Heart beats bouncing scope How to stop?

[CCH]

I have a good breathing routine. But my heart thumping causes my scope to bounce. Does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[J E Custom]

I have a good breathing routine. But my heart thumping causes my scope to bounce. Does anyone have any suggestions?

When I shot competition I allways shot on an empty stomach to minimize this effect(The heart beats
slower and has a lower pressure than after eating). Also lower the power of your scope to help reduce the pulse effect.

I am assuming that you are shooting prone, if so sometimes your position can be changed to help
reduce the effect. If you are right handed while laying on your stomach bring your right knee
up a little to take the pressure off your stomach and that can also reduce the pulse effect.

Hope this helps

J E CUSTOM

 

[Nimrodmar10]

You're going to have to give us more info about your shooting position before we can be of much help. Offhand, sitting, prone? Bipod, bench, rear bag, sandbags, etc.?

 

[JackinSD]

Think about baseball? Oh wait, wrong sport.

 

[bogger01]

i have that problem all the time and the best solution i have found is to imagine my wife telling me about her day out shopping with her freinds and about all the cute outfits she bought.zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.heart rate drop to 12 beats a minute so i have plenty of time to shoot between each one

 

[Kevin Thomas]

Square breathing. It's also known as Combat breathing, but they're essentially the same thing. Instead of just inhaling and exhaling, both of these techniques involved inhaling, pausing, exhaling, pausing, etc., throughout the cycle. Done properly, it noticeably lowers your heart rate and gives you longer respiratory pauses. Very commonly used among compteitive shooters, and has the added benefit of calming your nerves and just slowing you down in general. Been doing it for years and it truly works wonders.

For what it's worth, most competitive prone shooters (especially smallbore prone shooters) literally time their shots between heartbeats.

 

[Eaglet]

i have that problem all the time and the best solution i have found is to imagine my wife telling me about her day out shopping with her freinds and about all the cute outfits she bought.zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.heart rate drop to 12 beats a minute so i have plenty of time to shoot between each one

That cracked me up!

 

[Broz]

I think Black Hawk makes a vest that laces tight to compress this and it helps. I have found that a few deep breaths before I settle in on the target along with prone positin and applying chest pressure to the ground when I can. That depends of shot angle too.

But if you are having excessive problems with this I feel you may need better rests or bags along with you are probably using too much muscle to hold the rifle. Let her ride the bags, left hand on the rear bag with the left arm cradled around.

Jeff

 

[rwk]

No coffee, or die.

 

[codyjoe1128]

Square breathing. It's also known as Combat breathing, but they're essentially the same thing. Instead of just inhaling and exhaling, both of these techniques involved inhaling, pausing, exhaling, pausing, etc., throughout the cycle. Done properly, it noticeably lowers your heart rate and gives you longer respiratory pauses. Very commonly used among compteitive shooters, and has the added benefit of calming your nerves and just slowing you down in general. Been doing it for years and it truly works wonders.

For what it's worth, most competitive prone shooters (especially smallbore prone shooters) literally time their shots between heartbeats.

I've been shootin like that for the last ten years, its just natural for me now anytime laying behind a gun...works wonders!

 

[JP100]

What is your resting heart rate? the fitter you are the lower your heart rate and breathing rate. maybe some cardio is in need haha

 

[22 308 Target Shooter]

CCH, As a long time competitive smallbore shooter, I can tell you what Kevin Thomas said in an earlier response about timing shots between heartbeats is completely true. Now you can slow your heartbeat somewhat with proper breathing and relaxation techniques, I believe more relaxation than breathing, but somewhat a combination of both to a certain extent. But to truely shoot a good shot I think sometimes when one aspect of a shot is being discussed all the other fundamentals are sometimes forgot. I think many shooters know what problem they're having and complete concentration goes into that issue, and then other fundamentals such as trigger squeeze, and proper position balance, and sight alignment (for open target sights) and such are sort of forgot, and then the shot process and result still suffers. I'm a strong believer that to truely shoot well consistantly, you need to shoot and shoot alot (Practice), and on top of shooting alot what is practiced needs to be proper fundamentals, there is nothing more detrimental than practicing and re-enforcing bad habits through constant bad fundamentals. In shooting and practicing alot, all those fundamentals at some point should become sub-conscious, in other words you no longer have to think about making your finger squeeze the shot off, it just happens when the sight picture is perfect. I've always taught if you have to think about it, and have to have your brain tell your finger to "operate", in the time it took your brain to tell your finger, and your finger to react, it's already too late and the sight picture is probably changed and different. I'm sure I'll have some shooters agree, and some disagree, or at least with differing points of view, my overall point is just not to forget about the rest of the shot process in the process of correcting the heartbeat issue. Best of luck. Just my 0.02 as a rifle competitior.

C.D.

 

[SidecarFlip]

I did an inpromptu test concerning intake of various fluids (pop, coffee, tea, and bottled water prior to shooting indoor match pistol and the results were interesting and as expected.

The only fluid that didn't adversely impact my scores was bottled water and caffinated pop was worse than coffee, with Mountain Dew at the top as the most score lowering (shaking and concentration) followed by Coke and Pepsi followed by Squirt. Decaf has no discernable effect on my scores but regular did though not as pronounced as carbonated pop. Tea was just as bad as Mountain Dew for me. Tea actually left me shaky, not good for aiming at a quarter sized target.....

Of course all the fluid intake still has to come out, usually in mid-match......

 

[WildRose]

When I shot competition I allways shot on an empty stomach to minimize this effect(The heart beats
slower and has a lower pressure than after eating). Also lower the power of your scope to help reduce the pulse effect.

I am assuming that you are shooting prone, if so sometimes your position can be changed to help
reduce the effect. If you are right handed while laying on your stomach bring your right knee
up a little to take the pressure off your stomach and that can also reduce the pulse effect.

Hope this helps

J E CUSTOM

An empty stomach also reduces the "wave" effect of the heartbeat because a full stomach puts pressure on the descending aorta and heart along with pushing the diarpham up into the chest.

It's also just a hell of a lot more comfortable.