What affects your shooting the most?

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What affects your shooting the most?

Consistently accurate shooting is the end result of many things - not just technique.

By John Bidwell

Monday, 02 June 2008

In your view, apart from actual faults in shooting technique or gun handling, what other factors contribute most to poor performance with a gun?

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JOHN BIDWELL says:

All manner of things can, and do, have a bearing on how competently and consistently we shoot.

Even wearing the wrong clothing can have a detrimental effect on accuracy.

The deciding factor though has got to be our individual well being both from a physical and mental point of view while we are shooting.

The trouble here is that everyone’s different and what might be a drawback for one person will not be a problem to somebody else. The stimuli to a good performance will be different as well – as will be the ways each of us uses pressure to our benefit.

As I’ve always said, knowing how to shoot is one thing, knowing how to win is something entirely different.

The really important thing, however, is to keep things as simple as possible so that we do not make things harder than they really are.

Sometimes it’s tempting to pigeonhole problems when often two or more things might be more closely related than we first think. A simple thing like a poor night’s sleep can have a devastating affect on shooting performance because not only will we be mentally jaded, we will also be physically tired.

If your actual shooting technique is sound then to perform well with a gun I’d say the most important thing is to keep yourself reasonably fit and turn up on the day alert after a good night’s sleep.