Gun does not return to original POA after recoil

[1sickPuppy]

Did the videos help any?

[SpookyPistolero]

Check this grip video out

Seeing this and realizing how far I am from that level is deeply depressing. Is he (anyone) acquiring a full sight picture in between those shots? My recoil control is garbage...

[1sickPuppy]

Hahaha my recoil control sucks too, but the guys at the match told me front sight shooting only, point and shoot.... Not sure how many guys do that....

[jroback]

Try this - stand with your arms extended in front of you with your thumbs up like fonzie, and you elbows pointing down. Now turn your hands inward so your thumbs are pointing at each other. If you rotated inward with your forearms, your elbows will still be pointing down if you bend them. If you rotated inward with your shoulders, you elbows will now be pointing out horizontally. If you rotated with a combination of shoulder and forearm, your elbows will be pointed somewhere between straight down and horizontal. A lot of people prefer to rotate using their forearm muscles only, but I would recommend using both sets of muscles, and let your shoulders do a little bit more than your forearms, since they are larger and stronger and will fatigue less than your forearm muscles. Again, it doesn't take much strength, and the goal is to pinch the gun between your hands high up like a scissors. If your forearm muscles are super tight, back them off. Use the least amount of strength necessary to rotate your hand inward so that the front sight comes back down again automatically.

I'd recommend using almost no rotation to start, and let the gun jump around while slowly increasing inward rotation until the front sight comes back down into the general area of the rear sight on its own. At this point you can fine tune it by rotating one or both hands a little more or a little less, and raising or lowering one or both elbows very slightly to change the angle your hands contact the gun by a few degrees. By doing this you'll find that you can "steer" where the front sight will return to with a great degree of accuracy and control. Again, you don't do this with hand strength, you do this by rotating your hands inward with your forearm and shoulder muscles. When this is all working correctly your hand muscles are at less than 50%, your forearms are twisting inward but not taught, the muzzle of the gun will flip during recoil, but will settle back down into the rear in less time than you can physically operate the trigger.

Although this post is almost 3 months old, I just saw it yesterday and tried it today. It worked very well!

I was having a similar problem to Blackstone. My front site typically traced a letter "P": it started at the bottom of the P, rose up and to the right, and then came back to rest in the middle of the P. I tried a little forearm rotation, a little shoulder rotation, and the combination. For me, a very slight amount of shoulder rotation with no conscious forearm rotation (and no increase in gripping power) caused the front site to snap right back to where it started. It really surprised me at first, but it was very reproducible. I'm going to try to some of the tweaks JShu suggested next time.

Edited September 21, 2014 by jroback

[jhr1986]

When i try to emulate the "pinch grip" on my Gen 3 G19 that Vogel demonstrates in the video above, my trigger finger barely reaches the trigger. As in the tip of my right index finger is only contacting the right half of the trigger, just barely enough to depress the trigger safety. My grip feels higher on the gun and with the combination of rotational pressure my sights move less during dry fire with this method but I can barely reach the trigger. Am I doing it wrong?

[Jshuberg]

The placement of your finger on the trigger shouldn't shift when rotating your hands inward, or "pinching" the gun high up. The slide of the pistol should be in line with the bones of your forearm when holding it one handed. When holding it 2 handed, your two arms should create an A-frame behind the gun either directly in front of your dominant eye, or directly in front of your nose with the gun canted slightly toward your dominant eye.

If your arms and hands are in the correct locations, changing exactly where or how you are transmitting pressure from your hands to the weapon shouldn't change the location of your finger. You're not moving your hands, your changing how your hands are pressing on the gun.

The ideal position of your finger on the trigger is going to vary from person to person and from gun to gun, but as a general rule it should be somewhere between the center of the pad and the crease of the first digit. If you're only getting the tip of your finger on the trigger, you're likely either holding it incorrectly, or the gun is too big for your hands. Try lining up the gun with the bones of your forearm and dry fire one handed, and see where your finger naturally rests.

One way to determine the "best" location for your finger on the trigger, as well as to dial in the motion of your finger is to do a "weak grip" exercise.

What you want to do is to hold the gun with two hands, but hold it as loosely as possible, just enough to keep from dropping it when you fire it. It should be balanced on your hands rather than being gripped by the hands. It should wobble freely, and a person should be able to lift it out of your hands with almost no resistance.

Load one round, and begin to squeeze the trigger slowly. You'll notice that the pressure between your trigger finger and the web of your thumb will actually stabilize the gun more than your grip does when shooting this way. You want the greatest amount of pressure on the gun to be your trigger finger. It will be much more difficult to call your shots this way, as your attention should be almost entirely on what your finger is doing, rather than where the front sight is when the shot breaks. After the shot breaks, simply look at the location on your target where the round placed.

What this exercise does is to amplify trigger errors that are normally masked by grip pressure. This will allow you to find the optimal location for your finger on the trigger of that specific weapon, and to fine tune your trigger squeeze until your rounds place where they are supposed to with very little grip support to mask trigger error.

You obviously don't want to shoot like this normally, but it is one way to quickly and easily find the ideal position of your finger on the trigger. If your normal shooting grip prevents you from comfortably placing your finger on this spot, something is wrong and needs to be changed.

Hope this helps.