Need input on how to stop "milking the cow"

[johnbu]

Ok, I got Anderson's book on repetitions and refinement and have started a more structured approach w dry fire practice. It's a tough thing to dedicate enough time. Three fairly long sessions and only 1/2-ish of the drills have been done and about 1/3 done twice. Big issue is just learning the drill and doing it enough to get a meaningful par time, so I wind up doing extra reps and redoing par as the time drops after doing it 30x.

But.... the issue I would like assistance on is stopping the sympathetic twitching of the thumb and 3 fingers while attempting to shoot fast. I know my shots are too scattered and have been working on it. But doing the Bill drill today, watching the thumb bounce up and down sort of was a slap up side the head. Looked more like milking a cow than shooting a gun! Lol

The other tip needed is just how to physically move the trigger faster, repetitively. I get about 4-8 triggerings and it's like my brain is out of sync trying to squeeze and retract at the same time so the finger just stops. If that explaination of the problem makes sense.

And fyi, I've scheduled a class for in person help, but it's not until the end of July.

Edited March 31, 2016 by johnbu

[Hi-Power Jack]

Only in Wisconsin, would anyone think that their "thumb bounce" is like "milking a cow". :roflol:

Sounds like you're just getting started with the drills - give them a little more time -

it will come.. Patience.

[johnbu]

Only in Wisconsin, would anyone think that their "thumb bounce" is like "milking a cow". :roflol:

Sounds like you're just getting started with the drills - give them a little more time -

it will come.. Patience.

My wife says I have all the patients in the world... never having used any!

maybe I should just paint the gun brown and white ?

[bradsteimel]

If you get a firm/solid grip with those lower three fingers, it's next to impossible to milk with them when you pull the trigger.

Squeeze the grip

[Pat Miles]

Start a dry fire routine with SLOW shooting routine so you can concentrate on gripping the gun correctly. Gradually speed the process up as you see that you are succeeding at this drill. As you might know, the idea is to ingrain the correct grip/shooting routine in you mind so it becomes second nature and you can move on to learning other techniques. Just as you started slow to learn the correct draw, reload and transitions, you need to do the same with your gun grip during shooting.

[diddomatic]

^this guy gets it. If your not dry fireing correctly your forcing bad habits. Make sure everything's correct before you start going for a new record.

[superluckycat]

I'm a fairly new shooter and I noticed I do the same thing on high speed dry fire Bill Drills.

I can hit all A's in a live Bill Drill in about 2.8s and all A's in about 5.3s for a 25yd Bill Drill.

I guess what I'm saying is don't sweat it too much and keep dry firing. That's what I'm doing.

[Mhall]

In the 3rd book...Get to Work, there is a drill where you use a metronome to tap out a cadence that you press the trigger to. This may be a way to slowly build good habits at a certain cadence, then speed up gradually.

[Flexmoney]

Both your issues may be too much tension in the strong hand. That tends to come from trying to control the recoil with the strong side.

Check out this video from Vogel, with particular interst in what he ways about the support hand.

[Audioman]

[superluckycat]

In the 3rd book...Get to Work, there is a drill where you use a metronome to tap out a cadence that you press the trigger to. This may be a way to slowly build good habits at a certain cadence, then speed up gradually.

Just ordered it. I have a metronome app on my phone but am not sure how to run the drill correctly.

[Mhall]

In the 3rd book...Get to Work, there is a drill where you use a metronome to tap out a cadence that you press the trigger to. This may be a way to slowly build good habits at a certain cadence, then speed up gradually.

Just ordered it. I have a metronome app on my phone but am not sure how to run the drill correctly.

Press the trigger to the beat the metronome is tapping out. Start slow (120 bpm) that equates to .5 splits. Make sure you are pressing the trigger correctly every time. You can feel what different grip adjustments do to your trigger press as you keep pressing the trigger. Once you can properly keep up, up the tempo a little at a time.

This drill is good for endurance too. At higher cadences, I can only keep up for about 30 seconds at a time.

[johnbu]

Start a dry fire routine with SLOW shooting routine so you can concentrate on gripping the gun correctly. Gradually speed the process up as you see that you are succeeding at this drill. As you might know, the idea is to ingrain the correct grip/shooting routine in you mind so it becomes second nature and you can move on to learning other techniques. Just as you started slow to learn the correct draw, reload and transitions, you need to do the same with your gun grip during shooting.

Yep, I think you are right. Been doing more white wall too and since it's warmer (but it did SNOW last saturday morning!), I'm doing more live fire. That's also supporting the grip needs work.

[Jshuberg]

Isolating your trigger finger becomes more difficult the faster you shoot. If you start getting down somewhere around the .12s there will almost certainly be at least some sympathetic muscle movement in the hand. While the primary goal is to minimize it to the least amount of undesired motion possible, in order to shoot accurately at speed you also need to deal with the fact that some amount of undesired motion is likely at speed.

Some people advocate a very strong grip, which effectively masks sympathetic muscle motion. This works well for some people, but not everyone. You need a lot of hand strength and forearm strength, which some people don't have, and its effectiveness at masking the error varies from person to person.

Another technique is to construct a grip that is much less sensitive to sympathetic motion. Inoculating your grip from the negative effects of sympathetic muscle motion.

