Support Hand Woes

[AZDave]

So I had a friend video me while shooting the other day, and I was shocked to see that my support hand slips on every shot and (with two different handguns I was shooting, sig P229 and a 1911). The lower part of my support hand stays in contact with the frame, but the gun recoils about away from my index finger. On the 1911 at the peak of the recoil, my support hand index finger is like an inch off the gun. I do have smallish hands and use a forward thumbs grip not touching the gun, which may contribute. Has anyone else seen a problem like this?

Thanks!

Dave

[G-ManBart]

I've seen it before, but without seeing you shoot it's hard to say if it's the exact same thing.

Most folks it's simply a matter of them relaxing their support hand....the gun goes bang and they instinctively want to let go of it....like it's a hot potato. R,

[Duane Thomas]

What is your arm position like? I've seen the "break apart" phenomenon with people who lock their arms out in an isosceles position where there's no "give" to the arms. Thus all the pivot and snap takes place at the hands. When firing lightweight and/or hard kicking guns the hands have a tendency to break apart.

[AZDave]

I threw a video up on youtube of it

[Duane Thomas]

"An error occurred, please try again later."

WTF?

[AZDave]

Sorry, apparently it's still processing the file.

"An error occurred, please try again later."

WTF?

[AZDave]

Maybe I'm YouTube challenged.... I put it at http://img705.imageshack.us/i/shootinghandcomingoffof.mp4/

"An error occurred, please try again later."

WTF?

[AlamoShooter]

At Steel Challenge on the practice days before the main event , Angus Hobdell was useing rubbing alcohole on his hands becuse he griped the gun so hard with his off hand the finge nails from the right hand cut into his the palm of his left.

Thats Gripping It

[PONY EXPRESS]

I feel that the support hand should begripping 100%, the shooting hand should be 80 to 90%. Also I use a little push pull to keep the recoil down.

John

[AZDave]

That's where my shorter fingers may be a problem. I feel like I'm only gripping an "L", not a "C" where I can really squeeze with my left hand. Maybe I should try slim grips on the gun?

At Steel Challenge on the practice days before the main event , Angus Hobdell was useing rubbing alcohole on his hands becuse he griped the gun so hard with his off hand the finge nails from the right hand cut into his the palm of his left.

Thats Gripping It

[Flexmoney]

You are clearly using the right hand to hold onto the gun. As you fight to establish the grip, you end up just gripping more and more with the right hand.

What if the right hand wasn't there? Or, had nearly zero grip/hold on the gun?

[G-ManBart]

That's where my shorter fingers may be a problem. I feel like I'm only gripping an "L", not a "C" where I can really squeeze with my left hand. Maybe I should try slim grips on the gun?

I don't think it's a finger length issue at all. Two things I see right off. One, you're stopping the gun when it gets to the top of it's rise, releasing the tension on your support hand (watch the lower fingers as it's almost a ripple upwards), adjusting/regaining your grip and then bringing the gun down to normal index on the target.

If you're fighting the gun to try and stop it at the top, you're almost pushing forward with the support hand making it easy for your hand to want to release....it's going in that direction already. If we're shooting fast splits we're going to be pushing forward to drive the gun (after ignition), but that is happening with the strong hand, not the support hand, which is clamping side to side to make the gun track straight up and down and balance out the whole system.

Try shooting a couple of shots with a very relaxed grip and just let the gun go up and down almost by itself...it's not going anywhere. I'll often shoot a gun (as a demonstration) using only my strong thumb, middle finger and maybe ring finger in a very loose grip...partially putting my body off to the side so it's clear I'm not offering much resistance to the recoil/flip. The gun flips a lot more, and moves my hand, but it still comes back down pointed generally at the target. Once you see it come back quickly, by itself, that's something to strive for when you're shooting normally.

In a similar fashion, if you shot a .22 your support hand probably isn't doing the same thing...because you're not trying to control it since you know it's not going to move much to start with. I'm sure others will have more, better ideas, but that might be a start. R,

[AZDave]

Thanks for the insight! Maybe I'm trying to hard to fight the recoil. I just picked up this 1911, and I've been shooting a Sig P229 in .40 for the last couple thousand rounds.

