Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap.
Cliff notes:
Today I tried everything but nothing helped. I gave up in despair and shot my .22lr Browning Buckmark for 30 minutes. After that I magically shot 9mm fine. OMBWTFBBQ.
Full version:
I went to the range and tried everything: shoot the berm, watch the sights go up and down, ball and dummy (with mostly dummies) dry fire between shots. Here's a good thread on this subject with lots of other folks experiences btw:
https://forums.brianenos.com/topic/2...omment-2347231
However, after 2 hours of trying all those drills, nothing helped at all. All my targets looked like a comet tail headed low left. And the more tired I got it only seemed to get worse. I was really frustrated so I decided to stop.
I was demoralized so I decided to see how well I could shoot with my 22 Buckmark - and I confirmed that I shoot it just fine. This was my second target that I shot at medium speed (not fast but not super slow surprise break either). No signs of problems pulling the gun off target with my trigger finger or flinching.
Attachment 64218
This was the third target shooting the Buckmark at a much faster pace. Still awesome (for me).
Attachment 64219
At this point I concluded that I need to give up on 9mm and just focus on 22 (steel challenge, etc). If some day I find an instructor who can fix me, fine, but until then I'm done wasting 9mm ammo.
I decided to shoot one more 9mm target to take a picture to document how crappy I am with 9mm. I would show it to the instructor to argue it's not a trigger issue but a 9mm recoil-anticipation problem. And this is what I shot.
Attachment 64220
HOLY CRAP WTF? It's a little high but that group is A+++ compared to the garbage I had been shooting for the previous 2 hours. I proceeded to repeat it a several more times with similar results. Firm grip, loose grip, I had no issues with low-left. I even shot a whole mag at a fast pace with good results.
So while I'm elated that I suddenly stopped anticipating, I'm still a little concerned that it's still mostly out of my control. It's not something I did differently. My subconscious brain activity just decided to stop anticipating and ruining my day. For all I know it will be back the next time I shoot. But hopefully if I continue to shoot the 22 a lot the pattern and muscle memory will get ingrained and become permanent.