Breathing 101
Breathing is important. That’s all. End of article. Thanks for stopping by everyone! Yeah, I wasn’t expecting you to buy that one. The end of the article thing, that is, not the breathing thing. I’m not joking on that point. Breathing is what separates the dead from the living, the animate from the inanimate.
Breathing correctly, on the other hand, is an entirely different thing and I honestly have no idea why I started the article out like that. Tell you what, ignore that first paragraph. Keep breathing, of course, because you should do that and I would never suggest otherwise.
Let’s try this again. When shooting rifles, once you start going out past 100 yards everything seems to change. Little things become big things and any flaw is going to be amplified significantly. It’s that whole “a small percentage of a big number is still a big number” thing we’ve discussed in one way or another.
The further out you go, the more you’re going to have to refine your technique. When you start pushing 1000 yards, even something like your heartbeat can throw the shot completely off target. This is why you should be working on your technique even at short distances so that you don’t have to unlearn bad habits as you move further out. If the opening rambling was any indicator, one of those techniques we’re talking about today is how to properly breathe.
Manual breathing mode engaged.
Good, now that you’re paying attention to your breathing, let’s look at what happens. Your chest expands and your shoulders rise. If you are hunched over, your back will straighten a bit and if you’re prone your body will rise up off the ground. It may not be much distance but it’s enough to throw your shot off significantly, even at shorter distances.
So just hold your breath, right? Not so much. Kind of. In a way yes but not really. Holding your breath is ultimately what you do but it’s how you hold your breath that’s important. If you gulp in air like you would before diving underwater, it’s going to cause other problems. For starters, your heart is going to speed up a bit to start pushing all that new oxygen through your system. Your muscles are also going to tense up because of the expansion of your chest as well as the effort it takes to keep all that air inside. What we need to do is find a way to hold your breath that will actually relax your body.
Continue the manual breathing mode.
Try this, breathe in as normal then slowly let the air out. Do this a couple of times to gauge where the halfway point is on the exhale. Now, breathe in and exhale then pause for a moment at that halfway point. This is the ideal spot to pull the trigger of a rifle or even a pistol if you’re shooting for accuracy. At this halfway point, the body is relaxing, the heart is slowing down and it takes almost no effort to hold the remaining air in. Then it’s just a matter of accounting for heartbeat but that’s another article.
So try that out next time you’re at the range. In the meantime, go ahead and engage manual blinking mode for no other reason than because I’m being a jerk now.
“Lungs diagram simple” by Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator – Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lungs_diagram_simple.svg#mediaviewer/File:Lungs_diagram_simple.svg
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