On our journey as professional coaches, we have observed many things that are linked together with either success or failure, or otherwise contribute to stagnation in learning or performances.
One such observation is that the amount of cheek pressure can have a direct effect on a shooter’s ability to be consistent, and can affect the ability to continue to improve and shoot higher and higher scores. Shooters who use a lot of cheek pressure unknowingly do several things that eventually will get in their way of pushing their potential.
Have you ever heard this phrase? “That gun fits you but to shoot it well, you will have to either use a little more cheek pressure or just float the bird a little.”
Our 30 years of research have shown us that if you must use more cheek pressure to make a gun shoot for you, it does not fit you. And floating the target is not the answer.
Shooters who use a lot of cheek pressure typically think that it gives them a more aggressive approach to the target and that they will shoot better if they “get into the gun more!” If shooting skeet, (a gun up game) shooters typically mount the gun more firmly than sporting shooters. They also move the gun with their body like a tank turret, which means they move the gun from their legs up through their shoulders.
Everything seems to be locked in place, and while there is some arm and hands movement, there is a lot of body movement and a good amount of “cheek weld.”
News flash: as you age, balance becomes a more important aspect of shooting than almost any other thing. And your balance doesn’t get better with age! We find that moving the body less helps tremendously with consistency and performance in both skeet and sporting.
Due to the variety of presentations, sporting shooters typically move the gun more with their hands and arms and use a narrower stance than skeet or trap shooters.
In skeet, the breakpoints on pairs are close together, but in sporting, they are anything but close together. They are often split such that it requires the shooter to raise their head off the comb to first acquire the target and then move the gun and break it. When this happens, the shooter must reposition their cheek on the comb as the shot comes together without checking the barrel to make sure their cheek is in the correct place before they send the shot.
For this reason, we recommend fitting a gun with light cheek pressure and that the gun be stocked so that with light cheek pressure, the Point of Impact (POI) be 50/50. While some shooters like floating a target, we are not among them. We have two reasons for this.
First, let’s say your pattern is 60/40. That means 60 percent of the pattern is above the point of aim, at 16 yards, but because the deviation is exponential, at 60 yards it can be two patterns high! We have literally seen hundreds of thousands of long crossers missed over in our carriers!
Adding to this, the distance to our targets is unknown. So, the amount of “float” you apply will typically be a guess, putting you in your thinking brain as you take the shot. And as OSP member Rick Carter says, “If you’re thinking, you’re stinking!”
So, just how much float do you give a curling dropping left-to-right chandelle at, say, 55 yards? The second reason we prefer a 50/50 pattern for sporting is due to the large number of dropping targets in our game.
Shooters who have a lot of cheek pressure must move the gun with their body, and if their gun shoots high with a lot of cheek pressure, they must give a dropping target more lead than necessary. But “how much more” is determined by the unknown distance to the target.
The further away a dropping target is, the more lead must be applied. But just how much more is the real question.