I also did a little bit of shooting with just my thumb and forefinger that day as well, which was more accurate than my two handed shooting.... I learned it at a recent Dave Harrington class I took to work on trigger control. Beyond the support hand slipping off, I have a trigger control problem. I've started dry firing this week, as everyone seems to recommend it to improve. I just want to make sure I'm practicing the correct grip while I'm ingraining habits.

http://img266.imageshack.us/i/shootingwiththumbandfor.mp4/

Also, here is the a view from the alternate side.

http://img695.imageshack.us/i/shootinghandcomingoffof.mp4/

That's where my shorter fingers may be a problem. I feel like I'm only gripping an "L", not a "C" where I can really squeeze with my left hand. Maybe I should try slim grips on the gun?

I don't think it's a finger length issue at all. Two things I see right off. One, you're stopping the gun when it gets to the top of it's rise, releasing the tension on your support hand (watch the lower fingers as it's almost a ripple upwards), adjusting/regaining your grip and then bringing the gun down to normal index on the target.

If you're fighting the gun to try and stop it at the top, you're almost pushing forward with the support hand making it easy for your hand to want to release....it's going in that direction already. If we're shooting fast splits we're going to be pushing forward to drive the gun (after ignition), but that is happening with the strong hand, not the support hand, which is clamping side to side to make the gun track straight up and down and balance out the whole system.

Try shooting a couple of shots with a very relaxed grip and just let the gun go up and down almost by itself...it's not going anywhere. I'll often shoot a gun (as a demonstration) using only my strong thumb, middle finger and maybe ring finger in a very loose grip...partially putting my body off to the side so it's clear I'm not offering much resistance to the recoil/flip. The gun flips a lot more, and moves my hand, but it still comes back down pointed generally at the target. Once you see it come back quickly, by itself, that's something to strive for when you're shooting normally.

In a similar fashion, if you shot a .22 your support hand probably isn't doing the same thing...because you're not trying to control it since you know it's not going to move much to start with. I'm sure others will have more, better ideas, but that might be a start. R,

Edited January 6, 2010 by AZDave

[Duane Thomas]

At Steel Challenge on the practice days before the main event , Angus Hobdell was useing rubbing alcohole on his hands becuse he griped the gun so hard with his off hand the finge nails from the right hand cut into his the palm of his left.

I've heard tell of this wonderful invention called "nail clippers".

[Duane Thomas]

One mis-application (in my opinion) of the straight thumbs grip I see is that a lot of people seem to think the important thing is pointing the thumbs forward, they don't understand the importance of the rolled forward wrist, thus they wind up with an iteration of the technique where the wrist is basically straight and the support hand rides way low on the gun. This causes a host of problems. Try consciously bending the wrist forward, this will (1) get your support hand much higher on the gun, much more in line with the bore so you have a lot more leverage to hold down muzzle flip, (2) it springloads your wrist in the "down" position so it can't bend backward with recoil - this immensely cuts down on muzzle flip.

I notice you point your support hand thumb upward. Nothing innately wrong with that. Just bear in mind you can still point your thumb up even if the wrist is rolled forward.

[AZDave]

Thanks Duane! I'll try caming my wrist down next time out. I'll admit that I've been shooting thumbs forward for a year now, and I didn't understand until just now that the reason is really around camming the wrist... I've been a passable pistol shot, but probably only because I've been shooting 9mm and the additional recoil is really amplifying the problems with my technique.

Thinking about the responses in this thread, should my strong hand be driving the gun forward and the support hand be pulling back to keep the bottom of the grip from levering up under recoil?

BTW, I just picked up the 1911 issue and found your article really helpful!

One mis-application (in my opinion) of the straight thumbs grip I see is that a lot of people seem to think the important thing is pointing the thumbs forward, they don't understand the importance of the rolled forward wrist, thus they wind up with an iteration of the technique where the wrist is basically straight and the support hand rides way low on the gun. This causes a host of problems. Try consciously bending the wrist forward, this will (1) get your support hand much higher on the gun, much more in line with the bore so you have a lot more leverage to hold down muzzle flip, (2) it springloads your wrist in the "down" position so it can't bend backward with recoil - this immensely cuts down on muzzle flip.

I notice you point your support hand thumb upward. Nothing innately wrong with that. Just bear in mind you can still point your thumb up even if the wrist is rolled forward.

[Duane Thomas]

Thinking about the responses in this thread, should my strong hand be driving the gun forward and the support hand be pulling back to keep the bottom of the grip from levering up under recoil?

Nope. Think in terms, actually, of pressing your palms together with the gun butt between them.

BTW, I just picked up the 1911 issue and found your article really helpful!

Thanks!

