I was doing some positional shooting, and my pulse kept pushing my crosshairs about 1 MOA up and down. Should I try to grow some tactical padding (lol) or is there another solution?

cardio and yoga

Everyone has movement in the scope during field positional shooting.
The trick I use is to get your movement into a predictable pattern (I try to use a figure 8) and break my shot when the middle of the pattern crosses the "X"
Also, time your breaths with your movement and break at the bottom of your breathing cycle.

-Dom

When you are on deck, face away from the pad.
When you are walking to the pad, take slow deliberate steps.
Anything you do, make slow deliberate movements.
Do not rush for anything.
Its better to take your time and make shots count.

I have found that (all other things being equal), if I am behind the rifle, and take in three nice deep breaths, and let them out nice and slow without forcing things in or out, after the third deep breath, there is a short time when my pulse slows a bit, aid is noticeably softer.  Because you are alive, there will always be a bit of motion (pulse) that you can't eliminate, only reduce.  When you breathe in the rifle's muzzle goes down, when you breathe out, the muzzle goes back up.  If your natural point of aim is correct, you should end up where you started.

In a general context- aim for physical fitness, particularly cardio, and also mental discipline. Be able to separate yourself from stressors, and develop the skills necessary to focus on the immediate task at hand (at it's deepest this means focus on each shot- not the one before or any to come). Implement prior to getting behind the rifle. Being amped from driving, excited, pissed off, agitated, etc... are typically more detrimental. When possible put time between exposure to stressors  and shooting. Use coping mechanisms if necessary (eg listening to certain music before hitting the line, etc...). Know that when you fire that shot and receive feedback (good or bad), it's over. Focus goes into making necessary correction and making the most of the next one.

Like other poster's mentioned- breath control. (enough already posted)

Avoid caffeine/ other stimulants prior to shooting. You may want to also take a look at other things in your diet that you may be consuming prior to shooting that could impact you. Try to balance having sufficient energy to effectively shoot with knowledge of how various foods interact with your body.

Also, control your physical movement. Vigorous physical activity increases heartrate. If you need to move vigorously, for example, when loading/ unloading gear, accessing shooting site, moving frames/setting targets, etc... it's necessary to allow a little time to calm down.

Likewise, when establishing yourself in the position, take tame to get comfortable in position before going hot. Make the corrections you need to make. Take the time for dryfire practice, not only to confirm NPOA, but to assure yourself that you are confident in the manner you established for yourself.

Shoot between beats. It's something to get used too, and quite difficult to learn. But once you do, it becomes second nature. Timing is key! Also as mentioned, squeeze at the bottom of your exhale.

Now try them at the same time.

Full inhale taxes muscles that are not used to stopping for very long. Full exhale rests your lungs closer to your beating heart.  If you are out of shape shooting between heart beats is not going to be an option.  Breath normally, when you get your sight picture perfect, exhale half a breath hold and fire when ready.  You wont feel heart beat, and you wont get an increase in heart rate.  Snipers are selected based upon cardio condition, vision, memory, and they try to stay away from anyone with coffee addiction.  Coffee increases the heart rate, and going through withdrawals while you are doing recon for 48 hours or more is not an option, when you may have to take a shot at moments notice.

Count your heart beat. Ive found this helps new soldiers get used to shooting between their heart beat.

What magnification level are you shooting at?

One of the causes of this is shooting at high magnification (over 16x), and since it's not an issue or even noticeable below that to most shooters, I am assuming it is in play.  

When you are up over 16x you will see your own heartbeat, twitch, and effects of digestion appear in the reticle.  You cannot control or compensate for this, and you will invariably devote focus to it away from the shot.   Maybe you could slow your heart rate, but you cannot stop your digestion.  The answer is to turn the magnification down.  The fear of not being "as accurate" at lower magnification is a fallacy.  You will actually improve in accuracy because you will have a steady sight picture, and you won't be fighting all that other stuff.    I do most of my shooting in tactical comps from 25Y to 1050Y at 11x.  


--Fargo007

I'm using 10x magnification. I just got a new scope, so I'll be testing some loads today. Thanks for the advice, everyone.

If you need to slow your heart rate down or stop it from beating so hard try this:
Breath in for a count of 4
Hold your breath for a count of 4
Exhale for a count 4
Hole your breath for a count of 4
Repeat

I've found it easier to shoot on the exhale using this too.

It has nothing to do with your breathing or your cardiovascular fitness.  You're not relaxed enough, you're too tense, and you're not driving the rifle correctly.  The idea is to use artificial and bone support to transfer the stability of the ground into the position to realize muscular relaxation; thereafter, allowing for proper adjustment of Natural Point of Aim for the desired sight picture. The heartbeat causing the reticle to bounce indicates muscular relaxation has not been realized, likely from not understanding how to properly build the position with whatever combination of artificial/bone support.

the point of padded shooting gloves and jackets you see the HP shooters use is to stop the pulse from transmitting to the gun...

some days i see this more based on how i grip the stock.

use a rear bag.... use a padded stock pack... adjust how you grip the stock... all of these will help

i don't get the whole 'controling pulse' thing.   i'm sure this isn't the intention, but most of the conversations about this sound like 14 year olds explaining how their uncle is a ninja and can turn invisible and walk on walls or something.

