Please critique my draw

[Pro2AInPA]

Just a short video I just did of three draws (draw, aim, fire). Please critique me on what needs improvement. Par time was set for 1.5, so all I know is it was faster than that.

As far as equipment, the weak link right now is the holster. It's a comp-tac paddle, and it takes a while to get a 6" gun up and out of a holster that's right up against my body. A DOH or a SpeedSec is in my immediate future plans.

http://s303.photobucket.com/albums/nn150/d...rrent=video.flv

Edited December 30, 2009 by Pro2AInPA

[Calmwater]

I think you could have the holster a little farther forward and still be behind your hip bone and legal.......... If you are shooting limited you could move the holster forward A LOT. This would save you some time.

You look relaxed. That is a good thing.

[jar]

I'm not as good/experienced as most of the guys here, but the one thing I notice is that you're kind of scooping the gun up. If you drive it more straight up and straight out, you can get your eyes on the sights faster.

[CHA-LEE]

Here is what I see….

(1) There is no sense of urgency in your arm movements. The faster you get to the gun, get it out, build your grip and present it the less time the whole process will take.

(2) You move your hands in tandem during the draw, which is good. But your weak hand comes up to your chest and is just chilling out there until you get the gun up and out. This tells you two things. First you are taking too much time to get the gun up and out. Your weak hand shouldn’t have any extra time to just be hanging out somewhere. Secondly you want to eliminate extra motions. Putting your hand up into a “Parking Place” on your chest is an extra motion. You can just as easily get your weak hand moving towards the gun crossing the centerline of your chest. The sooner you build your grip the sooner you can shoot. Your hands should be coming together low in the process of the draw to start building the grip. Not when you have the gun almost fully mounted and extended.

(3) The only movement you should have are your arms and hands. You should be able to draw the gun, build your grip and position the gun in front of your dominate eye without moving anything else. You currently have a lot of extra upper body motion during the draw. You are also bobbing your head down to the sights instead of brining the sights up to your eye.

(4) You are taking at least a quarter of a second to break the shot after drawing the gun and having it fully mounted. What are you waiting for on breaking the shot? If you are aligning the sights before you can break the shot, this tells you that your shooting index isn’t right. Either your arms, grip, or stance isn’t correct. Every time you bring the gun up in front of your face the sights need to be aligned. You should be able to draw and mount the gun with your eyes closed then open your eyes and see that the sights are aligned in front of your dominate eye.

(5) This is very subtle but very, very important. Look at your eyes when you pull the trigger. You blink every time you pull the trigger. You need to keep your eyes open the whole time especially when you break your shots. If you blink when the gun fires you will not be able to call your shots, because your eyes are closed when the gun fires. Blinking when the gun fires is a hard thing to overcome. But don’t further burn in this bad habit by doing it while dry firing as well. Keep those eyes open!!!

(6) Dry fire in a more real match type situation. Drawing and firing only one shot then breaking down your grip will only happen in VERY VERY rare cases. Most of the time you are drawing while you are moving to your first shooting position and then shooting multiple rounds. Standing in a stationary position and doing 987394729347 draws to one shot will make you the stand and shoot one shot champion. Too bad there isn’t a competition for that. Practice what you will experience in a match. Drawing on the move, shooting multiple shots, transitioning between targets, odd starting positions, reloading on the move. Practicing things like that in dry fire will reap more reward on match day than any stationary stuff once you have your fundamentals down.

Edited December 30, 2009 by CHA-LEE

[jkatz44]

Here is what I see….

(1) There is no sense of urgency in your arm movements. The faster you get to the gun, get it out, build your grip and present it the less time the whole process will take.

(2) You move your hands in tandem during the draw, which is good. But your weak hand comes up to your chest and is just chilling out there until you get the gun up and out. This tells you two things. First you are taking too much time to get the gun up and out. Your weak hand shouldn’t have any extra time to just be hanging out somewhere. Secondly you want to eliminate extra motions. Putting your hand up into a “Parking Place” on your chest is an extra motion. You can just as easily get your weak hand moving towards the gun crossing the centerline of your chest. The sooner you build your grip the sooner you can shoot. Your hands should be coming together low in the process of the draw to start building the grip. Not when you have the gun almost fully mounted and extended.

