Help Needed to address a flinching issue

[Jay Cunningham]

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.

It's hard enough to analyze this stuff while standing there much less via the Internet. But I'm going to give it a go based off of what you said his target looked like:

He's not flinching. Flinch *usually* manifests itself as shots dropped straight down six to eight inches. It looks like that because the shoulders tense up simultaneously right before the shot causing the muzzle to dip straight down.

He's anticipating... which is different. Jerking the trigger due to anticipating is mostly a head game one plays with oneself. Try this:

Have him clear his gun for dry practice and establish a full, HARD firing grip on the gun. The goal for the dry drill is not for his front sight to stay perfectly still - the goal is to operate the trigger as quickly and aggressively as possible with minimal front sight movement.

With such an aggressive, committed trigger manipulation, the sights *cannot* remain relatively still *unless* he has a hard grip on the gun. Run several iterations of this.

Switch back to live fire and put 0.30 (three tenths of a second) on a shot timer. Direct him to align his sights with his target (A Zone at five yards is fine) then direct him to place his finger on the trigger - but don't take any slack out! - and standby.

On the beep (which sounds like one continuous beep) he is to pull the trigger... and he's to pull the trigger before the beep ends. Basically: starting pointed in, sights on target, finger on the trigger (no slack taken out) he has .3 seconds to break his shot. Only a strong grip will allow him to successfully facilitate this aggressive trigger manipulation.

Only aggressive trigger manipulation will help him beat anticipation. All anticipation is is mental anguish over breaking the shot.

[Josh Runkle]

I am a big fan of using suppressed .22lr for this problem with a student. They have no noise, flash or recoil issues, and thy can focus on sight alignment and getting rid of the flinch. Then dry fire with duty gun. Then fire one round with duty gun. Then two rounds...they almost always flinch on the second round...then go through the whole same cycle again.

Also, usually flinching would still be passable for such large targets that many agencies use. (We're not talking about missing a 1" target by 1-2 inches) The fundamentals of proper grip, stance, sight alignment and trigger press are most likely out of whack as well. How are their fundamentals if they dry fire? This is something else that can be tested with suppressed .22, and why I'm such a big fan of it as a training aid.

[echo19]

I second the use of Coach's Eye. I just used it to correct one of our officers pre-ignition movements. I used the timer along with the drawn line across the slide. In a tenth of a second, the entire gun moved downward about 1/4 inch. Seeing is believing. He fixed it by the end of the training. I deleted the screen shots so I can't post them.

[Skeeter]

My father liked using a revolver, and a random 0 to 2 live rounds with the rest empty. The advantage was not having to rack the slide, so less interruption and more time spent doing the repetitions. When I was a kid he'd usually use a .44 mag for this, and afterward a 9mm seemed like a suppressed BB gun - Fond childhood memories...

[Jay Cunningham]

The .22 is to try to condition your subconscious not to expect recoil. Sometimes that fails as soon as you revert to service caliber, sometimes not.

The root problem, as I understand it, is that your brain has free time to work mischief while you're pulling the trigger. So there are drills that use up all that spare bandwidth. Some work better than others. The dot torture is pretty effective at using 100% of your conscious brain on "front sight front sight front sight bang"

You nailed part of the answer, dude. I'm digging the "work mischief" thing - it's evil.

[HCM]

You are just living a day in my life. We have some frequent flyers who need to remediate every quarter. Based on what you've posted, I agree with Jay and Dgg9 this seems to be a trigger control and mental focus issue. I'm guessing you're shooting P2000 V2 LEM 40 cal?

Are y'all still shooting 135 grain or have you started getting 180? 180 is less "blasty" and going from 155 grain to 180 grain helped some of our struggling shooters.

We still have a few LEM shooters among our remedial frequent flyers who like to try and stage the trigger by taking out the slack and then slamming the actual trigger pull in when they think they see " the Kodak moment" where the sights are "perfect". They lack the visual patience to stay on the sights and trigger and they let that "mischief" in their head push them to make the gun go off NOW. I see the same thing with SIG DAK and Glock shooters, I've just found the LEM is less forgiving of it. Having your shooter focus on the process rather than the outcome will be key to overcoming this.

You mentioned your shooter returning to their old ways a round of two after a remedial drill. They may well be "Terco" and will likely deny they are doing it- that is where the video really helps as it lets them see what you are swing rather than what they think they are doing.

There is a thread on here about the P2000 LEM where JodyH described the LEM as " a continuous motion, continuous contact trigger". It's an awesome description of how to run the LEM successfully. Maybe a DA revolver would help? Several posters here have previously mentioned shooting DA revolvers to help improve their LEM shooting. I've also found sometimes seeing both the cylinder and hammer move helps shooters visuaize the " rolling break".

[dgg9]

Maybe a DA revolver would help?.

Just recently, after much searching, I picked up a nice 10 shot S&W .22 revolver for no other reason than to keep trigger problems and flinching in remission.

One of the best drills: Andy Stanford in his long-ago Surgical Speed Shooting class, asked us to find out how far we could retract the trigger without it firing. So we all, with excruciating slowness, brought the trigger back, mil by mil with the ostensible goal of not firing. Of course eventually everyone's round finally went off and of course everyone's shot was about perfect with no flinches. Obviously it was a trick, with that actual intention. Dot shooting comes closest to that.

[HCM]

Just recently, after much searching, I picked up a nice 10 shot S&W .22 revolver for no other reason than to keep trigger problems and flinching in remission.

One of the best drills: Andy Stanford in his long-ago Surgical Speed Shooting class, asked us to find out how far we could retract the trigger without it firing. So we all, with excruciating slowness, brought the trigger back, mil by mil with the ostensible goal of not firing. Of course eventually everyone's round finally went off and of course everyone's shot was about perfect with no flinches. Obviously it was a trick, with that actual intention. Dot shooting comes closest to that.

That sounds just like Bruce Gray's "Bump Drill"

[dgg9]

There's nothing new under the sun....

[Sal Picante]

Curious if things got better for the poster?