If anyone has advice on how to determine if a grip is good or not I'd be all ears.
Move your hand 'till it feels right and you shoot 10s!
Really, I wish it was easier. Once you get good at it, it becomes second nature. Here's what I do:
Start off with the handgun unloaded, on the table in front of you.
(1) Pick up the handgun with your off/support/weak hand, by the muzzle end.
(2) With your gun hand, make as if you were about to shake hands, thumb up.
(3) Place the gun in your gun hand. Your gun hand should not move. The backstrap should go from the web of your thumb to the wrist-heel joint. When you press the gun in, you should feel your four fingers involuntarily close.
(4) Pointing the gun in a safe direction, let your trigger finger fall on the trigger. If it's sub-optimally placed (too far in, too far out, too high, too low, whatever), go back to step 1 and make adjustments.
(5) Close your bottom three fingers.
(6) Let your thumb relax however it wants to relax. It should apply no pressure to the gun. If it does, you will push your shots to the left or right, depending on how much you unconsciously balance this and how your subconscious mind decides to do it.
(7) Adopt your stance and point the gun at the target. If all goes well and your stance isn't off, the sights should align naturally. Don't worry if it doesn't naturally point at the target (unless you have religious devotion to N P of A), or if it's slightly off. You'll get better with practice. Beginners should consider it successful if they don't have to hunt for the front sight.
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jim lock said:
Try and let that weapon surprise you when the hammer falls.
I respectfully semi-disagree. I think that the sentiment is correct, but it's a long way around doing it correctly. Even my newest, least-used pistol has hundreds of rounds through it. The most, several thousand. I know when that bang's a-comin'.
The problem is that it serves you well until you reach that point of familiarity, after which you just get really frustrated into you graduate to...
matteekay said:
the trigger shouldn't stop once it's in motion. Follow your sights all the way through the pull
Your subconscious--he's a terrible shooter--is always going to tell you "gun's gonna go off, gun's gonna go off, almost there". And then he's gonna tell you that fateful thing, the Root of All Poor Precision Shooting, the One True Evil:
"The sight/dot/crosshair isn't on the X, why are you still pulling the trigger? You should stop and wait for it to get on the 10-ring!"
To succeed, you have to dominate that scrub voice. Maintain conscious control of what you're doing. You have to think in four dimensions--the sight's not on the 10-ring
now, but that's okay, because the hammer hasn't fallen. And you don't know where it will be when it does.
That's why people shoot great with new guns, then gradually work down to their average. They're taking that "shot surprise" trick and it's actually working because they don't know the trigger well enough.
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I would suggest careful dry fire. It's really easy to work terrible habits into your shooting unless you have a plan for dry fire training. In this instance, focus on maintaining sight alignment through the pull. Use a target, but focus on maintaining alignment, and screw where the sights are aligned
to.
For shooting, back the target up to 3 or 5 yards, and use a target about the size of your groups with a semiauto at your target range (so if you shoot a 3" group at 10 yards--be honest--use a 3" target at 3 or 5 yards).
I call the game 10-0. Shots within the target score 10. Outside scores 0. At five consecutive perfect strings, replace the target and move it out to 7. Repeat until you're at your target range. Focus on alignment and smoothly increasing trigger pressure until the shot.
Don't be cheap with your targets, replace them as soon as you can't immediately tell where the shot went. The whole point of starting at stupidly close ranges is feedback. You have no excuses for missing, and you can see immediately where your shot went.
