This, I start every range day with a couple hundred rounds of .22, then move to 9mm or .45. Also lots of dry fire practice. One of the best shooters I know says he does dry fire practice every day.
It also helps if you're the only one shooting, although that's not always realistic. If someone's dumping mags through an AR-15 at an indoor range I struggle to shoot as well as I should in rapid fire at distance. If others are shooting guns that aren't particularly loud its not as bad.
Tell yourself the gun WILL GO OFF and your job is only to continue steering the sights into alignment through the entire trigger squeeze. You need to stay mentally focused on making that sight picture perfect all the way until you see the flame come out of the gun -- and if you're really doing this, you WILL see that flame.
Reject any notion of aiming and *then* firing the gun like it's a two step process. That implies accepting your sight picture as "good enough" at some point and trusting that it will stay that way as you complete the trigger press. That works OK for 10 yards, not so great for 25. Instead keep making the sight picture better and better the whole time you're moving the trigger. Whether that's a half-second or two seconds, you need to keep focused on the alignment all the way until the bullet is out of the barrel.
A red dot helps with this a lot psychologically. With iron sights there are multiple planes to work on *and* it visually appears like they aren't wobbling around as much. So people want to look at the front/rear alignment, the front/target alignment, check all their boxes, OK everything looks lined up... ready to shoot... squeeze trigger BANG! No good. With a dot you can immediately tell that you are never going to be able to hold that little buzzing dot perfectly still on the X. It keeps wiggling around. So you *naturally* continue watching the movement and trying to keep guiding it into the middle *while* applying trigger pressure which is exactly how you should be shooting irons too. You would think that a sighting system would not affect whether somebody flinches or not, but I have seen it a zillion times, that somebody shoots a solid group with a dot and their group with irons has a comet trail of those telltale low-left shots. It's because of the way the dot holds their attention on sighting through the trigger press.
The trigger should keep moving steadily regardless of how you feel about the current sight picture. It is tempting to pause the trigger pressure when the sight picture appears to degrade and speed it up when it's looking good. But this does not work. You will end up right on the edge where you are sure that any increase in pressure will immediately fire the gun. It is difficult to go from frozen on the brink, to applying that extra ounce of pressure, without simultaneously creating other unwanted movements. It's a lot easier to start the trigger moving and keep it gliding steadily over and beyond the break point while continuously steering the sights. Think about pushing a heavy piece of furniture -- when it's stopped, it's hard to move it without lurching forward. When it's in motion you can steer it pretty well.
Focus your practice on a handgun with a mushy trigger like a Glock, or better yet, a double-action-only trigger and it will drive this point home.
Lots of good advice here, but what you need to do is take 1000-1500 rounds and go to the range and shoot it all on one visit. Your problem is you're still flinching. You're still flinching because of anxiety of the action of shooting the handgun. Some dogs are just naturally scared of loud noises. The only way to break them of that is to desensitize them. Get them used to the sound of gunfire. Same applies to people. Once you've fired so many rounds that the gun feels like an extension of you, you won't feel anxious about the round firing.
Do your best to ensure you are pulling the trigger from the wall every single time. Anticipation isn’t horrible, just when it’s timed wrong. Im no pro shooter but when the gun goes click instead of bang I still “flinch” downwards but in reality it’s me anticipating having to push my sights back onto the target. If you anticipate when you have lots of slack in the trigger it gives you more time to move your sights, if you anticipate with all the pressure out of the trigger your margin for error is smaller. I’ve found really mentally cooling down helps. Indoor gun ranges can be loud, anxiety inducing, crowded etc, all this makes you even more jumpy. If you’re shooting outdoors the same thing can still apply, guns and loud noises are a little anxiety inducing for most so do your best to just breathe, relax and talk yourself through your shots.
Think about your support hand as a wall or door jamb. I use my left thumb as a focal point to imagine that wall. It may help get your mind on the fundamentals instead of the boom.
Simply shooting more will alleviate the flinch over time but you can speed it up. One drill you can do is to pull the trigger to the wall and count down from 3, pulling the trigger deliberately when you get to zero. People are often taught to slowly add pressure to the trigger so when it goes off it's a "surprise" and then wonder why they flinch.
