John McPhee on Trigger Control

[Chance]

Shrek posted this on Facebook and Instagram today, along with an accompanying video I can't embed here. He said:

Trigger Jerk is an Illusion! There is no such thing. Your trigger finger is not strong enough. In this vid I pulled the trigger with this 1/2" ratchet. Look how hard I hit the ratchet. I regularly break Glock triggers so I carry extras. Lol. Trigger jerk is actually #Anticipation. Anticipation starts in the brain and moves the gun before it goes off. Not your Finger!!! Commonly known as a #flinch. The fix is relax the brain and Don't Do It! Lol.

This goes in the face of what I've heard from many people, but it's an interesting demo. Curious to hear people's thoughts on this.

[joshs]

I agree with him that most errors that are categorized under "trigger control" are actually anticipation or pre-ignition push. There is definitely a certain amount of error that can be induced by a bad trigger press (which can be exaggerated or hidden depending on grip strength), but I think anticipation and recoil-timing errors are much more common.

[Eyesquared]

Sounds to me like Mr. McPhee is conflating the idea that a strong grip negates the effect of a slightly imperfect trigger pull and that anticipation is a more common issue. From a physiological standpoint I can't say I agree with the blanket statement that "trigger jerk is an illusion". Mimic pulling a trigger and use your other hand to feel the area under your index finger, in your palm. You can literally feel the muscles in your hand flexing. If your grip is weak enough that the gun can move about in your hand slightly, those muscles can obviously impart a force on the gun. I especially disagree with his contention that trigger finger placement doesn't matter. If your grip puts 10% of those muscles in contact with the gun, you will obviously impart a lot less force on it than if you'd touched the gun with 90% of them. Of course, at speed and especially with two hands, these issues can all be covered up with grip.

Edit: Obviously I'm no expert shooter. However, I do have a fair amount of physics and biology knowledge and some of the things he wrote don't track.

[SLG]

I'm pretty sure I know where Mr. Mcphee learned that, and I completely agree with him. I've been teaching this, and using a similar demo since 2006, when I learned it from Rob Leatham.

[Jay Cunningham]

I agree with him, except that I consider flinch a thing and I consider anticipation/trigger jerk a thing.

[joshs]

I'm pretty sure I know where Mr. Mcphee learned that, and I completely agree with him. I've been teaching this, and using a similar demo since 2006, when I learned it from Rob Leatham.

Do you just pull the trigger for the student, or do you use a ratchet (or something similar) as is demoed in the video? I've always just pulled the trigger for the student, and I've never had to replace a trigger bar.

[Eyesquared]

Rewatching the video, I think I get it better now. It makes sense that my trigger finger can't impart enough force on the trigger to move the gun meaningfully. If the rest of your hand contracts or you have other grip issues then I suppose that could be what he calls anticipation.

[EricM]

I recall reading something similar in an AAR for one of his classes a couple years ago, I think at the time he was using a screwdriver to pull a student's trigger. Made some sense and agreed with what I was experiencing at the time while learning to shoot a TDA handgun, causing me to prioritize grip more highly. I wouldn't go so far as to say movement of the trigger finger doesn't matter at all and trigger finger placement is irrelevant -- if the gun is bolted to an immovable boulder, sure, but for an average human I think those things still play a role. For me personally, my experience is that a subpar grip or sympathetic contraction of my strong hand is more likely to throw off a shot than the actions of my trigger finger.

[orionz06]

Good stuff.

[YVK]

The experiment shown above is supposed to demonstrate good hits achieved with bad trigger control when anticipation is taken out of equation.
However, this....

sympathetic contraction of my strong hand..

...is also taken out of equation by such setup. In my mind, symp squeeze and inability to sufficiently isolate a trigger finger from the rest of them is more a trigger control error and not an anticipation error. I am unconvinced that this experiment proves much, other than that strong grip is good.