[badchad]

The last couple of matches I did I noticed I was running out of air as the stage progressed, and would be aligning my sights on a target and had to pause to breath because I was running out of air. This is something I never notice in a pistol match. In slow fire rifle shooting I know you are supposed to hold your breath, but in 3-gun when hosing you don’t have much time to breath between shots nor is there much time between further shots that are close together. So what’s the method of choice for 3-gun to avoid running out of air and/or pausing to catch up on O2?

[Religious Shooter]

KYL... Know your limitations.

If you will be traversing a course at a fast clip know before hand if you will be sucking wind at a shooting position. If you know you will be sucking wind and you know it will be a long shot... back off. What good is going to a position real fast if you end up having a bunch of misses? Don't run so fast.

If you are serious... do some PT to build up your tolerance. And practice shooting when your sights are going into the target.

[Yankee Dog]

I dont think you need to worry about breathing much during a hose fest. If you are that might be part of the problem. Trying to hold your breath while on your feet and running around will wear your butt out fast. The targets are generally close enough that the wobble caused by breathing should not effect your score.

Long shot are a different story. Learn to time your wobble and your breaths. Take up the trigger and when your sights come on target stop breathing and squeeze off the shot quickly. Take a quick breath while transitioning to the next target and repeat. This is not high power you dont have the luxury of 20 minutes for 20 shots.

oh and the PT is not a bad idea either.

Yankee Dog

[JKSNIPER]

Don't hold your breath.
Shoot during your natural respiratory pause.
If your sucking wind and unable to catch your breath then take 3-4 quick breaths and lock in it with your tongue against the roof of your mouth and that should enable you to hold steady for a few seconds. Enough to get a shot off.
JK

[mlmiller1]

I've found that I breathe best if when the r.o. says "stand by" I Exhale fully. There is no way to go through a stage without breathing if you start off empty. This helps me use the autonomic breathing that the body has built into it. Before I started doing that, I would sometimes wind up near the end of a stage completely out of breath. I determined I was holding my breath through the whole thing. Not a good idea!
MLM

[badchad]

Thanks so far. Just to clarify it's not an endurance problem, I already do some hard cardio during the week. I'm pretty sure it's that I'm holding my breath for long periods during the stage.

[XRe]

Its really the same thing as it is in a pistol stage, you just tend to notice it more with a rifle, due to the difference in effective size of the target, and the sight radius on the gun. Force yourself to breath deeply and fully in between shooting positions, while indexing the gun, etc. If you want an example, go find a copy of Burkett's IPSC Strategies DVD, and listen to the audio on the hat cam footage...

A common misconception - commonly built cardio capacity will not help you in shooting most stages. They simply don't last long enough - if you're not doing hard anaerobic development (think sprints with rests, short intervals, etc), your weekly fitness regimen is not doing you any good when you go out sprinting and shooting for 30-40 seconds. Until the stage is a couple of minutes long, you're not getting in to an area where the aerobic processes in your body are actually doing anything useful for the performance. I don't know what "some hard cardio" means, so I can't say much more than that (that reminds me.. I should write a blog article... ).

[Yankee Dog]

badchad, on Dec 22 2008, 07:41 AM, said:

.....................I'm pretty sure it's that I'm holding my breath for long periods during the stage.

I think you have solved your problem. dont do that . it would kick anyones butt. I think I would pass out.

Yankee Dog

[AlamoShooter]

An Old trick...as in a few thousand years old. is to Exhale forcefully when you have some movement.
Its the Growl/ shout tool . It is a borrowed tool from marital arts.
It sounds like a mule Skinner's shout at the wagon mules. The reason it works in a fight / battle works like this.
To get fresh O2 air into the (Lungs) you must first get the air with high carbon diox. out of the lungs.
A good breath can only happen when the -Bad air- gets out.
I am a bit older than most of the other guys, but I can almost keep up with good technique. If I have more than six steps to the next place to shoot I will make a "HAwwA" sound Wide open throat. No one has made fun of me ..yet. I do it in a quick method and hardly hear it when the run is on video.
For STC we shoot standing with 10 round mag limits, we shoot for 90 seconds in the top class. during the reload I breath /try to breath out hard to get fresh air in before the rifle comes back up.
The eys's ablility to foucs sharp is the first to suffer when Ox levels drop in the blood. = over 60 seconds

This post has been edited by AlamoShooter: 22 December 2008 - 10:10 AM

[kurtm]

Now I don't shoot a lot of rifle, and I don't really 3-gun all that much so maybe I shouldn't say anything here, but as an R.O. I have noticed aboout 30% of shooters while shooting rifle "forget to breath". There have been several time over the last year I told a shooter to breath! ( don't you just love "outlaw" matches where the R.O. has discretion to help a hypoxic shooter?) I myself have never noticed or been afflicted by this problem probably because I never move that fast. I have noticed that if you tell yourself to remember to breath and keep telling yourself to breath for about 5 or 6 stages, the problem seems to go away for a while. You just need to remind yourself occationally.

It seems some folks hold their breath when they concentrate really hard, (I just usually fall asleep), just like some folks like to stick out their tongue, or roll their eyes up, or puff out a cheek...etc. this is a sub level reaction and can easily be programed out by just a few reps of remembger to ____!! Never use remember NOT TO ___ cause the last thing your sub level hears is the ___.

Ie. remember to press the trigger, the sub hears press.....The other side is... Remember not to JERK the trigger. the sub hears JERK THE TRIGGER!

So for You Chad, your mantra for a while should be "remember to breath, remember to breath" all the time you are shooting anything and after a while it will become second nature again! KurtM

[ken hebert]

Listen to Bush's "Machinehead" before each stage.

[TXMXRACER]

I knew i was forgetting to do something. I just figured it was to keep the sight still.

[badchad]

LOL about the Bush song, it’s one of my favorites. I did some dryfire practice with my rifle during my lunch break and used Kurt’s mantra, which seemed to help a lot. Also as said for closer shots and shots on the move my sight picture was not noticeably disturbed by breathing as I pulled the trigger, so I’m going to practice that more.

XRE, I also checked out my Burkett IPSC strategies DVD and yeah you can really hear when and where Matt’s taking his breaths. My undergrad degree is in Exercise Science and you’re absolutely correct about the energy systems being different for shooting a stage than for general aerobics. I’m still sure that’s not the issue for me though, as thought I’m not running formal sprints I do plenty of short fast runs from box to box in practice drills. So I wasn’t fatigued at all in the rifle stage, just turning blue from holding my breath too long.

Thanks again for all the advice.

[bigbrowndog]

Thats real funny Kurt because I thought you always told yourself "don't think, just drink" i vividly remember this mantra being chanted over and over again.

but then I think I drank too much!!!!!!!!

Trapr

[kurtm]

See it is working Trapr..the sub hears...just drink...it is a positive, not a negative!