(3) The only movement you should have are your arms and hands. You should be able to draw the gun, build your grip and position the gun in front of your dominate eye without moving anything else. You currently have a lot of extra upper body motion during the draw. You are also bobbing your head down to the sights instead of brining the sights up to your eye.

(4) You are taking at least a quarter of a second to break the shot after drawing the gun and having it fully mounted. What are you waiting for on breaking the shot? If you are aligning the sights before you can break the shot, this tells you that your shooting index isn’t right. Either your arms, grip, or stance isn’t correct. Every time you bring the gun up in front of your face the sights need to be aligned. You should be able to draw and mount the gun with your eyes closed then open your eyes and see that the sights are aligned in front of your dominate eye.

(5) This is very subtle but very, very important. Look at your eyes when you pull the trigger. You blink every time you pull the trigger. You need to keep your eyes open the whole time especially when you break your shots. If you blink when the gun fires you will not be able to call your shots, because your eyes are closed when the gun fires. Blinking when the gun fires is a hard thing to overcome. But don’t further burn in this bad habit by doing it while dry firing as well. Keep those eyes open!!!

(6) Dry fire in a more real match type situation. Drawing and firing only one shot then breaking down your grip will only happen in VERY VERY rare cases. Most of the time you are drawing while you are moving to your first shooting position and then shooting multiple rounds. Standing in a stationary position and doing 987394729347 draws to one shot will make you the stand and shoot one shot champion. Too bad there isn’t a competition for that. Practice what you will experience in a match. Drawing on the move, shooting multiple shots, transitioning between targets, odd starting positions, reloading on the move. Practicing things like that in dry fire will reap more reward on match day than any stationary stuff once you have your fundamentals down.

Well said!

CHA LEE pretty much covered it all.

[Pro2AInPA]

(4) You are taking at least a quarter of a second to break the shot after drawing the gun and having it fully mounted. What are you waiting for on breaking the shot? If you are aligning the sights before you can break the shot, this tells you that your shooting index isn’t right. Either your arms, grip, or stance isn’t correct. Every time you bring the gun up in front of your face the sights need to be aligned. You should be able to draw and mount the gun with your eyes closed then open your eyes and see that the sights are aligned in front of your dominate eye.

Aligning the sights. It's my biggest weakness. The sights are almost never perfectly aligned when the gun comes up in front of my face. How do I tell if it's my arms, grip, or stance that's causing it?

[CHA-LEE]

How to correct the issue depends on the failure mode. Answer this question....

(1) Are the sights always misaligned in the same manner? Such as the front sight usually being low left.

[Dan Burwell]

looks to me like you are not getting the front sight up to eye level until you have the gun extended. I like to get my front sight in my vision as quickly as possible to I can align the sights as I press out the gun.

Can you get us a side view so we can see where you are building your grip?

Do not worry about speed right now work on that index. The more you handle the gun the better the index will get. You want to get to the point that the gun is just like your index finger you can point it right at any target without thought.

[CHA-LEE]

You want to shoot from a natural arm position. The best way to find your own natural arm position is to do this. Stand straight up with your feet in the same front to back position. One foot not forward or behind the other. Totally relax your arms, hands and shoulders and then bend forward at the waist until your upper body is level with the ground. Your arms should be dangling in front of you. Now, with using as little muscle movement as possible move your hands together into a pseudo grip position. Then keep your arms, hands, and shoulders in this new position and straighten back up so now your hands are out in front of you as you are standing straight. THIS is your natural arm, hand, shoulder position and where you should be shooting from. No two people have the same natural position either. Some have their elbows more or less bent than another. The important thing is that this natural arm position will give you the most balance support of the gun when you shoot. It will give you equal support from both arms and also serve as a built in shock absorber at the elbows as you shoot. Now this is only ONE piece of your total shooting index. This arm, hand, shoulder position may be balanced but it may also have you pointing off to the left or right. For example, my natural arm, hand, shoulder position has me pointing to the left. To offset this I have to bias my right foot back about half a foots length to point my hips to the right and bring my natural arm, hand, shoulder position back to a straight ahead condition. This is just another piece of the total shooting index.

