The biggest technical problem shooters have?

[cheby]

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.

This is why I do not like the idea of the scoop draw.

[HCM]

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.

So I agree with Chuck Pressburg that recoil anticipation is primarily driven by the firing hand, and can be mitigated somewhat by the support hand.

There’s also the finer points of locking the firing hand wrist with the forearm without over, gripping with the firing hand

[MickAK]

Everything is grip. Everything.

Grip is the hardest thing to teach or explain, unfortunately. Humans are absolutely amazing at seeing stuff and doing small manipulations like pressing a trigger. We just have to know how to hold while we do it and the impulse of a pistol is unnatural.

Grips that try to mimic hand tools often have worse results than grips shaped like badly designed TV remotes (looking at you, Gaston). I think that's because it forces people to grip it like what it is, not like an axe handle. We don't have a good connection between what feels like a good grip surface and what's actually a good grip surface for shooting a pistol.

[JHC]

I started this thread because yesterday I coached two people who had never shot a gun before. It was a husband and wife--progressive Portlanders who decided they were interested in buying a handgun. I used a Glock 17.4 with iron sights.

The wife shot slowly and deliberately, and hit everything she shot at.

The husband shot left and low, with only a few good shots. It was the classic "bad Glock trigger press". But was it really?

Trigger mechanics had little to do with his issue. It turned out to be a subtle but strong pre-ignition push. He was pushing the gun down as it fired, making initial diagnosis difficult. This did not happen during dryfire. I mostly cured him of it using the "measurement drill" where the goal is to fire the gun and let it stay up after recoil.

My thoughts may fall under #1 but I think it's a little different and a mental issue. It's the biggest issue I've found with new shooters. And it's partly my fault for starting them out with the fundamentals of how to line up the sights and being sight focused in those days.

They spend too much time trying to steady the sights aligned just right and then snatch-breaking the shot when they think its good. And I'm not talking about 25 yards, but like close, 7 yards.

If I was doing it again I'd do it all differently. Target focus, sight "awareness" with emphasis on grip and steady press through the trigger.

[Robinson]

Everything is grip. Everything.

I don't know. I hear you, but there have been other recent threads here talking about this and for me personally I have started looking more into my trigger press because I already grip the gun hard. I think most of my mechanics are sound but I still struggle with accuracy -- so I've begun to think my main issues are that my eyesight is getting a little blurry (still not bad yet) and trigger press.

The only time I notice my grip affecting things is when I transition from 9mm to 45 and I realize I need to grip the gun even harder to get precise hits.

The problems I'm describing don't really affect me during slow fire, just when I speed up time between shots.

[LukeNCMX]

Grip is king. The difference between skilled and unskilled is almost entirely grip and once it is learned, building it consistently. A good grip promotes a relaxed firing hand that drastically helps isolate trigger finger actuation. A good grip welds the frame to your support hand which passively manages a lot of the sensations that drive tension and pre-ignition push.

Best drills in the game: Doubles to learn grip (among other things) then Trigger Control at Speed to learn trigger press.

Vision is the next layer: zooming vision precisely at maximum speed to all the necessary small spots on the shooting problem and then knowing and executing shots as soon as sufficient sight picture/sight alignment arrives based on target difficulty/risk.

Last layer is isolation of necessary tension while maximizing relaxation.

[MickAK]

I don't know. I hear you, but there have been other recent threads here talking about this and for me personally I have started looking more into my trigger press because I already grip the gun hard.

Well, there's certainly more to it than gripping the gun hard. I'm not saying looking into your trigger press isn't wise, but a lot of times the fix for that is going to be grip related. When my grip is slightly off I can feel the trigger press doing things to the gun I don't want it to do, if that makes sense.

Maybe the term grip should be changed to control?

[LOKNLOD]

Well, there's certainly more to it than gripping the gun hard. I'm not saying looking into your trigger press isn't wise, but a lot of times the fix for that is going to be grip related. When my grip is slightly off I can feel the trigger press doing things to the gun I don't want it to do, if that makes sense.

Maybe the term grip should be changed to control?

Grip Control(tm) is a good description but it also sounds like something printed on a new Springfield Armory product :P

Trigger Press and Grip Control might actually be better verbiage than the old "grip and trigger control".

Misalignment during the trigger pull is often (damn near always, for me) a function of changing grip pressure during the pull. Sometimes that's a sympathetic response to changes in the required trigger press force and that's when a "better" trigger can make a big diff, and sometimes it's due to changing grip in anticipation of the impending explosion - and sometimes it's both.

"Control your grip so you can isolate your trigger pull" might be a good way to explain it to someone?

[Robinson]

Well, there's certainly more to it than gripping the gun hard. I'm not saying looking into your trigger press isn't wise, but a lot of times the fix for that is going to be grip related. When my grip is slightly off I can feel the trigger press doing things to the gun I don't want it to do, if that makes sense.

Maybe the term grip should be changed to control?

Yeah I sort of hesitated to post what I did because I knew it might come across as disagreement or arguing -- but it wasn't meant that way. The whole grip control and trigger press things are very intertwined it seems, and it hasn't been easy for me to discern where my difficulties are. I have seen improvement since starting to practice more though, concentrating on "seeing what I need to see" and pressing the trigger without moving the sights. I need to get faster while doing it.

[Clusterfrack]

So I agree with Chuck Pressburg that recoil anticipation is primarily driven by the firing hand, and can be mitigated somewhat by the support hand.

There’s also the finer points of locking the firing hand wrist with the forearm without over, gripping with the firing hand

This thread is getting interesting!

Can you help me understand how pre-ignition push and recoil-return-mistiming are driven by the firing hand? And how the support hand can reduce or eliminate it?

My experience is that the gun is returned by muscles in the arms after recoil, and arms (sometimes the upper body as well) are what pushes the gun down before firing. This can be especially obvious in WHO shooting.