The effect of heart rate on shooting - Part 1

Quite a long time ago now, I noticed that the beating of my heart appeared to slow when I was in the aim. I remarked as such to a medically-qualified friend, who replied that he was not in the least surprised as it is known that it is possible to consciously slow heart rate*. Having recently bought myself a Garmin 225 GPS watch combined with a heart rate monitor as a training aid for running, I decided that it would be interesting to see what results I got when measuring my heart rate during a SCATT session.

The Effect of Heartbeats on Aim
It's logical that heart rate (and possibly strength of heartbeat) will have an effect on aim. The hydrostatic pressure of the surge of blood around the body will disturb the fine aiming required to shoot a rifle accurately, either as it passes through the organs of the body or through the major blood vessels of the upper limb**. Indeed, the disturbance caused by heartbeats can be observed using a SCATT as is shown in the diagram below.

Fig 1.0 - The effect of heartbeats on SCATT traces. The notation indicates the heartbeat number in sequence and the time before the shot broke.

What is perhaps less logical, or at least less well known, is that it is possible to consciously control heart rate to some degree. By extending this, maybe it's possible that some people can subconsciously control their heart rate under circumstances or, to put another way, do I subconsciously decrease my heart rate while shooting?

The Measurement of Heart Rate
I bought my watch primarily for running, as my pace judgement isn't great and this is critically-important when running long distances. Go out 15 seconds per mile too fast in a marathon and the last 10k is likely to be deeply unpleasant, not to mention very slow. The watch that I bought also has an integrated heart monitor, which works by detecting colour changes under the skin of your wrist when bloodflow increases. Once an activity is recorded, the data can be viewed through the Garmin website or through a 3rd party app like Strava. The plan is simple, start the heart rate monitor and then correlate the heart rate output with shots from SCATT.

Fig 1.1 - Strava output for my last 5k parkrun. The red line is heart rate.

Experimental Conditions
I fired a good 10 shot group using my SCATT wearing the heart monitor. I was careful to try and do this as close to normally as I was able using my normal kit and technique. I switched on the heart rate monitor after warming up, but before I got down to shoot.

Fig 1.2 - SCATT results.

Heart rate monitor results
The heart rate trace yielded some great results and demonstrated exactly the effect I wanted to observe; however it also yielded something rather unexpected. Given that my resting heart rate is somewhere around 50bpm*** I was expecting to see my heart rate decrease to around that level or possibly lower while in the aim, and it to increase moderately when back out of the aim to, say 90bpm. The raw graph looks not dissimilar to this expectation.

Fig 1.3 - Heart rate results. Note the average heart rate of 90bpm.

When I superimposed the shots on the graph, as is shown below and then actually looked at the specific heart rate numbers I was rather surprised to see that the average during shots was 60-65bpm and between shots it went as high as 130-135bpm,which is approximately the same as when I run at a 9 minute mile pace on a flat course.

Preliminary conclusions
It is clear from the result that I am subconsciously controlling my heartbeat when doing SCATT sessions; however the range of heart rates was much broader than was expected. In the next article, I'll have a crack at explaining what might account for this variation and whether there's any way of using it to our advantage.

* Vid. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22744827
** It is worth noting at this point that at least two aspects of shooting technique are aimed at diminishing the effect of heartbeats on aim: The modified Estonian position is supposed to reduce the effect of bloodflow through your guts on aim, and correct positioning of the sling on the upper arm reduces disturbance from the brachial artery.
** Average for a 40 year-old man is something like 70bpm according to http://www.topendsports.com/testing/heart-rate-resting-chart.htm but I've been running for few years now, which has had a significant effect.

Bugger.

Decided to record my heart rate using my Garmin 225 watch during this evening's SCATT session as part of an experiment but must have accidentally deleted the session. Bugger. Will try again tomorrow.

SCATT Games 1 - Feel the force

I have felt for a while now that just lying down and shooting on a SCATT under normal conditions is a really great start, but not necessarily the best use of such a versatile training tool. This season, to try and explore different ways of using my SCATT, I'm going to try some additional exercises to see what benefit they give.

One possibility came to me over the weekend while I was sanding and varnishing the front doorframe, which leaves my hands pleasantly occupied while allowing my mind time to think of other things. My idea was to establish my natural point of aim (NPA) and then shoot on a SCATT with my eyes closed to verify that I was actually shooting at the NPA and to allow me to focus on feeling my position rather than relying on a visual verification. Having given this some thought, the next thing to do was to set up the experiment.

