TargetTalk

The Schwartz chap from the states. He seemed to the authority on shooting in the US. I can't find any recent posts or score. Has he quit? Alf

I believe you are referring to Steve Swartz.

alf wrote:The Schwartz chap from the states. He seemed to the authority on shooting in the US. I can't find any recent posts or score. Has he quit? Alf

Take a look through this thread http://www.targettalk.org/viewtopic.php?t=15347

If you go to the top of this page and choose "Search" you can enter "steve swartz" (without quotes) in the search field, click on " Search for all terms" and then click "Search" at the bottom, and you will get over 300 threads, up to as recent as last Thursday. I believe he has been in the finals for several recent matches including the Canadian Grand Prix held a couple months ago.

Take Care,
Ed Hall
http://www.airforceshooting.org/
http://www.starreloaders.com/edhall/

Alf:

Thanks for asking- if you mean me, I've been around on occasion but my posts really tapered off a month or so ago because

1) I have some interest in "Which gun . . . " type issues (but not as much as "How to . . . " technique issues) and these seem to have dominated the forum recently
2) I took a lot of flack from some other posters and just got tired of it (figured Ed Hall and others could attract the sniper fire for a while)
3) My performance has slumped considerably (AP average 570+ down to AP average mid-low 560s). Frankly, it seems many folks don't want to listen to a guy who shoots less than 570 so I figured I'd shut my yap until I could bounce back a bit.
4) Busy at work- training schedule took a hit- not enough time to devote to teh important things (like shooting) with all that bothersome work, family etc. distractions . . . =8^)

I'm always delighted to discuss shooting on or off line however; leslieswartz@verizon.net is where you can find me!

Assuming, of course, you didn't consider my absence more of a relief. blessing, and a Good Thing!

Steve Swartz

Steve,
In the words of Mark Twain, I am glad to see that reports of your demise were greatly exaggerated!
Best of luck in figuring out your issues and hope you get things back to top form!
Ted Malone

Steve Swartz wrote:Alf:
>>>>>Frankly, it seems many folks don't want to listen to a guy who shoots less than 570
Steve Swartz

Oh.... my last match score was 526 ... So now I know that I should keep my opinions and observations to myself !!

Seriously , anyone who will only listen to those who shoot 570 plus are in actual fact depriving themselves from a lot of good advice and food for thought .

Do you think we should all add our top match score to our names on here... so f'rinstance mine would be Elmas526 ? That way , those who read my posts can judge them in the light of my ability ?

I am only 526 not because I cant shoot a perfect ten ... its because I have failed to repeat it the requisite SIXTY times in the match !

An interesting thread would be on how to repeat the perfect ten sixty times.. which is not necessarily a ten really , IMHO its a shot near the ten ring inside the nine , call it the magic circle ; shots touching or nealy touching the ten line are inside that 'imaginary circle' (espe relevant to AP/FP disciplines ) .


Elmas

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Steve,

I understand the commitments you have and really understand you want to spend more time improving your scores. Since getting married and having a kid I have had a really hard time getting time to train.

My time on TT has varied over the years.

I have noticed many people have appreciated your input and advice.

Chris583

In sports psychology one of the major pitfalls of athletes making either critical statements or offering helpful advice in a public way, is that sooner or later the performance of the individual is looked as a barometer of the given advice. If the performance lacks, then the credibility of the advisor comes into question." Do as I say not as I do." We try to have athletes limit their opinions about their sport while they are still in the sport. this prevents undo pressure to meet a publicly percieved level of performance. Many an athlete has ruined a career based upon public statement. Weather the statement are true or false is irrelevent. It is the public preception, and the pressure of that perception which sometimes can be an anchor around an athletes neck.

Hmmm . . . . some thought provoking stuff. I can certainly see the logic behind not wanting top athletes (or even "aspiring/almost top" athletes) to make any public discussions/advice regarding performance, technique, etc.

[personal note: Hmmmm . . . what self-induced pressures have resulted from the discussions in this forum?]

However

1) This prevents "national program" methods from leaking out to other competitors (a Good Thing, medal-wise).
2) This limits the amount of dialogue within the sport that new/all shooters can take advantage of (a Bad Thing, overall).
3) For the "True Amateurs" (coachless part timers) this also limits our natural "give and take" with other athletes (sometimes a Good Thing [for bad advice], sometimes a Bad Thing [for good advice]).

This thread has certainly taken a turn for the "Interesting."

