Weak hand grip causing this?

[Nimitz]

during my last 2 sessions I noticed the following start to creep back into my shooting ... A-C hits with the alpha being center A and the 'C' being a center, left C zone hit. Most of the time you can also draw a nice horizontal line between the two ... given this pattern of hits I assume this is not a visual patience issue but rather a weak hand grip and/or trigger finger issue? It also doesn't matter whether it's from the draw on a single target or transitioning between 2 or more targets.

[ChuckS]

Are you right or left handed?

[motosapiens]

what happens on bill-drills?

[Nimitz]

right handed. Hits tend to be center A and then drift left to the A/C perf. they also some times spread vertically along the A/C perf line 2-3 inches above & below center ...

[motosapiens]

right handed. Hits tend to be center A and then drift left to the A/C perf. they also some times spread vertically along the A/C perf line 2-3 inches above & below center ...

where are the sights when the 2nd shot breaks somewhere to the left. are you seeing the sights come back down further to the left and leaving them there when you pull the trigger?

[Nimitz]

Yep, whenever my sights don't return directly into the notch they are left ... I don't ever recall seeing my sights right, ever, they either come down straight or go up, drift left and come back down

[Nimitz]

Kinda like a narrow, vertical counterclockwise oval pattern ...

[motosapiens]

Yep, whenever my sights don't return directly into the notch they are left ... I don't ever recall seeing my sights right, ever, they either come down straight or go up, drift left and come back down

Hopefully someone smarter and more experienced than me will chime in, but if I were trying to fix a problem like that, I'd start experimenting with my weak-hand grip a little, perhaps with the amount of force, or positioning.

I'd also double-check first to make sure the sights aren't moving at all in dry-fire. Maybe you've already done that. I like to do bill drills against a white wall, just finding the sights and getting the first shot off before the beep, then 5 more trigger pulls at a normal bill-drill split (.2-.25 for me with a .45), continuing to make sure that the sights are steady. I find that if my weak-hand grip sucks because I'm lazy, shots start dropping, and sometimes going slighly left. Based on your first shot, it might not have anything to do with trigger pull, but it's worth ruling out maybe.

[Sparky]

I'm probably more experienced, been shooting IPSC since 1979, but not sure I'm smarter:).

Right handed shooters that have a stronger grip with the right hand than the left hand

are more likely to shoot to the left of center. You need to have a more balanced grip.

Some say even a stronger grip with the left hand.

Do some drills at slow speeds, shooting right handed supported and change your grip

pressure with the left hand. I think you'll find out that when your left hand is

either equal to or stronger than your right hand you will shoot more in the center

of the target and perhaps even a little right of center.

[Nimitz]

ok, I'll give that a try tomorrow. My main goal is to make sure I'm trying to fix the right problem ... grip vs trigger press. I assume if my shots were going low left vice center left then that would be a trigger press issue (and maybe weak hand grip as well)?

Edited September 5, 2013 by Nimitz

[Poppa Bear]

It is a multifaceted question. Which is more important trigger manipulation or grip position/pressure? In a perfect world your grip would be such that the sights always track straight up and down, AND your trigger finger always squeezes straight to the rear.

My desire is to concentrate on getting my weak hand grip proper and allow it to steer the gun, while allowing the strong hand to manipulate the trigger without conscious thought. My reality is that they tend to fight each other and the strong hand starts to try and steer the gun AND squeeze the trigger. Then things start opening up.

[Nimitz]

I've always heard that a crusher weak hand grip and wrist lock can 'fix' a lot of trigger finger issuesiftheyrepreent. And although I may not have a perfect trigger press, on a relative basis, I need to worry about my grip more than my trigger press ...

[Jshuberg]

Hello, first post here. I don't shoot competitively, but I train on average once or twice a week, primarily for defensive shooting. I also train new shooters.

Without seeing what you're doing, I'd say its probably one of two things, possibly both. If you are using an aggressive thumbs forward grip, you'll notice that your arms are slightly asymmetrical. Canting your left wrist more aggressively than your right results in your left arm being forced slightly straighter than your right with a proper grip. If you drive both arms out exactly equally with a strong grip, you'll notice that it wants to favor slightly left. It's a simple thing to "muscle" the gun slightly right with your wrists to get it on target.

My suspicion is that during your recoil control, the "spring" that is your hands, wrists and forearms, is coming back down to your natural point of aim, rather than your corrected point of aim you achieved by bringing the front site on target with your wrists on you first shot. Try the following - close your eyes and draw to your shooting position and hold with the same strength of grip that you use to manage recoil. If when you open your eyes your aim is left, this is likely the problem. Do this multiple times, you might find other insights into your technique by doing this.

