Stop fighting the dang gun!

[Neomet]

I've been struggling a bit of late with getting the dot to settle down for my second shot. I couldn't figure out why. Used to be that my second shot speed was not an issue but darned if it hadn't become one.

I was practicing with one of my buddies today who simply said "Stop fighting the gun. Just let it go up and come down." Inside of five shots the dot just went up a bit and then sat right down like a well trained poodle. I had been trying to force the dot back into position and was managing to drive the dot all over (and off) the target.

Yet again, I am reminded that forcing pretty much anything in this sport is counter-productive.

[JThompson]

Amen.

[benos]

I've been struggling a bit of late with getting the dot to settle down for my second shot. I couldn't figure out why. Used to be that my second shot speed was not an issue but darned if it hadn't become one.

I was practicing with one of my buddies today who simply said "Stop fighting the gun. Just let it go up and come down." Inside of five shots the dot just went up a bit and then sat right down like a well trained poodle. I had been trying to force the dot back into position and was managing to drive the dot all over (and off) the target.

Yet again, I am reminded that forcing pretty much anything in this sport is counter-productive.

That's cool when you directly experience a principle that simplifies everything.

be

[Carmoney]

Careful, though.

Too many shooters take this concept and use it as a reason to justify using a weak floppy-armed hold on the gun. And those shooters never progress.

[Victor_R]

"Stop fighting the gun. Just let it go up and come down."

I read this thread yesterday. I thought about this today when I went to the range and I have to say that this was great advice. I now know why I wasn't accurate and it was getting to me. My accuracy went from 20% to 70% and now I just have to practice this more. All this time I was trying to stop the recoil instead of letting it happen. Thank you for posting this info.

Edited October 27, 2009 by Victor R

[SHinck82]

Simple yet the best advice I've ever heard. Well other than the infamous don't suck.

[kgunz11]

I think we call that an "epiphany".

[Xd357]

Good stuff!

thanks.

[Bongo Boy]

Working in the gym with Spouse and we're working shoulders at the time, my set was finished and I complained that the 'only place I feel much is in my forearms'. She said, "You probably have a death grip on the machine. Put your thumb on the outside instead of opposed." Problem solved.

While you can't do that with a handgun, it says a lot about stuff we do that we aren't concious of because so much else is going on. I'm not saying Death Grip was your issue here, I'm using that analogy thing.

[benos]

"Stop fighting the gun. Just let it go up and come down."

I read this thread yesterday. I thought about this today when I went to the range and I have to say that this was great advice. I now know why I wasn't accurate and it was getting to me. My accuracy went from 20% to 70% and now I just have to practice this more. All this time I was trying to stop the recoil instead of letting it happen.

Yes. If you just grip the pistol with a nice firm grip, and don't do anything but pull the trigger straight to the rear with enough force to release the hammer, the front sight will track smoothly up and right back down and stop in the rear notch.

Don't try to control recoil, allow it to work for you.

be

[safarihunter]

While the relaxed (firm) grip sounds counter productive, once I stopped fighting the pistol, my scores improved. After a few matches, the firm relaxed grip is natural

[benos]

Perhaps a better phrase for the word "relax" is "not tense."

be

[sherpa]

thanks to this forum. After so long (for me, almost 2 years since I started shooting), I've got the hang of just getting a firm grip (i.e. relaxed and not tense, even looser than driving a hammer into a nail) and noticing the sights just falling into place, and fixing the issue of 'jiggling' that I posted before. My splits for consistent shots are now faster! Thanks again to Brian, Pat H., and Flex! The gun will indeed just go back to it's previous position w/o effort. This is using a grip very close to the one shown by Brian in the BF book at page 41, where there's good contact w/ the fingers and also at the left grip panel. FWIW, one significant thing that helped the consistency of the sight's return was the contact of my lower palm on the left grip panel (previously I was focusing on contact only at my upper palm). Using this grip with both palms contacting the left panel, my thumb doesn't reach the frame at all, like about 1/2 inch away from it.

One note though. I still have this feeling that I could still speed up recovery of the sights to get back sooner. With the current grip, it seems to have solved the lateral movement, but the rise seems higher. I know it has been mentioned many times here that the sights will lift and go back very fast but the sensation of the recoil makes me feel it can still be improved/reduced. My next experiment is to use the suggestion of Brian (also mentioned in the book) to 'extend the weak thumb and point it forcefully to the target', and see how much faster it causes the sights to fall into place w/o jiggling or causing the sights to dive further than vertical alignment.

