Trigger Control

[ricardo28]

I have been reading a ton and watching all kinds of video's people post. Being new to the sport and loving every minute of it im training almost daily. I have been told that I have great trigger control but after lots of dryfire, I notice my splits drops, causing me to pull off the A's and catch a c-d, with the occasional mike, high or off to the side depending on movement. Something i have been thinking about during my last few practices is why my splits are dropping and causing me to miss the A's. Well, it is the dryfire. No recoil. I watch all the videos i can and notice a lot of guys pulling the trigger as fast as they can, as do i when dryfiring.

This is just something I have not seen posted or talked about (Probably has, just not in all my reading). Just another thing for some to think about if your noticing your live fire being affected. I think about every movement i make in dryfire and how it will be affected in livefire and try to make the appropirate fix. I now slow my trigger in dryfire, not much but enough so im not just pulling as fast as i can.

I wont even get into split times because they depend on each individuals skill/ comfort level.

Edited June 28, 2012 by ricardo28

[Chris iliff]

This has been posted about several times. Don't know if it had its own thread before though.

It's pretty common that with lots of "incorrect dryfire" your live fire hits can suffer. You got to have a balance of dry and live.

Mr. Anderson can speak better to this than I. But , I'm sure that's why some of his drills don't use the trigger pull. Just an acceptable sight picture.

[38supPat]

When you say pulling it as fast as you can, are you referring to the time between trigger pulls or how fast you pull the trigger to the rear?

[dsb45acp]

I had this problem, too. A local GM told me to quit worrying about my splits and instead work on target to target transitions. I took the advice and moved up to "B" class. Chris is right. Balance your dry fire with some live fire if at all possible.

[E K]

Are you seeing your sights for both shots or seeing them once and pulling the trigger twice? I see a lot of new guys who do this.

[ricardo28]

Pat, Dryfiring i would have probably .10 splits, so way to fast for live fire with a SS in 45. I was first doing 50/50 live/dry and was doing fine. I ran short on ammo and did almost 90% dryfire and the next match i would hit high because i was use to no recoil. I would see the sights fall and knew they were high but from all the dryfiring it was hard to stop and i knew i hit high. This only happened in one match and I am fixing it in my training. My main purpose for the post though was because i have seen several people post recent video's of their dryfire practice. Most have been production and if you watch their trigger finger they dont stop pressing. This helped me further understand what i was doing wrong.

I have only been at 6 matches and have been constantly beating C and B class shooters. I had a Solid B class shooter, who should be A or M but has problems in the classifiers, tell me he expects good things from me and that helped motivate me. I trained hard for two weeks and shot around 1k rounds in practice. On my 3rd match I won SS with only 9 other shooters. Between work and the house, i fell short on my ammo budget and did way too much dryfire. The last two matches I am back in the middle of the pack with about 10 SS shooters because of this but know what im doing wrong and quickly fixing it.

Pat, The B class shooter i mentioned, I had a conversation with him speaking about some of your tips and training. He said he meet you years back at lunch and did not realize who he was talking with until the end of the conversation. He had nothing but praise about your sportsmanship.

[leemoe83]

When I dry fire I draw and do a correct trigger pull on the first target and any target after that I use a sight picture only. I shoot a Glock and for a while I would stick a piece of paper behind the barrel hood so I could keep pulling the trigger while dry firing without operating the slide. It caused some really bad habits with trigger control. I started slapping the trigger super fast during live fire and accuracy went out the window.

[dravz]

When I dry fire I draw and do a correct trigger pull on the first target and any target after that I use a sight picture only. I shoot a Glock and for a while I would stick a piece of paper behind the barrel hood so I could keep pulling the trigger while dry firing without operating the slide. It caused some really bad habits with trigger control. I started slapping the trigger super fast during live fire and accuracy went out the window.

I had this exact same experience with Glock dry-fire and came to the same conclusion -- first shot click, sight pictures for the rest.

[Noah my boy]

When dry firing I think its very important to feel the trigger reset and press the trigger as you would with live fire. I always say that you never want to have bad pratice. Like one day a buddy i was shooting with told me to run a pratice stage as fast as i could without looking at my sights, to see my limitations and I said NO i will always look at my sights and understand that you can never go faster than your mind will allow you to make your hits. Shoot for accuracy not speed and in turn you will speed up with A hits:)

[eric nielsen]

These helped me & i've been shooting for a long time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Azb3q8wOrV4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_h9rKDEXPvM

If you're not familiar with Ron or Travis just do a google search.

The Najaf, Iraq video of Travis is a good one (understatement).