Once you have those two things down, then get into this stance but this time LOCK your knees. With your knees locked slowly start leaning forward at your ankles until you feel like you are going to fall forward, not to excessively though. Stay in that position and now unlock your knees and bend them to a point where you feel stable. You should have most of your weight on the balls of your feet but you should still have your heels in contact with the ground. This is the most stable and aggressive stance you can build and you will be shocked at how much that stance alone will help in managing recoil.

[Pro2AInPA]

You want to shoot from a natural arm position. The best way to find your own natural arm position is to do this. Stand straight up with your feet in the same front to back position. One foot not forward or behind the other. Totally relax your arms, hands and shoulders and then bend forward at the waist until your upper body is level with the ground. Your arms should be dangling in front of you. Now, with using as little muscle movement as possible move your hands together into a pseudo grip position. Then keep your arms, hands, and shoulders in this new position and straighten back up so now your hands are out in front of you as you are standing straight. THIS is your natural arm, hand, shoulder position and where you should be shooting from. No two people have the same natural position either. Some have their elbows more or less bent than another. The important thing is that this natural arm position will give you the most balance support of the gun when you shoot. It will give you equal support from both arms and also serve as a built in shock absorber at the elbows as you shoot. Now this is only ONE piece of your total shooting index. This arm, hand, shoulder position may be balanced but it may also have you pointing off to the left or right. For example, my natural arm, hand, shoulder position has me pointing to the left. To offset this I have to bias my right foot back about half a foots length to point my hips to the right and bring my natural arm, hand, shoulder position back to a straight ahead condition. This is just another piece of the total shooting index.

Once you have those two things down, then get into this stance but this time LOCK your knees. With your knees locked slowly start leaning forward at your ankles until you feel like you are going to fall forward, not to excessively though. Stay in that position and now unlock your knees and bend them to a point where you feel stable. You should have most of your weight on the balls of your feet but you should still have your heels in contact with the ground. This is the most stable and aggressive stance you can build and you will be shocked at how much that stance alone will help in managing recoil.

I just followed all of those directions verbatim and WOW . . . honestly, huge difference. Thank you SO much. This is definitely going to help me.

[CHA-LEE]

Building the grip during the draw is a little harder to explain. Its best to start with totally relaxed hands and arms then explode both of your hands movement to the gun. Obviously your strong had will get to the gun faster but you should have the gun up and out of the holster by the time your weak hand gets to the gun. The best way to describe building your grip is to have your weak hand in a flat “I am going to back hand slap you” finger position low at belly height and then with an upward karate chop motion the base of your pointer finger should press up against the under side of the trigger guard and from there you simply push the gun out as you clasp down with your weak hand. The sooner you can initiate this upward karate chop to meet with the gun the better as building your grip early on in the draw means that it will be 100% complete and solid by the time you get the gun fully mounted and extended. If this means moving your weak hand across the center line of your body towards the gun then do it. The sooner you can get both hands on the gun the sooner you can start building your grip. The main movement of the gun during the draw should be mainly UP, then a punch out motion. Not a bowling or fishing motion. Up, then punch out.

The “Best” way to grip the gun can be subjective as some people say this % of grip pressure on this hand and that % on the other hand. One thing for certain is that a thumbs forward grip is superior for the type of shooting we do. For me it was easier to think about the grip by breaking down each hands purpose. The purpose of the strong hand is to get a high as possible grip on the gun (beaver tail buried hard into the web of your hand between your thumb and pointer finger), followed by applying pressure on the gun from a front to back vantage point. Not too hard though or you will lose dexterity in your trigger finger and you will experience trigger freeze when you shoot fast. Then the weak hands main purpose is to have the wrist cammed forward so that your thumb can literally point at the target. The pointer finger should be pressed up against the bottom of the trigger guard and the heel of your hand should be pressed up against the left side grip and your fingers will be interlocked with your strong hand fingers. The main pressure applied with this hand is a left to right gripping force. So the strong hand is gripping from front to back and the weak hand is gripping from right to left on the gun.

