After a dismal shooting session a couple of weeks ago,,,,,,,I just popped off 50 rnds in my .45. I had a problem with anticipating the recoil. I know, you should be supprised each time the firearm goes 'BANG'. Kinda hard not to when you know the travel of your trigger. The first ten rounds I was still 'pushing' before the round went off...not good.. the next 40 I did much better, hittiing center of mass 6 of 8 rounds. Still gonna have to burn up more powder, gotta get the reloader up and running. Suggestions on how to over come my (embaressing) fault?
press the trigger instead of pulling it. Think door-bell. When you "Pull" a trigger, the gun will shift position on you. Take a high grip with you thumb-web firmly against the beaver-tail, resting your thumb on the safety, the left hand wraps the fingers and the thumb should align with the slide and just touch the underside of your grip thumb. Keep both eyes open and on the target, the sight alignment should be just a hologram on the target.
Here's a ten cent solution. Take a dime and balance it on the top of the barrel. Now do your dry fire drill without dropping the dime when you can do that repeatedly you a developing a better trigger pull.
Repeat after me: “Recoil is my friend!” “Recoil is my friend!” “Recoil is my friend!” Look, I’ve been shooting all different sorts of firearms for more than 50 years. Firearms safety rules and handling procedures haven’t just been memorized; they are actually habits, instead. Many years ago I learned the importance of NOT trying to overcome and ‘master’ a gun's firing characteristics. Rather than wasting my time trying to control my gun’s recoil and blast, I learned how to cooperate with them—COOPERATE with them! And THIS has made all the difference in the world for me while I am shooting and handling guns. Now pay attention: If, by some mysterious law of physics, firearm recoil were to be either largely or completely eliminated, and the loud sound suddenly disappeared, do you know what would happen to my own extraordinary ability to handle firearms? . . . . Well, it would just as suddenly disappear, and I would have to learn how to shoot all over again! My own suggestion would be for you to stop trying to ‘master your weapon’ and learn how to cooperate with it, instead. There is a lot more to firearm recoil than just noise, and noise alone. (If you shoot enough then, after awhile, you won’t even hear your own shots going off in the same way that an amateur gun enthusiast does.) Behind every shot, behind every series of shots, there is a pattern of muscle reflex and sight movement (bounce and return) that always occurs and usually only very slightly varies. Experienced gunmen call this physical phenomenon ‘conditioned proprioceptive reflexes’, and it is this sort of coordinated movement that you should be training your own body reflexes to adjust to. The usual way that neophyte gunmen learn how to precondition their bodily reflexes and do these things is to fire hundreds and hundreds (if not thousands and thousands) of rounds. This, of course, means that if you want to learn how to fire centerfire rounds then you have to shoot centerfire rounds, and not rimfire rounds as so many casual firearm aficionados seem to think. (Yes, there are behavioral corollaries between the respective firing characteristics; but still centerfire, and rimfire recoil are not the same thing. In fact it is always a lot easier to transition over to rimfire shooting AFTER you have mastered centerfire shooting than it is to try things the other way around.) Even today—even today—I still begin every range session with a few minutes of ‘dry fire’. For the record I don’t ‘pull’ the trigger; I don't ‘squeeze’ it, either, and wait for a ‘surprise break’. My focus is on the front sight, and on the target. Instead, I ‘settle in’; and, if I am firing slowly and precisely, then I apply a steady, straight back and slightly downward pressure on the trigger until I achieve the desired result—which, when it occurs, comes as no surprise! (Nobody likes surprises, OK.) Rifles and shotguns I fire on a true vertical X–Y axis. Handguns, on the other hand, I do NOT hold on a true vertical axis. With a handgun I use a stance and weapon gripping technique very close to what master class pistoleros like: Robbie Leatham, Brian Enos, and D.R. Middlebrooks have been using in recent years. (While I’ve heard