[Duane Thomas]

Maybe this will help:

http://www.handgunsmag.com/tactics_training/combatg_100306/

[CHA-LEE]

This question may be stupid but........ Are your hands dry? If you have sweaty hands (Yeah, I know, I see the snow in the background of the video) your support hand will lose grip like you are experiencing. The same goes for lotion or other moisturizers. If your hands are slippery they will not have much traction on one another and your grip will fail during the shot.

I like to use Pro-Grip on my hands before I shoot. This ensures my hands are dry and have good traction on one another when I shoot.

[Arc Angel]

Wow! No offense intended, but, I’ve been doing this a long time; and, I’ve never before noticed a pistol shooter with the sort of reflex action shown in that video. I don’t know what to think? It, sort ‘a, reminds me of (for lack of better words) a, ‘reversed wicked trigger flinch’.

The shooter’s hand(s) actually open up on the shot! I suspect the entire recoil sequence from: hands, to wrists, to elbows, to shoulders is all screwed up. Now I’m trying to think of, ‘How’ to turn a shooter like this around? (I don’t know whether or not anything genuinely remedial can even be done over the internet?) Still, this problem fascinates me; and I’d like to try.

I’m trying to visualize how I would respond to this shooting problem IF I were standing right next to the shooter as he was attempting to work with his pistol. Why don’t we start with the way I’ve learned how to shoot a pistol. (Good place to begin, right!)

First my, ‘grip’ goes all the way back to the shoulders. One of the things I had to do in order to become good with a pistol is to visualize my entire upper body as, sort of, a firing platform or, ‘large triangulated rifle stock’.

On recoil, the OP is splaying his grip. This tells me he’s never really learned how to work with recoil and to treat it more as a, ‘tool’ (or as a, ‘friend’) rather than some, ‘alien mechanical force’ that needs to be overcome. Usually when I practice with a combat pistol I fire very fast and never less than two shots at a time – 99% of the time right into where I want them to go.

MY PISTOL IS MY FRIEND; I LIVE WITH IT; I WORK WITH IT; I SLEEP WITH IT, TOO; AND I KNOW WHAT MY FRIEND DOES AND DOESN’T LIKE!

Here’s how I, both, teach combat pistol shooting AND do it myself: We’ll proceed from the end of the proprioceptive muscular reflex sequence right up to the hands holding the pistol, itself. (There’s one proviso: Unlike most competition pistol shooters when I’m moving I don’t stop to set my body up for each shot. My right leg might be forward or back; my arms may be isosceles, modified Weaver, (FBI) or Weaver. It, all, depends upon how I’m turning my body or might have been forced to place my feet immediately before beginning to fire.)

In other words I’m not a gamesman; I’m a combat pistol shooter – Which is exactly how I view someone like Todd Jarrett. Whenever I watch Todd move, there ain’t a lot of, ‘gamesman’ showing in his body language. (My favorite gunsmith, one of Jarrett’s personal friends, calls him a, ‘pistol shooting machine’; and, maybe, he is.)

The important thing to realize is that, ultimately, the muscular stress caused by the pistol recoiling is delivered to both shoulder points at the same time and, then, dissipated, more or less, equally across the back. What I’m telling you, here, is that my own focus, my own conscious response to recoil, is NOT centered on my hands alone – Instead my perception of recoil goes all the way back to my shoulders.

It’s the shoulders that form the base of that, ‘triangulated rifle stock’ mentioned above. This means that, every time the pistol discharges, my hands and wrists are locked and NOT the principal focal point of the shot(s). The front sight resting immediately below the target is!

(It is important to hold low, like this, whenever rapidly firing a combat pistol. This is because nobody who’s any good at this is going to wait for the front sight to fully nest into the rear sight notch. Consequently, unless you’re holding low to begin with, your follow-up shots are going to hit high.)

Neither the hands nor the wrists should take preeminence as the focal point of the shot(s) – Far from it! In my own pistol shooting, the entire arms and upper body work together in order to control the pistol’s recoil and turn it into a, ‘tool’ that I’m able to use in order to aim the pistol’s muzzle and, of course, the front sight.

I’ll tell you an interesting little story: Not anymore, (Because I’m getting older and ammunition in all forms is really expensive for me now.) but, I used to do a minimum of 1,000 pistol rounds a month – frequently more, too. I’ve already mentioned that I double and triple tap everything. Sometimes I’ll put out an entire magazine. This means that my proprioceptive shot-to-shot reflexes must be highly consistent; or else, I wouldn’t be able to place subsequent shots where I want them to go.