During dry fire hold your gun with your normal grip strength. Align your sights, and then close your eyes, and relax your grip to the least strength you would be comfortable shooting with. Then open your eyes, and observe your sights. If they've moved, realign them and close your eyes again, and increase your grip strength to your maximum. Open your eyes and observe your sights. Keep doing this exercise across a wide range of grip strength.

If your sights move when applying different grip strengths, then your grip is not symmetrical, and sympathetic motions will throw your shot. Work on changing your grip, where you apply pressure, where your hands are located, how they transfer pressure to the pistol. Keep experimenting until you can construct a grip on the weapon where the sights don't move at all through a range of various grip strengths.

Again, the primary goal is to minimize unwanted motions and errors to the smallest amount possible, but that can only get you around 95% of the way there. To capture the last few percent of your speed/accuracy potential, you also need a grip that either masks, or in inoculates you from accuracy loss due to sympathetic muscle motion.

Hope this helps.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[kcobean]

One thing nobody has talked about here yet is grip balance. Remember that there are NO muscles in your fingers, only tendons. So manipulating the gun requires contraction of muscles in the palm and forearm. If you're gripping the gun so tightly with your strong hand that you cannot isolate the tendons of the index finger during trigger pull, then you need to back down on your strong hand grip just a bit so that your index finger can operate without a) affecting your other fingers (milking the cow) or b ) moving the gun. Let your weak hand pick up the slack. Depending on who you ask, It should be 70/30 or 60/40 weak/strong. This will also let you pull the trigger faster without trigger freeze because you're not binding the index finger tendons up in your grip.

This is something I'm working on myself.

Edited July 12, 2016 by kcobean

[ClangClang]

With the metronome exercise - are you pulling the trigger in DA every time? Or just squeezing a "dead" trigger" I can't visualize how this exercise can be performed in single action dry fire with full trigger pulls.

[MemphisMechanic]

Crush the gun with your weak hand. Literally, squeeze at max strength.

Float the gun in your strong hand. Shoot that way. Fast. It'll convince you.

Stoeger, Vogel, Seeklander... there's a long list of GMs who win big matches who advocate very tight grips for a multitude of beneficial reasons.

[koideath]

I agree work a lot in dry fire on drawing and gripping the living daylights out of it with your weak hand. You want to have strong precise movements.

[fastluck13]

Add some grip strength training too. Think about it this way...You loose control at say above 80% of your grip strength. If you increase your capacity 25%, you can squeeze your current 100% and still be well in your range.

Gripping the crap out of the gun is good but not at the expense of fine motor skills. From tnere it is all about dry fire and working that trigger without disturbing the sights.

Edited August 12, 2016 by fastluck13

[tanks]

...

Gripping the crap out of the gun is good but not at the expense of fine motor skills. ...

Most advocate "gripping the crap out of the gun" with the support hand, so no motor skills impacted as none are required.

[fastluck13]

...

Gripping the crap out of the gun is good but not at the expense of fine motor skills. ...

Most advocate "gripping the crap out of the gun" with the support hand, so no motor skills impacted as none are required.

That only covers part of the equation. trigger hand grip is important to both in freestyle and SH/WH. The key is to get a surplus of strength so you can squeeze the crap out of it by mortal man standards while still not maxing yourself out.

Edited August 12, 2016 by fastluck13

[Jshuberg]

Grip strength is important, but it's not the cure-all that many people believe it is. Once you have enough grip strength applied to control the weapon, and to bring it back from recoil to exactly where it started, any additional grip strength isn't improving your technique, it's masking errors in technique. If you can manage to develop enough grip strength that masking errors works for you all the time, then by all means use it. However many people, shooters with small hands, female shooters, etc. will never be able to develop the hand strength to fully mask their errors. So pointing those people to "increase grip strength" as a solution isn't going to necessarily fully solve their problems.

I only use around 40-50lbs of force in my grip, as measured by a Camry electronic hand dynamometer. Comparatively, many top shooters who utilize the "grip the hell out of the gun with your support hand" technique report using between 100-140lbs of force when gripping the gun!! Even so, I can consistently run a bill drill and put all shots in the A at around .13-.15 second splits. So it's not all about grip strength, it's just as much if not more about technique.

Any grip strength training should also be accompanied by other exercises that improve grip, trigger control and follow through that don't rely entirely on raw grip strength to work.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[fastluck13]

Grip strength is important, but it's not the cure-all that many people believe it is. Once you have enough grip strength applied to control the weapon, and to bring it back from recoil to exactly where it started, any additional grip strength isn't improving your technique, it's masking errors in technique. If you can manage to develop enough grip strength that masking errors works for you all the time, then by all means use it. However many people, shooters with small hands, female shooters, etc. will never be able to develop the hand strength to fully mask their errors. So pointing those people to "increase grip strength" as a solution isn't going to necessarily fully solve their problems.

I only use around 40-50lbs of force in my grip, as measured by a Camry electronic hand dynamometer. Comparatively, many top shooters who utilize the "grip the hell out of the gun with your support hand" technique report using between 100-140lbs of force when gripping the gun!! Even so, I can consistently run a bill drill and put all shots in the A at around .13-.15 second splits. So it's not all about grip strength, it's just as much if not more about technique.

Any grip strength training should also be accompanied by other exercises that improve grip, trigger control and follow through that don't rely entirely on raw grip strength to work.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Agree on all points. Strength is important but only part of the equation.