and read about this ‘stance’ being called a ‘Reverse Chapman’, D.R. refers to this method of handgun presentation as, ‘First-Fire’.) As for myself? I’ve added a few slight modifications to the ‘Reverse Chapman’ presentation that have yielded big returns in both handgun firing speed and accuracy: First—and in concert with Leatham, Middlebrooks, and Enos—I always bend my GUN HAND ELBOW. Why? Because this takes much of the tension in the upper tendons of my strong side forearm away, and allows me to more easily and NATURALLY COOPERATE with the handgun during rapid fire. Second, the other change I’ve made is to make a (Ready?) ‘1/8 Homie Grip’ shift from true vertical toward my body’s centerline in how I always hold, aim, and control a pistol. What does this so-called very slight homie grip do for me? Well, . . . . when I am shooting a pistol with my right hand (because I am completely ambidextrous), it redirects the force of recoil and prevents me from dropping pistol shots toward the weakest part of my gripping hand—THE FINGERTIPS—and eliminates all of the usual left and low shots! If you want to smooth out your own pistol shooting and become both much faster as well as more accurate then I would suggest that you stop trying to control and ‘fight’ your own pistol. (Because what you really need to learn how to do is to cooperate with your pistol and learn the rhythm and pulse of your pistol’s recoil characteristics, instead.) Rather than burning up a lot of increasingly scarce (and outrageously expensive) ammunition, I would suggest that you invest in several six (or even twelve) packs of snap caps. Me? For the past several decades I've had magazines (clips) and speedloaders full of snap caps scattered all over the house. This is how I keep ‘ my eye’ and other bodily reflexes well tuned to what I love to do—Which is to hit the target as quickly and accurately as possible! (This is another way that I continue to make certain that recoil is still ‘my friend’!) One of the handgun TRAINING AND PRECONDITIONING EXERCISES I regularly perform is Chief Firearms Instructor George Harris’s so-called ‘Wall Drill’. In fact I have such a high regard for Master Sergeant Harris’s Wall Drill that (as good as I am with a handgun) I continue to warm up and practice using one variation or another of the Wall Drill almost everyday. Here it is: Harris's Famous Pistol Shooting Wall Drill In my personal opinion: For every single time that a pistolero visits a live fire range, he would be very well advised to practice his wall drill techniques, at least, three times: slowly, thoughtfully, and precisely. If the experience is typical the first thing a shooter should notice is a big improvement in both talent and marksmanship. Remember: “RECOIL IS MY FRIEND;” “RECOIL IS MY FRIEND;” “RECOIL IS MY FRIEND!” Lastly remember, too, that the loud sound of a gun going off can’t hurt you—It cannot! After a while your concentration on both the front sight and your target (or, if you are an instinct shooter, just the ‘feel’ of the gun in your hand) will be so intense that you’ll barely hear the gun going off—Which is what has often happened to me. For me all those repeated loud bangs and booms sound like is no more than background noise! NOTES: I have deliberately omitted numerous comments about both holding a correct sight picture, and properly gripping a pistol. (We’ll save these things for another reply, OK!) What I will say, though, is that I do not ‘press’ or ‘squeeze' pistol triggers. I rather smoothly ‘TAP’ them instead. (Unlike yesterday's 1911 pattern pistols, with today’s incredibly crappy striker-fired pistol actions, you actually have to ‘TAP’ rather than to 'squeeze' for that presumed ‘surprise break’!) The only other suggestion I’ll offer is that: If you do not already have a trigger stop on your pistol then I think you should add one as soon as possible.
If you were shooting a revolver I would load an empty or two between the live rounds. Personally, I like training with CO2 air guns of the same firearm configuration and weight, they don't have the recoil, and often times the trigger is pretty much the same depending on the manufacturer. The recoil should surprise you going back to a fire arm. For the money your blowing on ammo, the air gun will pay for it's self in short order. Secondly, the air gun will provide more trigger time, not having to go to a range. IMO