PS: If it may help some, my previous tightening on the grip was caused by sweaty hands that is magnified by the humidity and heat here in Manila. I've tried Progrip and it does help but only for a short while, afterwhich my hands would perspire again, so I had to keep applying. Recently, I found a better solution (powder with a substance that absorbs perspiration like in deodorants) and it keeps my hands dry all throughout the match. I'm glad I found this.

[TWHaz]

I've been struggling a bit of late with getting the dot to settle down for my second shot. I couldn't figure out why. Used to be that my second shot speed was not an issue but darned if it hadn't become one.

I was practicing with one of my buddies today who simply said "Stop fighting the gun. Just let it go up and come down." Inside of five shots the dot just went up a bit and then sat right down like a well trained poodle. I had been trying to force the dot back into position and was managing to drive the dot all over (and off) the target.

Yet again, I am reminded that forcing pretty much anything in this sport is counter-productive.

When I started to shoot the open gun I put all the open tools on the gun. (For me) and maybe not others I found myself trying to grip the gun to death. The main culprit was the Thumb rest. After putting A Gangster (Cheeley side mount, Thanks Ogiebb) mount on my gun to get the C-more lower I had no room for my thumb rest. I found the TR (thumb rest) was allowing me to put pressures on the gun that were not consistant. The TR also did not allow a full foward rotation of my weak hand.

Now I have balanced pressure on the gun, it goes straight up and down all the time not some of the time. I can stop the gun smoothly and get a "consistant" grip when I present the gun from any draw scenario.

It may be one of those "new thing of the day" things brian talks about in his book, But it is still happening after 2 weeks and my shooting has jumped another level.

Edited November 30, 2009 by TWHaz

[j1b]

This is all so much about consistency and understanding what words mean what you need them to mean.

I have in general always lacked the ability to assess the tension I hold the gun with. So for me I in inherently had to come up with a word that helped me just let my hands do what I wanted them to do without technically telling them how to do it. I couldn't say "firm" or "tense" or whatever because I couldn't connect to it.

So what I began to work on was driving the gun. Driving was the word that connected with me. It allowed me flexibility in interpretation, allowed me to know I had to have a degree of control and yet realize that the true symphony came in coordinating with the gun and not fighting it.

Once at a show Springfield Armory set up a booth of air cycled guns. And it was then that I realized how much the gun helps me. Without true recoil, the action of the slide became very apparent. It became so evident that the slide pushes the gun back down. So when I got back to live fire it was awesome knowing that the gun would help me accomplish what I wanted. It wasn't something I had to fight, I actually had to embrace it. Control it. Drive it. But work with it (versus against it) and life got a lot better!

Jack

[Flexmoney]

Careful, though.

Too many shooters take this concept and use it as a reason to justify using a weak floppy-armed hold on the gun. And those shooters never progress.

That is true too.

I final got to see a shooter in a match that ran a 6in Limited gun well (not to name names, but it was a shooter from KY). Most others that I have watched, their running of the gun looks 'wet noodl'ish'. I see that with some shooters and their open guns too. I think they just expect the gun to majic the work/skill for them.

Mike, I am guessing that you like a firm grip from your background of shooting 'weaver'ish' and hot load for bowling pins?

I like a firm grip (support hand) from shooting a light gun (stock Glock) in Limited Major.

Anyway...that is just a bit of perspective/rambling on my part. Fundamentally, it's about driving the sights.

[Flexmoney]

My next experiment is to use the suggestion of Brian (also mentioned in the book) to 'extend the weak thumb and point it forcefully to the target', and see how much faster it causes the sights to fall into place w/o jiggling or causing the sights to dive further than vertical alignment.

I like that. Let us know what you notice about it.

[sherpa]

I will Flex, when I focus training on that part. During practice yesterday, however, on trying to master the amount of pressure w/ my new grip, I took videos so I could play them back in my PC in slow motion to see how the gun was moving after firing. I think I found a new problem....here's what's happening as seen in slo mo playback:

1. Fire the gun, the muzzle rises and my arms slightly bend on the elbow

2. while my arms are still slightly bent and the gun now in a bit higher elevation, the recoil spring returns the slide immediately forward. Hence even though the slide is back to battery, the gun is still positioned at a higher elevation than the original shooting elevation.

