The biggest technical problem shooters have?

[Clay]

I spend a fair bit of time on public ranges and the biggest problem for pistol shooters, by far, is pre-ignition push. AKA flinching, a timing issue, recoil anticipation, etc. It's rare that I see a target that doesn't have evidence of this.

I'm not immune to this myself, and spend a fair amount of of my range time working to manage it.

I think most of the other issues on the list are "first world problems" encountered by intermediate and advanced shooters. The vast majority of pistol shooters are simply struggling to hit the target and understand why their rounds are low left.

Well said. Grip and managing your trigger are the big two in my opinion. New shooters, and some of the goofy instructors I witnessed, spent way too much time worrying about a perfect sight picture. I was always like "put that front thingy on that orange circle".

My favorite was a guy that would come teach a concealed carry class every week and spent a good 45 minutes yammering on about eye dominance. People would get on the line and I would have to make my way down going "don't put your thumb behind the slide" and "finger straight and off the trigger"...

[HCM]

(This is a bit of a clickbait title because people are different.)

What is the main reason shooters keep missing what they're shooting at? How can we help them overcome the issue?

1. Trigger mechanics: trigger pull moves sights off target
2a. Recoil control: arms move sights off target in an attempt to control recoil
2b. Recoil timing: you attempt to time the recoil cycle of the gun, but press the trigger at the wrong time.
3a. Transition timing: you pull off the target before the gun is finished shooting it, or shoot before the gun has arrived on target
3b. Transition damping: your transition wasn't 'critically damped', and you overshoot the target.
4a. Sight alignment: sights misaligned
4b. Sight placement: sights aligned but aimed wrong (usually looking at the wrong place on the target)
5. Vision: focus or eye dominance. Looking at the sights through the wrong eye.

Other things?

At this point I boil everything down to two things:

1)Grip


2) Vision - either focus or sight placement.

In that order.

I used to be more trigger centric but if your grip is good you can beat the trigger like a red headed step child. Now I see trigger mechanics as a balance between how well you can grip the gun (particularly with the support hand) and how careful you need to be in manipulating the trigger.

I consider anticipation / pre ignition push sort of a grip issue (at least physically)

[JCN]

Pretty sure everything was closer than 5 yards.

And it was a 22LR…

[cheby]

I spend a fair bit of time on public ranges and the biggest problem for pistol shooters, by far, is pre-ignition push. AKA flinching, a timing issue, recoil anticipation, etc. It's rare that I see a target that doesn't have evidence of this.

I'm not immune to this myself, and spend a fair amount of of my range time working to manage it.

I think most of the other issues on the list are "first world problems" encountered by intermediate and advanced shooters. The vast majority of pistol shooters are simply struggling to hit the target and understand why their rounds are low left.

Last time I went shooting with my wife I was surprised to see how well she was shooting at the beginning of our session considering she goes to the range like once in two years. Then after a couple of mags she started flinching badly. I think she forgot about the recoil at the beginning and was just pulling the trigger well hitting everything she wanted. Then she started anticipating it. To me it was another proof that trigger pull is a very minor issue. People always trying to make it as short and light as possible but it does not really matter that much in practical shooting unlike in bullseye competition.

[Clusterfrack]

At this point I boil everything down to two things:

1)Grip


2) Vision - either focus or sight placement.

In that order.

I used to be more trigger centric but if your grip is good you can beat the trigger like a red headed step child. Now I see trigger mechanics as a balance between how well you can grip the gun (particularly with the support hand) and how careful you need to be in manipulating the trigger.

I consider anticipation / pre ignition push sort of a grip issue (at least physically)

Trigger-centric: Me too. As a precision rifle shooter, it's taken me some time to come to terms with the trigger being relatively unimportant compared to other things in pistol shooting. But even with rifles, I prefer a 2lb 2-stage trigger to an 8oz 1 stage "touch it off" trigger.

Grip: The reason I came up with the "miss menu" is that recoil anticipation (and other reasons for pushing down on the gun) are lumped in with "grip". I think that's confusing, and leads people to try to fix their problem by gripping harder, which doesn't address the core problem of using the arms to push the gun down before it fires, and may introduce other issues.

[GJM]

With my 38 Super Comp, there is so much concussion, it routinely causes my Sordin muffs to turn off! I wear plugs and muffs, and it is still like an explosion going off each shot.

[Clusterfrack]

With my 38 Super Comp, there is so much concussion, it routinely causes my Sordin muffs to turn off! I wear plugs and muffs, and it is still like an explosion going off each shot.

LOL! I hate RO'ing Open shooters.

[GJM]

LOL! I hate RO'ing Open shooters.

Me too! Some days I even hate shooting Open major. An experiment is to see what the delta is between major and minor over a whole match.

[LOKNLOD]

I think the reason we see "trigger" being an issue in many cases is because a crappy trigger results in weird timing issues with the grip/recoil anticicompensation (that's when you're anticipating compensating for recoil ). Putting in "nicer trigger" results in improvement not necessarily from the "better" trigger pull necessarily but a more easily timed, consistent recoil response.

[GJM]

Stoeger recently said that if you don't get a good grip, you can't shoot predictively -- you have to shoot reactively. TGO told me the same thing. You can make the shot with a poor grip or even just a finger or two on the pistol, but not at the same speed you shoot with a good grip. He said you need to recognize a bad grip and at a subconscious level shift gears to working with what you have. This is a reason a preoccupation with a blistering draw seems a bad move in USPSA, as you are trying to gain .20 or .30 on your draw but you could give that up per shot for an entire magazine.