The last BP2/DPS1 class I helped with at KR Training generated a bunch of thoughts in my head. I thought I’d make a small series out of it.

Take a Breath!

This is pretty simple.

Breathe.

You’ll see people on the line, they hold their breath and shoot the whole string without ever taking a breath.

Depriving yourself of oxygen isn’t good. Just listen to the song above. 🙂

This is very understandable. I do this myself. Pressure goes up and the breath gets held. Ideally we should breathe naturally, but when fur is flying, what’s naturally? And note, this isn’t precision rifle shooting, so it’s a different sort of breathing. Really, the goal here would be to just keep breathing and breathing in a natural way.

In an attempt to combat this, in my practice (especially dry fire practice) I make myself inhale deeply on the draw stroke. Even if I end up holding my breath, at least I’m getting a fresh lung-full of oxygen. Plus getting that big lung-full tends to force me to exhale, which tends to force me to inhale, and so the cycle continues. If I don’t do this, often I end up not breathing, which typically ends up on an empty set of lungs and thus already oxygen deprived. No, I’m still not perfect about this, but it’s something I work on.