Hey Folks (calling Ed Hall?)- whaddya think?

Is the public nature of TT dialogue a net plus or minus for the aspiring (perhaps "self proclaimed") "coach athletes" among us?

Steve

Some random thoughts

For me shooting has always been a sport where most people are will to tell you everything they can to help you shoot better. The people at the top welcome the competition and know it is a tough sport. Just because a person shoots a national record one day does not mean they are allways going to shoot at that level in every match. If we looked at scores of the top level people in the US they have proven they can shoot 580+ scores. they do not do it in every match.

I think it is important for the upper level shooters to teach the tools of the sport. TT is very limited in allowing a really good transfer of knowledge of all the the tools. The shared knowledge can be passed on but there is no way to monitor if the lesson has been understood or put into practice.

I can tell someone to dry fire over and over but if they never do it as much as they should then they will never learn the benifits of it and scores will not go up.

I do not think the people with the knowledge should keep it in their head, or our sport will never grow if we do not share.

There are some great coaches out there who do not shoot very good scores, have never been on the national team. They have coached kids up to the national team level.

I think the forum can work and I am sure it has provided people with some information to help them improve scores. I think it would have been interesting to have this site around when I started in this sport. I do not think you can get every thing you need to reach your goals but you can learn a lot of the tools you need. It is up to the person receiving the information to use it correctly. Not every piece of advice will work for everyone.

My methods of dealing with information I have collected over time is to collect it in a "tool box". This can be a diary or log of some kind. The trick is to go back and look at the lessons you have picked up over time and determine if this is something you can apply at the level you are at or save it for later. The important thing is to change only one thing and try it out for at least 2-4 weeks or more depending on how much you shoot. If you train 5-6 days a week you can give it 2 weeks and you should know if it is going to work for you. This is something I learned from 2 different people who shot in the Olympics

Everyone reading TT should be able to learn something to increase their personal enjoyment of shooting and who knows their scores might improve also.

Happy shooting

Interesting twist of this thread, indeed!

When athletes publically talks about performances and techniques in detail, it can certanly put a big anchor around the athletes neck, exactly as spsyched explained. I havn't even thought about it, not even close. Thanks spysyched for this eye opener!

As I understand it: By publically explaining in detail on how to perform the perfect shot, and by giving feedback to others what to work more with how to improve will result in big psycological pressure. Especially when performance level, for whatever reason, is not on top that day. Suddenly the "expert talker" isn't this true expert any longer... Negative thoughts will build up negative pressure "I lecture others but can't shoot better than this, I'm a fool", "I must shoot better than this, this is embarrising" etc etc.

Cheers,
Axel

Steve Swartz wrote:Hmmm .

Is the public nature of TT dialogue a net plus or minus for the aspiring (perhaps "self proclaimed") "coach athletes" among us?

Steve

A net plus of course.

Self Doubt . short attention-span and faulty decision making remain challenges to good shooting .
Self doubt makes for hesitant triggering , short attention span and lapses in concentration causing faulty sight picture whereeas faulty decision making causes many a shot to be released when ideally one should abort and start over .

Anyone willing to offer help in this domain (( without adding undue pressure on his performance as a top athlete ??! ))

Elmas

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It seems to me it will depend on the person providing the advise if it will have an impact on their performance.

Elmas has an interesting question. Who can share information and not impact performance? One problem I can see is if this person has the ability to communicate clearly and not become frustrated if it appears people do not listen. The other piece is will people listen to someone they do not know. In Steves case he has been an active member in many of the post on TT at the same time shooting in big matches and making big improvements in performance. People have seen this and can see Steve give advise and improve and so people listen. I have also seen past US team members provide advise or direction and people flat out disagree with them on TT. This could drive a person to stop posting to TT.

Feedback or advise is a gift. You did not pay for it. You do not have to follow it. It may not work for you. It could be the wrong advise for you or anyone but works for the person providing it.

I know I would try and provide advise and it is hard to tell if people were listening and putting the advise into practice or not. After a while you see the same questions pop up and do you answer it again or refer them to the archives. For me personally this makes it hard to dispense the same advise over and over with out feedback on how things are going. It does take some time to develop relationships, and longer I am sure on TT, to the point were people get back to you about something they learned from you.

I also struggle with trying to communicate what I do to shoot the scores I have shot into a "lesson" someone can learn from. In this sport we have the basics everyone needs to follow strictly and then a mess of other little details which take experiance to figure out what works for you to get your performance to the level where you feel happy and are acheiving your goals.

