Not much else to do here in the desert. It is almost impossible to shoot at Ben Avery, still can't swim at the neighborhood fitness club, and "church" is still on-line
SO, might as well discuss flinching. Words (should) have meaning, and the more precise we are with our words, the better we communicate; our thoughts, our problem, our needs, and corrective measures we might try.
Links to previous threads on Trapshooters.com are here, and with more good and very bad information than anyone probably wants to reviewhttps://www.trapshooters.com/threads/what-causes-a-flinch.860907/"Target Panic" in archers; "Yips" in golfers; "Cueitis" in billiards; "Dartitis" in dart competitors; Musician's and Embouchure dystonia; Mogigraphia or "Writer's Cramp"; Computer mouse-related dystonia; and the various shotgun sports "flinches" (including lunging at the trap house in response to the "
trigger freeze") are all variants of
Task-Specific Focal Dystonia or "a psycho-neuromuscular impediment affecting the execution of fine motor skills during sporting performance."
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2015/11/1...tand-surprisingly-little-about-the-yips/ I would add "visual" to the definition as some flinches are clearly precipitated by some visual error ie. losing sight/focus of the target.
"Tics", de la Tourette syndrome, and Meige's syndrome are related dystonias
https://www.webmd.com/brain/tic-disorders-and_twitches#1Excellent review of "The Yips"
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/26/the-yips Sports psychologists think "yips" is all psychologic.
Neurologists think it's a neurologic/physiologic disorder.
Likely a bit of both.
Certainly, after the first flinch, there is apprehension/anxiety about having another, which leads to loss of focus, which leads to more flinches. Telling oneself "don't flinch" before calling for a target is a good way to flinch.
Stanley Fahn M.D., professor of neurology at Columbia University, and the scientific director of the Parkinson's Disease Foundation
"It's beyond their control. It's not psychogenic; it's an organic disease of the brain. But we still don't understand why? It's some kind of a physiological-biochemical problem that we don't understand."
"What are the yips? Experts say it's not just in your head" in
Golf DigestDebbie Crews PhD, a sports-psychology consultant for the women's golf team at Arizona State, and Aynsley M. Smith PhD, a sports psychologist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota studied "yips" in golfers and found it to be "characterized by the co-contraction of groups of arm muscles that don't ordinarily operate at the same time: one group that extends the wrist and one that flexes it."
The Task-specific Focal Dystonia that shooters call a "flinch" is a 2 part event (though occurring almost instantaneously):
1st is the "trigger freeze" (which may not be perceived by the flincher) from involuntary and dysfunctional contraction of opposing small muscles in the hand and forearm, followed by
2nd an entertaining variety of bodily reactions; lunging, jerking, stumbling toward the trap house, etc. involving large muscles.
The reason we can't pull a pull trigger is because the extensor muscles (Extensor indicis and Extensor pollicis longus) are contracting rather than relaxing, and the flexor muscle (Flexor digitorum profundus) will not contract (that's the short version and ignores the contribution of the Lumbricals and Interossei).
Recoil clearly contributes to flinching, but there is no recoil in putting or throwing a dart, and people still "yip" or have "dartitis"
Almost all of us push our bodies forward with recoil (obvious when we have a dud), but that is recoil compensation,
not a flinch.
Recoil/noise avoidance flinching before the shot (ducking the head, closing the eyes, being unable to pull the trigger without jerking) is a physiologic conditioned response to an unpleasant stimulus, is
not a task-specific focal dystonia, and one can become accustom to the stimulus, and the response thereto attenuated.
BTW: I've come to understand that my trigger freeze and flinch trying to
click my mouse (which BTW doesn't bite) is a visual flinch; if I'm not precise in placing the cursor arrow exactly where it needs to be, I flinch.
The dystonia in throwing a baseball is failure to relax the muscles ie. inability to "let go"; the opposite of a shooter's "trigger freeze".
https://d1softball.com/throwing-ope...cher-sydney-collazos-destigmatizes-yips/ Releasing a release trigger is not a passive action; the extensor muscle must contract. Releasing an arrow from a long bow requires contraction of that same extensor muscle. Archers still have "target panic"; and some release trigger users still flinch.
Moving the gun before the target appears has been called "forecasting the target" and is purposeful, rather than an involuntary dystonia.
What a flinch most certainly is
not is ALL anything; recoil fear, focus, vision, grip, slapping vs. pulling, trigger pull, gun fit, performance stress, hold point or anything else, for everybody. And claiming "it's 95%" anything is simply wrong, and not helpful. LOTS of things contribute to the dystonia, and many of us have found effective ways to suppress our flinching without a release (for me dealing with my cross-firing, firmly gripping the gun, intense focus, and low recoil loads) but as said over and over, usually a release will work (but often requiring dealing with vision issues also), and we don't know why.
Anyone claiming to understand focal dystonia, and who demonstrates a cure thereof will very quickly be a gazillionaire. The big money is in professional golfers with "the yips", but maybe the secret will trickle down to us flinchers.
Fortunately, a release trigger CAN be a cure, but may not be for everyone. And adjustments in ribs, hold points, target focus points, and vision training may indeed help visual flinches.
SRH