Locked Wrist Enigma, advice requested

[Leroy]

I think IIRC (it was a while ago when I timed this) it was something like .5 or .6 at the fastest and more likely .6 - .7 or maybe even .8. It wasn't a terribly consistent time, since there's a big mental component that can easily get in the way, obviously.

Your doing something vary wrong. It does not take a good grip to shoot 100% As on a USPSA target at 7 yards at .5 splits. You need to get with somebody to figure what your doing. My only internet suggestion would be to ditch the target, get a timer, and shoot as fast as you can into a berm while watching your sights and figure out what you need to do to get below .3 splits. Below .2 is better, but .3 is a good starting goal.

[gomerpyle]

Horizontal and vertical variance of the front sight path.

Repeatability of the front sight's final resting place after the shot.

The degree of active correction needed (usually in the form of pulling the gun back up or straight) to avoid dropping shots low or anticipation.

The amount of total effort, tension, and mental concentration required to achieve the above. IOW, how sustainable is the technique in the presence of reduced cognitive or physical faculties or other considerations. (E.G. -- if the technique requires that my entire body be stiff as a board and that I practically give myself a stroke to achieve the result, then it's not desirable.)

Fit might also be an issue. What pistol are you shooting?

I used to shoot the VP9 exclusively. GREAT pistol. but sight kept going up to 1oclock. couldn't get a consistent grip, etc. Ergo grips arent neceassarily the best grip for you.

Moved back to Glock (as we all do!). Sights 6 to 12 to 6. There's something to flat side panels......

[spinmove_]

Dude. You are WAAAAAAY overthinking this. You need more DO and less analysis. And this is coming from someone who habitually over analyzes everything.

Want to know the secret to “locking” your wrists? Make wrists not move. It’s literally that simple. It’s just not easy to do if you’ve never done it properly before.

Immobilizing your wrists can be completely and totally independent of how hard you grip any given thing. Take your strong and and open in flat and make your fingers perpendicular to the ground. Now freely make “jazz fingers” and wiggle them all about freely and fluidly. WHILE you’re doing that, take your weak hand and grasp your strong hand below your base thumb knuckle and the heel of your palm far below your pinkie finger. Now attempt to rotate your strong hand with your weak hand in the direction that a pistol would recoil WHILE wiggling your fingers SIMULTANEOUSLY fighting that upward motion with JUST YOUR WRIST in the opposite direction.

That sensation that you should feel of your wrist not moving while still having full dexterity in your fingers is what you should be striving to achieve. Rinse and repeat with your weak hand. Granted your support hand will be gripping hard most of the time while not moving, but there will be times when you’re shooting support hand only, thus it’s a valuable skill in this context as well.

At the end of the day you’re just preventing a service caliber pistol from recoiling and pushing your hands around. Just don’t let it do that. Be smarter than the gun, just don’t over analyze it.

[scjbash]

I think IIRC (it was a while ago when I timed this) it was something like .5 or .6 at the fastest and more likely .6 - .7 or maybe even .8. It wasn't a terribly consistent time, since there's a big mental component that can easily get in the way, obviously.

If you are remembering those times correctly and were shooting inside of ten yards you have much bigger issues than wrist tension or grip technique, especially since you said that was with a grip that was weak but let the sights track consistently. Shooting a .5 cadence, even with a horrible grip and a ton of sight movement, is enough time for the gun to stop moving and let you make adjustments before the next shot. The gun simply cannot move far enough to require up to .8 to break the next shot if the sights are tracking back to the target. In other words, if a grip allows the sights to recover back to the target, the next shot is ready to break the moment the sights are there. Needing .8 would mean that the sight is climbing and recovering for .8, and that's impossible.


It sounds like the problems go well beyond grip. Your grip may actually be the smaller part of the issue. I would find someone to work with you in person.

