How to Stop Flinching or Anticipating When Shooting?
I’m retired Navy SEAL Chris Sajnog, the author of Navy SEAL Shooting, and one of the top 20 most frequently asked questions I get is, “How to stop flinching or anticipating when I shoot?”
When it comes to shooting and problems that people experience while shooting, some people experience anticipating or flinching when they shoot. I’m going to give you five ways that you can eliminate that in a relatively short amount of time.
#1 Dry Fire Challenge
Way number one is to take the free 30 Day dry fire challenge on my SEAL training app. So just go ahead and download the app. It’s absolutely free. There’s a free course on there called the 30-day dry fire challenge.
It’s going to give you every day a challenge and steps for you to take to help you not only become a better shooter but also eliminate that flinch or anticipation when you’re shooting.
#2 Confidence
Alright, so number two on how to stop flinching is to stop telling yourself that you always flinch or you always anticipate when you shoot. Well, we are the stories that we tell ourselves.
If you tell yourself you always do it, well guess what you are always going to do it. Your mind does not want to let you be wrong. So it’s going to figure out a way to make your body anticipate or flinch every time you shoot.
So start telling yourself the story that you want. Just tell yourself what you want. “I’m a great shooter.” That’s all you need to do.
#3 Meditate
Alright, so number three is learning to meditate. If you’re more present with what’s happening at the moment that you pull that trigger, you are going to be less likely to flinch or anticipate. You’re not going to be thinking about what happened before, you’re not going to be thinking about what’s about to happen, you’re going to be in the moment.
You’re going to be focused on the front sight, and just relaxing and the gun goes bang and everything works out perfectly. You will also learn about meditation if you take that 30 Day dry fire challenge. So start doing that training, start meditating.
#4 Breathe When You Shoot
Alright, so next up along those same lines is to breathe when you shoot. A lot of people when they teach shooting tell you to hold your breath while you shoot. This just doesn’t make sense.
Breathing is going to help you relax. The more relaxed you are, the less you’re going to anticipate or flinch when you shoot. So just breathe normally, that’s going to help you relax and it’s going to get rid of that flinch or anticipation.
#5 Have Patience
Alright, the last one is to just have patience. If you’ve had a flinch or anticipated for the last 30 years that you’ve been shooting, don’t expect it to go away after meditating or dry fire training for one day.
If you’re training properly, it’s definitely not going to take 30 years for it to go away. But you need to be patient and give your body and your mind some time to build new neural pathways that don’t have a flinch or anticipation built in them.
You have a neural pathway that when you pull the trigger, something in that neural pathway says, “Okay I need to flinch or anticipate.” So we need to create a new neural pathway. Take some time be patient and it will happen you will get rid of that flinching or anticipation.
Alright, so that is it for today’s FAQ. Remember to use these five techniques on how to stop flinching or anticipating and please check out my other 19 five and under-five FAQ posts and videos to continue paving your path to perfection.