How hard you grip will always vary depending on the shooting conditions you are in. When you shoot fast you like everyone else will bear down on the gun more than shooting slow precise shots. Everyone’s grip pressure is always varying throughout a stage run so you really can’t make a blanket statement like “Grip the gun X hard”. It would be like saying “Only run at X single speed when shooting a stage”. You can’t and it doesn’t make sense to do it so don’t get wrapped around the axel on it. One focus of your grip is to make a consistent presentation of the gun/sights as you draw. Another focus is to allow the gun to recoil consistently after every shot. The sights should return back to aligned after every shot. If you find yourself realigning the sights after every shot then your grip is failing in some fashion or another. Only you can know what is causing the failure by testing out different grip pressures and hand positions to solve the issue. All I can tell you is that the front sight should track straight up then back down to aligned when the gun fires. If its not doing that, then try adjusting your grip until it does. Also don’t get me wrong when I say that the sights should always be PERFECTLY aligned. There will always be some variance in how refined the sight alignment is when you present it on a target. How well you develop your grip and shooting index will simply reduce the magnitude of this misalignment. But a good gauge from a standing position is that the sights should be at least 90% – 96% aligned when you do your one shot draws. The more you practice the more refined this alignment will become.

[duncan]

Cha Lee covered it very well. One thing that helps me when shooting SS or Prod. is driving my elbow straight back. When I let my elbow angle out I dont get the finished presentaion I need. When I keep my elbow in, bringing it straight back, The sights are lined up perfectly. And I can break the shot around .2 sec. faster. When I let my elbow fly out to the side I seem to be aligning the sights instead of breaking the shot.

[MemphisMechanic]

Only thing I have to add, is follow-through in matches is critical, and good practice will include it.

What do I mean? Watch your video. The nanosecond the shot breaks, you pull the gun down. It wouldn't even be fully lifted in recoil by the time you are 'done' with your practice shot.

This habit will kill you on steel targets. Ever missed steel because your sight picture was perfectly centered, but you pulled the gun off-target before the bullet left the barrel as you tried to transition to the next one?

Happens a lot on paper, too. Your first shot is centered, but you need to run to your right after firing the second shot. Heading down to score, you find that the second shot was a C or D up in the shoulder, because you started leaving just a bit too early.

That's what follow through fixes.

Keep the gun on the target for another quarter second or so in dryfire. Many guys like to take a second sight picture.

Also, do this to your gun in dryfire:

Now you can shoot pairs of shots (okay, the trigger feels funny, but you still practice keeping the front sight on targets while working it fast). Hang 3 targets out there, and shoot a dryfire el-prez at them. That's a draw, four transitions, and a reload. All practiced in under 10 seconds per run. Much more useful than a simple draw-to-one-shot type of thing.

CHA-LEEs advice is golden. To clarify:

1. New shooters have slow hands. Both on the draw and reload. Why? Because they always move the same speed. You only move your arms as quickly as you can consistently form a grip, and pull the gun. Stop that. Snap the hand to the gun... SLOW DOWN as you form your grip in the holster, and speed back up to skewer the target with the front sight. Same thing on the reload. Snap the hand to the mag, pause to draw it, snap it back to the gun, and pause to insert it cleanly.

Fast... slow... fast - is always speedier than slow, slow, slow.

2. Bring the gun up in front of your eyes with both hands on it, about six inches from your face. Then extend to the target while aligning the sights. You swing the gun up at full extension, then have to align. Wastes time. Pretend there's a clothesline the gun must clear on the draw, no 'bowling swing' allowed.

3. Freaking hold still! Find your natural point of aim like CHA suggested. I like closed-eyes drawing, also try swinging the gun around and back to where everything is effortless then opening your eyes to see where you are, etc. Now adjust feet and hips and legs and back so that this is dead-center on the target. Holster the gun and place hands at sides. No bouncing on your feet like in the video, adjusting belt. Just stay still. At the beep, move nothing but your arms to drive the gun back into the A-zone. It's a lot easier to bring the sights to your eyes, instead of dipping the head to make eyes and sights both a moving target, isn't it?

Edited February 1, 2010 by MemphisMechanic