[Matthew]

Apologies....

None needed. I wholeheartedly agree with you!

 

[Two Dogs]

Just be smarter than the trigger.

 

[Jusanothajoe]

Great! Jerry has just fixed flinching for the whole world!
I'm CURED!
But I won't get rid of my release trigger just yet.

 

[9point3]

I think we all know the background and qualifications of Jerry Muculek. Perhaps JBrooks would be so kind as to share his background and qualifications with us.

So world champion bull riders are experts in everything bovine related? That's the logic y'all are using regarding JM's expertise when it comes to flinching

 

[Drew Hause]

What 9point3 said - The problem frequently is in equating genuine expertise in one athletic skill/discipline with
1. understanding the process of performing that skill and
2. being able to communicate/teach that skill and
3. having expertise in a different field of knowledge ie. task specific dystonia
For instance, expertise in a video game does not mean the player understands how a computer works.

IMHO someone (I'm not referring to Miculek) who has never flinched should be very cautious about telling someone else why they are flinching and what to do about it.
But with AI we now can all be experts

 

[LowBrass366]

Being a good shot doesn't qualify Mr. Miculek as an expert in physiology or neurology, or anything else. It just makes him a good shot.

How much would you charge me to talk to my wife about a similar problem????

 

[Shootin'coach]

Who's Annie Oakley?

She runs trap shoots with money for prizes.

 

[entropy]

If that is true why are release triggers predominantly found only on trap fields?
Seldom seen on skeet, sporting clays (typically here held by trap shooters), FITASC, etc??

Said differently, what is special about trap that brings a unique problem that is only solved with a release trigger, when ALL the other dirt bird sports use the same targets, the same shells, and often the same guns??

I have one possible explanation below.

Anyone who claims trigger freeze in trapshooting is a visual problem has the unenviable task of explaining how a release trigger eliminates the "visual" problem. So far, no one has done that. But, go ahead, you may as well take a shot at it if you want.

It can be a combination of causes, and while the brain is the main cause, the eyes have a part in it also. Jerry's explanation points that out. Pulling the trigger with one's eyes shut is not an option with flying targets, however.

The subconscious, responsible for the events leading up to a broken clay, can be overridden by the conscious, which has a tendency to (using a Navy term that despite the Freudian double entendre, does not refer in this instance to self pleasuring) "polish the torpedo". That is, the conscious mind is constantly trying to refine the "firing solution", and can cut the unconscious' firing decision off. Something is not quite right to the conscious, and it causes a "glitch in the system". We react in the amusing ways mentioned above, usually resulting in a lost bird.


So here's where the eyes' part of the fault for the missed clay comes in. The subconscious reacts much faster than the conscious. This is why a trained non verbal communications expert can find the real meaning behind verbal communications, because the fleeting gestures and faces a person makes are much harder to control, many do not even realize they are doing them. This is what separates a good actor from a great one.

The fly in the ointment is the conscious will send a message to "abort" firing after the subconscious has seen and corrected for whatever the conscious belatedly reacts to.

We've all had clays that, due to wind, either attempted orbit, or dove to the ground. When the subconscious stays in control, we usually hit them, more so the ones going up. When the conscious "panics" and takes over, it's more often a miss.

The eyes don't just send signals only straight back to the occipital cortex, they dump off signals to several other centers in the brain, and all of these areas process varying data: color, motion speed, etc. Then signals are sent to the muscles to cause the desired/needed action.

The more the conscious mind is repressed/ cut out of the process of a task it has repeatedly done successfully, the more success is attained using the subconscious, and yips, flinches, whatever you may call them, will disappear.

Have I consistently achieved that yet? No. But when I allow my subconscious to guide the process of shooting a a clay, I hit. The hard part is letting go of conscious control and letting the subconscious do what it already knows how to do to perfection.

 

[tomk2]

I have had a few dozen flinches over the last 10 years. Usually spaced out by weeks, months, or even years. One thing I did notice is that with every one of them, I knew I was trying to fire when there was no chance I was going to hit the target. So, whatever I was doing, it was not recoil, and it seemed to be trying to fire when my barrel was nowhere near the target. Only once, perhaps twice, I was able to skip the chicken dance and not try to shoot again. Once or twice the shot after the chicken dance hit the target, but otherwise trying to shoot the same target after a flinch is a lost target.