Experimental Theory and Conditions
I decided that I would fire two sighters and then 10 shot group* under normal conditions to act as a control. I would then fire a second pair of sighters under normal conditions to re-establish my NPA and then fire a second 10 shot group, except that I would have my eyes closed from the start of the exhale phase through to shot release**. The core hypothesis of the experiment being that were my natual point of aim to coincide with the target with my eyes open, it should also correspond with the target with my eyes closed. Any deviation in the mean point of impact (MPI) for the two groups should be within the standard error of the MPI, otherwise my my NPA would clearly not be "natural".

To try and eliminate calibration and other errors, I fired the two sets of sighters and groups without breaking position. In this case I fired the normal group first, but when I rerun the experiment I'll shoot first with my eyes closed to eliminate order as a confounding effect. Also, I'll try control shoots where I keep eyes open for both shoots and closed for both shoots.

Results
As is clear from the two diagrams shown below, I need to work on my NPA! There is a difference of about 0.75moa horizontally and 0.75moa vertically between the two groups. I've not yet run the maths, but I think that when I do I'll find that the difference in zeroes is greater than the standard error of the group size.

Yes, I know. I used two slightly different targets by mistake. Damn.

Conclusions and Next Steps
While the result isn't quite as I had hoped, much more important is that I know have further knowledge about my shooting; information backed by data upon which I can act. The key actions I now know I need to take are: to repeat the experiment, to check that this is not simply the result of experimental error; but also to monitor improvement as I work on this aspect of my shooting.

Addendum; I hadn't really noticed that the eyes closed shoot had a much better shot release number. Now this could be because I was wobbling a bit less because I wasn'y unconsciously holding the rifle off the NPA, or it could just be chance. I'll have to do this a few more times to distinguish between the two possibilities.

* Yes, I know I should really be firing more shots that this (at least 30 to have some statistical validity) but it was the first time I tried the experiment and I'll repeat it a few

** My final shot sequence goes: Confirm NPA, breath in, breathe out to natural respiratory pause, confirm centering, take first stage, squeeze, bang, follow-through.

For the love of shooting

In last week's missive, I confessed to being a filthy hypocrite who hasn't picked up a rifle in weeks (months!) because of work, family and running, so it is something of a relief to be able to say that I have finally got off my backside and done some SCATT training in addition to a little live firing.

You know what? I rather enjoyed it.

It may sound a trifle sad to say so, but I enjoyed setting up my kit, lying down in my living room with my rifle and spending about 45 minutes clicking away at the sterile paper target set up next to the television. Probably the most welcome aspect is the feeling of muscle memory getting dusted off and being put to use once again. Things that were once automatic reactions becoming so once again; fully relaxing my left arm is probably the most significant for me; I can physically see the wobble getting less with each shot as I remember how to let down the muscular tension and allow the sling to do the work. When I can do this without thinking about it, and the same with my right shoulder, I will be ready.

The return to training is a bit late, as the NZ Nationals kick off in a little under two weeks' time. I may have been a little tardy starting my preparations; however I'll do what I can to make best use of the days available to me, helped by the fact that I'm on vacation for most of them. In addition to loading the remainder of my ammunition (185 rounds of short range ammo loaded and 150-something rounds of long range ammo to go) I'll try and get on the SCATT for 30-40 shots every day. I've already checked my kit over, so I should be good to go in that regard.

I'm looking forward to heading down to Upper Hutt again; to see who's on form and what the conditions are going to be. Most of all, though, I'm just anticipating the fun of spending a week on a rifle range with a bunch of likeminded folks and doing a bunch of shooting.

Get those shots away quickly to avoid retinal fatigue

I was on Facebook the other day when a friend posted a negative picture of a woman with a blank slide next to it, the idea being to stare at the picture for 30 seconds and then stare at the blank slide, blinking a few times. Miraculously, a ghostly positive image of the woman is reproduced on the slide.

It is critically important to understand that the reasons behind this optical illusion are also the reasons why you shouldn't stare down the sights forever and an age before letting a shot off.



Stare at the three coloured dots on the woman's nose for 30 seconds, then look at a brightly lit white piece of paper or wall and blink. You should see a photo-positive image.

