Re: dealing with heartbeat
Mental.... (Long post, maybe worth the read. Unlikely)
I grew up hand loading and testing loads. I had a rifle (read "not bench rest") that would shoot -sub- .1 (tenth) moa groups with good conditions and me on a good day from bench & bags.
Loading and shooting that rifle taught me two things, one of which applies to you...
Perhaps a somewhat detailed background to qualify my "Mental" experiences.
I grew up under a former USMC father whose past time was competitive shooting; I was started in Trap (shotgun) shooting first. At age 7 is when I first stood alone, on the line with men, at my position holding a loaded, dirt cheap .410 bolt action shotgun. It was just the local guys at the local club who knew me & were mostly convinced I'd NOT shoot them and maybe would shoot -A- clay target out of 25, which I did, occasionally. I'll never forget how cool I was when dad "graduated" me up to a 12 gauge Beretta auto. It made no difference he had to load the loads so light they would only crack the bolt open 1/4" or so. It made no difference I was so little after half a match or so I was too tired to be able to pull the bolt back with my little hands. I was not embarrassed either I had to resort to putting the butt of the gun on the ground and open/lock the bolt to the rear by pressing my foot on the bolt handle. The gun/muzzle was taller than I was too. All that mattered was I was cool beans- I was shooting a freaking 12 man!
My father in many areas was a mind boggling brilliant man. And others areas, well, anyway... My first "gun" was a Red Ryder style BB gun, except he ground the rear site off before he ever let me launch the first BB- to FORCE me to learn proper mounting of the stock, cheek weld, head and eye alignment, Trigger tease etc. Once I got those things down, it's amazing what a determined kid can hit with a rear sightless, crude BB gun.
I feel it more brilliance to have started me in shotgun sports. Some 28 years later I look back and agree with him, and the various military sniper books I have read (Gunny Hathcock's book comes to mind) in when looking to interview soldiers for sniper school they especially liked to see a history of shotgun shooting. The essence of shotgun shooting, like I'm told of Golf, Tennis etc is mental. In trap shooting, you have 5 stations you shoot from in a given 25 rounds all repeated 4 times for a 100 target match. And the target thrower throws the targets in one of 5 specific angles. So it's FACT- if a man has hit JUST ONE target, presented from all of the 5 angles, from the 5 firing positions, then he can hit every target thrown, every time and be the world champ. No, you laugh, but the only guy to beat to hold the world title is yourself, if you have reliable shooting plunder. Enter "the mental program"
So once I have hit every target presented in trap shooting,(ball in tennis, tramp in golf, nail in carpentry, etc.) I can hit EVERY target presented in Trapshooting, EVERy time, so long as I clear my mind, have 100% faith and have filtered all doubts & negatives out of my mind for
-this- coming shot.
Dad & I spoke of & worked on and strengthened our mental programs. We'd get in a mental zone prior to shooting the first target that was as if we had seen the future, of us shooting perfectly, bringing home the trophies, feeling the euphoria in the victory etc. and exceedingly more times than not, our mental program's projection of the future, would pan out precisely in the hours/days to come at the awards dinner.
Early on we damn near won 1st & 2nd places overall at the Tennessee state shoot with our "mental programs" while competeing together in the "Parent & child team /class" (Henry Horton State park, American Trap Shooting Assoc. ["ATA"] "Trap & Field" Magazine, September 1991, page28- thats me with my "dirty sanchez" mustache, 16 years old and dad in the photo at the very top right of the page. The caption reads " ~tresmon~ jr. & senior paced parent-child duos in the main singles, and ~tresmon~ junior went on to take home 6 other trophies-three junior, two yardage and one D class doubles.) for the entire shoot with the scores we put up in the "parent & child category" and I was a wet behind the ears pup. I still have the ATA magazine article and pics.
My trapshooting career started with that .410, and ended with my having won myself a place on the TN junior trap team, and a potential tryout with the US team the following year if it went as well as the past year.
I had a best little buddy who's dad (Former "old school" USN SeaBee) started him out in NRA Junior program with Indoor small bore as well as (service rifle) high power.
It was with this friend & his dad that I got caught up into high power & precision rifle shooting. Hence my adaptation of my mental program to the rifle shot.
Enter "mental program & the heart beat."
