Help Needed to address a flinching issue

[Jay Cunningham]

I work as a Firearms Instructor for a Federal Agency. I am having an issue with one of my Agents "flinching" or pre-ignition movement of the weapon in anticipation of felt recoil. We have had him shooting twice on the range this past week, two qualification attempts each time and remedial training sessions in between. He has failed to pass either time. This is largely due to his "flinching". He may have other issues regarding sight alignment, sight picture, etc., but until we can get this "flinching" under control, it's hard to say what other issues he may have. In working with him, we identified this issue early on, both through observation of him shooting and impacts on target. We confirmed this through the use of ball and dummy drills which also acted to clearly identify this issue to him. I have had plenty of cases like this in the past. Routinely, a few magazines of ball and dummy drills and persistent verbal re-enforcement to manipulate the trigger without disrupting point of aim is sufficient to "cure" this to the point that the Agents can pass the qualification course. At times, I have had to work through several magazines loaded with nothing but dummy rounds, but the Agent usually can self-teach themselves enough to be able to pass in a relatively short amount of time.

Now, Let me be clear. I know that consistent dry fire practice over the course of time, weeks and months, not hours, is the only true way to correct this "flinching". And that's on the Agent to do this to advance his skill sets as a shooter. This isn't the hand that I have been dealt, however. I have a limited amount of time, a limited amount of resources with which to work through this issue and get this Agent back working on the line. Due to lack of manpower currently, being able to pull this agent for extended remedial training isn't really an option.

So, my question is, does anyone have a technique to apply that can provide immediate help with this flinching? We have tried everything we know of. We've done ball and dummy drills, we've done full magazines of dummy rounds, we've had him say phrases while pressing the trigger, we've had him do multiplication tables. It will work for a few rounds and then almost inevitably, he starts to "flinch" again. I don't need to turn him into Wyatt Earp, I just need to be able to get him up to minimal standards that have been defined by my Agency. Any techniques is appreciative, except aiming high and right. That's a cover-up to the problem. I'm looking more for a tourniquet to apply until surgery can be performed.

What do his targets look like? Where exactly are his bullets going relative to his point of aim? How consistently do they group? Is he right or left handed?

[rebelxd1224]

What do his targets look like? Where exactly are his bullets going relative to his point of aim? How consistently do they group? Is he right or left handed?

He's a right handed shooter. The bulk of his rounds are low left. There are a few that are scattered through out the target, I believe is an issue related to losing focus on his front sight because he's more worried about where his rounds are impacting than about what he's doing with the weapon. I've had a lengthy conversation with him about a performance based mindset as opposed to an outcome based mindset. I want him to focus on what he's doing with the weapon each and every single presentation and understand that if he does that, he hits will come.


Target is a TQ-15 silhouette. I've glued a standard 3X5 card in the center to act as an aiming point for him. He's barely able to keep rounds on that card at 3 yards. When pushed out to the 7 yard line, most shots are left side of the 5 ring and scattered. Out to 15 yards, impacts are generally in the 4 ring, lower left corner and when pushed out to 25 yards, 2 ring impacts appear lower left and off silhouette. He also starts assassinating my target stands at that distance with rounds off target completely. So, it's pretty consistent.

We did the exercise of manipulating his trigger for him, while he aligned the weapon and that resulted in hits on a steel, 2/3 IPSC target from 15 yards, consistently and grouped fairly well. Him on his own, hits went down drastically. Honestly, it's been 2 frustrating days out on the range.

[Sal Picante]

In Bill Roger's book, he mentions a staggered dummy round drill - this is significantly different than the traditional ball and dummy drill - the magazine alternates between live,dummy,live,dummy with a live round on the bottom and a live round on the top. (Load the magazine to capacity!)

The idea is that during unconscious manipulation, the shooter will hit a dummy round, observes the "flinch" and then, after malfunction drill, be able to walk themselves through the trigger manipulation process. (You want the shooter to snap a dummy round without any movement in the gun)

By the end of 1-2 mags of this, it should show a difference. To validate, I usually throw a few of these "staggered" magazines randomly into their pouches.
When they notice the flinch, I'll just have them work through the remainder of the magazine at a closer/fresh target.


An additional play from Bill's book is to have the guy shooter with heavy, goggle (as opposed to safety glasses) - Bill cites the "overpressure" and eye sensitivity as being a cause of flinch.

[rebelxd1224]

Have you had the agent try shooting while using as light, relaxed grip as possible? When I first started shooting a handgun I had a massive flinch....I'm talking miss a B27 at 7 yards sort of flinch.

