to the trigger finger to pull the trigger. By the time the shot fires the sights have
moved around somewhere else in the aiming area. (Hopefully)
So, again, we must start and continue trigger movement before we see a perfect sight picture.
We can achieve almost perfect sight alignment with our eye by choosing the same grip on the
pistol for each string. Then sight picture can be the less precise but adequate to keep our
shot(s) inside our aiming area. Nature and statistics will make most hits cluster in the middle of
our area.
Dave Salyer 2/26/2012

I hope this helps everyone with the fundamentals, it did me.

Clarence and with permission from Dave Salyer.

He is a fine fellow.  I met him a month ago while dropping off a mil-spec 45 for a build and really enjoyed the visit.

Thanks for posting - I thought was excellent, so I formatted it to print a little more neatly:

===========================================


Dave Salyer 2/26/2012
 
How to shoot better bullseye scores.
1--Accept your present wobble area rather than trying to reduce it.
 
2--Standardize your thought process during raising the arm and shooting.
 
3--Apply steady pressure straight back on the trigger while not altering your firm grip on the pistol.
 
4--Keep this pressure mounting until you feel the trigger go up against its over travel stop.  Then release.
 
5--Immediately start mounting pressure straight back on the trigger again even though the gun is at peak recoil.
 
6--Continue applying trigger pressure steadily while recovering from recoil at a rate that will cause the shot to leave the barrel sometime while sights or dot are in your aiming, wobble, area.
 
7--Repeat the process when the trigger stops in its over travel and the gun recoils.
 
 
Back-up Comments on each step:
#1
Your hold ability or wobble area will be a certain size on a given minute, hour or match day. Accept it.  You can improve on it in a training session of dry firing or holding/gripping exercise on another day.  No need to try and hold tighter than what’s comfortable on match day. Struggling will cause trigger errors. Shots that go outside your comfortable wobble area are the result of trigger errors!  Again, accept your comfortable hold and smoothly apply ever increasing trigger pressure straight to the rear. The shots will land within your hold area and cluster to the middle.
 
#2
Talk to yourself! Preach the same sermon before each shot in slow fire and before each string in sustained. This will trigger your conscious and subconscious mind to concentrate on the exact same things for each shot. Some top shooters go through the commands from, “Is the line ready?” to “Ready on the firing line.”, before each shot or string.
 
#3 and #4
Notice that this instruction does not mention shoot or shot. This is an important point! You do not want to know or decide exactly when to shoot. Your job is to pressure the trigger straight back until the trigger stops. The shot will happen somewhere between starting the trigger pressure and when the gun recoils. Your job is just to actuate the trigger somewhere within the window of time that the sights have entered anywhere into the wobble area. Follow through will be achieved.
 
#5
As soon as the gun recoils restart the above process of applying pressure to the trigger and moving the sights or dot into the aiming area. This is recovery, not follow through In slow fire, stop the recovery process there. In sustained fire keep applying pressure to the trigger until it is stopped against the frame. Some call this keeping the trigger moving. If this is done without hesitation there will be plenty of time to squeeze off five shots in rapid fire without being rushed.
 
#6
We often worry about time especially in rapid fire. We often take too much time trying to refine our aim in slow as well as timed. The hesitation associated with this causes trigger errors and bad shots. Each time the trigger pressure is stopped and restarted, the gun’s angle changes away from the center of the target. Emphasize smooth unhesitating trigger pull rather than consciously emphasizing aiming. Your subconscious will help you do the pointing.
 
 
Hand to eye co-ordination
We hear a lot about this being good for athletes. It doesn’t work too well with shooters because we must do it backwards. We must take what we see and do hand and finger coordination to cause a shot to leave the barrel at the right time and direction. This is not so precise because what we think we are seeing is not real time but is actually recent history. Plus, it takes a finite amount of time for what’s happening to reach the eye, move to the brain for processing and send a message to the trigger finger to pull the trigger. By the time the shot fires the sights have moved around somewhere else in the aiming area. (Hopefully)
 
So, again, we must start and continue trigger movement before we see a perfect sight picture.  We can achieve almost perfect sight alignment with our eye by choosing the same grip on the pistol for each string. Then sight picture can be the less precise but adequate to keep our shot(s) inside our aiming area. Nature and statistics will make most hits cluster in the middle of our area.
 
   
Dave Salyer 2/26/2012

Awesome read

Clarence, thanks a lot for posting and many thanks to Dave Salyer for writing this so succinctly.
Mike, thanks for formatting.

I have been working recently with Lenny Bassham's Performance Analysis Journal. When I read Dave's notes, I said to myself: "This is exactly what I am arriving at in my training process and what I am trying to write in my journal after each dry fire session and live fire session!!!

In Dry Fire training, I have been focusing on Dave's points 2 - 4 and on "encoding" my shot process into keywords and very short phrases. As I say each word or phrase, I also visualize the corresponding part of the shot process. This training requires intense focus and I can't do it longer that about 20 mins but it has been immensely helpful.

In Live Fire training, I have been focused on Rapid Fire and was applying Dave's points 5 - 7. No miracles, but all four of my .22 Rapid Fire targets last weekend have been in 95-97 range and the .45 Rapid Fire is getting to be consistently in high 80's to low 90's.

It is amazing how reading and re-reading the materials on this forum at different points in our journey to improvement, helps to lift one to the next level!

Dave Salyer shoots a 2700 every week as a grand senior while many posters "write" about shooting.  Fine gentleman!

Dave sent me another article to post, answering questions about "Area Aiming".  It's now posted here in this forum.