Alma's Range Rant

[alma]

Straightening Out My Trigger Pull

Getting more serious about dry fire practice and shooting "dot drills" has started to reveal several areas where my technique has been lacking.

The most important of these is the realization that my trigger pull is bad. I think moving from a Glock to a CZ has made this issue somewhat more pronounced since the longer DA pull is much less forgiving than how my Glock had been configured. I think it is a problem that I have always had but I shot well enough to get by so when I did dryfire I ignored the slight dip and leftward movement of the front sight.

I could always produce an accurate group without issue but it required a conscious effort to gradually increase the pressure on my trigger until the shot broke "on its own." This method is a great way to teach new shooters how to shoot a group and I still find this is an effective method for long range or difficult shots that I known need accuracy but I think it is severely limiting my mid-range and long-range USPSA game.

When I miss, like most right handed shooters, I still tend to miss low and left and when I look at the steel I hit during Area 8 the pattern because fairly obvious.

I think it was TGO was recently commenting on someone elses range journal (Esthar's I think) who said something simple and straightforward about just needing to learning how to pull the trigger fast without disturbing the sights.

That simple and very basic statement made me realize that I had been going about it all wrong and was trying to artificially fix my trigger pull by slowing down instead of correcting the underlying issues.

Often you hear the advice given to "pull the trigger straight back" but I really didn't get that or understand that it was my issue. In another Video, Ron Avery discussed the need to ensure that when your shot breaks, ideally the part of your finger which is on the trigger should be exactly at 90 degrees from the face of the trigger to ensure that you are pulling straight back into the frame. Unfortunately I have some pretty large hands and most triggers just aren't far enough out for me to get that ideal placement and I can't shift my grip enough to make that change. As a side note I have always assumed that the perfect trigger for me might be an SVI trigger with a long insert but that is a theory I have not tested yet.

Coming from shooting Glocks I was used to having my finger placed somewhere on or just past the first distal joint. Even with the largest grips that I can find for my CZ this doesn't seem to be optimal for me on that trigger.

I am now trying to use more of the pad of my finger to shoot my CZs but my subconscious hasn't yet got on board with that program as a frequently have to stop and readjust my finger placement to get the desired outcome.

In addition to finger placement I am trying to learn to "pull straight back" which seems to be much harder than it sounds. To get my gun to stay straight during a fast trigger pull it kind of feels like I am trying to curl my finger more in than just pull on the trigger straight back. Again, I have larger hands so your experience is likely (and hopefully) different than what mine has been.

I am grateful that my CZ's trigger can be manipulated multiple times during dry fire after the initial double action shot. This repeated manipulation of the trigger has helped a lot to see what was going on when before I was able to ignore it when my dry fire practice consisted of just one trigger pull. I am nowhere near curing my problem but at least now I see it and I am paying more attention to it during dry fire and live fire practice.

Unfortunately I don't have nearly enough time to go to the range and when I do go for practice I am limited to the nearby indoor range. I really appreciate Ben Stoeger's guidance from his dry fire books where he teaches that although dry fire is a valuable tool for learning skills you need to have live fire time to validate what you are seeing in dryfire.

Perhaps the best reinforcement that I am on the right track came at a practice session just before Area 8. I had started to speed up on some 8 inch paper plate targets set at 7 yards and after about a bill drill's worth of shots I only had one or two hits. I realized that my finger's first joint was on the trigger and that I wasn't focusing on pulling it straight back (which feels like pulling in towards my strong hand unfortunately). I slightly moved my finger, focused on pulling correctly and repeated the same drill with 6 out of 6 landing on the paper.

This was really encouraging but, again, I am far from resolving my issues. I need to get to where I can pull the trigger correctly and at speed every time and that will take a lot more hours of dry fire and a lot of live rounds down range. I believe that this is one of my main issues when it comes to being able to speed up my splits while maintaining accuracy on those classifier range target arrays.

[Moltke]

Good stuff Alma.

What you say about trigger pull is spot on. I've found that telling people to be "fast on the sights and slow on the trigger" helps as a stepping stone to get them to learn to maintain accuracy at higher speeds but sooner or later they will plateau. Eventually we all need to master how to move fast on the trigger too "perfectly".