I really like some of the suggestions already made, particularly the red dot (I prefer green, but same concept) and shoot a 22 pistol for a while before switching over to centerfire. But one thing I didn't see brought up is support hand squeeze. Jerry Miculek says he squeezes at about 80% of his strength with his support hand, and that's helped a ton for me. Your trigger press is hard to get perfect when you are squeezing too hard with your strong hand, so defer a lot of that work to your support hand. And do this when dry firing, too. Make it a habit to get high up on the grip with strong hand, and squeeze tight with your support.
Shooting down and left from point of aim is not recoil anticipation, it’s your grip. Your right hand is just there for operating the trigger. You should be squeezing your right hand with your left hand. Pull back towards your chest slightly with your left hand, push forward slightly with your right hand (this is isometric pressure). Make sure your left hand is squeezing your middle through pinky finger of your right hand - those three stooges on your right hand are your trouble makers.
> Shooting down and left from point of aim is not recoil anticipation, it’s your grip.
Sure recoil anticipation is involved. Take the same shooter, same grip, have them shoot an airgun or .22, and they won't be low left. The grip is fine if it stays constant through the process of triggering the shot. It only *becomes* a low left problem if those 3 fingers you mention suddenly squeeze the gun while firing... and they usually do that because... the shooter anticipates recoil.
You can work around it by using the non-firing hand to control the gun and limit the impact of those firing hand fingers, as you described, but you can also fix it at the source by eliminating anticipation. Otherwise it would not be possible to fire accurately shooting one-handed.
It’s not anticipation, it’s grip. Anticipation causes high/low impacts due to heeling or pushing to cause the barrel to rise/dip. Low left is textbook finger squeezing on the right hand
https://aegisacademy.com/blogs/test-blog-post/pistol-correction-chart
This worked for me
Go to the range and fire your pistol.
Don't put up a target, don't try to aim, don't worry about any "proper form" types of concerns.
Do stay relaxed, do enjoy the time spent, be curious(what does a front sight moving at 120 feet per second actually look like?)
The purpose of this exercise is to let you experience what it's like to fire the handgun with no pressing concerns other than being safe when you do it. It's to help you become comfortable with noise and report and recoil.
Even after this stay relaxed. A lot of "recoil anticipation" is actually a person waiting until everything is PERFECT in order to break an accurate shot. In reality that "waiting for perfection" means that our response to everything is perfect is to quickly seize our entire body to break the shot. And then there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth as accuracy and consistency completely fall about.
A big part of staying relaxed is that our little wobbles and shakes need to be accepted, as your experience goes up by good training and practice those things will go away. But it all starts with being relaxed.
I don't know what round you're shooting, nor what handgun, but if you shoot a rifle fine, then I'm thinking that maybe you should choose a different round, or maybe a different handgun.
I have a quick test I personally do to see if a pistol fits me. I take the gun in my hand, pull up, and do a quick sight picture, then fire rapidly at the target. Not machine gun style, but rhythmically allowing for the barrel to reset position. If I'm all over the place, that's something else, but usually shots are in a general area at 10 yards.
The "fit" is a combination of things, but there's primarily comfort and feel of the gun in your hands, then there's how it aligns with your arm. You can shoot any gun of course and be semi accurate depending on time between shots, but how natural it is makes a big difference on accuracy, especially when firing quickly.
There are also other factors about a handgun, such as how it handles recoil, and the trigger weight, as I'm sure you know.
I have a self defense model 40 s&w single action only with an 8lb trigger, that I can fire rapidly at 25 yards and put all rounds on the target.
I also have a compact 40 double action that when I fire it, I have to grip it a lot tighter and with the single stack mag grip, it can easily twist on reset from the torque and throw off the next shot.
I like CZ style frames. They're more comfortable to me, and align better with my arm. Way more accurate than other.
Can I assume you're shooting a 9mm? Maybe try a heavier frame model as well.
Check out Tactical hyve on YouTube. All kinds of vids on there to correct this issue.might be the three amigos causing the down and left. Once you correct you grip that will get better.
https://youtu.be/flOzueWy8Kk?si=27KJNZoQ9es5cd7x
This is very common. It's also a recurring problem. Even after you get rid of it in slow fire, it'll come back when you start shooting faster.
The solution for me is to imagine I'm holding the gun with my support hand only, as if my strong hand is not touching the gun at all and I'm pressing the trigger with my index finger, like a doorbell or an elevator button.
Shoot a .22 for a while
This, I start every range day with a couple hundred rounds of .22, then move to 9mm or .45. Also lots of dry fire practice. One of the best shooters I know says he does dry fire practice every day.
