newbie at the range... shooting extremely high and left...

[hufnagel]

So as I do, I took another newbie shooting for the first time. We ran into a consistent issue across all hand guns we shot. She is shooting EXTREMELY high and left; easily 8" high and 12" left. Semi-auto, revolver, .22lr, 9mm, .45acp, .38spl, didn't matter.
Her grip looked good. She held them just fine. We went over sight picture and alignment multiple times, and everything looked fine when I observed her from various angles, but she still was WAY off target. Right handed, right-eye dominant, no eye correction in that eye. I even tried having her shoot left-handed/right-eye'd and the results were the same. The only thing I noticed at one point was an occasional twitch to the left while pressing the trigger. She did seem to have a pretty consistent problem with having the P30 cycle completely (115gr Freedom Munitions reloads) and did have an induced stove pipe once. Shooting the .22lr (Ruger SR22, Beretta M9-22, S&W 617 4") still had the same results.
Could she just have THAT weak of a grip and forearm strength, that the action if pressing the trigger, even in SA mode on anything, is enough to create sympathetic movement, forcing the sights that far off target? She had a good time, learned the mechanics quickly and followed the rules and procedures diligently, so she's eager to go back and do better. I would love to have an answer though before we go, as to what is going on. I stupidly removed the laser from the SR22, thinking it would make the gun nose heavy for her, and i'm regretting that. I'm considering inviting her over for some dry fire practice, with the laser, to see if we can't pin down what's going on, and if it's a grip/trigger-press movement issue.
Any thoughts from the intelligencia here would be welcome.

[SkippySanchez]

Next time you might consider making a couple slo-mo videos while she shoots. Did she try shooting a .22 pistol? What distance was she shooting? I'm no expert, but I'm guessing it's not flinching, which usually results in low left, not high left

I'll be interested in what you learn.


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I'd give my right arm to be ambidextrous.

[hufnagel]

We started the day on the .22's... and the problem was occurring then as well. I don't think it's a flinch either, although she did "experience" that on the revolvers when she tried to go +1 on the cylinder size. :D Interestingly, she picked up on it happening immediately.

[rjohnson4405]

I sometimes shoot high when I anticipate. If she is constantly feeling the gun move high and left after a shot because her left hand grip is weak she could be moving the gun where she "knows" it's going to go prematurely.

A couple things to try.
1. See if she can relax and keep her eyes open through the whole recoil cycle, often anticipating/flinch will come with them shutting their eyes against the blast/recoil.
2. Stand to the side of her and have her line everything up and then you pull the trigger so she can't anticipate it early.

[LittleLebowski]

Do the dry fire drill where you balance a piece of brass on the front sight and have her press through smoothly, not knocking off the piece of brass. Obviously the pistol will be unloaded.

[Gio]

You need to put a laser on the gun and let her aim with that instead of the sights. Since it's happening on a .22, the high part is probably her not aligning the sights correctly, while the left part is likely the classic trigger control (not pressing trigger straight back) issue.

[gomerpyle]

were I to hazard a guess, I would say she is likely anticipating the shot and milking the pistol.

[psalms144.1]

Shooting that high would lead me to believe she doesn't understand sight alignment. Make HER draw you a picture of what she's seeing when she's looking at the sights. I'm betting she's ONLY looking at the front sight, and has is nowhere near aligned with the top of the rear sight.

Left - yeah, all trigger control, all the time. No jerky, no lefty...

[Alpha Sierra]

Massive flinch. Ball and dummy drill will confirm it.

[lwt16]

I had a couple of shooters like that over the years.

One was "helping" the gun recoil....even a .22....by snatching the pistol up and to the left. I caught it when I switched him over to a .22 Ruger Mk III with a bull barrel and standard velocity ammo. On the first round...without telling him what he was shooting caliber wise...he came up and left at the crack of the shot.

Induced a stovepipe on a gun that had never (10000k plus rounds) stovepiped a day in it's life.

I asked him "Kick too much?" to which he replied "A little".

So I told him to look ahead and handed the weapon back to him after clearing the stovepipe and keeping the gun in condition 3. He took aim, pulled the trigger, and at the huge, loud CLICK.....again pulled high and left. A few more drills like that and he was hitting everything he shot at with the anemic .22LR pistol.

With this person you are training, I'd go back to basics with a .22 revolver (if you have access to one) and load random cylinder charging holes until the flinch is gone. A semi auto will work but you will have more down time in between shots as you make the chamber "hot or not" until she figures it out.

Regards.

[hufnagel]

lwt16 I like that idea with the revolver a lot. The stove pipe bit got me too, as I haven't seen one of my P30's do that since I first started shooting.
I'll see if I can get her to come over for a little bit and practice some dry fire with the laser.

[lwt16]

A RDS equipped pistol (as much as I am putting off getting into them) will assist even an experienced shooter to show them where their trigger press sucks.