Have you tried dry firing up close against a plain white wall to really see how much your double action pull is moving the sights before the break? You might be surprised at what you find. I'm constantly surprised at how clean I think my trigger pull is until I do this and then its a let down. Shooting on brown (cardboard) or black (dots) will often blend the sight movement just enough that youre not seeing everything. The higher contrast of bright white is unforgiving.

Ernest Langdon is a perfect example of a shooter who is fast on the sights and "focused" on the trigger, which is what I'm trying to do now too.

[Esther]

Nice. Alma, I hear you about not getting to practice nearly enough at an outdoor range!

Ken, I like what you said about being fast on the sights and focused on the trigger. Too often in dry-fire I swing my gun to a spot and then press the "dead" trigger twice without worrying about the quality of my press at all. I'm going to try dissociating being fast on the sights (between targets) and fast on the trigger (on a white wall) in dry-fire and then put them together in live-fire.

I miss shooting with you guys!

[taadski]

Straightening Out My Trigger Pull

[snip]

Ron Avery discussed the need to ensure that when your shot breaks, ideally the part of your finger which is on the trigger should be exactly at 90 degrees from the face of the trigger to ensure that you are pulling straight back into the frame.

To get my gun to stay straight during a fast trigger pull it kind of feels like I am trying to curl my finger more in than just pull on the trigger straight back.

Alma,

I really appreciate all your documentation. Some valuable stuff. In this last post of yours (straightening out my trigger pull) I'm finding a ton of parallels with my own journey. The quotes above in particular strike me with interest; partly because there seems to be a bit of a juxtaposition there and party because I've experienced the same thing. I'd be interested in hearing more of your thoughts on the matter and look forward to you sharing your developments.

t

[alma]

Ken, Esther, and taadski, thanks for the advice, feedback, and support.

Ken, yes, I have been doing some "white wall" dry fire just to watch my sights. I can do it without disturbing my sights going slower. I am trying to make that pull more aggressive now without disturbing the sights.

[alma]

Area 8 After Action Report

I had about two pages written up with my thoughts on my performance at Area 8 but somehow I managed to close that document without saving so you now get the condensed version; maybe that isn't such a bad thing. I would welcome any feedback on obvious areas where I can improve.

Stage 4

The video starts in at Stage 4. My time is about 4 second off the pace. I remember feeling that I was running too slow. The other obvious area for improvement would be improving my split and transition times for the first three positions. For as complicated as the stage looked from the initial match book it might as well have been 4 boxes with mandatory arrays shot from each.

Stage 5

My worst stage performance in the match. I tried a risky stage plan that had me taking sloooow shots on some tight targets, one of which landed in the wood for a "mike." Skipping those two positions was absolutely not worth it. I ran it in 24 seconds but the following week we shot almost the same stage but ran up to all of the far targets and I shot it in 17 something. A well-known and respected GM who was on the squad behind mine said that it was the stupidest stage plan he had ever heard of.

Stage 6

I practiced long and hard before hand to ensure I was comfortable with knowing what it would take to shoot upper A hits. Given the very low hit factor on this stage I was much more focused on making sure that I had no misses than I was with trying to go fast. I had one major mess up when I thought I saw a hole in the black of the three targets stacked one on top of another so I took a make up shot that I didn't need. That make up shot really messed up my head because then I missed a reload and shot the remaining targets even slower. I also missed two positions during the stage so I had extra setup time. My plan was to shoot this stage and stage 3 conservatively because of what I perceived as a high risk factor with little to gain for the overall match. I got all my hits and feel I succeeded there even though it is extremely painful for me to watch this stage.

Stage 7

I feel like my performance on this stage and the next one were slower than they needed to be because I was still in first gear from stage 6. It took until after lunch on stage 9 before I felt like I was speeding up again.

I didn't practice empty gun loads and it looks like I have no sense of urgency in getting my gun up and ready to go. I also went too far into the windows which slowed down my transition between windows.

Stage 8

I had all Alphas which means I should have sped up a bit. I missed one piece of steel on the first pass (to the left) and the make up shot didn't take it down. I only noticed after I finished shooting everything else so I easily added another 3 seconds getting that one down for good.

Stage 9

I was fairly happy with my work on the outside target arrays. Inside I wasted too much time moving around and had a no-shoot while missing a shot on the steel. If I had it to do over again I would try to set up for the most difficult shot on over the table first and work my way back out.

