Transitioning to Glock

[Surf]

I have spent the overwhelming majority of my handgun trigger time with TDA firearms, first the M9, and then SIG 226/9s of various flavors.

My agency is going to be transitioning from the P229 to the Glock 19M in the relatively near future. I have no hate and discontent towards the Glock, but I have made a conscious effort to concentrate on one platform at a time for both work and gaming. As a result, I have almost no experience shooting Glock platform guns (probably less than 150 lifetime rounds).

From my limited experience with Glocks I know that I will need to learn a dramatically different index, and that the lack of an under-thumb slide release is going to drive me nuts for a while.

What are the things that Glock shooters wish they had been told when starting out?

Without being able to install a gadget, how do you mitigate the lack of hammer control when holstering?

I am not a completely inexperienced shooter (pretty consistently mid C in USPSA production class), but this is almost completely new territory for me.

Our Agency (Just over 2K) went from a 5906 to a G4 G17 and my unit (50 members) went from a P226 TDA to a G4 G21. I pretty much did the transition from inception. From my experiences and what we saw; Grip angle was easily addressed in a 2 day transition class. Issues with pushing support side and low was at about a 40% rate, about what you normally hear people complaining about. Grip choice should be based off of performance as opposed to "what feels right". A good instructor should be able to diagnose issues that may be fixed with altering grip length of pull, but unfortunately many generic LE instructors may not fully understand these issues.

On the plus side, first shot or non TDA shot accuracy dramatically increased as well as the subsequent first follow up or second shot fired. Overall qualification scores increased or par times were much more easily attained. As a matter of fact since that time, higher standards have been implemented in agency quals. These benefits were dramatically noticeable pretty much immediately.

Manual of arms is IMO much easier to omit the decocker etc, and going to a Glock then to go the other way around.

I use the slide stop as a release but definitely prefer an over sized stop if allowed. I don't like the factory stop like the 34/35.

DON'T do any alterations that are not departmentally approved. I like to do a lot of stuff to my personal Glocks, but my issued weapons are as issued, period.

Hammer control is obviously a non factor in a striker weapon, however we do still put a thumb on the end plate which tells us that the weapon is in battery or is staying in battery while holstering. We have absolutely gone away from the "you can never look at your holster, when holstering" crap.

In direct response to this:

What are the things that Glock shooters wish they had been told when starting out?

My answer would be learn from the start to allow the trigger to reset under recoil. It should be reset as the front sight settles back into the rear sight My job went to Glocks a long time ago and our transition training did not stress this. When a well known instructor suggested this at a class, it was truly a "duh" kind of moment.

We should all be learning to "reset the weapon under recoil" as opposed to "pinning the trigger", but it takes a long time for things to travel through the machine. Unfortunately even the topic of "resetting under recoil" or more so the technique is often confused.

The 25 cent job is interesting, although I am extremely leery of making any sort of modification to a duty gun. Is there any effective difference between polishing it, and a few thousand rounds of break in?

I will just state this again as it is important, don't go outside of policy and be aware when doing anything that may be contrary to a manufacturers recommendation.

I have always used a pretty heavily sunk finger, so I am anticipating taking awhile to figure out where/how to position my hand.

Finger placement is very shooter dependent, so just have an open mind. I may have someone go real shallow or sink the finger to the first groove. Just depends on the shooter and various factors. The important part is being able to know this yourself, or have someone smart enough to help guide you. That can be the hard part.

How do you do that? Every factory Glock I've tried won't let the trigger reset, or even move forward, until the slide has returned to battery. When I try to reset a Glock trigger during recoil, my finger loses the trigger

I think it may have been mentioned, but the slide cycles much faster than most can ever comprehend to even remove their finger from the trigger. Also resetting during recoil does not mean that you ride the trigger only the the point of reset. You can or should go beyond reset. There is a lot of slop in a Glock trigger which leaves a shooter a lot of wiggle room to find their happy medium. If you listen to a shooter who is running their weapon fast, try to listen for the audible "click" or reset of the trigger. If you can hear it, they are not resetting during recoil. Again this does not mean riding the trigger only to sear engagement or only to the point of reset.

