Press-Out: Good or Bad?

[JohnN]

I find shooting the DA .22 revolver a lot, where you have to steer the sights while working that long trigger, has been the biggest thing to help my support hand only shooting.

My wife and I shoot a lot of two inch dots with the revolver, SIRT and live fire, practicing breaking the shot at extension, and if we are unable to break the shot, don't fire. We learned this from an instructor with the initials TLG. My wife is awesome support hand only, and a few days ago, I watched her go 5/5 on an 8 inch plate at 30 yards, with her G17, breaking each shot at the extension of the press out.

Support hand only has been the single hardest thing for me in all of pistol shooting.

Did you use the DA revolver as a training tool to help improve your one handed LEM times or did you just recently start using it? In prior discussions you had mentioned that you were struggling with the LEM system when trying to shoot it quickly one handed. I have found the same thing, whereas my two handed scores were fairly decent. If the use of a DA revolver would help improve one handed shooting with the LEM it would be worth a try.

[GJM]

Did you use the DA revolver as a training tool to help improve your one handed LEM times or did you just recently start using it? In prior discussions you had mentioned that you were struggling with the LEM system when trying to shoot it quickly one handed. I have found the same thing, whereas my two handed scores were fairly decent. If the use of a DA revolver would help improve one handed shooting with the LEM it would be worth a try.

I read about it here at PF, and started shooting the 317 regularly in late March, after getting back from Rogers, and deciding I was going to become a great support hand shooter. At that time, I also decided I was going to do something that comes easy to Todd, and hard for me -- basically shoot just ONE platform for a year, the Glock. Out of curiosity, I have shot a few rounds thru the LEM in the last month or two, and it feels like the revolver has been a big help, but I really have been just shooting a 17, so it is only anecdotal. I can say without question it has made an enormous difference in my Glock support hand shooting, and I know my wife feels the same. Between my tennis elbow in my dominant elbow, not mostly resolved, and the thousands of rounds of .22 I have shot since March, I am actually more comfortable one handed with my support hand!

As is our custom, we started our practice today shooting dots at 7 yards, one hand only with the DA Smith 317. This is the result of six shots my wife shot at 7 yards, 3 each hand, with the shot broken at reaching extension, with one called "flyer."



I can't imagine not having a DA revolver and SIRT pistol to help our Glock shooting, but for an LEM shooter I feel like the revolver should be mandatory, and HK would be smart to package one up with each LEM pistol.

[Steven Cline]

Not sure where the dickering went after that.

We have a bunch of arguing by people with differing opinions and no real scientific based facts. The best arguments are only analogy based. Vodel uses X it much be best; nope, Enug uses Y so it much be best; nah-ah, Lethal uses Z, it must be better.

What you have there gentlemen are three great shooters practicing their draws until they are finely honed. Great shooters with sharp reflexes, fast eyes, excellent motor skills with other's pretending the technique got them to the top of their game. Stop pretending the technique matter more than genetics couple with huge amounts of practice by persons driven to be the best there is.

How about we admit that we simply have minor variations of getting the the gun from holster to shooting it and drop all the ego out of the picture? I predict that if we had forty eleven people all claiming their were doing J or press out or Index or whatever draw we'd have forty eleven different looking draws as each tailored it to himself.

Better, yet, someone pony up some science. Let's pick a large sample, randomly assign the participants to groups, measure their draw times to an 8" plate at 10 yards without training. Train them in the various draws while keeping a control group. We'll measure their improvement, and come to a statistical measure of what is actually working better. State your hypothesis, your null-hypothesis, formulate your method. What's gonna be your confidence factor (interval? I can't recall, college was too long ago).

You might have to repeat the study with different models to determine (definitively) if one draw is actually better. Otherwise you're arguing your opinion and ego.

To throw my observations into the non-scientific debate arena:

It's neither good nor bad. It's implementation is either good or bad.

The speed at which you arrive to when you break the shoot is the first to consider. Index would seem to be fastest, until a show that the arms move faster do to their engineering.

Add to this the time to align the sights plus press the trigger. Maybe J or press out "speeds" up the time to shot, but only if the additional motion does not off-set reduced sighting time. Eyes sight fast, you can't add too much time to the mechanics without slowing down the total time.

Now, individual differ. Some dude with really fast hands and slow eyes might be able to index that gun to full extension and still beat the press-out or J draw dudes.

Also, don't we have some Japanese shooter running about who learned on airsoft who is fast as hell with a gun draw to a few inches from his face and firing right there? Now what.

If missed something important in pages 3 - 12, please bring it to my attention. Otherwise, we've had 12 pages of, "I'm right." "Nuh uh, I am."

Though Todd J does make a convincing argument for the J draw.... .66 wowser.

sorry, couldn't resist.



ETA: I got back to reading the posts past page 2- it did better, apologies. Please read post in that context. Discussion is still largely theoretical without the test to prove the opinions, no matter the origin of the opinion.

[Gun Nerd]

Not too long ago I trained with John Holschen at Insights. He teaches a press-out, but he prefers to not elevate the muzzle. His draw stroke is L shaped. I suspect his preference for the horizontal muzzle is partially the result of him using an RDS (Glock 19) and elevating the muzzle would make it harder to track the dot since it would be out of view (initially).

We also talked about breaking the shot early, before full extension. IIRC, he said breaking the shot before full extension, as long as your sights were aligned, was a natural next step - I think he used the phrase "evolutionary step".

When I took Intensive Handgun Skills with John in late 2008, he wasn't yet using an optic on his pistol. However, he indicated that part of what he was teaching was aimed (due to InSights' emphasis on integrating their combative system) at developing the ability to fire at any point during the draw. He demonstrated this by firing multiple shots during a single draw stroke, breaking the first shot from retention, at least one more part way out, and the last at full extension.

[Gun Nerd]

When I took Intensive Handgun Skills with John in late 2008, he wasn't yet using an optic on his pistol. However, he indicated that part of what he was teaching was aimed (due to InSights' emphasis on integrating their combative system) at developing the ability to fire at any point during the draw. He demonstrated this by firing multiple shots during a single draw stroke, breaking the first shot from retention, at least one more part way out, and the last at full extension.

Coincidentally, InSights just put out a video that shows John's ready position, press-out and close-range engagement from the ready. Press-out is about 1:45.