so seriously,  what exactly are you going to do?  what do you expect to accomplish? change your heart rate from 60/min to 50/min?     what difference does that make for practical shooting?

ime, like ohio implied, the goal is not to stop your heart from pushing oxygen do your body (uhh, hello?) but to change your position where you don't put major blood vessels directly between your bones and the stock.  Or, if this is unavoidable, to mitigate it with some cushion that doesn't transmit the pulse to the gun.

best thing to do is a lot of dry fire.  keep working on your position until you find one where you don't see your pulse in the crosshairs at all, as opposed to one where you've slowed it down and are trying to time the shots.

no matter what the question, I agree that 'practice more dryfire' is almost always a pretty good answer. That being said, shooting itself and/or shooting in competition are certainly two things that can drive someones heart rate high enough to the point where it will be detrimental, it is also generally going to be the result of of a sympathetic nerve response (anxiety) and not usually exertion, in other words its your bodies reaction to what it thinks is about to be a life or death struggle of some kind and its priming your body accordingly. While some of your bodies response will actually be beneficial to good shooting such as pupil dialation an cessation of digestive functions, most of it is bad, and its usually bad enough to have a noticible effect on your ability to hit the bull.



The problem with trying to find a position where you arent putting any major blood vessels directly between your bones and the stock is that there is this pretty big chunk of blood vessels located right smack in the middle of your chest only a few inches beside your collar bone, those vessels are all connected to another kinda important chunk of muscle in that same area that makes it hard to find a place to rest a stock where those two arent going to have an influence.



In oother words, its not something like a pulse increase of 50 -60, but rather somethign like 60-130, along with a bunch of secondary responses which will further detract from your ability to shoot well.



Like the doc mentioned above, there is are times int the hospital when a patient is suffering from either a rapid  heart beat (tachycardia) which we want to try to lower , or they might present with a more serious type arrythmia known as SVT.



The first line of treatment for these patients  are several of the "natural" ways to stop some of these types of tachycardias One, in particular, is the vagal maneuver, which takes its name from the vagal nerve, the nerve that regulates your heart rate.

The vagal maneuver stimulates this nerve and will hopfefully halt an arrhythmia or rapid heartbeat that started in a specific region of the heart, although it will still work for all types of rapid heart rate. There are different behaviors that will trigger or cause a vagal maneuver, five or six in all iirc, however they can be very dangerous if performed incorrectly or excessively, so a degree of caution is definaltey necessary, but they absoltely do work. 'Tactical breathing' or simply doing sets of 3 long breaths that consist of a 3 second inhalation, a 3 second hold and a 3 second exhalation is generally your best bet to get your heart rate well back under control and allow you to shoot more accurately



fun fact, rectal stimulation is one of the 6 areas of the body that will trigger a vagal response in someone.



 

my point is simply that when i shoot, i don't have to worry about it.  there is no movement from pulse because i've isolated the gun from it.  it won't matter if my pulse is 60 or 120 because it's not moving the crosshairs at all.  

I'm not debating that you can do things that affect your heart rate.  it just seems highly unlikely that any of those things would be effective shooting:    if you are shooting from a bench and your heart beat is bothering you, it's already probably at your resting rate and not going any lower.  if you are in a practical/match situation and your heart beat is 120 because you just ran 4 flights of steps to the top of a roof/tower, you probably don't have time to do rectal yoga.  I mean, if you had time, you would have walked the stairs, right?

ya no I hear you. I kinda got started on a rant and just said eff it and kept going, it wasn't really meant to be something aimed back at you. so sorry.



Your right about the rear bag and I think that's one of the reasons they have really evolved into an absolutely essential piece of equipment for those who pull triggers for a living out in the real world.



Im not so sure about the second part. I don't thin i've ever really thought of it in terms of lowering my heart rate necessarily, but breath control is absolutely a real part of the fundamentals of how I shoot. consciously controloing ones breathing, then finding npoa, and finally breaking the shot during the respiratory pause is absolutely shooing fundamentals 101.



When I used to compete a lot more in both smallbore and biathalon anotherr thing I used to notice that often  went against what you would think was the more logical decision was that I would often see increases in my scores during timed events when I used my breath ing to get into a rhythm where I would take a shot after every single breathe say, without concentrating so much on how my sight picture was forming up and whether or not I wanted to hold the shot and take anotherr breathe before trying  again.



There way definitely something to getting into a rhythm that also helped improve my shooting, and that of course is ssomething that usually reloves around your breathing.



 

This is your only real solution.

Cardio Cardio Cadrio... And good trigger control. time your shots between the beats. One thing you can do is literally run from yard line to yard line with all of your gear and have no option but to learn how to shoot between the beats and control your breathing.

 

Cardio and yoga have nothing to do with it!  it's all about building the proper support.  useing bone support and not muscular tension.  

in SSBC they have you run 300-400 yards and then set up a prone shot.  it's never an issue because you set up a proper fireing postion.

In SSBC I only worried about muscular tension out to 6, after that it was all prone at which point muscular tension was only an issue with gripping the stock or using a first to adjust buttstock. Very much unlike the annual rifle qual with sitting and kneeling.

 

Exactly!