One day I discovered something I found to be really interesting: Right in the middle of a fast shot string I hit a dud. The round didn’t go off; and, guess what? All of a sudden I discovered exactly how my body has been reacting to rapid fire pistol recoil for all these years! Know what it felt and looked like? A wicked trigger flinch! Down went the muzzle; not because the pistol had recoiled; but, instead, because my proprioceptive reflexes normally responded to pistol recoil in this way.

THIS MEANS THAT THE PRINCIPAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A WICKED TRIGGER FLINCH AND PROPERLY MANAGED RECOIL AND FRONT SIGHT RECOVERY IS, ...... TIMING! TIMING! (Remember this against that day when you might need to know.)

If a pistol shooter pulls his muzzle down too soon, or if he pulls his muzzle down too late then that, otherwise useful and appropriate, ‘pull down’ is going to look like what is conventionally referred to as a, ‘trigger flinch’. The other thing I discovered is that if mechanical pistol recoil were to be taken out of the pistol shooting equation, then: (1) Every time recoil did NOT occur and I pulled a pistol trigger correctly, it would have appeared as if I were flinching; and (2) without my, ‘old friend’, mechanical pistol recoil, I would suddenly be unable to successfully manage any of my follow-up shots.

In my opinion, all dry fire practice does is help to program your mind and reflexes to react properly to the sear suddenly dropping on ONE shot. What dry firing a pistol will NOT do for you is teach you how to manage your follow-up shots. In order to properly (and accurately) handle follow-up shots the shooter must teach himself: the proper sight picture, the rhythm, the pattern, the, ‘pull-down’ and how to correctly pull the trigger. (Sounds intimidating; but it’s not hard. I learned inside 3,000 rounds; and you can too.)

As far as I’m concerned, the only way to learn how to fire a pistol quickly and accurately is to start in close, watch your groups, manage them for proximity and tightness, and fire lots and lots of doubles and triples. Only begin to move out farther and farther as your groups continue to tighten up and remain that way. (I don’t care whether or not you watch your bullet holes. While you’re learning, it doesn’t matter.)

Once you become aware of where and how the forces of recoil are dissipated across your shoulders, you will realize that the main pivot points between your hands and your shoulders are the elbows. Instead of splaying your grip on every shot learn how to correctly flex your forearms and shoot all the way back to your elbows, and, then, all the way back to your shoulders.

Then, after you become fully conscious of how pistol recoil travels up your arms and is ultimately distributed across your shoulders, you will appreciate ‘Why’ your grip needs to be constant, your wrists need to be locked; and your elbows should flex on the shot(s).

In those videos I just watched the shooter wasn’t really firing with a limp wrist. What I saw, instead, was his hands (amazingly) splaying on each shot. Over and over again, whenever the pistol fired, the shooter immediately attempted to reset his grip. Interesting physical phenomenon! Without spending an hour watching those videos over and over again, I’ll try to handle this in the same way that any line coach would.

(1) One, the shooter is definitely fighting the recoil. Let me ask the shooter: Are you dropping the muzzle on the shot? Are you tending to hit the target below 3:00 and 9:00 o’clock? I suspect this is what’s happening. (Post some targets, why don’t you.)

The impression I get is that the pistol’s muzzle is being dropped on the shot; the bottom of the backstrap, then, impacts against the lower web of the gun hand and – almost with a sense of physical relief – that hand(s) is/are opening up as the gun recoils. Man, that’s really fighting recoil!

2. The above is, at the present time, my best guess. What I have absolutely no doubt about is that the pistol shooter in those videos has a very poorly defined concept of what a correct pistol grip should be. (I know from reading his gunzine articles that Duane and I are not going to completely agree on some of this; but, that’s all right. Each of us, I am sure, has something useful to contribute to this problem.)

The shooter needs to learn how to grab a pistol frame, primarily, from FRONT-TO-BACK. Secondarily, he needs to learn how to apply horizontal thumb pressure to the side of the pistol’s frame. Personally, I don’t care whether the thumbs are crossed, or not. Either form of thumb placement works (or can be made to work). The advantages to, ‘thumbs forward’ is the hands will set up faster, control over the support hand AND arm will, also, be easier to achieve, and in a full isosceles stance the pistol shooter will automatically rotate his support wrist. (Practice a little; it’ll happen!)

