A month away from handguns

[Night-king]

I spent a month exclusively on rifle work..and came back to handgun practice expecting the fundamentals to hold. They mostly held but split times were slower and my grip felt less instinctive for the first session. Skills have a shelf life, it is important to maintain everything you want to keep.

 

[HWB13]

Night king, you were up late I see. Your right, the major things shift back and forth, sight alignment, sight picture, breathing , focus, squeeze or press the trigger , follow through . But when you go from very little pressure on the stock to totally carrying the weight of the pistol it changes everything. I too spend most of my time behind the rifle and moving back and forth is challenging.

 

[Alan]

Skills don’t vanish, they just get rusty, it is funny how quickly timing slips when you stop feeding it reps.

 

[guntha45]

When my buddy and I were 14 we were in a black powder shooting club. We were the only non-adults. Everyone else were our parents age and older. One of the guys, who was in my mother's class in school was one of those slow talking rural Mainer types, 6'6" and 275 pounds. He and his brother and cousin were all the same type guys, all were excellent shots, and when they went showed up at matches all over the state the other competitors got worried. We asked Peter how often he practiced.
His response was, "I did all my practicing when I was a boy".... I can still hear him saying that, and it was 50 years ago.
All those guys are gone now but not forgotten....

 

[blue raven]

It took a couple of weeks off rifle practice once and when I picked up the pistol again, the grip felt weird, like it wasn’t mine. Muscle memory slips away faster than you’d expect. You gotta keep juggling everything if you want to stay sharp.

 

[deer_down]

Last year, I took six weeks off pistols for a rifle class. The first day back was rough. My split times were off by nearly half a second and it ook me three sessions just to get the feel back.so yea maintenance matters way more than we usually admit.