I try to be a laid back person, but I know it’s in my DNA to be pretty “type A”. Physically it’s hard for me to relax… physical tension creeps in all the time. One of the most evident places? The shoulders. I can do this to myself, I can do this to other people all the time. Just say “drop your shoulders”… many people think their shoulders are dropped but when you make them go through the motion, they’re always amazed that they were partially shrugged. Tension.

Recently I purchased a bunch of Matt Burkett’s DVD’s. I just finished watching volume 1. One thing Matt was constantly telling the video’s student was to stay relaxed and drop your shoulders. Also, Matt’s discussion of the drawstroke really hit home with me. You see, I know what the proper and ideal drawstroke should be like, but I’ve been going too far. That is, when you get to position 2, I’ve been drawing it up a little higher than it should be in an effort to get the gun higher so it’s in my visual sight plane sooner. I know not to go too high (e.g. in front of the face), but I was still going kinda high and shrugging my shoulders to do so.

After watching the Burkett video and then doing a dry fire session, I see this is bad… or at least, bad for me.

The main thing is, with the shoulders shrugged I’m just not relaxed. I already know that being relaxed is so important (I know this from my empty-hand martial arts practice, but like I said, being “type A” seems to be wired into my DNA), but I was sacrificing some relaxation for picking up the sights sooner. Trouble is, I wasn’t picking up the sights any faster! What I suspect was happening? As I’d push the gun out there would be wobble as my shoulders would change height, or tension which would lead to some jitter. When I keep my shoulders relaxed, the gun in position 2 and 3 may not be as high, but I’m picking the sights up a lot faster because the shoulders are all the way down and as long as I’m not shrugging them up as I present then the gun is staying in a level plane with no wobble or jitter added by the shoulder movement. And get this… I was doing this dry practice with a snub revolver — crappy sights (compared to something better, like the Dawson target and fiber optic front sight).

Stay relaxed. It’s good for many things in life, not just shooting. I’m going to print out a piece of paper to keep by my dry fire area that says “relax, drop the shoulders”. I suspect this will help my performance greatly.