The answer to the riddle of why we see a positive image of a woman, having stared at the negative image lies in the chemical magic of how our eyes work. When light shines on certain chemicals in the cells of the retina, a reaction is triggered which results in nerve impulses being fired. Our brain interprets these nerve impulses and we see an image as a result. These photosensitive chemicals are then regenerated for further use.

The problem is that there are finite quantities of these chemicals in our eyes and the chemical process which recycles them takes a little time. Normally this doesn't matter because your eyes are constantly moving and the patterns of light falling on your eyes change also, so the regeneration process can keep up; however if you're very still and looking at the same image for a long time, the supply of photosensitive chemicals is exhausted in the retinal cells. When you look at the blank piece of paper, the overstimulated retinal cells don't react in the same way whereas un-stimulated cells do, producing the same pattern of reactions that you would get if you were looking at a positive image. The image has been "burned" into your retina and you are no longer seeing what is actually there.

Just as in the Facebook post where you see a ghostly afterimage of a woman, when looking through the sights of your rifle the image of foresight and target becomes distorted. Holding on to shots for too long before letting them off is not a great recipe for phenomenal accuracy. Let the rifle settle naturally on target, breathe in, breathe out, acquire the sight picture and then fire the shot within 2 - 8 seconds.

Pretending you're awesome; visualisation for beginners

At various points I've mentioned visualisation in my posts, as have people who have commented on either my Facebook page or the UK Fullbore Facebook page. It has been pointed out that it may not be entirely clear to people what visualisation (a.k.a. Imagery, mental rehearsal) actually is.

What is visualisation and what is it not?
Visualisation is the process of imagining yourself firing the perfect shot under a variety of different conditions. The idea behind it is to try and imagine all of the different sensations (but vision and touch in particular) as you prepare for a shot, fire it, and then follow through. In theory this will help you execute the action when you come to do it for real because it reinforces muscle memory pathways. There is a significant amount of evidence to support this hypothesis but perhaps most significantly in our case a 1995 study by Whetstone* found that police recruits who were instructed in and then practiced visualisation showed a much greater increase in marksmanship skill than a control groups who had not been so instructed. This increase in marksmanship test scores was statistically significant for both high performing and low performing groups.

It is important to note that visualisation in this context is about rehearsing the precise actions associated with a shot; it is not about imagining how wonderful it would be to win the Grand Agg or the World Long Range Championships. There is some evidence to suggest that this kind of "creative visualisation" approach may lead to a reduction in motivation to achieve the goal imagined (article needs to be purchased to get full text.)** So, despite the rather catchy title of this post, pretending you're awesome isn't strictly a good definition.

How do I do it?
Here's a step-by-step guide to doing a basic visualisation session...

1. Sit down, close your eyes and relax. It's probably worth trying this somewhere quiet when you start, but with practice you'll learn how to do it with a bit of noise.
2. Imagine you're lying down on the firing point with all of your kit and ready to load the rifle and fire a shot.
3. Follow your normal shot routine, but focus on how everything feels***: arms, legs, face on cheekpiece, hands on stock, the pull of the sling on your upper arm, what the trigger is like when you squeeze it. Try to ensure that the technique you're imagining is as perfect as possible, for example, you're pulling the trigger back perfectly in line with the bore of the rifle.
4. Imagine the rifle firing and seeing the follow through.
5. Rinse, repeat.

There are a huge number of variations on the basic theme, such as seeing yourself execute the shot from the perspective of a 3rd person, or imagining what you'd do if the wind changed, if there was a stoppage and how you recover from it etc... however they all come down to seeing and feeling yourself execute perfectly the skills that you want to develop.

Unless it's something that you're done before or have a very disciplined imagination, it will probably be quite difficult at the start. Your concentration will waver and you'll start thinking about something else, or weird things will happen (I used to have a problem with the firing point start to ripple like water. Yes, really.) Over time you will get better at it and you'll be able to see a sharper image and feel sensations more vividly; however to get good at this you're going to need to practice regularly. I've found that 10 minute sessions 3 - 4 times each week is a good amount of time to dedicate.

If you want to go any sit somewhere inspirational like the top of a mountain, or stand one legged in the crane stance at the beach go for it. Personally I used to do it on the 06:36 Stansted Express on the way to work in the morning. The key point here is that like the other elements of your training it won't survive if you don't find a good slot for it in your normal routine.

If Mister Miyagi shot fullbore, he'd tell you to practise visualisation too.

