Week 171: Press Six Hundred

[Mr_White]

Time to do this one again. Trigger press is just so fundamental...

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Week 171: Press Six Hundred

Results may be posted until August 1st, 2016.

For this drill, all you need is your pistol, a target, and a safe direction. This is going be a dry practice drill that almost everyone can participate in regardless of range restrictions.

At bare minimum, verify gun is unloaded, have no live ammo anywhere in the dry practice area, and keep muzzle in a safe direction. But there is more you can do to ensure safety in dry practice. Please also read Robust Dry Practice Safety Principles and Procedure following the drill description.

Things you must be absolutely disciplined about for dry practice to be productive: grip the gun as hard as you do in live fire, pay attention to the sight picture, and call every dry shot. Be ruthless in evaluation of the quality of your sight picture and trigger press.

We are going to be focusing on one of the very most essential parts of shooting – pressing the trigger without moving the gun excessively. You're going to aim at the target and press the trigger straight back. Watch the sight picture. Hold the sights on target. Don't let the gun move out of alignment with the target.

Designed by Gabe White
Target: 1”square/2” circle/6” circle - http://pistol-training.com/wp-conten...ch-circles.pdf
Distance: 5 yards
Rounds: 0


Part A: Target is the 1” square.

Do 10 repetitions freestyle where you press the trigger as smoothly as you can so the gun doesn't move – speed is not a factor.

Do 10 repetitions freestyle where you press the trigger as quickly as you can – smoothness is not a factor.

Now that you have a subjective sense of how smoothly you can press the trigger (without regard to time), and how fast you can press the trigger (without regard to smoothness), do at least 50 freestyle repetitions of pressing the trigger smoothly enough for the target, as quickly as you can. Put the two elements of smoothness and speed together. Keep the gun in at least adequate alignment with the target while pressing the trigger as fast as you can. The difficulty of the target defines the precision you need in the sights and trigger.


Part B: Repeat Part A weak hand only.


Part C: Repeat Part A strong hand only.


Repeat the entire sequence (parts A, B, and C) aiming at the 6” circle – pay attention to the sight picture and call your shots, now to an easier standard.


Repeat the entire sequence (parts A, B, and C) aiming at the 2” circle – pay attention to the sight picture and call your shots, bringing it back to a more difficult standard.


It's not important that you do exactly the number of repetitions called for in the drill. If your hands/arms or attention won't take it, do however many you feel you can. Or maybe you'll do a thousand presses each way. It may be helpful to break this drill into multiple sessions and that's perfectly acceptable.

Report in this thread when you've done this practice, what gun you were using, and feel free to report anything you noticed.

Training with firearms is an inherently dangerous activity. Be sure to follow all safety protocols when using firearms or practicing these drills. These drills are provided for information purposes only. Use at your own risk.



Robust Dry Practice Safety Principles and Procedure (the closer you follow this, the fewer opportunities you will have to ND)


Principles:

Allow no distractions – focus exclusively on the task at hand

Keep muzzle in a safe direction

Use correct trigger finger discipline

Verify no live ammo in gun, on person, or in the dry practice area

Use dedicated dry practice targets that are put away until you consciously choose to begin dry practice, and taken down when you consciously end dry practice

Use dedicated dry practice magazines and dummy rounds/inert training cartridges that stay in the dry practice area (if you use any magazine or cartridges)


Procedure:

Unload gun in a location other than the dry practice area

Leave live ammo, and magazines with live ammo, completely outside the dry practice area

Enter the dry practice area

Verify gun is unloaded, that any magazines do not contain live ammo, and that any cartridges present are inert/dummy cartridges

Consciously choose to begin dry practice

Put up dry practice targets

Do your dry practice

Take down dry practice targets and put them away

Consciously choose to end dry practice

Exit the dry practice area and do something unrelated for a few minutes

Return gun to location and condition of your choosing

[scw2]

CZ 75 SP01, did all my work without a holster.

I've been doing this several days and have found this to be a pretty fruitful DOTW and have had the following insights so far.

1. In dry fire I often would watch the sights, but ignore the alignment with target, so I wasn't getting a full benefit of calling shots in dry fire.

2. My left hand grip has largely been good so far, and was what I focused on before the most.

3. Leading in tho the issue of not gripping hard enough with my right hand, leading to milking and the sight dipping when I pushed speed.

4. Also occasionally wasn't finishing flat on the trigger with straight rearward force vector, but more of a down and back vector, leading to milking/sights dropping.

5. Getting a neutral grip by testing whether the sights move as I alternate between gripping fully and relaxing helped me see that I had a grip that also led to leftward drift in the sights whenever I wasn't fully gripping with the left hand. Shows me that I needed to fix the grip and also grip firmly more consistently with my left hand.

Hope to keep doing this in dry fire and seeing what I can learn, then test it out a bit at the range in the coming few days.

[Mr_White]

Great observations!

[cheshire_cat]

I'm going to have to do this over multiple sessions. I did side grip pull-ups and bicep curls yesterday. This morning I got through 10 reps slow, 10 fast, then 25 on the 1" target and my forearms were toast.

[Mr_White]

my forearms were toast

If your forearms were made of toast, would you eat yourself? I would! But I would butter them first.

Give me a break, I have a four-year-old and have the mind of a child myself.

[cheshire_cat]

If your forearms were made of toast, would you eat yourself? I would! But I would butter them first.

Give me a break, I have a four-year-old and have the mind of a child myself.

I prefer jam and yes

[RJ]

Thought I would try this.

Holy crap! This was hard.

I used my VP9, +1 power eye pro and a headlight to keep my focus on the front sight.

1) After the first run through A, 10, 10 then 50, I had to throttle down to 5, 5, and 10. Took me a while, and I had to take some breaks, but I got through.

2) Aiming at the 1" square takes a lot more time than the 6" circle.

3) I found my eyes drifting to target focus. I did manage to keep both eyes open most all the time.

Very good (if tiring) drill. Thanks Gabe, appreciate you posting these very much.

[cheshire_cat]

OK, I had time to finish Part A and Part B. I still have to do part C. The target I used was a little different. It was a 1/2 scale USPSA target 5 yards away. I used the 1" piece of tape holding it up as the target for Part A and the A/Cish zone for Part B. I will use the head for part C.
Observations:
-It is important for me to focus on isolating my trigger finger to get fast hits at speed.
-I need to grip with both hands firmly, not just my support hand.
-This is probably the most trigger presses I have done with my left hand all year...which goes to show I need to practice it more, and also why I suck at support hand shooting.
-I shake more when my forearms and hands are tired.
-Gabe is evil, because this drill is hard! But it is worth it and something I need to do often to get to the next level (a fast accurate trigger press).

[scw2]

Been continuing to work on this over the past few days, generally as a quick practice or warmup. Noticed two things since last time:

1. I feel like this has helped me see my sights better when doing live fire. That has helped provide motivation to keep doing this drill.

2. I've noticed that when I shoot the small targets (1" and 2"), going through the 50 reps it's easy to lose alignment since I can't really see the targets well with the front sight focus and drive the dot. Forces me to really focus on it as well as all the other stuff, hopefully will carry over to live fire and seeing sights + target alignment better with calling shots.

[Range1]

Worked this drill over several days using a Gen 4 Glock 23 and a Gen 3 Glock 22.
Observations: Need to do this more. One handed is especially difficult to get a smooth press. Taking too long to press the trigger one or two handed results in shaky sight picture. Need to have a quick and smooth press (duh). Also think I have been cheating my dry fire in that my grip and sight concentration in dry fire is not the same as live fire. Need to work on that also.