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Monday, March 07, 2005
Rama: The Gestalt of Brian Enos II
By Karlon N. Rama
Stage Five
TECHNIQUES and mechanics, according to Enos, do not a shooter make.
They are merely tools, he said, that you’d need to fire a gun accurately and with speed. They exist only to prepare you to rise above them while developing to your full potential.
Good mechanics, for example, is not even nearly as important as understanding and being aware of what you’re doing in shooting while you’re doing it.
But mastering the mechanics is the best point of departure for those who intend to attain growth. Accuracy, he stressed, is the first fundamental.
Enos says that accurate shooting is not merely a function of manipulating the sights and bearing your gun down on the target. He considers accuracy as the greater summation of a series of actions that can begin with something as indistinct as the way your feet are planted on the ground.
Starting in accuracy requires an understanding of the concepts of sight alignment, sight picture and trigger control. The sights are correctly aligned when the front sight blade is exactly centered on the rear notch and the top of the blade is exactly level with the top line of the rear sights.
Sight picture, meanwhile, describes how the sights appear relative to each other and the target. A real textbook focus on the front sight will give you the best results when you’re shooting for extreme precision. In order from sharpest to fuzziest as you perceive them are front sight, rear sight and then target.
It is only when the firearm is centered and aligned in the area where the shooter would like to place the hit that the shooter should initiate pressure on the trigger.
In sighting, he advised, you must maintain visual attention and monitor the exact placement of the sights every millisecond until the gun goes off and, more importantly, at the exact instance that the gun actually fires. You must then visibly stay with the sight so that you can call exactly where the hit will land.
This becomes easy when one begins to understand that sighting and pulling the trigger are not two separate but one continuous motion that results in a third action – putting pressure on the trigger. It is your sighting awareness that should control the trigger pressure and the subsequent trigger break.
But sight picture and sight alignment, no matter how perfect, will not translate into accurate shooting unless the other components of the mechanics of shooting are present.
GRIP. Enos stresses consistency and neutrality in the grip. He teaches that a shooter must have a totally neutral felling in each hand as the shooter grips the firearm as opposed to the conventional doctrine of having the strong hand pushing the gun forward and the support hand pulling it back.
Achieving neutrality, he said, allows the grip and stance component to perform its most important function: allowing the gun to recoil in the same direction, to the same level and on the same path – both in lift off the target and return to the target – in each shot.
The amount of grip and the stability of the stance were never meant to control recoil in the sense of stopping it. The intent was always to have full control on the gun and make it return to the exact point prior to the liftoff generated by a shot leaving the gun.
Part of achieving neutrality on he grip is that the support hand must be directly and equally involved with holding the gun. The support hand doesn’t just make contact with the shooting hand. It must also touch the pistol itself.
The shooting hand, meanwhile, should be positioned as high on the gun as is comfortable, Enos said.
The heel of the shooting hand is locked together with the heel of the support hand without being pressed together. The result is a locked grip but without any excess tension.
ARMS AND POSTURE. The shooting and support arms may be relatively straight or in varying degrees of angle facing each other. It doesn’t really matter whether the arms are straight or bent so long as they are relaxed and neutral.
A correct tension-free lockup actually takes stress off the arm muscles; it’s a gentle stopping place where the arms extend. Avoid stretching the arms out too far forward and, subsequently, forcing your arms to lock up beyond that natural stopping place. Doing so causes too much tension in the antagonistic muscles.
It is likewise important, Enos said, that the shoulders are allowed to stay naturally down and back into their sockets, as they are when one is standing at rest. Having a relaxed stability is important especially when a shooter must face multiple targets or place multiple shots on one target.
The overall shooting stance should be relaxed and neutral. Enos advices that shooters should keep their backs straight, flex their knees and lean forward slightly from the waist just enough to feel balanced. The knee flex, he said, is crucial. A shooter, whenever feasible, should essentially stand directly facing the target so that his firearm aligns naturally when brought up for presentation.
The weak-side foot may be placed forward of the strong-side foot or whatever is comfortable. It is necessary for the strong-side foot to flex a little so that it can hold the shooter’s upper body square towards the target while remaining relaxed.
Next week, shooting focus.
MAIL CALL. Let me just quickly acknowledge Mr. Alexander Tanchan (aldytanchan@ hotmail.com) who wrote to ask where he could have his loose firearm licensed.
You’re in luck Aldy. The Police Regional Office has just announced that it is accepting applications for firearms amnesty starting today. This is inline with Executive Order 390, signed by President Arroyo last Dec. 13, which provides for an extension of the licensing of loose firearms that began last year.
Just drop by the PNP Firearms Explosives Security Agencies and Guards Supervisory Section (Fessags) office along RR Landon St. for inquiries.
(knrama(at)sunstar(dot)com(dot)ph)
(March 7, 2005 issue)
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