3. Then, my arms brings the gun back to the original level, and when I see the sights aligned again, I fire the next shot.

No problem with horizontal alignment. The new grip with good contact on the fingers and that of the left palms on the left grip panel are working.

The problem is now with delay in vertical alignment, w/c I saw is caused by the delay from what I described in #2 where the elevation of the gun is still higher even as the slide has already returned. I tried to play back in slo mo other videos, like that of Todd Jarret (same video in youtube) but his arms don't bend during recoil. Only the gun recoils but the wrist/arm don't, so as soon as the slide returns, it's already level, which makes it faster to make the 2nd shot. In my case, obviously, there's the delay of having to bring back the gun to the original level. Am I supposed to be pushing and gripping harder with my strong hand so that my strong elbow won't bend during recoil? How can I correct this?

Thanks.

[Flyin40]

Saul on recoil

Flyin

[AriM]

I have found that once your hammer spring/recoil spring/firing pin stop (I like the flat bottom EGW, with a small radius on the bottom right corner) are in harmony, the gun will automatically settle back into the original position...I just "roll" my finger over the trigger, BANG, relax, and the gun magically comes back to where it started....the more I seem to worry about it, the more of a problem it seems to be (hmmmm).....I can run through a 10 round mag fast enough to have my range master give me a funny look, and no high shots...synergy (probably more about the pistol and me just letting it do it's thing)....

[JThompson]

I fit a new grip on my open and saw a huge dip here. I think that swapping out the magwell might have changed my grip a bit too. When I noticed it I eased up on the grip and it went away. Here's the question that is nagging at me though. I didn't think I was over gripping the gun and still don't. My open gun weighs in about two pounds, and you add a big stick in there and you have a lot more than that. If I use that relaxed grip, what I see is horrible transitions in that the gun is bouncing pretty bad when stopping on target and then rebounding back. With my regular grip this is minimized, but with the lighter grip, to keep the dot from dipping, it's a real issue. I'm wondering if some of you alter your grip for transitions, and if so, are you even aware of it. What I would like to do is work with ht e gun and see if I can get the gun to perform with the grip I have now. It's either that or use a tighter grip on transitions, but that seems like it would be hard to learn with any consistency.

NOTE: I always had a slight dip, but with the aluminum grip this has really seemed to increase the travel of the dot in a downward motion. I only fired a couple hundred with it, so I'm not sure where I need to go yet. I want to get another Cape magwell on it and make sure this other magwell isn't exacerbating the issue.

Edited August 24, 2010 by JThompson

[benos]

In theory, my goal was to find one grip that I applied all the time. Although in practice, that grip might increase a bit on closer targets.

But If I could manage to keep my "one grip" on close / hoser targets, I shot my best.

be

[Sam]

So, it isn't cool to be a "Gun Fighter", then?

[sigsauerfan]

I've been struggling a bit of late with getting the dot to settle down for my second shot. I couldn't figure out why. Used to be that my second shot speed was not an issue but darned if it hadn't become one.

I was practicing with one of my buddies today who simply said "Stop fighting the gun. Just let it go up and come down." Inside of five shots the dot just went up a bit and then sat right down like a well trained poodle. I had been trying to force the dot back into position and was managing to drive the dot all over (and off) the target.

Yet again, I am reminded that forcing pretty much anything in this sport is counter-productive.

well,good advice.i'll try this motion later.

i'd like to get more consistency trough this, not that i'm inconsistent,but i feel too much tension in the wrists on reaquisition (second shot) wich sometimes make the front landing off instead of dead-on,wich is lenghtening the 2nd shot.

i tought locking the wrists were helping target reaquisition.it seems good for the first shot,but stress in the wrists seems to upset the re-aim in my case.

Edited August 24, 2010 by sigsauerfan

[Youngeyes]

I've been shooting for years. Not reg competition like most of you, just fun. A quote always stuck with me that seems to be appropriate to this thread. "Rigidity means a dead hand, flexibility means a living hand. One must understand this fully" Miyamoto Musashi,Samurai (1584-1645).