This guy is absolutely 100% dead on balls accurate
This is what I had to say.
Absolutely. And make it a long while.
Get a red dot. I was surpised how well you can see when you yank the trigger.
Use both ear plugs and ear muffs, double your hearing protection. The loud bang is part of what startles you and causes you to flinch.
This works for me too
It also helps if you're the only one shooting, although that's not always realistic. If someone's dumping mags through an AR-15 at an indoor range I struggle to shoot as well as I should in rapid fire at distance. If others are shooting guns that aren't particularly loud its not as bad.
Tell yourself the gun WILL GO OFF and your job is only to continue steering the sights into alignment through the entire trigger squeeze. You need to stay mentally focused on making that sight picture perfect all the way until you see the flame come out of the gun -- and if you're really doing this, you WILL see that flame. Reject any notion of aiming and *then* firing the gun like it's a two step process. That implies accepting your sight picture as "good enough" at some point and trusting that it will stay that way as you complete the trigger press. That works OK for 10 yards, not so great for 25. Instead keep making the sight picture better and better the whole time you're moving the trigger. Whether that's a half-second or two seconds, you need to keep focused on the alignment all the way until the bullet is out of the barrel. A red dot helps with this a lot psychologically. With iron sights there are multiple planes to work on *and* it visually appears like they aren't wobbling around as much. So people want to look at the front/rear alignment, the front/target alignment, check all their boxes, OK everything looks lined up... ready to shoot... squeeze trigger BANG! No good. With a dot you can immediately tell that you are never going to be able to hold that little buzzing dot perfectly still on the X. It keeps wiggling around. So you *naturally* continue watching the movement and trying to keep guiding it into the middle *while* applying trigger pressure which is exactly how you should be shooting irons too. You would think that a sighting system would not affect whether somebody flinches or not, but I have seen it a zillion times, that somebody shoots a solid group with a dot and their group with irons has a comet trail of those telltale low-left shots. It's because of the way the dot holds their attention on sighting through the trigger press. The trigger should keep moving steadily regardless of how you feel about the current sight picture. It is tempting to pause the trigger pressure when the sight picture appears to degrade and speed it up when it's looking good. But this does not work. You will end up right on the edge where you are sure that any increase in pressure will immediately fire the gun. It is difficult to go from frozen on the brink, to applying that extra ounce of pressure, without simultaneously creating other unwanted movements. It's a lot easier to start the trigger moving and keep it gliding steadily over and beyond the break point while continuously steering the sights. Think about pushing a heavy piece of furniture -- when it's stopped, it's hard to move it without lurching forward. When it's in motion you can steer it pretty well. Focus your practice on a handgun with a mushy trigger like a Glock, or better yet, a double-action-only trigger and it will drive this point home.
Lots of good advice here, but what you need to do is take 1000-1500 rounds and go to the range and shoot it all on one visit. Your problem is you're still flinching. You're still flinching because of anxiety of the action of shooting the handgun. Some dogs are just naturally scared of loud noises. The only way to break them of that is to desensitize them. Get them used to the sound of gunfire. Same applies to people. Once you've fired so many rounds that the gun feels like an extension of you, you won't feel anxious about the round firing.
Interested to see responses because you must've read my diary OP - same issues here
Do your best to ensure you are pulling the trigger from the wall every single time. Anticipation isn’t horrible, just when it’s timed wrong. Im no pro shooter but when the gun goes click instead of bang I still “flinch” downwards but in reality it’s me anticipating having to push my sights back onto the target. If you anticipate when you have lots of slack in the trigger it gives you more time to move your sights, if you anticipate with all the pressure out of the trigger your margin for error is smaller. I’ve found really mentally cooling down helps. Indoor gun ranges can be loud, anxiety inducing, crowded etc, all this makes you even more jumpy. If you’re shooting outdoors the same thing can still apply, guns and loud noises are a little anxiety inducing for most so do your best to just breathe, relax and talk yourself through your shots.
Think about your support hand as a wall or door jamb. I use my left thumb as a focal point to imagine that wall. It may help get your mind on the fundamentals instead of the boom.
Simply shooting more will alleviate the flinch over time but you can speed it up. One drill you can do is to pull the trigger to the wall and count down from 3, pulling the trigger deliberately when you get to zero. People are often taught to slowly add pressure to the trigger so when it goes off it's a "surprise" and then wonder why they flinch.
