I can't hit my target--where should my left pinky toe point??!!

[VERT]

Cool video. Now if he can show us how to dual wield .45s that would be awesome.

 

[Hemingway]

That's what I like to see: a good, solid, toes forward grip.

 

[Dead Duck]

How about quad wield .45s.

 

[Shay]

I totally agree that stance is not important.

But...but...but people have already told me that my stance affects my accuracy. Check this thread. Check other threads on this topic. It's common knowledge that stance and grip are fundamentals of pistol marksmanship, right?

If you don't have your feet in the right place you won't be able to shoot well. Everybody knows that!

 

[hpclayto]

There have been a few threads lately about helping shooters hit their targets.

Some good science fiction stuff, too. About how feet and/or unicorns are somehow connected to your trigger finger.

For your viewing pleasure, I'm posting some of the contemporary theories on how to diagnose your shooting problem in convenient visual form.

(Later, I'll explain how it's all horse-puckey that's regurgitated from one mediocre firearms instructor to the next. And explains why many students just stay in one frustrated plateau for their entire life.)

This one has my personal favorite advice ever: When shooting low horizontal left, apply more pressure with YOUR PINKY! Your pinky????

That's 100% fantastic, stuffed with wonderful, and smothered in awesome right there.

Let me break it down for you:

1. Mastering sight alignment:

----Go to your kitchen, grab three cups and put them in a straight line on your countertop. Put equal space between them. Bam. You've mastered sight alignment. You could spend the rest of your life trying to get those cups more perfectly aligned but I think they're probably good enough the first time.


2. Mastering trigger pull:

----With your unloaded gun, use the above technique you learned with the cups and apply them to the 2 things on the rear and the 1 thing on the front of your slide. They should all be aligned. Put the 1 thing (we'll just call it, oh, "Front Sight" for the sake of this thread) in the front aimed in on a small target, say a doorknob, and pull the trigger to the rear. Did the front sight stay on the doorknob through the whole pull and is it still on the doorknob?

Yes? Great, you've mastered trigger pull.


3. EVERYTHING ELSE IS COMPLETELY UNRELATED TO WHERE YOUR ROUNDS ARE GOING!!!!
(Example, did your grip matter when you aimed at the doorknob? What about your stance when lining up the cups? Did you find you could line up the cups better if you got in some specific foot position?)


4. You aren't hitting where you're aiming because once you move past Step 2 and put REAL bullets, that create REAL noise and REAL movement in your gun, you start flinching due to PSYCHOLOGICAL REASONS ONLY!!!!!

5. Once you recognize it's a psychological problem, you can dismiss the rabbit trails of stance, drooping head, pinky squeezing, thumbing, unicorns, candy corn, corn pops, cornucopias, cornhole games, whatever, and start focusing on the real AND ONLY problem: RECOIL ANTICIPATION.







For those of you that have struggled through the conventional nonsense that passes for firearms training, and come out the other side realizing that you wasted time on a 60/40 grip instead of recoil anticipation, and now you're shooting better than ever because you've actually identified the problem, I salute you. Spread the good word.


To the rest of you, get to work!

You shouldn't dry fire/pracitce whatever you want to call it on a fixed object. Put up a 3x5 index card or piece of paper whenever you do so and take it down once you're done. That way whenever you're walking out the of the house on the way to wherever and you see the doorknob or lightswithc you don't think to yourself, "hmmm just one more time" and get a boom instead of a click. Take it for what it's worth

 

[Coach]

But...but...but people have already told me that my stance affects my accuracy. Check this thread. Check other threads on this topic. It's common knowledge that stance and grip are fundamentals of pistol marksmanship, right?

If you don't have your feet in the right place you won't be able to shoot well. Everybody knows that!

It can affect NPA. Which can affect accuracy.

 

[lovemachine]

It can affect NPA. Which can affect accuracy.

Whats NPA?

 

[ATM]

Whats NPA?

National Podiatrists Association.

They really are the foremost experts regarding pinky toes and foot placement in general.




...or Natural Point of Aim.

 

[Double T]

I consider it more like my batting stance when I played baseballs. The swing and follow through were what mattered, the stance not so much.

I also change my stance several times at the range. If I am in a SD shoot, I'm probably not going to be able to pull off a weaver stance or anything. Draw, push, squeeze. My feet aren't even involved in that.

 

[Coach]

Natural Point of Aim. Which is the reason for shifting feet and stance. It is not practical for self defense applications, but practical is not the point in this thread. If you only have to fire one shot it does not matter how you hold the gun. How many times are you only firing one shot?