Stage 10

I just missed too many times on the steel. As far as I could tell I am still consistently missing to the left (see my trigger control discussions above). To finally get the last target down I consciously started pulling the trigger straight back instead of just slowing the pull down. I hit the center target without coming to a complete stop and I had no extra reloads which was a small victory.

Stage 1

I did a risky stage plan that had me doing a slide lock reload 3 times on the stage and didn't leave me with much margin for error on the steel. I should have shot the paper targets faster and one mini popper which was hit just below the calibration zone didn't fall.

Stage 2

My time was comparable with the better shooters except the top three but looking at the video I should have got into and out of the lowest port faster. I missed one steel which was out of my view when I first got into position. Other than the obvious miss, my hits were very poor on these closer targets when compared to the better shooters. When targets are that close I really can't be satisfied with playing 3GN and getting two anywhere, I need to shoot for "As."

Stage 3

It was the end of the day and this was stage that I had been worried about because of all the no shoots. I had planned to take my time and get "As" which is what I did. Again, I am very slow here and don't like watching it but I didn't want a catastrophic failure on my last stage of the day. I took way too long on the last target on the left side so I am wondering whether setting up on the tightest shot first would have been helpful?

Overall I placed fairly consistent on all the stages except for stage 5. That was one of my goals going it was to strive for consistency so I am pleased with that. I also had a huge focus on accuracy for stage 6 and stage 3. This was the major focus on my practice going on and I do feel I learned a lot about what it takes to reliably get hits on tight shots when needed. The fact that JJ and Ben were there burning down the stages definitely puts performance into a new perspective and is a humbling experience. Even without those two there it is nice to be in an area where there is so much competition in Production division. Originally there were 133 shooters signed up for production including 6 GMs and 22 Ms. I ended up coming in at 20. Things to work on still include speeding up splits on medium range targets, shooting fewer Cs and Ds, and getting my trigger pull where it needs to be to reliably take down steel.

[alma]

I am shooting a 3 gun match this week.

I was at my first stage early and ready to shoot at 11:30 for a 12:30 start time.

The ROs were instructed to run another squad first so they could finish early tomorrow. I didn't shoot until 2:40.

This match has been one disaster after another from a performance perspective and if there wasn't a good prize table I would not bother showing up to shoot at 7 AM tomorrow.

[Moltke]

Embrace the suck. None of us are doing awesome this time around.

[Jadeslade]

Alma and Mollke. Awesome. Truly.

[alma]

The UnGlocking Continues – Point of Aim

After Area 8 and the FNH 3 Gun Championship (which ended well by the way and an after action report should be coming soon) I took a short break to regroup but have since started up with again with regular dry fire sessions and a bit of live fire range time.

Last week I found a few minutes to run to the range to test fire my new M&P 15-22 and practice my pistol skills. Although I found the practice worthwhile and I gained some insights during the session I do feel I could have been much more organized and more effective.

New goal: always have a detailed plan about what I will practice during live fire. In other words I want to know ahead of time which drills to run, and track progress for those drills. This session wasn’t nearly as bad as the days when I would just throw rounds at the paper without even taping or having no idea what was happening in detail but, again, I could have done better. I think I have a tendency to try to assure that the people at the bay next to me understand that I am capable of group shooting before I start squirting rounds around the C zone but I need to leave my ego somewhere else and just get the work done.

I practiced a lot of drawing and firing two shots into a single USPSA target. My draw speed and first shot have definitely gone down this year because of all of the dry fire. Where 1.1 to 1.3 was pretty common I now find myself mostly in the .90s. My hits on those draws, however, started out low, at the bottom or just below the A zone. Unlike before when trigger control was to blame, this time when I came up for a flash sight picture I was only seeing the rear sights with my front still below my view. My theory is that all of those years of Glock shooting are still affecting my point of aim making me naturally point the muzzle lower than needed so it’s time to work that out of my system.

Back to basics again with dry fire. Instead of coming out of the holster for a quick trigger pull I have been focusing on coming out and just getting a good sight picture. I am also spending a lot of time starting with the gun just below where my hands come together during my draw stroke, and just coming up for a sight picture on different targets like simulated plates and poppers. I know that I need to be able to immediately look at and move my gun to any spot with my sights already aligned because right now I regularly find myself hunting for the front sight because its view is obscured by the rear and I am not perfectly in line. I am using a pretty narrow rear sight which doesn’t help my current situation. The next time I set up a gun I would like try a wider and deeper rear notch.