Mental rehearsal of correct technique is a core part of any competitive athlete's training programme and has significant experimental evidence to back it up. It can be another marginal gain to your overall level of performance if you have the discipline to include it in your training programme.

*Whetstone, T.S. Enhancing Psychomotor Skill Development Through the Use of Mental Practice. Journal of Industrial Teacher Education. Volume 4. Number 32. Summer 1995. Available at http://scholar.lib.vt.edu/ejournals/JITE/v32n4/whetstone.html

**Kappes, H.B. Oettingen, G. Positive fantasies about idealized futures sap energy. Journal of Experimental Psychology. Vol. 47. Issue 4. July 2011, pp. 719-729.

***The technical term for this internal sensation of position is proprioception. Your body has a huge number of different mechanisms for measuring muscle tension, joint position etc...

A couple of other papers for those who are that way inclined...

Clark, L.V. Effect of mental practice on the development of a certain motor skill. Research Quarterly. 31: pp 560-69, 1960. See http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1962-00248-001 for abstract.

Suinn, R.M. Imagery and sports. In Straub W.F. and Williams J.M. (Ed.). Cognitive Sport Psychology. 1984. Lansing, NY: Sport Science Associates.

Decety, J. & Jeannerod, M. L’imagerie mentale et son substrat neurologique. Revue Neurologique, 1995. 151, 474-479.

This One Weird Trick Can Eliminate Flinch

It is probably fair to say that my first tour with the Great Britain Palma Rifle Team to the World Long Range Championships at Connaught Ranges in 2007 was not a roaring success. While I came an acceptable 39th in the individual WLRC, my position in the DCRA Grand Aggregate was miserable, I didn't make the Governor General's Final and I was first reserve in. Every. Single. Goddamned. Team. Match.*

The long and the short of it was that my usual technique had degenerated from an extremely consistent and barely-controlled flinch into an inconsistent mess of a flinch. On my return from this tour, I decided that I should probably do something about this. I knew that good trigger control was critical to achieving consistent results and yet I managed to lie to myself about this, kidding myself that it really wasn't that big a deal and my technique was fine.

Normally, I'm a strong believer in the non-existence of silver bullets; however in this case I really believe that this one weird trick eliminated my flinch in the space of about 25 shots. There are a couple of different variations on the theme but it all really boils down to firing a few dozen shots not knowing whether there's a live in the chamber or a dummy/snapcap/empty.

I had tried having someone else load for me with a snapcap, but with the Swing Mk. III I was using at the time I could hear the difference between a live round and a snapcap being loaded. To get around this I made myself ten dummy rounds, each of which was identical to my normal handloads except for a) having an already fired primer, and b) the large red handwriting indicating that this was a dummy round. Otherwise they were completely indistinguishable from a live round, to the point of containing the same charge of the same powder.**

The next time I went to the range, I dumped the dummy rounds into a cloth bag with 20 live rounds and then shot a couple of 2+10s without looking at the rounds as I loaded the rifle. At the start my technique was close to what was normal for me at the time; however I got the fright of my life the first time I pulled the trigger on a dummy round: my position was beautiful, centred perfectly on the vee with only a tiny wobble, but all hell broke loose when the trigger broke! The rifle waved all over the bloody shop before coming to rest neatly back in the middle despite the complete lack of recoil.
This was something of an eye opener.

My composure eventually regained, I continued to shoot and seemed to take a lot more time over triggering, and the next time a dummy came up the rifle wavered only a little. The third time, the rifle didn't move when the firing pin went *ping*. It looked very much like I had cured myself of my flinch. Certainly, the last time I had a misfire (sometime in 2014) the rifle did not waver in the tiniest degree when the trigger broke.

It is worth emphasising at this point that in general my muscle memory felt like I was triggering correctly, just very quickly; however it was clear from the results that this was wrong. But when I consciously tried to squeeze the trigger more slowly, I simply could not do so no matter how hard I tried.

There. You know the secret of my success, or at least how I eliminated one bad habit. If you have a flinch or even a suspicion that your trigger discipline could be better, try this one weird trick and let me know how you get on.

* NB - I freely accept that the team hierarchy made exactly the right decision and that this was fundamentally my fault for not shooting well enough. Own your own performance biatches.

** If you are going to do this, please, please, please ensure that they are stored separately from real ammunition (but still under lock and key, as they may technically consistute a live round under UK law) and are clearly labelled as dummy rounds which contain real powder. Alternatively, use the same mass of an inert filler such as semolina.