The Process of “Neurological Suspension”

When the approach is to not see the barrel, shooters are calling on their limited capacity working memory system to do too many things. This is why they are so inconsistent and on different birds on different days.

Adding to this outcome, even if they’re successful, the successes do not make their way to the long- term memory, which is where most skill resides.

Accepting the muzzles in the periphery is the first step. And over time, the brain learns through failure just how much of the muzzle you can get away with seeing and still break the target. This process of cleaning up the picture and making things look right is called “neurological suspension,” which is a crucial step in the automatization of skill circuits.

The good news is that it does get better relatively fast if you’ll have a deliberate movie of where and how you want the shot to come together. This leads to being able to shoot five singles in a row and enables you to begin to learn to self-correct.

We are learning that self-correction is the genesis of confidence, which leads the shooter to perform at higher and higher levels seeing less and less.

That’s right. The better you get at anything, the less you need to see to perform at higher levels.