Tomb Raider QTE's-- what am I doing wrong?

[nnodley]

twesterm said:

That's the dumbest fucking thing I've ever heard. How am I supposed to know that? Why do you show me the button I press only after it's too late?

There was no tutorial in this, it just assumes you know some backwards system. Even knowing this now, I'm still not sure when to press Y. I pressed it once while the circles were closing in and still failed. At least mashing Y works I guess.

And this is the game that was supposed to make me less angry after getting screwed over by SimCity. 

It shows you what to push right when the outer circle hits the smaller circle and then you have like maybe 1-2 seconds to push it.  It also glows green when you can push it.