At the present time I’m not going to talk about, ‘crossed thumbs’ or what I use this grip for. (From where the shooter is at, right now, he don’t need to know this.)

All of us who teach pistol shooting, especially combat pistol shooting, constantly yakety-yak about watching the front sight. Yippee! What a student rarely gets told is exactly, ‘How’ to watch (or manage) that front sight. Now, while opinions might vary, I’ve got more than 50 years of experience that says: Until a pistol shooter learns how to properly control his pistol’s backstrap he ain’t never going to be able to control that front sight – Never! (So, why bother to watch it so intently anyway?)

The reason pistol coaches stress watching the front sight is because it’s faster and easier to tell a student to, ‘watch the front sight’. By doing this one thing alone the student is, also, going to have to teach himself how to manage the pistol’s backstrap. ‘Watch the front sight!’ is a form of mental shorthand, and just plain easier than having to go into all of these various handgun recoil management particulars.

(The, ‘watch the front sight’ lecture is, also, very good for the ammunition companies! Heck, what’s it going to take? At least 3,000-5,000 rounds before the student finally begins to really catch on!)

The correct way to, ‘watch a pistol’s front sight’ is to: (1) Tighten up your grip on the pistol’s frame from FRONT TO BACK – Like Mas Ayoob often says, really tighten it up! Mas and I differ only in that he carries this tight grip to an extreme; and I do not. (Then again I don’t fire a pistol from, ‘panic mode’; instead I shoot every handgun in exactly the same way that I practice. Like Todd Jarrett, I’m a very deliberate pistol shooter; a, ‘death grip’ on the pistol has no real advantage for me.)

The grip I saw in those videos is way too loose and completely devoid of any front to back hand pressure. Not to sound trite, but, I got the impression the shooter was, ‘squeezing a lemon and releasing his hand pressure, in order to rest, once the juice was out’. That’s NOT how to work correctly with any handgun.

It might help some pistol shooters to visualize the backstrap as having a, ‘magic’ or, ‘control’ spot located somewhere along its length. This control point is either the highest spot on a backstrap or else it is more toward the bottom of the grip and close to the mag well opening. Let me guess? The pistol shooter in those videos is using a 1911 with a straight backstrap – Right! (It’s throwing him off, too.) He needs to learn, ‘How’ to work properly with a straight 1911 backstrap.

Once you gain control of the backstrap’s, ‘control spot’, you will have control over the entire pistol. Now is the time to start watching that front sight! (Because, now, you’ll be able to actually control it.)

3. The shooter needs to regularly practice dry firing his pistol. Fast and accurate pistol shooting is a, ‘biodegradable skill’. Even after more than 50 years of doing this I, still, dry fire my EDC everyday. (It’s the only way I can tell if I’m really, ‘on’ and whether or not some aberrant, ‘nasty little reflex’ is sneaking into my proprioceptive pistol shooting reflexes.)

4. A word about lateral side pressure on the pistol frame. Before saying anything more, perhaps it should be mentioned that I really have not addressed shooting a revolver in this thread. Revolvers are largely different devices; and I’ll leave an explanation of their proper use to other instructors like: Cirillo, Ayoob, and Lovette.

I’m not really happy with what I’ve been reading and hearing about how to correctly apply horizontal side pressure to a semiautomatic pistol’s grip panels. Now, making allowances for the facts that everybody’s different, no two people are going to do something exactly the same way, and everybody’s a great imitator. I’m going to offer this: Since switching from a 1911, I primarily work with my thumbs in the, ‘thumbs forward’ position. ‘Thumbs forward’ is not only the fastest way to set-up your hands, it’s also an easier way to horizontally steer the muzzle and gain lateral control over your front sight on any shot(s) inside 18 yards.

Is the edge of either hand actually involved? Yes, to a significantly lesser degree the edges of your hands are involved; so is the web and, especially, the support hand web. However, in a horizontal plane, the muzzle is primarily steered with the thumbs.

5. Learn how to visualize the pistol and your grip on that pistol as a whole – ‘one large rock’ if you will. Do NOT visualize your grip as a discombobilation of combined hand movements. Once you start doing it right, the only hand grasping element you really have to watch is whether or not the pistol is set up properly in your gun hand. Correctly grasped the pistol should be squarely lined up along the heel of your hand.