I would love to see if a golfer with the yips could suppress them by hitting balls with eyes closed. It is an interesting theory that even if a flinch is multi-modal in cause, practicing without the visual portion can help reduce it?

 

[LowBrass366]

I have had a few dozen flinches over the last 10 years. Usually spaced out by weeks, months, or even years. One thing I did notice is that with every one of them, I knew I was trying to fire when there was no chance I was going to hit the target. So, whatever I was doing, it was not recoil, and it seemed to be trying to fire when my barrel was nowhere near the target. Only once, perhaps twice, I was able to skip the chicken dance and not try to shoot again. Once or twice the shot after the chicken dance hit the target, but otherwise trying to shoot the same target after a flinch is a lost target.

Such a weird emotion after hitting the target after a flinch.. Remember feeling like I didn’t deserve the break but then I lost quite a few from the flinch as well.. Duality of the brain. Then you wonder who was watching and if I looked as ridiculous as it felt.

 

[JBrooks]

It can be a combination of causes, and while the brain is the main cause, the eyes have a part in it also. Jerry's explanation points that out. Pulling the trigger with one's eyes shut is not an option with flying targets, however.

I don't know, some of my scores would seem to indicate that must have been what I was doing. .

Before I switched to shooting with one eye shut but using occlusion on my left lens, there was a regular occurrence where my left eye would still take over and all I would "see" at the moment of firing was nothing. However, the muscle memory was already in gear and I would always break the target without seeing the actual break. I just figured it was a Jedi thingy.

However, my friend, I am still waiting on an explanation how a release trigger "fixes" trigger freeze regardless of the cause and particularly as to claims of a visual deficiency.

I will also say that I have never been able to identify any visual discrepancy pattern between release users and pull users in their RightEye dynamic vision test results which include some basic neurological visual performance data. Now, I haven't tested 1000 of each but the differences between normal and cross dominance shooters has always been readily apparent.

 

[Drew Hause]

tom: interestingly, a golfer with hopeless putting "yips" will often have a smooth stroke when there is no ball to look at. I've seen the same thing with driving "yips" - the driving swing is a mess, then the golfer takes 2 perfect swings with no ball. You can see Barkley do that here

Compilation of Charles Barkley's hilarious golf swings

 

[jeff348]

I can testify that some flinches are visual. Mine is and a release trigger does not fix it magically. I flinch equally with a pull and release. My flinch is caused by bead checking. This results in either being unable to pull the trigger, unable to release a release trigger or firing as soon as my eyes look at the front sight / end of barrel. I find it happens most from not holding the barrel still until seeing the target clearly. I took a Phil Kiner clinic a couple years ago and he was able to see the bead check when reviewing the taped shooting. The harder I look at the target the less it happens.

 

[tomk2]

I don't know, some of my scores would seem to indicate that must have been what I was doing. .

Before I switched to shooting with one eye shut but using occlusion on my left lens, there was a regular occurrence where my left eye would still take over and all I would "see" at the moment of firing was nothing. However, the muscle memory was already in gear and I would always break the target without seeing the actual break. I just figured it was a Jedi thingy.........

I had the exact same experience. The target would disappear as I was firing at it because the occluded eye took over. WTF? It wasn't your inner Jedi, you brain still saw and processed the image from the non occluded eye, and knew how to make the shot, but your conscious mind was focusing on how the target became invisible. I ignored it for a while, but then wondering if I had hit the target became an urge to lift up my head and try to see. The same phenomenon can be observed when a target enters a different background with very different contrast. Your conscious processed image tells you the target can't be seen, but you brain can still see the now reduced contrast image and motion. Pretend you can still see it, and you will hit it, because in reality, you can still see it, just not like you had been consciously seeing it. What you consciously see is a processed image, not the raw data, which evolution used as a way to improve threat identification and reaction speeds. That is why you see things like faces in the patterns on floor tiles, but they are not there when you actually study the tile. There was an evolutionary advantage to quickly seeing patterns that looked like faces (or any other possible threat) than closely examining the raw data to make sure if it was real or not.

 

[entropy]

I don't know, some of my scores would seem to indicate that must have been what I was doing. .

Before I switched to shooting with one eye shut but using occlusion on my left lens, there was a regular occurrence where my left eye would still take over and all I would "see" at the moment of firing was nothing. However, the muscle memory was already in gear and I would always break the target without seeing the actual break. I just figured it was a Jedi thingy.

