Prepping vs. staging the trigger

I stumbled across some good discussion on trigger control, in particular a thread by Jay Cunningham on dry fire. I believe one of his point (and please Jay, if you're out there, correct me if I'm wrong) was the the proper trigger press is one motion with continuous rearward pressure until the shot breaks and then you want to reset the trigger very quickly during recoil. Contrast this with taking the slack out of the trigger, pausing while you further clean up the sight picture and gun reaches full extension, and then pressing the trigger the rest of the way. The seconds sounds like it has three parts to me - wall, pause, break the shot versus the first which just has one.

So I think of "prepping" as starting the continuous trigger press during the aiming and extension part of the draw while "staging" is just what I described above, a press to the wall, a pause for sight alignment / picture, and then another press to break the shot. It's prepping in that I'm (correctly?) working the trigger, while aiming the gun, and moving it to full extension all at the same time rather than doing one after the other. Staging seems to encourage me to want to "jerk" the trigger or anticipate the shot.

Am I thinking about this correctly? Feedback / thoughts? How do you work a trigger? For reference this is in the context of a Glock trigger.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by RyanM

I believe one of his point (and please Jay, if you're out there, correct me if I'm wrong) was the the proper trigger press is one motion with continuous rearward pressure until the shot breaks and then you want to reset the trigger very quickly during recoil.

---

This is going to sound really picky, but it's an opportunity to make a technical point:

The proper trigger press is one continuous motion with constant trigger speed until the shot breaks. If you have a "rolling break" trigger then continuous rearward pressure will in fact produce a constant trigger speed. But if you don't, then you will have to vary the pressure to achieve the speed.

Sounds complicated but actually it's simple. Operate the trigger aggressively... don't operate it in stages. Even if you need to make a precise shot it's okay to slow down your trigger manipulation a bit... but not too much. Even if a bit slower it should still be a constant speed.

Generally speaking, of course.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jay Cunningham

This is going to sound really picky, but it's an opportunity to make a technical point:

The proper trigger press is one continuous motion with constant trigger speed until the shot breaks. If you have a "rolling break" trigger then continuous rearward pressure will in fact produce a constant trigger speed. But if you don't, then you will have to vary the pressure to achieve the speed.

Sounds complicated but actually it's simple. Operate the trigger aggressively... don't operate it in stages. Even if you need to make a precise shot it's okay to slow down your trigger manipulation a bit... but not too much. Even if a bit slower it should still be a constant speed.

Generally speaking, of course.

---

Thanks Jay! Glad you saw my thread and thanks again for making that dry practice thread. Super helpful for a newer shooter like me.

Not to dive to far into the weeds, but is my understanding of "prepping" the trigger correct? It's starting the continuous, constant speed trigger press as the gun is being moved out to full presentation in the draw?

Yeah, I think you're right on in your understanding of staging vs. prep.

Staging goes hand-in-hand with surprise break methodology ("slowly take the slack out") and is useful in bullseye discipline and can inform your long range shooting technique.

Prep in an integral part of the pressout presentation method. Prep may or may not occur with the index draw - at fast speeds I'm sure some prep comes into play and would likely be captured on camera, even though it's not integral to the technique.

FWIW I do not teach trigger prep nor consciously utilize it.

I teach and use both. Jay is correct when he says "The proper trigger press is one continuous motion with constant trigger speed until the shot breaks", but I have found newer shooters or those with anticipation issues, have problems with this. For most I teach "prepping" the trigger and think of it as a way to graduate to the next level. Prepping the trigger won't fix anticipation, but it is a band aid, until the shooter matures.

For me at my level I generally use continuous motion, but will prep the trigger when precision shooting is required (usually at smaller targets or greater distances).

Either way, I believe both have their place in the learning curve.