An Unforeseen Lesson in Self-Mastery from the Concept of ‘Pliable Hands’

Valuable Lessons Arise From The Most Unexpected Sources

Circa 2019 I went to a three-day shooting school founded by Ron Avery, a legend in the shooting space. I had been out of the Navy for six years and got the itch to start shooting again—so much that I started shooting competitively on the weekends, for two reasons. First, shooting is meditative for me. The amount of concentration that’s required to align the mind and body into a single unit such that they move as one is one of the closest pursuits to self-mastery that I’ve experienced. Second, I wanted to put myself in stressful situations because I didn’t really have any my life—at least, nothing that really tested me. I wanted to test myself again, and there is no better competition that facing oneself.

That’s exactly who you face on the course: you. Sure, there are other competitors, but who you're really competing against is yourself: your thoughts, your nervous system, and your ability to align the two against the clock such that your body moves like water (it’s cliché, but it’s true). Learning how to better self-manage under stress never gets old.

Anyway, I started shooting for two reasons, and I stopped for another two. First, it was expensive. During COVID the cost of primers (I pressed my own bullets) competed with our mortgage. Second, it took time away from my family. At best I could only attend two shooting matches a month because when I have my son every other weekend, I want to maximize our time together, and going off and shooting for three to four hours would be too selfish. Plus, shooting at the level that I wanted was extremely perishable, so two times a month wasn’t gonna cut it.

Anyway, this article isn’t about guns or shooting. Rather, it’s about one of many important concepts shooting teaches you. And that is the concept of "pliable hands.