The Dreaded Flinch

[jslaker]

We don't have a thread for this yet, and it's plaguing me, lately so let's do it.

In the last couple of months, I've developed a flinch I'm having a hard time working around. I have clear sight picture, trigger press feels good, I can dryfire fine all day, I'm not blinking, I can track my sight fine after discharge, bu as the gun goes off with live fire, I can visibly see the gun dive, resulting in hits seriously low and left.

This has been going on for about a month, and I'm really at a loss on what to do about it, as I've gone through several hundred rounds aware of the issue and the problem seems to be getting worse, if anything. It's particularly perplexing given it's the same gun I've been shooting for three years now, and haven't had this this problem up until now.

Any pointers for drills or exercises that might help would be hugely appreciated. And maybe will be helpful for others with a similar predicament.

[MTechnik]

Try with a 22?

[jslaker]

Try with a 22?

I've thought about this, but I'm not sure how much good it'll do when my dry fire is clean. Worth a shot though.

[BWT]

Try with a 22?

This and buy some snap caps, load them at random intervals into your magazines swap around your magazines in such a way that you're not certain of which magazines have snap caps and where they're located.

I think it's one of those things you just have to practice. I start flinching if I haven't shot in awhile (month or more), it takes me a few magazines usually to get it under control.

[jslaker]

I have tried snap caps. I'm really not sure if they're doing much good given that I *know* it's an issue on pushing the gun. Like I said, I can literally see the gun dive when it happens.

[ToddG]

Do some ball & dummy practice at slow pace. Until you can consistently shoot tight groups and not have any muzzle dips during B&D, trying to shoot faster is just a waste of time and ammo.

If you're not already, double up on your hearing protection. Some people experience noise as "recoil" and it can quickly induce a bad flinch.

You say you're seeing the front sight dip as you press the trigger. That is great (that you see it, not that it's happening, of course). Take away the target and just fire slowly at the berm, watching your sight. Does the dip/flinch go away?

Another thing you can try -- odd as it sounds -- is to aim the gun then close your eyes and keep them closed until after you break the shot. This gets you used to the gun going off, moving around, etc. without any visual anticipation. A big part of flinching is simply an unconscious reaction to the big boom and pressure wave. As you get more accustomed to that, a flinch may sort itself out with just a little effort.

[jslaker]

Do some ball & dummy practice at slow pace. Until you can consistently shoot tight groups and not have any muzzle dips during B&D, trying to shoot faster is just a waste of time and ammo.

If you're not already, double up on your hearing protection. Some people experience noise as "recoil" and it can quickly induce a bad flinch.

You say you're seeing the front sight dip as you press the trigger. That is great (that you see it, not that it's happening, of course). Take away the target and just fire slowly at the berm, watching your sight. Does the dip/flinch go away?

Another thing you can try -- odd as it sounds -- is to aim the gun then close your eyes and keep them closed until after you break the shot. This gets you used to the gun going off, moving around, etc. without any visual anticipation. A big part of flinching is simply an unconscious reaction to the big boom and pressure wave. As you get more accustomed to that, a flinch may sort itself out with just a little effort.

Thanks for the suggestions, Todd. I'll give these a try next time I hit the range.

Like I said in the OP, I'm trying quite hard not to simply get frustrated with this given this is a problem I haven't had in the past. I think this gives me a place to start working on it, which is better than what I had before, since the more general fix a flinch guidelines didn't seem to be working.

[Ed L]

*For me,* the ball and dummy drill seems to make me tense up and if anything it increases any chance of a flinch. It makes me feel like I am disarming a bomb and not knowing what is going to happen when I pull the trigger.

It is different when I am simply shooting live ammo and getting inot a cyle of pulling the trigger, having the gun go boom and recoil, then settle back into place for me to fire the next shot.

[peterb]

Noise can certainly affect perceived recoil.

A note on hearing protection: Most folks I've seen with foam plugs don't use them correctly, and loose a lot of protection. here's the right way:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPNPZJingZA

Here's a good source for foam plugs. http://earplugstore.stores.yahoo.net/difoearpl.html
I like the assortment pack for finding one that works for you. The 200-pair boxes bring the price to where there's no excuse not to use them.

[part-time shooter]

Have you been practicing with a backup gun or mouse gun lately? those beat the snot out of your hands, especially Kel-Tec's and LCPs and so on, and can induce a flinch from anticipation of pain...and rightly so.

Oddly enough it didn't bother me when I had a full sized pistol in my hands using a normal grip, only something smaller. The moment I noticed it the gun ran dry and I dry fired the BuG. I'm surprised I wasn't shooting the floor the front site dropped so far. This was only after 50 or so rounds so it can happen quickly. Takes longer to fix one than to pick one up.

[jslaker]

Have you been practicing with a backup gun or mouse gun lately? those beat the snot out of your hands, especially Kel-Tec's and LCPs and so on, and can induce a flinch from anticipation of pain...and rightly so.

The only thing I've fired other than my USPc in months was a Gen4 G19, and that was only about a magazine's worth to see how I felt about the gun. The USP *is* a .40, so this may be accelerating my plan to move to 9mm, which had been in the back of my head for cost reasons for some time before I developed this flinch.

[jslaker]

I finally had a chance to get to the range tonight and work on this some.

Printed out a bunch of Todd's 2" circle targets and worked slow fire from 3 yards, loading up 5 rounds at a time to help pace myself.