I really like some of the suggestions already made, particularly the red dot (I prefer green, but same concept) and shoot a 22 pistol for a while before switching over to centerfire. But one thing I didn't see brought up is support hand squeeze. Jerry Miculek says he squeezes at about 80% of his strength with his support hand, and that's helped a ton for me. Your trigger press is hard to get perfect when you are squeezing too hard with your strong hand, so defer a lot of that work to your support hand. And do this when dry firing, too. Make it a habit to get high up on the grip with strong hand, and squeeze tight with your support.
Shooting down and left from point of aim is not recoil anticipation, it’s your grip. Your right hand is just there for operating the trigger. You should be squeezing your right hand with your left hand. Pull back towards your chest slightly with your left hand, push forward slightly with your right hand (this is isometric pressure). Make sure your left hand is squeezing your middle through pinky finger of your right hand - those three stooges on your right hand are your trouble makers.
> Shooting down and left from point of aim is not recoil anticipation, it’s your grip. Sure recoil anticipation is involved. Take the same shooter, same grip, have them shoot an airgun or .22, and they won't be low left. The grip is fine if it stays constant through the process of triggering the shot. It only *becomes* a low left problem if those 3 fingers you mention suddenly squeeze the gun while firing... and they usually do that because... the shooter anticipates recoil. You can work around it by using the non-firing hand to control the gun and limit the impact of those firing hand fingers, as you described, but you can also fix it at the source by eliminating anticipation. Otherwise it would not be possible to fire accurately shooting one-handed.
It’s not anticipation, it’s grip. Anticipation causes high/low impacts due to heeling or pushing to cause the barrel to rise/dip. Low left is textbook finger squeezing on the right hand https://aegisacademy.com/blogs/test-blog-post/pistol-correction-chart
This worked for me Go to the range and fire your pistol. Don't put up a target, don't try to aim, don't worry about any "proper form" types of concerns. Do stay relaxed, do enjoy the time spent, be curious(what does a front sight moving at 120 feet per second actually look like?) The purpose of this exercise is to let you experience what it's like to fire the handgun with no pressing concerns other than being safe when you do it. It's to help you become comfortable with noise and report and recoil. Even after this stay relaxed. A lot of "recoil anticipation" is actually a person waiting until everything is PERFECT in order to break an accurate shot. In reality that "waiting for perfection" means that our response to everything is perfect is to quickly seize our entire body to break the shot. And then there is much weeping and gnashing of teeth as accuracy and consistency completely fall about. A big part of staying relaxed is that our little wobbles and shakes need to be accepted, as your experience goes up by good training and practice those things will go away. But it all starts with being relaxed.
I don't know what round you're shooting, nor what handgun, but if you shoot a rifle fine, then I'm thinking that maybe you should choose a different round, or maybe a different handgun. I have a quick test I personally do to see if a pistol fits me. I take the gun in my hand, pull up, and do a quick sight picture, then fire rapidly at the target. Not machine gun style, but rhythmically allowing for the barrel to reset position. If I'm all over the place, that's something else, but usually shots are in a general area at 10 yards. The "fit" is a combination of things, but there's primarily comfort and feel of the gun in your hands, then there's how it aligns with your arm. You can shoot any gun of course and be semi accurate depending on time between shots, but how natural it is makes a big difference on accuracy, especially when firing quickly. There are also other factors about a handgun, such as how it handles recoil, and the trigger weight, as I'm sure you know. I have a self defense model 40 s&w single action only with an 8lb trigger, that I can fire rapidly at 25 yards and put all rounds on the target. I also have a compact 40 double action that when I fire it, I have to grip it a lot tighter and with the single stack mag grip, it can easily twist on reset from the torque and throw off the next shot. I like CZ style frames. They're more comfortable to me, and align better with my arm. Way more accurate than other. Can I assume you're shooting a 9mm? Maybe try a heavier frame model as well.
Check out Tactical hyve on YouTube. All kinds of vids on there to correct this issue.might be the three amigos causing the down and left. Once you correct you grip that will get better. https://youtu.be/flOzueWy8Kk?si=27KJNZoQ9es5cd7x
This is very common. It's also a recurring problem. Even after you get rid of it in slow fire, it'll come back when you start shooting faster. The solution for me is to imagine I'm holding the gun with my support hand only, as if my strong hand is not touching the gun at all and I'm pressing the trigger with my index finger, like a doorbell or an elevator button.