[Alpha Sierra]

Does no one think that trying to be very precise about what is happening and understanding not just the end goal but the primary factors involved precisely would greatly contribute to the effective learning of this material? Are we forever going to be stuck with "just feel it" without being able to provide any consistent advice other than "try a bunch of these visualizations and tips and see what sticks?" It seems to me that this isn't what sports science does, and it would seem to me to be valuable to continue to refine the accuracy, totality, holism, and vocabulary of the practice of training in the shooting discipline, no?

No.

Most people don't need to go into this level of ridiculous analysis to figure this out. Do more, think less, and become one of those people.

Like someone else said, there's something fundamentally wrong with the entire manner in which you grip a pistol and in the way that you manipulate a trigger if the best you can finagle are half second splits at a 5 to 7 yard target. I'll second the advice to stop trying to teach yourself and have someone knowledgeable help you.

I'll summarize how I learned how to control a pistol adequately:

1. Improved my arm, chest, and back strength
2. Improved my hand strength
3. Went out and shot the shit out of cardboard targets under time constraints while making subtle changes to my grip until I got the results I was after
4. Duplicated the sensations learned in #3 during dry fire
5. Repeated 3 and 4 over and over

By the way, your end goal is wrong too. The end goal isn't to see the front sight track in any particular way. The end goal is to make the bullets land where you want them at the speed that you want. What the front sight does is just another clue about how well you're doing towards your goal, which lies at the target.

[Clusterfrack]

This has evolved into a great thread, complete with Enos quotes. P-F for the win!

I agree with @gomerpyle that a Bronze membership to the PSTG is an excellent deal--especially because you can suspend anytime. I've been a member since it began, but suspended for the match season. I'll likely keep that pattern and pay for 6 months a year.

@arcfide, one thing you might try to build wrist strength, while isolating those muscles from your hand is slow fist pushups done while having a relaxed hand (be able to wiggle your fingers). I do this exercise daily for martial arts purposes, but I think it's helpful for shooting as well.

For Doubles, a good way to start is with no target at all. Just fire doubles into the berm, and learn what it feels like to shoot 0.2s splits while staying relaxed. Don't worry about where the bullets go--as long as they are fired safely. Learning the dynamics of the gun has to come first--otherwise you'll be fighting it.

[luckyman]

I shoot the target and pay attention to what I feel in my hands when it works.
I change things and pay attention to what I am changing, wrist locking and tension included, when it doesn't.
There is a specific pattern on the target that poorly locked wrists give, but it is also shared with a couple of other problems. I try to isolate which one and get the result I want. The diagnostic mechanism is a correction and elimination of variables, one at the time.
In practice it is much simple and less verbose than in posts here. I just shoot the target and vary one thing at the time until I am happy, or until it is time to go home.

I miss Todd being in discussions like this. Glad we can still have these types of discussions.

[Clobbersaurus]

I just finished dry practice for this evening. I rarely do more than 20 minutes because my forearms and hands are usually smoked by then. Tonight I did 15 minutes of various drills; draws, reloads, match mode, 4 aces, and afterwards I could feel the pump in my forearms. The relevance to this thread is that dry practice alone will help build shooting related strength.

I could never understand the dudes that do an hour or more of consistent dry practice. Grip endurance for those guys would have to be extreme based on my observations, but maybe that’s a topic for a different thread.

[Clusterfrack]

I just finished dry practice for this evening. I rarely do more than 20 minutes because my forearms and hands are usually smoked by then. Tonight I did 15 minutes of various drills; draws, reloads, match mode, 4 aces, and afterwards I could feel the pump in my forearms. The relevance to this thread is that dry practice alone will help build shooting related strength.

I could never understand the dudes that do an hour or more of consistent dry practice. Grip endurance for those guys would have to be extreme based on my observations, but maybe that’s a topic for a different thread.

Dude that is the truth. I’m reading this in the middle of my dryfire and my forearms are smoked.

[Medusa]

Dude that is the truth. I’m reading this in the middle of my dryfire and my forearms are smoked.

I’ve noticed that using CoolFire helps me, at least, a little because instead of nearly all DA shots I get lots of SA shots (as well as some recoil).