Recoil Management Tips

[BamaShooter88]

Need help or tips with recoil management. I can’t track my sights. How do I get it to shoot flat?

[gdboytyler]

Hwansik Kim has a great video series on recoil management on the Practical Shooting Training Group.  The video is worth a one month membership.  A quick summary of Hwansik's videos, you need to flex your forearm muscles to keep your wrist from breaking.  Separate your forearm muscle tension from your hand muscle tension to allow quick trigger manipulation while keeping your wrist locked.

[BamaShooter88]

Ok thanks!

[BamaShooter88]

29 minutes ago, gdboytyler said:

Hwansik Kim has a great video series on recoil management on the Practical Shooting Training Group.  The video is worth a one month membership.  A quick summary of Hwansik's videos, you need to flex your forearm muscles to keep your wrist from breaking.  Separate your forearm muscle tension from your hand muscle tension to allow quick trigger manipulation while keeping your wrist locked.

If you join the practical shooting training group can you cancel at any time? I couldn’t find any info on it.

[gdboytyler]

3 minutes ago, BamaShooter88 said:

If you join the practical shooting training group can you cancel at any time? I couldn’t find any info on it.

 

Yes, you can cancel at anytime.  I'm only signed up for the Bronze membership.  For the higher price membership, you can have Hwansik or  Ben  Stoeger review your drill or match videos.

 

I've been able to diagnose errors in my own shooting from watching Ben/Hwansik's videos critiquing other member's videos.

 

 

[BamaShooter88]

1 minute ago, gdboytyler said:

 

Yes, you can cancel at anytime.  I'm only signed up for the Bronze membership.  For the higher price membership, you can have Hwansik or  Ben  Stoeger review your drill or match videos.

 

I've been able to diagnose errors in my own shooting from watching Ben/Hwansik's videos critiquing other member's videos.

 

 

Awesome thanks!

[jmtyndall]

I'm pretty new at this and don't have a ton of advice to give. The first thing I see right away is that the trigger guard is lifting up off the support hand and coming back down. Look at the screenshot I posted below. You can watch the video at 1/4 speed on YouTube to get better sense of what I'm talking about. How hard are you gripping with your support hand? The piece of advice I see thrown around is if your hand/forearm don't hurt after 15-30 minutes of dry fire, you aren't gripping hard enough. Also your support hand wrist is locked pretty well, but your strong hand wrist is moving during recoil. After the recoil the gun dips then takes a bit to settle in.

 

Hwansik and Ben are going to be much better at diagnosing this and helping you fix the issue over at PSTG. But I think you're going to have to get a silver membership to post a video for review.

Edited April 25, 2019 by jmtyndall

[N3WWN]

Try getting more of your support hand on the back of the gun and squeeze your wrists together like you're crushing something.

To open up the backstrap, flag your strong hand thumb during the draw, which will create space for the "meat" of your support hand below the thumb to come into better contact with the side and rear of the grip. Then bring your strong hand thumb down to meet your support hand.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

[BamaShooter88]

I’ve tried everything. I’ve watched tons of videos and tried every technique. It’s either really uncomfortable or I’m straining really hard. Nothing seems to be clicking. I have to re aim after every shot. Cannot track sights at all.

[Paulie]

20 minutes ago, BamaShooter88 said:

I’ve tried everything. I’ve watched tons of videos and tried every technique. It’s either really uncomfortable or I’m straining really hard. Nothing seems to be clicking. I have to re aim after every shot. Cannot track sights at all.

 

1) Check your vision

2) Grip gun hard in dryfire 

3) Experiment with degrees of sight / target focus. Observe rather than death stare the sight lift and return. 

4) Grip, wrist and even elbow/ shoulder tension are all part of the calculus 

[DKorn]

22 minutes ago, BamaShooter88 said:

I’ve tried everything. I’ve watched tons of videos and tried every technique. It’s either really uncomfortable or I’m straining really hard. Nothing seems to be clicking. I have to re aim after every shot. Cannot track sights at all.

 

Sounds like you need to either join PTSG and get some personalized feedback, or find a shooter local to you that has a good grip and recoil control and ask them for help. 

