The only thing I've fired other than my USPc in months was a Gen4 G19, and that was only about a magazine's worth to see how I felt about the gun. The USP *is* a .40, so this may be accelerating my plan to move to 9mm, which had been in the back of my head for cost reasons for some time before I developed this flinch.Originally Posted by part-time shooter
I finally had a chance to get to the range tonight and work on this some.
Printed out a bunch of Todd's 2" circle targets and worked slow fire from 3 yards, loading up 5 rounds at a time to help pace myself.
First couple of strings were bad, with the some pretty serious dive. After that, though, things started to clear up a bit. Instead of throwing every. single. round off, it got to be more like maybe once a string, and when there was anticipation it was more of a dip than the outright dive I was dealing with before. Todd's suggestion of trying with my eyes shut definitely helped some, and I found in general that I was putting rounds where I'd intended when there wasn't a flinch.
Interestingly, I also found that I was having significantly fewer problems when firing from the LEM's fully released position than when shooting from the reset position. I guess for some reason my brain isn't associating the light, long length of pull of the LEM first shot with the bang. Firing from reset like the gun was a DA/SA made the gun dive on me.
Another data point since noise was mentioned before -- the range was significantly busier tonight than it had been on recent trips. On top of that, the lanes just to the left of me were occupied by a couple of guys firing full power .357 magnum loads out of Ruger GP101s. So short version is that there was much more constant and louder gunfire all around me, which may have masked the boom of my own gun some. Definitely think I'm going to look into some better earpro as I've just been using a cheap set of Caldwell electronic muffs to date.
Either way, it feels great to finally feel like I'm making progress in fixing this instead of treading water. Thanks again to everyone that offered suggestions!
I double up on an indoor range, many of the ones around here have a rifle range inside so there's AK or AR muzzle blast to deal with as well. Foam plugs under your normal ear protection will help with that drastically. You'll be hard pressed to hear anything if you are concentrating on what you're doing.
I'm going to disagree a little with Todd in this instance, and recommend a different approach. Since you already know you have this problem, I don't think that slow ball and dummy, or snap cap use is going to help much. I have had a good bit of success shooting much faster. The drill is to randomly load 3 or more mags with 2 or 3 dummy rounds. Then, start shooting at a pretty fast pace on a medium sized target (5"x8" or so) at 5-7 yards. Whenever you hit a dummy round, tap rack and keep shooting fast. After a few magazines of this, I have found that the problem tends to go away. If it doesn't, then at least you had fun
Not being there with you, I can't really tell you how fast to shoot, so that may be a sticking point to how well this drill works. A good rule of thumb is to shoot again as soon as your front sight touches down, and to clear the induced malfs as fast as possible and keep shooting. This seems to affect/improve your shooting on a more unconscious level than the slow ball and dummy type stuff.
SLG,
Do your sights dip when you hit the dummy while shooting at a faster pace? When I'm shooting faster, if I don't see the front sight lift perfectly, I cannot tell the difference between anticipation and post ignition push when I hit a dummy/bad primer. Or, is the dummy only to draw the shooter's attention away from thinking about flinching, and not used to diagnose whether or not the shooter flinches when they hit the dummy? If so, I can see how it could be useful for learning subconscious shooting.
Joshs,
The dummy, as you surmised, is not for figuring out if you have a flinch. In this case, and for this drill to work, the shooter already knows what he's doing wrong. The dummy round, after a couple of mags, shows the coach/shooter that the shooter is no longer flinching. Shooting and clearing the malf at speed, does not allow the shooter to anticipate the recoil in the same way that slow fire does.
I really should have started this by saying that this drill is an option to try if the previous advice didn't do the trick. I have seen excellent results with this, but it definitely helps to be there live, rather than trying to analyze and advise over the internet. As always, YMMV.
I should also point out that shooting at speed is rarely the way to fix problems, but in this case, it sounds like this solution might be appropriate.
FWIW, I made a lot of progress towards mastering my flinch during a 1,450-round training day with Frank Garcia - shooting a compact 45. I was very focused on all my other problems, and on the drills Frank had me do, so that after an hour or so I started forgetting to flinch. Towards the end, I was too tired to flinch.
When I have a flinch issue, I find it usefull to do a lot of self talk while doing slow fire. I just tell myself - "don't flinch, don't flinch, don't flinch..." as I am squeezing off the round. I am not so worried about sights/target alignment - I am trying to convince my body to suppress its response to recoil. I am completely focused on NOT flinching, and ignoring everything else. I find this works when shooting a large magnum rifle as well - no matter how bad my shoulder hurts, no matter the size of the bruise I am getting - it seems to work.
I think a .40 is not so large of a caliber to induce a permanent flinch, so I think you should be able to work through this shortly.
I do like SLG's drill as well - sounds like a great tool for this issue.
@SLG - funny thing - when this first cropped up I noticed I threw fewer shots due to flinching during rapid fire than when I was taking my time (albeit while being less accurate when getting doing things "right"). I've pretty much been shooting slow fire exclusively lately figuring I should fix this problem rather than waste lead throwing shots.
Maybe I'll run a few magazines at an upped pace next time and see what happens. Like you said, it's good stress relief if nothing else.
I've got snap caps for my Glock 26 and should use them. I'm very frustrated with my low left flinch. I don't see the barrel move. I also have a S & W 357. I've loaded 4 of the 6 chambers and can see the barrel move low left when an empty chamber comes up. That helps me on the next round. I don't know if my stance is improper, breathing??? I've only been at this for a little over 2 years but want to improve my accuracy and the flinch is in the way. Are different sights the answer?
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