The best task I learned with my mental program was heart control. The .1 moa rifle I spoke of was what I feel like was the best success I ever had with my mental program. When I got the load perfected in that rifle as well as the "rifle shooting" format of my mental program... I could pause my heart beat. I do not care if you believe me. I could TOTALLY STOP my heart beat, for a shockingly long duration of a time. A 16 mississippi count was about all that was worth anything as muscle fatigue from depleated O2 levels stared causing problems by that point, +/- a few seconds either way. But a 7-10 missippi was a no brainer. And that's PLENTY of time+++ to squeeze off a perfectly executed shot.
I have proved to doctors and nurses in the past as have the upper echelon (I read) of meditation experts that at-will the heart rate can be far reduced. I'm the only person i know of that has ever claimed "stopped" -though obviously for very short durations in the overall grand scheme of things.
So there I would be with handloads I had made as perfect as I humanly could, with a highly capable rifle on a cement bench on good bags.
I'd be over the rifle hovering on the stock with my mental program up and running. Everything is calm, serene, euphoric. From here it is hard to explain in text. It's as if my entire being, was mental. My existence, was mental only- as if their had never been a tangible physical part of my past or present, or me- my body. Like anything and everything that was every me, size, stature, ability, intelligence was & only had existed in thought. And that thought- ALL of me was tranquilly pouring across the top of the stock, delicately and wholly through the cross hairs like a leisure laser into the center of the POAim which became a bullet hole. Then my "whole existence" was the leisure laser trickling over the top of the stock, through the cross hair pouring through the bullet hole of the target making sure not to brush the edges of the hole/paper. Nothing else in all eternity existed except the cross hair & all of me pouring through that bullet hole, trigger squeeze and heart.
I found that with concentrating on my heart within my mental program that in time it would actually slow down, and literally stop, or pause.
Again hard to explain in text but it would be something like: [I will use underscore marks _ to illustrate where normal beats should have been, but my heart was no longer beating in this mental shooting cycle.}
beat,beat.beat,beat. beat-beat. beat.....beat. beat........THump....THUMP! _,_._,_. _,_. (BANG!)_,_._,_. _,_.(following through the shot)_,_. _,_. THUMP!(heart resumes), beat,beat,beat,beat,beat. beat,beat. beat,beat. beat,beat.
I never knew why, and to be honest it was a little unnerving but the last few beats prior to the stop or pause of the rythm was HARSH. As was the start back up beat.
So we all hear what an amazing tool the mind is blah blah blah, and I'm actually a pretty conservative person. Never been much for Zen bull crap. Heck, I can hardly stand Brian Eno's stuff for all the zen bull crap plastered all over the forum. But maybe I'm actually using my own zen bull crap as I fell into it incidentally, or that is me & dad. Let's not overthink it, I'm a conservative.
But Learning to shoot in a meditative state can only be a good thing. With what little I know I can teach common folk to drop their heart rate a minimum of 15-20 bpm, for a *short* duration of time pretty quick, after I taught them basic meditation and thats with them keeping their meditative trigger tuned up. (It's like programming a switch in your mind to instantly drop into a serene/euphoric state of conscious.)
So anywho these statements are absolute fact. I'm home sick and have nothing better to do than type, so FWIW, enjoy. These techniques, and having a really good shooting rifle and hand loading knowledge is what got me to my first " .0" " group. My first .0" group measured .097" @ 100, and I was just barely old enough to drive yet. My all time best ever group I have fired was .092", center to center, with a stopped heart. {cut me some slack, I'm a poor boy and no longer sponsored by the attorney. I have not owned a single,premium, hand built custom rifle, EVER, except for my AR.)
The other thing this all taught me? It taught me burn out. When a bench rest group does not go into a .0_ _" hole or you do not shoot 100 straight in trap, or you do not "clean" your NRA target and you call it a (enter a whole lot of 4 letter words) bad day at the range, it's time to go back to THOUGHTLESS "plinking" and enjoy shooting, period.
I encourage you all to develop your own mental program. I use it when shooting everything that has sights. (slow fire anyway) I took my bow shooting from good to shooting one arrow into the back of another (called a "Robin Hood") frequently and a "triple hood" twice by running my mental program.
So wether you believe all this or no, I promise if you can really,really,really, REALLY really, really relax when your at the rifle new accomplishments in your shooting will come quickly. Just remember notto loose your bowels.
Tres