Some of the things on the chart that has been belittled here are examples of not having mastered trigger control. But if someone points that out they are likely to be mediocre.

Funny how in this thread and some others on this topic some good advice by good or even great shooters has been attacked by people with no name visible on their posts or on their profile. People who have not demonstrated their ability with a little video or provided some bona fide background, but have not hesitated to make some bold statements. Tells me everything I need to know.

 

[Shay]

If you only have to fire one shot it does not matter how you hold the gun.

Exactly.

 

[Grelber]

"But, even FBI agents and INGO members should be intelligent enough to catch the order of things there: that if "recoil" is happening, the shot has already left the barrel and has hit whatever it was going to hit. The best grip in the world doesn't change that fact."

There used to be high speed footage available from the Trip Research website that showed the gun moving (1911 if memory serves) before the bullet cleared the barrel. Also the physics make sense, the gun and bullet should start moving at the same time.
Is there consensus among the experts that grip does not effect how much the gun moves before the bullet clears the barrel, or perhaps that the amount of change in movement is too minute to measurably change point of impact?

 

[Hemingway]

"But, even FBI agents and INGO members should be intelligent enough to catch the order of things there: that if "recoil" is happening, the shot has already left the barrel and has hit whatever it was going to hit. The best grip in the world doesn't change that fact."

There used to be high speed footage available from the Trip Research website that showed the gun moving (1911 if memory serves) before the bullet cleared the barrel. Also the physics make sense, the gun and bullet should start moving at the same time.
Is there consensus among the experts that grip does not effect how much the gun moves before the bullet clears the barrel, or perhaps that the amount of change in movement is too minute to measurably change point of impact?

In James Yeager's "Shooting Missology" DVD, this is covered pretty well, if not scientifically, at least from a practical standpoint.

 

[Hemingway]

Funny how in this thread and some others on this topic some good advice by good or even great shooters has been attacked by people with no name visible on their posts or on their profile. People who have not demonstrated their ability with a little video or provided some bona fide background, but have not hesitated to make some bold statements. Tells me everything I need to know.

It's hard for me to get range time. My mom can't always drive me over there when I want. And besides, she keeps my basement well-stocked in Cheetos and Amp so, really, where's the incentive to leave?

But, next time I get out, maybe I can borrow a friend's camera and film some of my awesomeness with my tricked out airsoft Glock.

 

[Shay]

It's hard for me to get range time. My mom can't always drive me over there when I want. And besides, she keeps my basement well-stocked in Cheetos and Amp so, really, where's the incentive to leave?

But, next time I get out, maybe I can borrow a friend's camera and film some of my awesomeness with my tricked out airsoft Glock.

You don't often see this level of honesty on an online forum. Bravo to you, sir.

 

[the1kidd03]

You don't often see this level of honesty on an online forum. Bravo to you, sir.

LOL, I was thinking it should be in purple

 

[the1kidd03]

It's hard for me to get range time. My mom can't always drive me over there when I want. And besides, she keeps my basement well-stocked in Cheetos and Amp so, really, where's the incentive to leave?

But, next time I get out, maybe I can borrow a friend's camera and film some of my awesomeness with my tricked out airsoft Glock.

Sadly, due to $$$ mostly, along with time constraints from furthering my education now I too don't have a lot of time to devote to a range. That and the majority of shooting drills I do are frowned upon at most ranges and defensive based drills, so I must travel to family property a good ways away which takes even more time to be able to go. I feel your pain I miss getting paid to shoot on uncle Sam's dollar and take training courses all over the place rather than having to pay for it and make time for it myself.

 

[VERT]

That's it! The only thing that will solve this is a Dualing tree at 15 paces. Two INGOers enter, only one remains.

Scratch that because that requires a mix of speed and accuracy. So each shooter gets one bullet and no time limit. Maybe a game of HORSE with pistols.

 

[the1kidd03]

That's it! The only thing that will solve this is a Dualing tree at 15 paces. Two INGOers enter, only one remains.

Scratch that because that requires a mix of speed and accuracy. So each shooter gets one bullet and no time limit. Maybe a game of HORSE with pistols.

Those things look like a lot of fun if you can for one

 

[Grelber]

"In James Yeager's "Shooting Missology" DVD, this is covered pretty well, if not scientifically, at least from a practical standpoint."

So he says: 1. the gun is moving before the bullet clears?
2. The opposite of 1. ?
3. 1 but the movement is so little it doesn't make much difference so you might as well say 2?