Locked Wrist Enigma, advice requested

[Cory]

I suggest reading Breakthrough Marksmanship by Ben Stoeger.

What it will not do is dive into the micro minutia of grip. What it will do, is tell you broadly what the most common issues are, and what to do to correct it. This is in terms of both marksmanship and practical shooting sports.

Ben uses sentences with alot of brevity and high clarity.

Good luck, and good shooting.

-Cory

[Alpha Sierra]

That would be Darryl's interpretation of the test. This year's class, Ben mentioned, and I asked again to be absolutely sure, it was important to me: the second shot is triggered at the speed of your finger, not eyes. I would not call that accountable.

I suppose that depends on the meaning of "accountable" in a given situation.

For the purpose of self defense, triggering the shot to hit a given split time regardless of where the sights are might not be.

For the purpose of the doubles drill, which is to train your index and grip to assure a certain level of precision (distance dependent) for two shots based on one sight picture at a mandated speed (split), accountability is met because all shots, whether in the A zone or not, tell a story.

Gotta remember the point of the drill: your speed is pre-determined by the distance. Your hits are made through index and grip, not individual sight pictures.

[Alpha Sierra]

For the OP's benefit, here are the doubles drill's benchmarks for iron sights

5 yards, sub .2 splits, 100% Alphas
10 yards, .20 splits, 95% Alphas
15 yards, .25 splits, 90% Alphas
20 yards, .30 splits, 85% Alphas
25 yards, .35 splits, 80% Alphas

Procedure
At the start beep, draw and get a good sight picture. When you have an acceptable sight picture, send a pair of shots at the predetermined split for the distance. Stabilize the sights, send another pair at the required speed. Repeat until you've fired four pairs. Repeat that string five more times for a total of 48 rounds on target.

Focus: grip and trigger control

Comments
Draw time and time between pairs are unimportant. Only splits matter for this drill. Ignoring the prescribed splits to get a second sight picture during the pair defeats the purpose of this drill. Accuracy has to come from controlling the gun through recoil, not from letting the sights settle for the second shot.

[Clusterfrack]

The data you get from Doubles is not just the % of alphas at a given distance. Where the fliers are tells you a lot. There are simple diagrams in the book:
https://smile.amazon.com/Breakthroug...dp/B07QC9S41W/

I am also shooting the Dots drill, and getting a lot out of it. This is a brutally difficult drill, but it's a good check for how well the Doubles is working to improve your consistency.

IMO, Doubles is not "all accountable shots". Dots is.

[GJM]

Let’s keep this discussion going — this has the potential to be a great software thread.

[Eyesquared]

I actually asked Ben about locking wrists during that class, since his associate spends so much time talking about it. Ben said that almost everyone does that automatically. I didn't push that further, but I thought he implied the strong hand.

I would say that is true for many people. For me once I started trying to apply Hwansik's take on returning the gun after the recoil is done, I lost the wrist tension I used to have and it took a little bit of deliberate focus during Doubles to bring it back.

[miller_man]

Just recently watched (over on PSTG) a video of a subscriber posted video of himself shooting 2 or 300 rounds on doubles drill. Ben said the dude was one of few who actually put in the work and a higher round session into the drill. He said something along the lines of more people would learn a lot more if they just put in the time and effort shooting the drill.

Count me in. I’m going to be putting a lot of time and rounds into the drill over the next few months. Which is something a little harder to jump into, not being one who reloads. But already in the couple times I have shot it with a box of 50 or so, the juice is well worth the squeeze.

OP, just go shoot the drill. Focus more on observing, learning and improving and focus less on over thinking or over analyzing.

[YVK]

It is a tough drill to run correctly for 300 rounds, even with 9 mm. I also dug out my single stack gun and I am shooting it with 190 power factor ammo regularly. I rarely last past 120 rounds with that before going fully spastic. He had us go a full trigger speed pretty much out to 12-15, so that's what I am doing, and it is fucking hard. We keep talking about correct technique and bone alignment and wrist locking but I am convinced that this is one of those things where physical strength matters. I don't expect Ben-like results on this drill out of myself until I get Ben-like grip strength, among other things.

[Clusterfrack]

@YVK, I’ve come to the opposite conclusion. I don’t think grip strength is as important as I used to think it was.

[txdpd]

When I say overthinking it, I really mean overthinking. There's a lot of mental masturbation going on. Shooting doubles? How does that possibly have any value in assessing a “locked wrist” or wrist movement issue under recoil (especially without a high speed camera and some very expensive software). I don’t think it was ever a problem in the first place, but shooting doubles is about as useful as going to the hospital for a gunshot wound and them focusing on high cholesterol.

Either you have the musculature to maintain your wrist position or you don't. If you have have the strength to maintain your wrist position all you need to do is grip the gun firmly to engage those muscles.

If your wrist aren’t strong enough, which I highly doubt, you can work on wrist strength or upper body strength in general for 5 minutes a day three times a week, and be good in a month or so.

It's only as complicated as you make it.