First couple of strings were bad, with the some pretty serious dive. After that, though, things started to clear up a bit. Instead of throwing every. single. round off, it got to be more like maybe once a string, and when there was anticipation it was more of a dip than the outright dive I was dealing with before. Todd's suggestion of trying with my eyes shut definitely helped some, and I found in general that I was putting rounds where I'd intended when there wasn't a flinch.

Interestingly, I also found that I was having significantly fewer problems when firing from the LEM's fully released position than when shooting from the reset position. I guess for some reason my brain isn't associating the light, long length of pull of the LEM first shot with the bang. Firing from reset like the gun was a DA/SA made the gun dive on me.

Another data point since noise was mentioned before -- the range was significantly busier tonight than it had been on recent trips. On top of that, the lanes just to the left of me were occupied by a couple of guys firing full power .357 magnum loads out of Ruger GP101s. So short version is that there was much more constant and louder gunfire all around me, which may have masked the boom of my own gun some. Definitely think I'm going to look into some better earpro as I've just been using a cheap set of Caldwell electronic muffs to date.

Either way, it feels great to finally feel like I'm making progress in fixing this instead of treading water. Thanks again to everyone that offered suggestions!

[part-time shooter]

Definitely think I'm going to look into some better earpro as I've just been using a cheap set of Caldwell electronic muffs to date.

I double up on an indoor range, many of the ones around here have a rifle range inside so there's AK or AR muzzle blast to deal with as well. Foam plugs under your normal ear protection will help with that drastically. You'll be hard pressed to hear anything if you are concentrating on what you're doing.

[SLG]

I'm going to disagree a little with Todd in this instance, and recommend a different approach. Since you already know you have this problem, I don't think that slow ball and dummy, or snap cap use is going to help much. I have had a good bit of success shooting much faster. The drill is to randomly load 3 or more mags with 2 or 3 dummy rounds. Then, start shooting at a pretty fast pace on a medium sized target (5"x8" or so) at 5-7 yards. Whenever you hit a dummy round, tap rack and keep shooting fast. After a few magazines of this, I have found that the problem tends to go away. If it doesn't, then at least you had fun:D

Not being there with you, I can't really tell you how fast to shoot, so that may be a sticking point to how well this drill works. A good rule of thumb is to shoot again as soon as your front sight touches down, and to clear the induced malfs as fast as possible and keep shooting. This seems to affect/improve your shooting on a more unconscious level than the slow ball and dummy type stuff.

[joshs]

SLG,

Do your sights dip when you hit the dummy while shooting at a faster pace? When I'm shooting faster, if I don't see the front sight lift perfectly, I cannot tell the difference between anticipation and post ignition push when I hit a dummy/bad primer. Or, is the dummy only to draw the shooter's attention away from thinking about flinching, and not used to diagnose whether or not the shooter flinches when they hit the dummy? If so, I can see how it could be useful for learning subconscious shooting.

[SLG]

Joshs,

The dummy, as you surmised, is not for figuring out if you have a flinch. In this case, and for this drill to work, the shooter already knows what he's doing wrong. The dummy round, after a couple of mags, shows the coach/shooter that the shooter is no longer flinching. Shooting and clearing the malf at speed, does not allow the shooter to anticipate the recoil in the same way that slow fire does.

I really should have started this by saying that this drill is an option to try if the previous advice didn't do the trick. I have seen excellent results with this, but it definitely helps to be there live, rather than trying to analyze and advise over the internet. As always, YMMV.

I should also point out that shooting at speed is rarely the way to fix problems, but in this case, it sounds like this solution might be appropriate.

[MDS]

FWIW, I made a lot of progress towards mastering my flinch during a 1,450-round training day with Frank Garcia - shooting a compact 45. I was very focused on all my other problems, and on the drills Frank had me do, so that after an hour or so I started forgetting to flinch. Towards the end, I was too tired to flinch. :cool:

[John Ralston]

When I have a flinch issue, I find it usefull to do a lot of self talk while doing slow fire. I just tell myself - "don't flinch, don't flinch, don't flinch..." as I am squeezing off the round. I am not so worried about sights/target alignment - I am trying to convince my body to suppress its response to recoil. I am completely focused on NOT flinching, and ignoring everything else. I find this works when shooting a large magnum rifle as well - no matter how bad my shoulder hurts, no matter the size of the bruise I am getting - it seems to work.

I think a .40 is not so large of a caliber to induce a permanent flinch, so I think you should be able to work through this shortly.

I do like SLG's drill as well - sounds like a great tool for this issue.

[jslaker]

@SLG - funny thing - when this first cropped up I noticed I threw fewer shots due to flinching during rapid fire than when I was taking my time (albeit while being less accurate when getting doing things "right"). I've pretty much been shooting slow fire exclusively lately figuring I should fix this problem rather than waste lead throwing shots.

Maybe I'll run a few magazines at an upped pace next time and see what happens. Like you said, it's good stress relief if nothing else. :D

[Len]

I've got snap caps for my Glock 26 and should use them. I'm very frustrated with my low left flinch. I don't see the barrel move. I also have a S & W 357. I've loaded 4 of the 6 chambers and can see the barrel move low left when an empty chamber comes up. That helps me on the next round. I don't know if my stance is improper, breathing??? I've only been at this for a little over 2 years but want to improve my accuracy and the flinch is in the way. Are different sights the answer?

[JodyH]

Len,
A flinch is a software issue not a hardware issue.
You can't fix it with different sights.
It has nothing to do with stance or breathing.
It's 100% mental.