By relaxing my grip as much as possible, my recoil control was non-existant but the flinch disappeared and I scored expert, shooting a 363/400 on the old USMC pistol qual, taking the third highest score in my company. Ball'n'dummy on my own time got me shooting fast without a flinch.

If you're shooting the Border Patrol qual, given the generous times on the qual, the lack of recoil control should be the lesser of two evils and he'll at least qual even if he kittens up the faster strings.

Yeah, we have worked on him lessening his grip some. He originally had a severely tense grip. Not a strong grip, but one where he was just exerting a massive amount of tension, almost to the point of shaking. That is better now. It didn't correlate to better scores though. 214-222 out of 360 were his points range from 1st qualification to last.

We believe that this is an engrained flinch that has been present for some time. He recently came off light duty due to a medical issue. I think that the flinch got more intensive when he came back from the 9 month absence of not shooting. That's just my speculation though.

[rebelxd1224]

In Bill Roger's book, he mentions a staggered dummy round drill - this is significantly different than the traditional ball and dummy drill - the magazine alternates between live,dummy,live,dummy with a live round on the bottom and a live round on the top. (Load the magazine to capacity!)

The idea is that during unconscious manipulation, the shooter will hit a dummy round, observes the "flinch" and then, after malfunction drill, be able to walk themselves through the trigger manipulation process. (You want the shooter to snap a dummy round without any movement in the gun)

By the end of 1-2 mags of this, it should show a difference. To validate, I usually throw a few of these "staggered" magazines randomly into their pouches.
When they notice the flinch, I'll just have them work through the remainder of the magazine at a closer/fresh target.


An additional play from Bill's book is to have the guy shooter with heavy, goggle (as opposed to safety glasses) - Bill cites the "overpressure" and eye sensitivity as being a cause of flinch.

Yes sir. I worked a couple of magazines with staggered ball and dummy as well as ones with random ball dummy counts. Some initial improvement is there, but by the end of the next magazine of all live rounds, flinch is back there. One of the other instructors mentioned that his inability to "self-teach or self-correct" after these drills was disturbing. And I concurred.

[Sal Picante]

Is he aware of what he's doing? Is it possible to film him (maybe with Coach's Eye) and show him in slow motion how he is kittening up?

[rebelxd1224]

When I took a class with Ernest Langdon, I asked about this. My lady was still having flinching issues, even though her form was otherwise very good for a novice.

He walked us through a mental exercise where he kept talking about "feeling" the trigger, and trying to press just up til the point of the break and stop a hair before we thought we'd fire. Then pushed us to keep feeling for it, you aren't quite there, there's more slack than you think. Guns went bang most of the time.

Then he told us to look at the targets. Most were consistent A's. A few of us had caught onto it by then, one had seen the trick before. It was all about distracting the brain from anticipating the bang, and switch that anticipation or focus on the feel of the trigger only.

I'm not sure it would be as effective without the constant push, verbal feedback from the instructor. But I managed to approximate the tone and urging with her and a friend, to good results.

It can't hurt to try. Get him to play this game. And while he is trying to focus on finding the break, distract his mind with your voice commands and encouragement. It wouldn't take too much time to try, and it might help get his mind over that hump to see a consistent string where he was successful in subverting that urge.

Edit: I also like the idea of doubling up the ear pro and trying to run some strings at a high rate, where he may just have too many other things to worry about than the bang.

Thanks for the idea!! That's somewhat different from what we were originally trying. And I agree, double ear-protection might help. I'll have him back on the range Monday. That'll be something to try.

[rebelxd1224]

Is he aware of what he's doing? Is it possible to film him (maybe with Coach's Eye) and show him in slow motion how he is kittening up?

It's hard to say if he is aware and actually understands what he is doing as opposed to simply being aware that the weapon is moving when it's not supposed to. When we're doing the ball and dummy, he can observe movement of the weapon with no round being discharged. When we ask him to self-diagnosis his misses, I don't know if he's just regurgitating back to me what we've been saying the whole time, "Stop Flinching." Haha. He could be.


I didn't film him on the range. I don't have access to a quality camera like that. I do have one on my phone that we could possibly use.

[Sal Picante]

Coaches Eye on the phone is excellent tool for diagnosing issue like this...

(iPhone and Android)

https://www.coachseye.com/v/xfuC


I don't have any good flinch content (deleted a few vids last month...)

[rebelxd1224]

Coaches Eye on the phone is excellent tool for diagnosing issue like this...

(iPhone and Android)

https://www.coachseye.com/v/xfuC


I don't have any good flinch content (deleted a few vids last month...)

Outstanding. I haven't used that before. Looks helpful.