I had a RDS Sig X5 on my bench to detail strip and check over and took it to see how the RDS thing was. It was pretty immediate in telling me "hey, your trigger press.....even though you thought it was G2G......it sucks and needs work".

Doubt I would try that on a newbie because I want them to learn trigger press and sights old school to get them on paper. Advanced trigger press work can wait until later.

The laser dry fire thing might show her all she needs to know.

Let us know how it turns out.

[Nocturnalis Discipulo]

I would second the idea of milking the grip, especially without a solid support hand grip. I tend to shoot high left when I am not focusing and that's usually the reason.
I suppose it could also be a variant of a flinch where she is crush gripping it in her firing hand as she pulls the trigger to try and control recoil.

[baddean]

Huf,
I know I'm a little late to the party here but I had some thoughts based on a student that was experiencing the same thing.
About a year ago I had a young lady in class that was new to shooting.
After covering the usual sight alignment, trigger press, grip etc. everyone was set up in front of targets on the line.
The cardboard backers are about 2x3 feet with target affixed. From 10 feet she was not on paper. Odd! Suspecting what she was doing from standing behind her and watching the gun I had her aim at the very bottom of the target and got hits on paper about 18 inches high and centered.
So working with her we established that she understood the above basic concepts. As usual we also drummed into their heads about hard focusing on the front sight. She took that literally. She was so hard focused on the front sight that she would lift it out of the rear sight picture (so she could see it better) to make the shot.
I had her align her sights and put her finger on the trigger all while keeping that alignment and I put my finger over hers and pressed the trigger for her.
Center hit. The light came on and she shot exceptionally well after that.
Others have already mentioned "milking the gun". I've always thought of that as "heeling the gun" or pushing the heel of the hand into the back of the grip to mitigate felt recoil as opposed to controlling the recoil.
A combination of these could explain the high left hits and the stovepipe.
Just thinking out loud here.

[Jim Watson]

A friend's wife was shooting over like that.
He said she had had eye surgery and I am not sure that fully restored normal vision.
If I can get her to the range again, I will let her try a pistol with big white dots to put in a row across the target and a red dot equipped gun.

[rodralig]

Newbie to guns, and you already ran her through different calibers? What distance were those high and left? How big were the targets? How long were you shooting?

My feeling, correct me if I'm wrong though, you just rushed the newbie to everything rather than have her enjoy! Too much information too soon, IMO, is not a good thing.

Here is a snippet of me bringing a complete newbie to the range last year.

https://youtu.be/9SJzFcEegyQ

We just focused on 22LR and placement in just center mass at 5-yards. Once she became comfortable did we move to 9mm.

That's it... If she likes it, then take formal training. Then focus on those groups, ie., 1-inch at 5-yards, etc.

Just my few cents..



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[Jay Cunningham]

It's not flinch. Flinch manifests itself as shots dropped straight down 6" to 8" because the shoulders uniformly tense up right before the shot, lowering the muzzle.

First make sure that she understand that she needs to look at the front sight through the rear notch. Then make sure she is not looking over top of her sights to look at her target between each round.

Isolate that first, then worry about grip issues.

[hufnagel]

Newbie to guns, and you already ran her through different calibers? What distance were those high and left? How big were the targets? How long were you shooting?

My feeling, correct me if I'm wrong though, you just rushed the newbie to everything rather than have her enjoy! Too much information too soon, IMO, is not a good thing.

Here is a snippet of me bringing a complete newbie to the range last year.

https://youtu.be/9SJzFcEegyQ

We just focused on 22LR and placement in just center mass at 5-yards. Once she became comfortable did we move to 9mm.

That's it... If she likes it, then take formal training. Then focus on those groups, ie., 1-inch at 5-yards, etc.

Just my few cents..



Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

I didn't rush her through anything, with calibers; I generally bring an assortment, and we try out whatever the person wants to. When we determined there was an issue we were having trouble solving, she was still having fun, and she decided she wanted to experience other firearms as well, regardless of her targeting issues. She left happy and eager to come back, so I'd call it a win regardless of the lack of cool target for her to take home. And please note, she was consistent in her targeting issues, regardless of firearm and caliber. It looks like we're hitting up the range again this coming week as well. When we go back, it'll be with .22LR only.

[hufnagel]

It's not flinch. Flinch manifests itself as shots dropped straight down 6" to 8" because the shoulders uniformly tense up right before the shot, lowering the muzzle.

First make sure that she understand that she needs to look at the front sight through the rear notch. Then make sure she is not looking over top of her sights to look at her target between each round.

Isolate that first, then worry about grip issues.

Thanks. That was pretty much my thinking as well. I'm hoping that, with the inclusion of a laser, it'll be a "duh" moment for both of us as to what was going wrong.