Glock Grip and Trigger Interface

[ASH556]

I'm not sure if this is a personal revolution or what. I thought I had progressed to a certain level of handgun proficiency and somewhere around the end of October the wheels fell off. I didn't make any conscious changes to what I was doing, but my performance fell off badly. Of course I blamed the gun. I did all manner of testing to validate that it was the gun's fault and not mine (some of which resulted in eating crow) , and ended up here:



I reached out to my friend @Kevin B. for some 1911 advice and his advice was esentially, "don't do it." There was much more to it and a lot of food for thought, which ended up with me re-centering the rear sights on my Gen 4 Glock 17's and doing a bunch of dry work messing with my grip and trigger finger placement. I also re-watched and re-read a bunch of @Surf 's material on the subject. I went to the range today and began working my new-found "Interface" with good results as far as groups were concerned:



2 different iterations of "10 Perfect Presses" @ 7yds Freestyle:
String #1 (10 rounds)

String #2 (10 rounds)


Then a B8 @ 25 Freestyle:



Seeing the vertical stringing, I decided to try a 1.5" orange dot for a finer POA:



But even so:



I even shot 10 EA SHO and WHO to try and see if there is consistent lateral bias (IE> Right-handed always hits left, Left-handed always hits right). I'm not sure if my one-handed shooting is good enough to really tell anything, but here are the pics anyway (layered in the following manner: Freestyle, SHO, WHO)

Freestyle:

SHO:

WHO:


So is there any input about how to crack the interface code and get myself to shoot centered with centered rear sights?

[HopetonBrown]

Why does it matter if your sights are centered?

Kyle Defoor shot my G34 after watching me struggle with 25, shot it himself, then drifted the sights over by 1 pen mark width.

https://youtu.be/bITxL4jNGlM

[psalms144.1]

I'm also in the "want to do it perfectly and can't" camp. My rear sights are drifted a couple of "pen mark widths" to the right to keep me centered at 25 yards.

I also find that as I age, my grip strength lessens, and I'm more impacted by cold weather, my groups drift more left. I have to consciously grip the dog snot out of my GLOCKs to stay centered, which is frustrating, but, a fact of life.

[LSP552]

I'm also in the "want to do it perfectly and can't" camp. My rear sights are drifted a couple of "pen mark widths" to the right to keep me centered at 25 yards.

I also find that as I age, my grip strength lessens, and I'm more impacted by cold weather, my groups drift more left. I have to consciously grip the dog snot out of my GLOCKs to stay centered, which is frustrating, but, a fact of life.

This ^.

Glocks are just different. I wish that wasn’t true but I have seen way too many folks suffer the consistency issues they bring to the table. They leave little room for error when it comes to grip. Unfortunately, my grip isn’t always perfect and my strength isn’t what it once was.

I’m having the internal debate about picking up a PPQ, VP9 or APX and see if I can shoot them more consistently.

Glock = Succubus

[Edster]

Some things that have helped me with being off laterally. Please don't assume I am an expert.

The front strap of a Glock is rather flat compared to many other pistols. Some other grips fall naturally into your middle knuckles (proximal interphalangeal joint), centering your knuckles under the triggerguard. The natural inclination to grip hard overcomes the inclination to align the middle knuckles straight and causes a Glock to twist inward. Just make a fist like you're gripping something hard and watch how the hand rotates.

Focus on centering the knuckles on the grip.

I have become a fan of the "lots of finger on the trigger" approach. I shoot a Glock more like a DA revolver than a single-action trigger now. It took me a while to adjust this. Combining this with paying attention to knuckle alignment, I seem to be doing better.

I really consider the shape of the double-stack Glock grip to be an impediment to natural good shooting. It just seems to encourage the muscles of the arm and hand to create the low-left problems almost everybody experiences. If some of the more narrow Glocks being talked about come to fruition, I would not be surprised to see a lot of folks saying they shoot them better.

[41magfan]

I guess I'm just a dumb-ass. I thought the object of shooting was hitting. I also thought adjustable sights were meant to accommodate the external variables, not the other way around.

Why is it perfectly OK to change the height of the front sight to accommodate a needed change in elevation but it's somehow a not OK to change the orientation of the rear sight to address a needed change in windage?

[spinmove_]

I guess I'm just a dumb-ass. I thought the object of shooting was hitting. I also thought adjustable sights were meant to accommodate the external variables, not the other way around.

Why is it perfectly OK to change the height of the front sight to accommodate a needed change in elevation but it's somehow a not OK to change the orientation of the rear sight to address a needed change in windage?

Because most people who suck at shooting buy a Glock, shoot way low and left, push the rear sight almost out of the dovetail, and call it good. Most of us would recognize that person for the ignorant dunce that he is and tell him to center that rear sight back up and go learn to shoot. So much so to the point now where if anyone with a Glock has accuracy or precision issues, regardless of distance, the automatic answer is “center the rear sight and learn to shoot”.

I’m pretty sure that we’ve established at this point that Ash is a decent pistol shooter. As such, I think it would be perfectly acceptable, at this point, if he simply picked a carry load and zero’d his sights to that load and then simply drove on. Now he’d then need to pick a practice load, document where that load impacts with where his sights are zero’d, and keep that in mind whilst driving on. Or he could simply buy a fully adjustable sight set and tweak his zero between practice and carry loads depending on what he was shooting at the moment.


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[Edster]

Why is it perfectly OK to change the height of the front sight to accommodate a needed change in elevation but it's somehow a not OK to change the orientation of the rear sight to address a needed change in windage?

If a windage miss is consistent, mechanical in nature, and not the result of something on the gun needing to be fixed, adjusting the sites seems reasonable.

If a windage miss is caused by a tendency to twist the gun inward, drifting the sites may cause worse misses the other way when the shooter switches hands.

[GJM]

I have a proven two step process to shooting a Glock better laterally. First, try more finger than you are using. This is about a 80 percent solution. If that doesn’t work, try less finger. Not kidding.

My wife recently transitioned from Gen 3 to 4/5 pistols after several decades of Glock shooting. She started have lateral POI problems. She tried more finger and that fixed it. I think, as a general rule, you need more finger with a bare G4/5 than a 3.

[ASH556]

I have a proven two step process to shooting a Glock better laterally. First, try more finger than you are using. This is about a 80 percent solution. If that doesn’t work, try less finger. Not kidding.

My wife recently transitioned from Gen 3 to 4/5 pistols after several decades of Glock shooting. She started have lateral POI problems. She tried more finger and that fixed it. I think, as a general rule, you need more finger with a bare G4/5 than a 3.

Thanks @GJM! I suspected something like this and part of my messing with grips in dry fire involved adding the "M" backstrap to one of my pistols. Unfortunately, my lane died today and there were no other lanes available, so I didn't get to test the pistol I added the backstrap to.

To your point, though, do you think adding a backstrap has a similar effect as putting more finger on the trigger? Preference between the two?