Originally Posted by
Dan Lehr
As someone mentioned, as you begin your reload sequence, slightly loosen your strong hand grip, at the same time exert just enough upward pressure against the trigger guard with the index finger of your support hand and allow the pistol to slightly shift in your hand as the support hand separates from the strong hand.
At this point in the process one of the mistakes shooters often make is trying to reload at arm's length instead of naturally bending the elbows and bring the pistol into the 'working area' in front of your face.
Done correctly (at least what I think is correctly) you should end up with the pistol in front of your eyes (more on this later) The muzzle should be elevated slightly, and if you stop to look you will find that this gives your magazine a straight drop out of the magwell with as little friction against the sides as possible.
When depressing the mag release a big mistake folks make with the Glock is that they try to us the pad of their thumb, or index finger if they are left handed, rather than the tip or end of the thumb. You should be able to exert more force onto the mag release this way.
Another mistake shooters make is they don't keep the mag release depressed until the mag has fallen completely free - really, some folks do that and they don't even realize it. Some folks also cover the other side of the mag release and keep it from moving to release the mag.
A couple things I check myself on when practicing are:
1) am I driving the upper arm elbow into my ribs (or vest) onto my touch point;
2) is the pistol in the 'work space' in front of my eyes;
3) is the muzzle elevated so the mag well is pretty close to perpendicular with mother earth;
4) is the muzzle not going much beyond 45 degrees to the left or right - if you are concerned about that you can simply twist your upper torso left or right as needed to get the muzzle more downrange (some folks will tell you to shift your feet to do this, but my thought is if I ever need to do this for real I won't be standing still)
5) is the index finger tip pressing on the mag release instead of the pad (I'm left handed so I use my trigger finger to release the mag)
6) do I have a firm, proper grip on the new mag before I release the old mag
7) am I seating the magazine in one fluid motion
8) If an out-of-battery reload, is my support hand smoothly traveling to an over hand grip on the back of the slide and an then pulling the slide slightly to the rear and crisply releasing
9) is my two hand grip established properly (once again think about touch points on the pistol and your other hand - are they the same)
10) finger onto trigger as muzzle onto target
Wow, I'm wordy.