In regards to the second video, im trying to reconcile aggressively driving the gun, vs just letting recoil happen. Yesterday I shot DoTW, and followed it up with some accuracy work and speed drills. Focusing on isolating the trigger finger, I shot a 1", 3 shot group at 25yds. Then when doing the Garcia dot drill, I kept driving rounds low. The fight between letting recoil happen, and wanting to drive the gun back on target is on going.
Taking a break from social media.
You need to use your muscles to return the gun to the target after the first shot. This should happen after the first shot is fired and before the second one. So, there's some critical timing that has to happen. That gets tricky when you try to shoot fast splits, like in the doubles drill. As you're learning to do this, sometimes the timing is wrong and you fire after you push the gun down, or you fire before the gun returns. This isn't a flinch. It's part of the learning process. As you develop your grip, stance, and relaxation, the amount of force needed gets smaller, and it starts to feel like "just letting the recoil happen".
Here's a quote from Hwansik: "Most pistols have a high bore axis. Mixing in physics, when we fire the gun, there will be an upward force created by the leverage related to the bore axis and the grip axis. If the operator doesn’t push the gun down, the gun will stop higher than the original spot after a shot."
There's some really good info about this on the PSTG, but it's behind a paywall.
https://www.practicalshootingtrainin...urement-drill/
Last edited by Clusterfrack; 12-14-2018 at 12:22 PM.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
Right. I think many shooters with less experience in practical shooting confuse timing the gun with flinch. This is one of the reasons that I think ball and dummy is of limited application beyond learning what a truly isolated trigger press feels like. Any good shooter should be able to consciously go through a mag of ball and dummy without having the muzzle dip, but if they hit a bad primer in the middle of a Bill Drill, they'll likely have very apparent muzzle dive.Originally Posted by Clusterfrack
I admit, I have not read the most posts of this thread. I have never been able to keep up with the PF threads flow. However, what I see is many people define "shooting" as "standing still while shooting one target a front of you." From that point of view, the trigger control, however you describe it, it is a very big part of the successful process. However, I think it is a very narrow definition of shooting. How about the time spent on the sight acquisition, target transitions, shooting from very awkward positions (Tight leans, kneeling, low ports) and so on. All of this is "Shooting." If you broaden the scope of the term, the trigger control, while very important, would become a relatively small part of the process. All the time I see people who can shoot extremely tight groups but do not perform too well in any dynamic situation. That is because they never practice the entire process of shooting and focus only on a very narrow part of it. Balanced practice is very difficult to do because there are so many elements of it and most of us not only have a very limited time available but also tend to practice what we are good at. I was one of those people. I can hit pretty much any target. The real question, however, is how fast can I do it?
Trigger control is a very important part of shooting but I think it is the easiest part of the process.
Cheby, I think what you are saying is that having great trigger control upright, stationary on a flat range does not necessarily translate to trigger control in a dynamic situation. I am not sure that is a trigger control defect, as much as a technique problem. JJ stresses how picky he is about sight alignment and trigger control when shooting on the move, and that was initially a new concept to me, as I assumed sights and trigger must necessarily suffer when moving. JJ proved to me that you can shoot accurate shots on the move, by being fanatical about sights and trigger as you move.
Cluster, TPC has a different take, and definitely does not advocate muscle controlling recoil.
After yesterday’s trigger control session, I decided to double down on trigger control today!
Likes pretty much everything in every caliber.
@GJM back at ya with a 10 round 10 yd group[emoji3]. I’m glad you challenged me because I don’t do this often enough. Sure is easier to light up those 8” plates at 25.
We must be talking past each other about recoil control. The gun won’t return itself after it lifts! We have to do that using muscles. Now if you mean fighting the recoil as it happens... that’s not what I’m talking about.
Last edited by Clusterfrack; 12-14-2018 at 04:40 PM.
“There is no growth in the comfort zone.”--Jocko Willink
"You can never have too many knives." --Joe Ambercrombie
I was so bummed out yesterday as I thought I found a JJ Racaza 2 day class down in Houston in which I tried to sign up for, only $550. Found out it was for LE & Military only. #@%#
I was just reflecting on the title of this thread. 90% is a lot.
Last edited by cheby; 12-14-2018 at 05:17 PM.
I don’t think that trigger control need be wholly prioritized over other shooting fundamentals; but we do need to recognize that coming lastly as it does for the scale of reference of each singular round, the virtues or shortcomings of the trigger press will either leverage everything that’s come before it or can wipe away all of that positive potential.
Put differently: a shooter can have a good stance, vicing grip, synchronized breathing, and an acute sight picture; but a trigger press overdriving the support-side can make that all for nought.
I believe that if we push our folks to relax less and to muscularly stack tension onto the gun, we’ll see different things proof out. Every round that we fire from a pistol that articulates our wrists conditions us to flinch with a downward dive. Every round that we fire from a rifle that drives us out of posture conditions us to shoulder drive the rifle forwards until it dips. Yet, there doesn’t seem to be crossover for the two, as far as bad habits, minus the third option of blast/report related flinching in the more general sense. Fire any sort of firearm while staying in posture and without articulating wrists, and the habit diminishes from lack of feeding: every repetition of the former gradually undermining those previous repetitions that conditioned the flinch behavior in the first place.
If we preload all of the muscular tension onto the gun in advance of firing, then we won’t have to apply it after the fact while playing catch up to the effects of recoil. If we load it high up on the frame as near to the slide as able and involve more musculature, we see the weapon recoiling much more in a linear fashion and much less with an upwards arc. Such a vicing grip onto the gun also provides for direct muscular opposition to the trigger finger, which circles back to the whole issue of poor trigger control being able to overdrive good sight management. There is also no need to drive the gun back down onto target as a deliberate action; the gun returns to position as a function of isometric resistance.
I think that approaching the paradigm from the position of an “opposed trigger press” will take most shooters farther than the “isolated trigger press” methodology.
Jules
Runcible Works
Is that really true? It is not like nothing acts on a gun when shot's fired. Recoil spring pushes slide forward and uses the same leverage in the opposite direction. I mean, we have a whole industry making low power recoil springs to prevent over-dipping.
P.S. Do you find that content behind that paywall is worth paying for?
Doesn't read posts longer than two paragraphs.
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