I don't normally "prep" my trigger to the "wall" on a normal first shot pull, unless if it is for an extreme precision shot. However all of my subsequent trigger pulls will have a reset during recoil and my trigger will be at the "wall" when the sights settle. I don't start my subsequent trigger pulls from full trigger extension even when running sub .25 splits. Many shooters are quite the opposite, but that is often (not always) due to the trigger type. As an example I run a slick 1911 straight draw, minimal overall movement trigger, much different than a Glock.

[ASH556]

While the trigger return spring does allow you to relax your trigger finger to reset, I would not count on that under stress nor would I recommend training to reset the trigger "just enough." For success on a glock trigger, you want to press through in one continuous motion with the shot difficulty determining the "speed" of your trigger press. Being a two stage trigger, a common error I see from shooters of all experience levels is they try to take the slack out and stop their trigger finger motion to stage the trigger at the wall right before it breaks or reset only to that point.

This is good advice.

As far as trigger jobs, .25 or higher, I recommend just shooting the gun. You'll be better off in the long run, both for your competency and your dept. policy.

SLG, can you elaborate on which part is good advice? I get the not timing of the reset part; that's a commonly-preached mistake. I'm more curious your thoughts about staging the slack and firing from the wall vs full press. My current operation for anything other than rapid fire is to stage to the wall as the sights are completing their alignment and my visual focus is shifting to the front sight. Once I have a solid (or solid enough for the difficulty level of the shot I'm making) front sight focus I go ahead and roll through the break.

Conversely, I find that if I try to press through the first stage and the wall/break in one motion, I'm more likely to move the gun as my finger encounters the wall. Thoughts?

ETA:

my trigger will be at the "wall" when the sights settle.

This sounds like what I'm trying to describe above as what I currently do.

[SLG]

It just depends on the target size, distance and speed.

What Give08 described is a good foundation for working the trigger well. I do what Surf describes quite a bit, as well as other variations in between. Give08 didn't write a treatise on the subject of trigger manipulation, and so where I might do things differently under different circumstances, what he wrote is a great place to start. Hope that helps clarify.

[Surf]

SLG, can you elaborate on which part is good advice? I get the not timing of the reset part; that's a commonly-preached mistake. I'm more curious your thoughts about staging the slack and firing from the wall vs full press. My current operation for anything other than rapid fire is to stage to the wall as the sights are completing their alignment and my visual focus is shifting to the front sight. Once I have a solid (or solid enough for the difficulty level of the shot I'm making) front sight focus I go ahead and roll through the break.

Conversely, I find that if I try to press through the first stage and the wall/break in one motion, I'm more likely to move the gun as my finger encounters the wall. Thoughts?

ETA: This sounds like what I'm trying to describe above as what I currently do.

ASH556, I will not speak for SLG and I will note that highly skilled shooters can get away with some amazing things and he may be a bit different, so keep this in mind.

**ETA Since SLG posted as I typed, he has included his own thoughts.... More on my thoughts below.

When it comes to the Glock and similar triggers, many shooters and I mean a lot of shooters often have worse results when doing a flip and press and accelerating through a trigger pull from the full extension or forward most position of the trigger. They often place waaay more pounds into the trigger than is required for the trigger to be pulled. This in turn causes grip or trigger finger issues that disrupt the weapon. Also just the range of motion that the trigger finger travels when accelerating from the full reset position can leave more room for a shooter to disrupt the sights.

In other words if you put say 10-15lbs of pull into a 5.5lb trigger your not helping yourself. From the time you start your trigger pull how far would you like your trigger to move before it breaks ~2mm or ~10mm and which provides you more room to screw up? Much better results can be gained from a much larger range of shooters by learning to reset the pistol during recoil and having all of the prep work done by the time the sights settle. Then simply applying that 5.5lbs of pressure to move the trigger 2mm instead of gorilla gripping the weapon and trigger pull with double or triple the amount of lbs needed and moving it 5 times further to get it to break.

