I read your thesis and I gave it a B grade.
The highest grade went to a student who explored how to continue gripping as hard as possible with a support hand without tensing up everything else.
I read your thesis and I gave it a B grade.
The highest grade went to a student who explored how to continue gripping as hard as possible with a support hand without tensing up everything else.
Doesn't read posts longer than two paragraphs.
Do Bill Drills with different grip pressure. The grip pressure with the fast splits and best accuracy is the one you should use.
This is an important but pretty basic part of shooting fast, so most competitors experiment with it early in a their career.
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If you want to dive deeper, Matt Burkett's timing drills will help.
Timing Drills – by Matt Burkett http://www.doublealpha.biz/courses-tips/matts-tips/
One of the drills that I like to do most of the time and has had the most impact on my shooting ability is a timing drill. First we should have a discussion of terminology.
Timing of the gun:
I am not referring to the actual time the mechanism takes to return to battery. I am referring to learning the timing of the gun by the shooter. Since most guns return to battery in about 5 hundredths of a second, we cannot return the gun fast enough with our conscious mind. The subconscious will return the gun to point of aim by using the appropriate amount of muscle force during recoil. You will see top shooters push down on the gun if it does something it's not supposed to do, such as hitting a bad primer and not firing. This is not a flinch. A flinch occurs before and also during the firing of the gun.
You must shoot a full magazine on every string in this drill and you must not stop and restart in the middle of a magazine. Unless there is a safety issue, shoot the entire magazine at the required splits. You must have a relaxed positive stance and grip on the gun for this to work.
The major areas this drill assists are the return of the gun under recoil, calling your shots, grip control, and solidifying the stance. If you are not using a solid forward shooting stance, you will see the gun start going out of control and the sights moving differently after about 3-5 rounds. Please refer to my previous articles for more stance information or check my website at www.mattburkett.com. You will need three targets, tape, and about 250 rounds of ammo. [for the record - I only used 100rds]
The drill:
Start out with three targets 15 yards away. Load all of your magazines. First three strings are two seconds per shot. Like a metronome, have the splits be as close to two seconds as possible. Check your split times on a timer or have another shooter help you with the drill. Two seconds per shot gives you plenty of time to shoot an extremely small group.
First string: use as light of a grip as possible on first target.
Second string: medium grip on second target.
Third string: use a heavy grip on the third target.
Now unload and review your shooting.
You shouldn't have more than about a 2” group on each target. Compare where they are impacting on the target. Is there more vertical stringing or horizontal on the different groups? Which one did you feel more comfortable with? How did the gun feel with each grip? What exactly did the sights do? Did they rise straight up under recoil? Could you even see the sights under recoil? This will show you if you have a flinch. If you can't see the sights going up and down, there is a good chance you're blinking. Figure out what grip worked best for you and use that for the rest of the drill. Tape the targets.
String four: two seconds per shot on target 1 with your new favorite grip.
String five: one second per shot on target 2.
String six: 0.5 seconds per shot on target 3.
Now unload and review your shooting.
Once again we go back and look to see where our problems are showing up. What is the group dispersion on the targets? Is there a significant difference between the groups at two seconds and at .5 seconds? How much vertical error is there with the groups? What did the sights do at the different speeds? Diagnose what is happening. If you're getting a significantly upper right lift to the sights, grip a little more with your left hand and slightly less with your right hand (assuming you're right handed). Tape the targets.
String seven: one second per shot on target one.
String eight: 0.5 per shot on target two.
String nine: 0.25 per shot on target three.
Unload and review.
How did your shooting go at this speed? Are the sights coming back naturally to the aiming point?
Critical things to remember:
The timing of the gun that you have learned is specific to that firearm and load. If you change any part or your load, rerun the timing drills because the gun itself has changed.
Doing it this way would have caused me to miss how grip effects transitions, which turned out to be much faster for me using less grip tension.
In terms of one target, I really like the Stoeger drill of shooting multiple iterations of two shots. Apparently Stoeger shoots like 30,00 rounds, or some ungodly number, on this one drill each year. Isn’t two shots, transition, two shots, repeat, as opposed to Bill drills the core of USPSA shooting?
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
In the weeks since I started this thread, I continue to associate my best shooting with less squeezing of my fingers and more fore aft application of pressure.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
And that's with your VP9? Out of curiosity, what size panels and backstrap are you using?Originally Posted by GJM
It works with everything for me, not just the VP9. It is so interesting, because “gripping hard” was settled science for me, for many years.
I use a large left panel so I can quarter panel better.
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
If I'm reading to focus the effort for and aft vs full circular pressure like making the tightest fist one can make then heck yes on the fore aft. I would describe dominant hand "grip" pressure coming mostly from the middle finger and the base of the thumb working fore aft opposing each other.
“Remember, being healthy is basically just dying as slowly as possible,” Ricky Gervais
thanks for the reply
So if I understand this correctly, you are gripping fore and aft strongly with with pad at the first joint of your fingers (near where a ring is worn), and gripping with less pressure on your fingertips?
Doing this would seem to improve dexterity and trigger control, because your fingertips are less tense/compressed compared to your core grip with your finger bases. (Doctors and EMTs feel free to bludgeon me for using layman’s vice medical terms).
Because of this grip style, I have found skateboard tape fore and aft to be important, and grip panel texture to matter very little.
How much are you gripping with your support hand vs shooting hand? 70/30? 60/40? 50/50?
Thanks for the discussion.
Last edited by Trigger; 01-22-2019 at 05:15 PM.
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master"
I shoot a couple of “micros” with bad triggers quite a bit. I notice whenever I get “sloppy” and loosen my grip, I shoot left. Shooting an under 1 lb gun with ten thousand pound triggers will do that.
On the other hand, I can shoot .38’s out of a 5” 686 with barely any grip at all, and still tag anything I like.
Gun size/weight and caliber dictate how much grip I need to be accurate. YMMV
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