However, my friend, I am still waiting on an explanation how a release trigger "fixes" trigger freeze regardless of the cause and particularly as to claims of a visual deficiency.

I will also say that I have never been able to identify any visual discrepancy pattern between release users and pull users in their RightEye dynamic vision test results which include some basic neurological visual performance data. Now, I haven't tested 1000 of each but the differences between normal and cross dominance shooters has always been readily apparent.

Well, it won't be me explaining it, because I've only shot a release trigger once, and I shot my average that round.

I had the exact same experience. The target would disappear as I was firing at it because the occluded eye took over. WTF? It wasn't your inner Jedi, you brain still saw and processed the image from the non occluded eye, and knew how to make the shot, but your conscious mind was focusing on how the target became invisible. I ignored it for a while, but then wondering if I had hit the target became an urge to lift up my head and try to see. The same phenomenon can be observed when a target enters a different background with very different contrast. Your conscious processed image tells you the target can't be seen, but you brain can still see the now reduced contrast image and motion. Pretend you can still see it, and you will hit it, because in reality, you can still see it, just not like you had been consciously seeing it. What you consciously see is a processed image, not the raw data, which evolution used as a way to improve threat identification and reaction speeds. That is why you see things like faces in the patterns on floor tiles, but they are not there when you actually study the tile. There was an evolutionary advantage to quickly seeing patterns that looked like faces (or any other possible threat) than closely examining the raw data to make sure if it was real or not.

Yes, that's what I outlined eariler; not all the signal sent throught the optical nerve goes to the occipital cortex first, some goes through the limbic system, which makes those "fight or flight" type decisions quicker, though often on sketchy data.

 

[John Henry]

I don't know who this guy is but he is full of crap if he thinks trigger freeze in clay target sports is a vision problem.

Well, maybe you are full of crap, I don't know.

I went to a release trigger before I went to a dot/patch on the eye. Sometime later, I started to wonder if I had done the dot/patch first, maybe I wouldn't have needed the release trigger.

Not sure why you are calling it "trigger freeze" as I've never heard it called that, and I don't think that is what it is. Rather, I think of it as target panic, and your mind deciding not to shoot at the last millisecond because it perceives the lead to be wrong. This can absolutely be a vision issue.

 

[JBrooks]

I went to a release trigger before I went to a dot/patch on the eye. Sometime later, I started to wonder if I had done the dot/patch first, maybe I wouldn't have needed the release trigger.

Then, with the occlusion you should no longer need the release. Further, you can't explain how countless shooters have adopted a release after starting to occlude.



I call it a trigger freeze to distinguish from the totally normal conditioned reflex in response to recoil which is more aptly called a flinch.

Now, do you want to explain how a release trigger overcomes a vision problem? No one else seems to be able to.

 

[JBrooks]

and your mind deciding not to shoot at the last millisecond because it perceives the lead to be wrong.

Then please explain trigger freeze on a dead straight target from post 3 where good shooters break the target within a fraction of a second from muscle memory as soon as the recognize the presentation?

 

[visible chip]

Then please explain trigger freeze on a dead straight target from post 3 where good shooters break the target within a fraction of a second from muscle memory as soon as the recognize the presentation?

The only things I know for sure about flinching are:

#1 Whoever figures it out and offers a reliable cure will shortly be one of the wealthiest people in the world.

#2 Neither you nor Mr. Miculek is so busy counting money that you don't have time to argue about it on the internet.

 

[Matthew]

From where I sit, I don’t see anyone that can provide a definitive answer. I sure can’t and I’d like to know, as I now I flinch at least once per round. Sure don’t want to have to go to one. A lot of big words thrown around for what reason I don’t know. Hard for me to understand, but admittedly I’m not that well versed in trap shooting. Haven’t been at it all that long.

My thoughts are that it would take a trained medical professional to be able to explain it and hopefully in a way that one could understand. I doubt that any posters here have that training. But it’s a topic for lively discussion and arguing if one is so inclined. I’m not as it’s not that big of a deal to me. If I have to do it I will, but I’m not going to spend my time arguing over it.

Jerry is of course a champion pistol shooter and in that sport I’ll listen and put his thoughts into practice. Perhaps some ot it would apply to trap shooting, but I doubt that it would provide a definitive answer to a complicated condition.

So carry on with your discussion. I don’t think you will ever get there, but who knows?