I will add that in the past 13 or so months, I have been training the same 200 individuals who are a part of select units one day per week. The units come one day per month and I see a different unit every week and this rotation continues. This is rifle and pistol. While they are experienced shooters and are selected for their particular units, we stripped them completely down as shooters and started them from zero putting into place what we want to see from them as far as skills and technique. Some was a complete redo, many were a transition to new technique and some were modification of what they already do and making it optimal for them. We started first with pistol from concealment as that is how they generally work, then added rifle with pistol concealed and have progressed them into full gear and more advanced tactics.

Having said that, as far as our specific topic, the majority (99.9%) did not reset during recoil, put waaay too much lbs pull on the trigger and applied bad tension into the weapon. A certain percent actually started their trigger pull from a pinned trigger position to the rear and when they fired the follow up shot they did a flip and press which causes all kinds of issues in the Glock unless if you not a mere mortal of a shooter. This is a common result of bad indoctrination to learning to reset or riding the trigger to reset drills found in large organizations from outdated techniques.

Once we get these shooters to understand the principle or resetting under recoil and they learn and correctly apply the technique, the results on target are night and day difference. It is literally an aha or light bulb moment for them. Speed and accuracy results on target are obvious.

[Larry Sellers]

Tossing my 2 cents in here...I was introduced to the shooting world on a glock, I have more time and rounds though a glock than any other pistol I own or have owned. What I've recently realized through larger than acceptable groups and wild errant shots at 25 yards is that I was pinning the trigger to the rear as the many of the well-respected members here stress NOT to do. I would fire the pistol, allow it to cycle all the while holding the trigger to the rear. I would then allow the trigger to reset and then upon reset SNATCH the trigger to the rear, a vicious cycle that repeated itself through many disappointing range sessions. As others have mentioned I had trained myself to hear or feel the "click" that is the glock reset, and upon hearing, feeling or sensing that operation I would snatch off another shot instead of waiting for the sights to settle and get a proper sight picture at 25.

Today I went to the range to try the Dobb's Recipe for my Glock's ejection issues and focused on what has been said here about the trigger reset. It was as if the lightbulb finally illuminated as it should. The trigger was reset as it should and follow up shots required a tad more "travel" than my previous snatch and pray technique, however the group sizes became smaller.

I hope that wasn't too wordy, I'm just realizing that after 8 years of shooting glocks I've almost figured out 10% of what there is to know about the platform and its idiosyncrasies.

Joe

[Beat Trash]

SLG, Surf, or anyone else who can chime in:

The concept of reset during recoil makes sense. But can you simplify the "how"? After the first shot, are you letting the tendons in your index finger relax during the recoil process, thereby permitting the trigger to reset?

[JustOneGun]

SLG, Surf, or anyone else who can chime in:

The concept of reset during recoil makes sense. But can you simplify the "how"? After the first shot, are you letting the tendons in your index finger relax during the recoil process, thereby permitting the trigger to reset?

There are many ways of doing it and thinking about it. When combining the idea of follow through and reset I try to get new people to take the recoil and when bringing the pistol back down on target to reset the trigger.

As for relaxing, I don't do that. My grip stays the same tension throughout. Including the wrist and forearm. This makes the recoil happen against the tension and when the force of recoil ends then the tension pushes the sight back on target.

[Beat Trash]

I guess I misspoke. I'm not talking about relaxing my grip, be it hand wrist or forearm.

When reseting during recoil, I assume one is not riding the trigger to the reset, but yet not letting the trigger go fully forward either. Are you talking about allowing the inertia from the recoil itself reset the trigger by relaxing the tendon in the trigger finger?

[Mr_White]

I guess I misspoke. I'm not talking about relaxing my grip, be it hand wrist or forearm.

When reseting during recoil, I assume one is not riding the trigger to the reset, but yet not letting the trigger go fully forward either. Are you talking about allowing the inertia from the recoil itself reset the trigger by relaxing the tendon in the trigger finger?

You pretty much have it right - not relaxing or changing the overall grip or arm pressure, just letting the finger forward at least enough that the trigger resets (powered by the trigger return spring or whatever mechanism in the gun, not inertia), and doing that close to right away after the shot is fired, rather than waiting until the sights are back on target to initiate letting the trigger reset.

A separate issue is how far to let the trigger forward. I'd generally recommend just what you said, letting it forward more than the reset but less than coming all the way off the trigger.

[Jason M]

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