I think one of the hardest things to do for me is the time to post and read all of the posts.

Rules I. use to evaluate shooting advice. 1> Do I,always out shoot the person advising me? If so I simply disregard whats being said. 2. does he always out shoot me? I listen to every thing being said in hopes I'll learn something. If I dont Understand what I'm being told I rat hole the information away hoping I'll get smarter. I do not change any thing in my approach to shooting until I understand what was said and see a clear way forward with the possibility of increasing ny scores.Please understand me, I know I'm being arrogent, But my approach to a match is arrogent. I believe I'm the best shooter on the range and I expect to beat every one in the match every time. Does'nt always work out but thats where I start from Bill Horton

Well, again I post . . . you could consider the following model. Suppose there are "4 kinds" of people in almost any endeavour; a "2x2 Matrix" of "Doing" vs. "Teaching/Coaching."

I have found that there are:

a. Great performers who apparently have no idea (or can't communicate how) they do what they do; or can't translate it into anything useful for anyone else (more the rule than the exception I fear)

b. Great performers who can also explain very well, and to a broad variety of other athletes, how to achieve higher levels of performance (the rarities)

c. Struggling performers who either don't know or can't communicate how to improve performance for themselves or anyone (generally rare because they don't generally share much)

d. Struggling performers who are actually great teachers/coaches; those who may not be able to execute world-class performance in their own efforts but can lead others to do so (not as rare as one might think?)

O.K., so what this means to me personally (your mileage will of course vary) is that I need to LISTEN to advice from all . . . and then consider it in light of what is already known ("Body of Literature" so to speak) about the sport and how it might be relevant, or a new twist, or even "new information" about achieving excellence.

I have heard some really great shooters give some really crappy advice. I have learned some very useful things from some "lifetime 540" shooters (who had good reputations as coaches). I have heard some crazy stuff from "not quite there" shooters who may never "get there." And I have on occasion heard some good stuff from great shooters.

Sometimes people who shoot better than you don't desire your company on the podium . . . (apologies to Scott Adams for the paraphrase). Thankfully, in our sport, these individuals seem to be somewhat rarer than in other sports.

I also agree with funtoz- don't measure the success of a coach by HIS/HER medals, but by the medals of his/her STUDENTS.

When the advice is coming from another competitor (not necessarily coach), there is no simple "truth detector" for determining whether or not their advice is Good, Bad, or Ugly. I learned this the hard way on a couple of occasions.

Just my humble $0.02 . . .

Steve Swartz

[personal note: like with my formal education, I am realizing that "the more I know" about shooting, "the more I know I DON'T know" principle is real. I hope I never get to the point of thinking I have "the answer" to any of this.]

Steve, I think your 2x2 is spot on.


When I got started in the pistol portion of my shooting career I was at a selection match and spent some time hanging out with some of the members from the team. One interesting statement was said to me which can explain the struggle of many shooters. "Shooter A was really good until they realized they were good. Then they started to shoot below world class scores." They were refering to an individual I do not remember any more who they were talking about. This was an interesting statement and it still is to me. This has happend to me in a match. I was in Atlanta and shooting my way to a 560 in Free, until the last 10 shots. Ended with a 547. Still a PR and was very happy with my perfomance. For some reason I could not shoot a 4th string of 97 to complete the match. Match pressure or did I start to become "aware". It sure felt good when I was done. I did learn I could shoot an 8 in a string as long as there was only one 9 and 8, 10's.

I can see this happening to someone and others look at this person and have second thoughts about getting advise from them.

The person receiving the advise has to determine if it will work for them and in general they should be the only person to make that decision.

Happy shooting

The army team once had a famous coach that would council the team before every match. Just before we were called to the firing line his last statement would be " dont start the day off with a seven". Shooters that had not fired a seven for at least a week would succumb to the negative advice and somewhere in their first ten shot a seven would appear. One year, at the georgia state champion ships he became ill and could not make it to the range. The army doubled its number of 2650 shooters in that match. Little things count. Good Shooting Bill Horton

The army team once had a famous coach that would council the team before every match. Just before we were called to the firing line his last statement would be " dont start the day off with a seven". Shooters that had not fired a seven for at least a week would succumb to the negative advice and somewhere in their first ten shot a seven would appear. One year, at the georgia state champion ships he became ill and could not make it to the range. The army doubled its number of 2650 shooters in that match. Little things count. Good Shooting Bill Horton