Before I get yelled at, I tried searching this first, but the search results were a wild goose chase.
How important is it that your sight movie during recoil track vertically and why? How does this translate to red dot sights vs iron sights?
What elements of the grip, wrist/forearm tension have the most effect on sight tracking?
I would say that theoretically, it doesn't matter if the sight tracks vertically so long as it returns to the same spot consistently however in my experience when it does track vertically, it also returns to the same spot more consistently than it would otherwise. When the gun tracks vertically the mass of the slide returning to battery does a decent chunk of the work when it comes to returning the gun. In my view when the gun tracks diagonally it is requiring additional input from the shooter to return the gun to the point of aim.
Grip - pistol cannot be allowed to move around within your hands during recoil because a slight movement can cause the pistol to not return properly to the same spot.
Wrists - both should be rigid so as to flex a minimal amount in recoil. If one is locked and the other not (sometimes see this as support hand wrist locked, firing hand wrist loose) then the gun will track up and to one side.
Body posture can also affect sight tracking and whether or not the gun returns to the original point of aim after firing.
Critically important that it tracks perfectly vertical if shooting static (clarification: if you’re shooting static and want to eventually take it to movement… bullseye doesn’t apply. This also only applies to freestyle and the reason freestyle is mechanically superior to single hand when it comes to tracking and predictive shooting)Originally Posted by cornstalker
Before I get yelled at, I tried searching this first, but the search results were a wild goose chase.
How important is it that your sight movie during recoil track vertically and why? How does this translate to red dot sights vs iron sights?
What elements of the grip, wrist/forearm tension have the most effect on sight tracking?
Doing slow mo video of your grip and recoil impulse mechanics and experiment on your own to get that is important.
It starts in dry fire though.
If you see any dot jerk with trigger pull you have to correct that before moving to recoil / grip / forearm tension tweaks.
It’s way more nuanced than “return to the same spot” because when you start adding lateral motion on transitions your only chance of tracking and predictive triggering faithfully you need to have clean vertical baseline.
Last edited by JCN; 05-01-2022 at 10:04 AM.
Very cool. Thank you.
You’re welcome, I think a lot of intermediate shooters spend a lot of time accepting and burning in bad habits that don’t show themselves until they later add transitions and efficient recoil to vision triggering mechanics.
But by then they’ve grooved in a bad golf swing.
And it’s hard for them to unlearn their bad habits.
I’m not sure if you saw my wife training thread but we started with things that people traditionally think as “advanced” but I think are basic.
IMO, trigger press and transitions trained in dry to isolate the vertical and lateral mechanics without the recoil, then live fire for recoil to vision timing and adding the recoil vertical part to the known lateral mechanics.
That’s my long standing beef with untimed Dot Torture.
Instead of wasting live fire with trigger control exercises, if the student did dry trigger control work and then worked on recoil management in live they’d be much better served.
This was money. I came out of it with lots of low-hanging fruit to go after.
The gun moved more in my hands than I thought it did and did not return to POA as well as I thought it did. Also picked up on some opportunities to improve my stance and trigger management.
Thanks for the help.
You are very welcome! Thanks for the follow up and feedback.
Video and the ability to slow mo and self-coach is a great tool for improvement.
Keep at it and as always, let me know if I can help with anything!
Reply With Quote