The solution is to break the habit of correcting your aim with your wrists. Instead, your wrists should be locked in place in your natural point of aim, and minor aiming corrections should be made in your elbows or in the angle of your arm. Remember that an aggressive thumbs forward grip is very slightly asymmetrical, and you may have to bend your right elbow ever so slightly to make up for the difference in the cant of your wrists.

The other thing you might be doing is driving the gun with your right (weapon) hand, rather than your left (support) hand. While you're shooting, one hand will always be the lead hand in a two handed grip. The differences are subtle, but you want your left hand to be in charge of aiming and moving the pistol, and your right hand should be dedicated to the task of trigger control. Both hands participate in gripping the gun equally, but you should make a mental point of "leading" all movement with your support hand. It's actually more of a mental than physical thing, but it emphasizes a separation of concerns between what each hand is responsible for, which minimizes trigger squeeze errors from effecting point of aim during rapid fire.

This is most often seen when transitioning between two closely placed targets back and forth. As you pick up the pace rounds begin to stray left or low left much more on the left target than the right. The reason is that while a right handed person tends to drive the gun with their right hand, when moving from left to right and shooting quickly, the brain tends to transfer the lead to the left hand because its easier to push something with the palm of your hand than the back of your hand, and even though your not "pushing" the gun, your hands are aligned in such a way that when moving from left to right your left hand naturally takes the lead. If you've never paid attention to which hand is leading, you may in fact be shifting which hand is leading every time you move back and forth between the left and right target. The solution is to practice transitions between targets slowly, making a mental point to drive your gun with your left hand at all times, and operate the trigger with your right. Increase speed, driving with the left hand until doing so becomes ingrained.

Once you've gotten pretty good at this you can speed up the process of locking this skill into procedural memory by wearing some earbuds under your hearing protection and listening to music that has a significantly lower tempo that your firing cadence. I've found Pink Floyd works well. Start by paying attention to your shooting with the music in the background. Over the course of the session slowly shift your mental attention away from the task of shooting, and pay attention to and mentally sing along with the music. Eventually you want to get to the point where you can be entirely focused on the music your listening to, but can still shoot and properly drive the gun without paying much if any attention to it at all, the same way you can drive to work without thinking about the act of operating your car. Introducing something unrelated for your mind to latch onto speeds up the process of developing procedural memory faster than brute force repetition alone can. In fact, I suspect that one of the criteria that makes repetition work at developing procedural memory is actually doing the task repeatedly so many times that you become so bored that your mind wanders off. This forces the subconscious to take over the role of performing of the task. The music technique accelerates the process by distracting the mind intentionally without having to rely on boredom to engage the subconscious in taking over the performing of the task.

Anyways, its kind of a long post, but I hope this helps!

Edited September 24, 2013 by Jshuberg

[Nimitz]

Jshuberg, thanks for the in depth analysis! Interestingly enough I just started to train & compete while listening to music for the exact reasons you mention and I believe it is helping. I also started to adjust my elbow positions somewhat so it looks like that is on the right path as well ...

[Moltke]

Are you calling your shots? Or are these surprises that they're C zone hits?

[toothguy]

I've always heard that a crusher weak hand grip and wrist lock can 'fix' a lot of trigger finger issuesiftheyrepreent. And although I may not have a perfect trigger press, on a relative basis, I need to worry about my grip more than my trigger press ...

Up close maybe. Grip the gun so the sights come back consistently. Press the trigger straight back so the sights stay in alignment until the gun goes off.

[Nimitz]

unfortunately I'm still inconsistent at shot calling ... there are times when I know it's a center left hit and others when it's a surprise ...

[Moltke]

Okay, then for each shot instead of seeing your sights lift, are you seeing them settle before breaking the next shot? What's happening in your sight picture when the gun goes off?

[toothguy]

unfortunately I'm still inconsistent at shot calling ... there are times when I know it's a center left hit and others when it's a surprise ...

Have someone watch you to see if you're blinking.

[Jshuberg]

First, sorry for the initial formatting in the above post. I used Tapatalk and it appears to have removed all of the line breaks. Sorry about that....

There is a condition called chronostasis that effects being able to track the front sight blade properly. What happens is that the brain attempts to sew together a contiguous stream of consciousness, but tends to drop transitional and rapid changes in observation as unimportant distractions. The classic example of this is looking away from an analog clock, and then quickly moving your eyes back to the clock. Every once in awhile the second hand will appear to stall for a brief moment before resuming it's motion.

