Advanced Marksmanship Managing Breathing & Respiratory Pause: Try this app next dry fire practice

[BobD]

Im sure plenty of you practice proper breathing during dry fire sessions but Id like to share this idea to those open minded in trying something new.

The idea is to track and/or modify your breathing with audible and visual feedback. By doing so you can not only know what capabilities are (eg. time of respiratory pause), but try to Improve by understanding how you are effected by different inhale and exhale times. You can also work on keeping your breathing consistent, though different sessions and outings. You could add a heart rate monitor watch (or something similar) and take it to another level. It would be nice to watch how this directly effects your heart rate.

Seeing, hearing and feeling the way I breathe has made it easier to replicate and maintain a rhythm that works for me. Sometimes (at least I) feel like I have a system for shooting down that works and days where I have to remind myself of the basics... A checklist of correct body, head and hand positions etc... I think this could be just another system to engrain proper and consistent breathing for a variety of situations.

There are a handful of FREE metronome apps for both android and iOS. There are a variety of options and settings that vary between apps that I've found useful such as:

-Better visual feedback. This is helpful to facilitate a rhythm. eg. You can have a constant 7 sec inhale but be choppy and different each time. That may work better for some. Maybe taking in most of your breath in the first 3 seconds and slowly taking up the rest is more efficient...

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-Mixed audio feedback
Without changing the speed, you have the option to hear different sounds between each beat. eg. You can set up the beats in one second intervals but have a different sound at each 1/2 second.

-Less annoying tone
Some of the chimes you hear are a bit obnoxious. All of them have options to change the sound you hear. I prefer the really subtle ones. 'Blip' on the app Tempo shouldn't give you or anyone around a headache.

-Tracking and Timing
You can set up a variety of methods to do this. For example MetroTimer has different preset count down timers you can use while other track how long its going. Where its useful... Set the timer to 2 minutes and see how many dry fire shots you can take while maintaining whatever rhythmic breathing you use. You can allot however much time you think recoil would play.


Some ideas-

-Set up the metronome to 60 BPS (one second intervals) and track not only your current inhale and exhale times but how long it takes to reach a comfortable respiratory pause. How many cycles of breathing did it take? How long was was your pause?

-Track how much your breathing effects your sight picture at different rates

-Try changing some of your breathing times and the amount of cycles slightly and understand if it shortens or extends the pause. This includes different inhale and exhale times. Eg. If your at 1:1, try 1: to 1.5 or 2


-For shooting strings of shots try either setting a timer or track how long it takes you to fire x amount of shots. See if you can shorten the length of time comfortably.

-For preparing for more stressful situations try starting fast and learn what it takes for you personally to regain whatever however much control you need.

For apps like Tempo that can display each beat and other visual cues try setting the timing and BPM so you can visualize inhale, exhale and pause times. For example, your first breath may be quicker but try setting 4 or 6 beats across at 30 BPM or whatever goal your next or last cycle is. Personally, having multimedia or using multiple senses is the best way for me to learn or memorize something. You can get pretty creative with both the visual and audio feedback on some of these.

Tempo has the ability to reach as low as 10 beats per minute (BPM) while MetroTimer can only go down to 40. I find 30 BPM can be useful but the simplicity of the MetroTimer and timer feature are enough to keep it around.

I've only been doing this or a short time so I have nothing to swear by but to me it makes sense. If your setting up to dry fire it doesn't really take additional time. The only hassle involves turning on your phone and pressing a button or two. Everyone's different, and I hope this could help keep what works best for you or help you find out what does.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

 

[Hairball]

I just pull the trigger after I exhale but I don't need an app for it. I find that it does not matter how fast your breathing cycle is (unless you pant like a dog) and just pull the trigger at your natural pause after you exhale in the breathing cycle.

 

[Sterling Shooter]

Or a shooter can just concentrate on sight alignment and trigger control. The brain will take care of placing the shot during the natural breathing pause, unless the shooter screws it up by thinking about his breathing.

Today, I am using curriculums for basic marksmanship which do not present any thoughts on breathing. I think these modern curriculums have abandoned information on the need to pull during the natural respiratory pause since, when told to do it on command the shooter's consciousness for it prevents it from being natural.

 

[Graham]

There is no usefulness to a gadget like that because there is no need to monitor the duration of your inhale or exhale, and your heart rate is irrelevant.

Today, I am using curriculums for basic marksmanship which do not present any thoughts on breathing. I think these modern curriculums have abandoned information on the need to pull during the natural respiratory pause since, when told to do it on command the shooter's consciousness for it prevents it from being natural.

I do the opposite: I have abandoned much talk about breathing with advanced shooters, but basic marksmanship absolutely requires instruction on breathing. Otherwise novice students almost always get it wrong.

I have not seen any basic marksmanship curriculums which omit all discussion of breathing. As instructors, when we drop something from a curriculum we do it for an articulable reason. Not teaching something because the student will then become conscious of it is a circular argument. When I want to convey to a student that he should not consciously concentrate on breathing, I say so. Then I give her a method by which to do that. But, in my opinion, not talking about breathing is a mistake.