How do you check for a properly grasped pistol? Look at the back of the pistol, If the base joint of your gun hand thumb is anywhere underneath the back of the slide, then, your grip is WRONG. The gun hand thumb should be wrapped all the way around toward the open side of your grasping hand. When you’re moving quickly and not looking you can check this and set make certain the pistol is set properly into the web of your gun hand by slightly stretching or raising your grasping thumb. (If you watch, you’ll often notice postal pistol shooters do this while they’re setting up the pistol and getting ready to fire a string. If your grip is wrong, the pistol will almost fall out of your grasping gun hand as you raise that thumb!)

The OP has mentioned having fingers that are, ‘too short’. Who cares! If the trigger finger’s distal joint is able to stretch to clear the trigger’s face when it’s in the forward most position, that’s all that’s needed. All this tells me is that someone is, ’squeezing that lemon’ again. If I were told something like, ‘I’m having trouble pulling the front sight down between shots,’ I’d think to myself; ‘Well, it’s probably a muscle reflex problem; and, at least, there’s nothing wrong with his grip’. However, if the pistol is, ‘getting away’ from the shooter between shots then, no matter how long or short the shooter’s fingers might be, the problem is with the shooter’s grip.

My final suggestion would be for the shooter to reread everything above; and, then, stop opening his hand after every shot. Stop trying to, ‘muscle’ the pistol out of recoil. Let the front sight rise of its own accord. Mentally visualize and approach pistol shooting as a harmonious whole. Muzzle recoil and muscular stress should move as a unified action all the way from the front sight to the horizontal line across your back and from shoulder-to-shoulder. (Listen, if you can learn how to master a golf swing, you can, also, learn how to handle a pistol at speed.)

Hope this helps! Hope I haven’t confused anyone or anything. This is as far as I’m able to go with this topic for people over the internet.

[Duane Thomas]

You're sure you don't have more?

[Arc Angel]

Hey, don't laugh. Pistol shooting is the only hobby I've ever had in life that I have stayed with (almost) from cradle to grave. I've done more than my fair share of remedial coaching with people who've either developed confusing pistol shooting habits, or been seriously injured and lost the skill. Don't know if it's happened to anyone, here, or not; but a lot of men who experience heart attacks or another serious illness will eventually come back to the line with their reflexes, 'shattered' and need to start all over again just to be a reasonable facsimile of the pistol shooter they once were.

(Remember, pistol shooting is a, 'degradable' skill; and, worse, most people learn how to handle a pistol well on only a subconscious level of perception. If or when they get, 'shaken up' this skill set can quickly evaporate and, in varying degrees, needs to be relearned.)

In my experience, if you think it's hard to learn how to skillfully handle a pistol, try to relearn how to do it after being seriously injured or ill. No joke, I'm one of the few instructors I know who has both the ability AND the experience to help another shooter in this way. That's, 'Why' after watching those videos I decided to see if I could get a rank pistol shooting novice (Who obviously doesn't have a clue.) turned around.

Perhaps, I should have kept my mouth shut? I don't know and will let the original OP decide.

Edited January 18, 2010 by Arc Angel

[Duane Thomas]

I'm sure he will. Also pretty sure he's not a rank pistol shooting novice.

[MemphisMechanic]

...The front sight resting immediately below the target is!

(It is important to hold low, like this, whenever rapidly firing a combat pistol. This is because nobody who’s any good at this is going to wait for the front sight to fully nest into the rear sight notch. Consequently, unless you’re holding low to begin with, your follow-up shots are going to hit high.)

If you're doing so much practice with this pistol, and this load, can you tell me why you're intentionally placing the first shot low, and then triggering a second when the sights are not aligned?

For someone who is attempting to help a shooter fix a bad habit, it would appear you have a major one of your own.

The rest of your advice, I have no problems with. Some good stuff in there... Although you use the phrase "combat shooting" a lot on a forum that is not interested in discussing combat shooting.

In our world, low shots lose matches.

Edited January 24, 2010 by MemphisMechanic

[Duane Thomas]

(It is important to hold low, like this, whenever rapidly firing a combat pistol. This is because nobody who’s any good at this is going to wait for the front sight to fully nest into the rear sight notch. Consequently, unless you’re holding low to begin with, your follow-up shots are going to hit high.)

I'm sorry but that is simply not true. Anyone who's really good is going to have the gun snapping down out of recoil, right back to the same spot, before they could possibly fire the next shot anyway. An inability to get the gun down out of recoil before the next shot fires is indicative of someone whose shot-to-shot speed is exceeding their recoil management abilities.