[CHA-LEE]

Managing recoil requires significant pounds of grip force being put on the gun to keep it from moving within your hands. Watch your video again and look at your hand movement vs the gun movement. The gun is moving independently from your hands. When the gun can move within your hands like that you are NOT gripping the gun hard enough. Gripping the gun hard enough is where most people lose their minds because they don't want to accept the fact that you actually need exceptional grip strength to do it properly. Exceptional grip strength can easily be translated to pounds of grip force you can produce per hand. For most non-compensated guns you need a minimum of 100 pounds of grip force PER HAND to sufficiently grip the gun hard enough to minimize muzzle flip. 

 

Professional athletes must maximize strength in key muscle groups in order to produce an optimal performance. This is no different if you want to shoot a pistol in an optimal manner. There is no getting around the fact that you MUST build grip strength to a level that is good enough to properly manage muzzle flip while keeping the gun from shifting around within your hands.

 

You can confirm this by going to your next local match and ask the top shooters to shake your hand HARD. The top shooters will be able to produce a CRUSHING level of grip force with ease on demand.

 

I also want to point out that this is yet another topic that has already been discussed in exhausting depth many times before on this forum. Use the search function on the forum to find answers to your questions. I hate to say it but 99.9999% of everything you can even think of asking has already been fully covered in some manner or another on this forum.

Edited April 25, 2019 by CHA-LEE

[Supermoto]

Grip strength is very important.  You can also use you chest muscle to aid in that griping force.  Mike Seelander has a good video on it

[Captiontom]

Like other have said you lack grip strength, technique or both. Look at the clip jmtyndall posted. The gun is recoiling and the trigger guard lifted up from your support hand. Both hands need to stay in constant contact with the frame of the gun and move with the gun in recoil. Right now your support hand isn’t doing anything. A video from the other side would be helpful,  but I would assume that your strong hand wrist isn't locked. It could be the camera angle but it also looks like your strong hand is too far to the right side of the gun. The joint your strong hand thumb shouldn’t be behind the center of the gun. The recoil need to go into our forearm not the joint of your thumb.

 

Also take a video of your face to see if you are blinking while shooting. You can’t track the sights of your eyes are closed.  Watch videos of how top shooters grip the gun and try different techniques. Rob Vogel has a good video on YouTube along with some other shooters. There isn’t going to be a magic fix. It will take time and practice to make small improvements that will eventually add up to being in control of the gun while shooting 

[elguapo]

On 4/26/2019 at 10:12 AM, Supermoto said:

 You can also use you chest muscle to aid in that griping force.

 

This.  When I grip the gun hard enough to make it shoot flat my pecs, triceps, biceps, and forearms all hurt.

[bimmer1980]

No expert, but maybe you could ->

 

Try more force on your strong hand pinky, that helps stiffen your wrist as well as it doesnt let the gun flip in your hand. Pull the Grip right into your hand. 

Try start building your support hand grip with your fingertips, then wrap the hand around. Like a nutcracker. If that issn´t for you, try a bit of push pull force or do strengths training.

 

You also could try a bit of dryhands and/or chalk.

[jsoupene]

On 4/24/2019 at 5:47 PM, gdboytyler said:

Hwansik Kim has a great video series on recoil management on the Practical Shooting Training Group.  The video is worth a one month membership.  A quick summary of Hwansik's videos, you need to flex your forearm muscles to keep your wrist from breaking.  Separate your forearm muscle tension from your hand muscle tension to allow quick trigger manipulation while keeping your wrist locked.

I would agree 100% with what gdboytyler said. I have watched a ton of videos about grip and I have never seen someone break it down like Hwansik Kim does in his grip videos. They are over an hour long and he goes into a lot of detail. I have actually changed my grip to his "push/pull" method and it almost instantly solved my sore wrist issues I was having even to the point where he has literally saved me money because I no longer have to see a doctor for the pain anymore. He does a great job of basically showing you how to work smarter instead of harder. It was the best $25 I have ever spent plus you get all kinds of other training material and like he said you can cancel at anytime.

[Abflyboy]

This might sound pedantic, but push ups, ab and core exercises, and hand grip exercisers will pay HUGE dividends.

 

I'm just barely a 'B' class shooter and have only been shooting USPSA for 15 months now, but with doing these types of exercises every day, I'm running the trigger faster than I ever thought possible with a polymer gun as well as keeping the gun on target for follow up shots.

[Merldizzle]

Lock wrists

more left hand pressure