What's happening is that the brain determined that the amount of time it took for your eyes to transition between point A and point B was unimportant, so it dropped that information from your stream of consciousness, and replaced it with an artificial memory of your having been looking at position B for longer than you actually were. The length of the false memory is the amount of time it took for your eyes to move between point A and point B. Because the false memory being introduced into your stream of consciousness is a snapshot of the instant normal observation resumes again, there is no movement during the false memory. This is why a second hand on a clock tends to pause in time when you look away and back to it rapidly. This condition is traditionally recognised to occur when the observer makes a rapid eye movement, or saccade, but it can also be caused when an item being observed makes a rapid change. Unless you have trained yourself not to, when your gun fires you will likely experience chronostasis, where you are not able to track the front sight properly, but simply observe it returning to where it came from. When this happens, your brain is actually "throwing away" any observations made and replacing it with an artificial memory.

This condition also exists with audio events. When person fires a machine gun, and then watches a video or listens to a recording of him doing so, most are shocked at how fast it was actually cycling. This is an example of acoustical chronostasis messing with your perception of the passage of time by introducing false memories that create the illusion to the observer of a much slower cyclic rate, or of time slowing down.

In order to "turn off" the effect of chronostasis you need to teach your brain the the transitional state is actually of importance. You can do this both dry and live fire training. During dry fire, point your weapon at a completely blank wall - no target or other visual clutter. in slow motion squeeze the trigger, and when the hamer/striker drops simulate the recoil of the gun in slow motion as accurately as possible. Visualize that the weapon actually fired and that you are controlling rather than simulating the recoil. During this process, keep your eyes on the front sight, and make a point to actually move your eyes up and down when tracking with the sight. Doing this repetively imprints on your subconscious that the front sight is important, and by moving your eyes with the simulated recoil, you are training yourself that the observation of the motion of the sight is what is most important, and not a transitional state to be sacrificed to the efffects of chronostasis.

During live fire training, remove all visual clutter from behind your sights (preferrably the same looking background as during dry fire), and visualize yourself performing the dry fire exercise above. By visualizing live fire during dry fire, and then visualizing the dry fire exercise during its live fire counterpart, your subconscious mind is able to bridge the gap, and connect the two exercises together, which will result in programming the observation of the sights without the effect of chronostasis into procedural memory.

It may take a little time, but this is the best way I've found to "train out" the effect of chronostasis which prevents you from being able to track and observe your front sight through recoil. There are other areas in pistol shooting where chronostatis can actually be leveraged to assist in increasing shot accuracy, but for sight tracking during recoil you want to train it out of yourself.

Hope this helps!

Edited September 24, 2013 by Jshuberg

[Nimitz]

very cool. I suspect this is in large part (or all) of my problem with shot calling as I've had a difficult time learning to do this successfully and as I think back on it I usually see the front sight returning to the notch but not it initially lifting all the time. I've been pretty disciplined to train myself to not take the 2nd shot until the FS returns to the notch but seeing the sight lift in the first place has been an issue ...

[Jshuberg]

Blinking is also a big problem with sight tracking, but if your certain your not blinking and still can't see the sight lift (as opposed to seeing it lift and then losing it, which is another issue), it's most likely the effect of chronostasis.

The illusion can actually really mess with a guy, and they may believe that they are seeing the sights at the instant the shot fired, but that may be a false memory that your brain backfilled. It may have actually been the sight picture immediately after the shot fired, rather than before, which can cause an inconsistency in being able to call shots depending on your level of recoil control.

Let me ask you a question - when you are able to call your shots, are you able to do so more frequently when the round hits in your typical left-of-center spot, center target, or randomly?

If there is a pattern to where your round placed and your ability to call it, it provides additional information on diagnosing whats going on with your technique.

[toothguy]

very cool. I suspect this is in large part (or all) of my problem with shot calling as I've had a difficult time learning to do this successfully and as I think back on it I usually see the front sight returning to the notch but not it initially lifting all the time. I've been pretty disciplined to train myself to not take the 2nd shot until the FS returns to the notch but seeing the sight lift in the first place has been an issue ...

It's natural to blink. Try painting a small white dot on the leading edge of the front sight, model paint, white out or whatever. Use ear plugs and muffs and concentrate only on the white dot. Pull the trigger straight back and hold it back until after you see the sight lift.

[toothguy]

[Nimitz]

That video is how I first learned to figure out how to do shot call training. I need to go back and do more shooting against a berm to focus on what my sights are actually doing with changes in my grip pressure so I can ensure I understand what the proper grip feels like and then focus on repeating that grip feeling when shooting other drills, al good stuff ....