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Trigger Speed


Sarge

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Just worked on this last night with an experienced shooter friend. I have a slow trigger finger too. Have a hard time getting splits much lower than .25-.30.

What he has me working on is getting my finger off the trigger as soon as the shot breaks and having it back on the trigger, pressed and prepped, before the recoil is complete. This means that as soon as the front sight is back on the target you can pull the trigger again.

I'm basically leaving my finger on the trigger until the recoil stops, then pressing and prepping, and breaking a new shot. Got it right 2 or 3 times and saw a huge difference, just going to take a little while to get used to it!!!

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I find it hard to get much below .20 shooting into the berm.

.14's are out of the question.

Doesn't make a difference you say? Don't worry about it you say?

On a hoser stage or just a hoser array, it matters.

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Depending on what you consider "slow" - it might be worthwhile to check the reset. Particularly with tuned 19/2011s, some builders tune the sear spring in such a way as to provide a really sluggish reset in order to get that magic 2lb pull weight that everyone thinks they need. Reset makes a difference.

Even with a 2.5lb trigger buckmark 22, I couldn't get below .19-.20 because it had a slow, anemic reset.

On fancy pants tuned up 2011s I've shot, same thing.

On MY 1911 that I tuned for a nice reset, .15s were easy. On my stock Glock, even with it's heavy 5.75-6lb trigger, the very quick, positive reset makes .14-15s easy.

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I find it hard to get much below .20 shooting into the berm.

.14's are out of the question.

Doesn't make a difference you say? Don't worry about it you say?

On a hoser stage or just a hoser array, it matters.

I am by no means the fastest guy around but I have been known to run .14 splits with good hits during matches and while the pop pop sounds cool, I still get my clock cleaned by shooters with slower splits and faster transitions.

That said, for fast splits I let the gun recoil away from my trigger finger to get that reset before the gun even begins to come back down from recoil, then I begin prepping the trigger as the muzzle comes back down onto target and press the shot off just as the sight gets to the target. When shooting it feels like my finger stays in the same place and the gun is resetting as it recoils and pressing the trigger as it recovers, (I know that's not the way it works but that is what it feels like)

Another thing to think about is you have to be anticipating the gun being where it needs to be as it recovers from recoil in order to shoot quick splits, you cant be wondering if the front sight is going to land in the notch, you have to know it will because you are basically committing to the shot before the sights are back on target. you are still visually confirming your sight picture and calling the shot but you will be starting the second shot precess before you get that visual info.

Mike

Mike

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Sub .20 splits are easily achieved with a trigger reset spring tension which allows the trigger to push your finger back when you relax your trigger finger after the initial trigger press. Doing this allows you to shoot from a more relaxed state because you know that if you simply relax your finger after pulling the trigger the trigger will push your finger back to reset. If you have to row your finger forward post shot that usually creates more tension and results in overall slower trigger finger speed.

I have used the "Press, then relax" trigger press/reset method many times to allow myself to crank out .10 - .15 splits. But as others have already said, fast splits are useless without aggressive and efficient target to target transitions. If you have solid transition skills you rarely have to shoot an on target split below a .25 and still produce a GM level performance.

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Sub .20 splits are easily achieved with a trigger reset spring tension which allows the trigger to push your finger back when you relax your trigger finger after the initial trigger press. Doing this allows you to shoot from a more relaxed state because you know that if you simply relax your finger after pulling the trigger the trigger will push your finger back to reset. If you have to row your finger forward post shot that usually creates more tension and results in overall slower trigger finger speed.

I have used the "Press, then relax" trigger press/reset method many times to allow myself to crank out .10 - .15 splits. But as others have already said, fast splits are useless without aggressive and efficient target to target transitions. If you have solid transition skills you rarely have to shoot an on target split below a .25 and still produce a GM level performance.

Come on, one problem at a time. Yeah, my transitions suck too.

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What is considered a slow trigger speed to you?

I'd like to know as well.

On command, what kind of splits can you produce?

I actually don't know the answer to these questions. If I shoot again Monday night I will try to remember to get some times to post. I will put it this way. I'm not slow per say but on a classifier such as "can you count" my trigger speed is holding me back in my opinion.

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It's already been said but bears repeating .... If you can produce .25 splits on command with good hits, are not currently a M/GM class shooter and still trying to get faster splits then you are wasting valuable training effort on the wrong things ... "slow" splits ain't your problem ...

Edited by Nimitz
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In golf their is a well known saying .... "drive for show and putt for dough"

In practical shooting it would be ... "splits for show and transitions for dough"

Not on a five shot string classifier. I just can't move my finger as fast as I'd like.

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Ok, but how many classifiers are like that? By in large, the majority of classifiers revolve around the theme of draw, shoot 3 targets, reload, shoot 3 more targets making reload and transition speed far more critical than splits ... Hundreds of a second versus tenths of a sec ...

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Ok, but how many classifiers are like that? By in large, the majority of classifiers revolve around the theme of draw, shoot 3 targets, reload, shoot 3 more targets making reload and transition speed far more critical than splits ... Hundreds of a second versus tenths of a sec ...

Same for drawing, WHO, SHO, etc... still plenty of threads on that.

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Sarge,

You have 11000+ posts and you're asking this question now?

Yeah. I just had somebody point it out to me over the winter that my trigger might be too short and I sort of tried putting two and two together.

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